Wu Xiaochuan:

Climbing Up the Ladder to Heaven

Gu Zhenqing

The acrylic painting of Wu Xiaochuan shows a kind of lofty mood. Wu Xiaochuan likes to indulge himself into his unconstrained imagination and mediation. However, when he is about to choose the outward object of his painting, he becomes very prudent and always gives deep thoughts. Stone steps along the mountain road, skeletons, horses and newspapers…all these symbolic objects spread on his clean and tidy canvas, so quietly and calmly, with all secular making being washed out, as if they never belong to this temporal world. Wu Xiaochuan prefers to use the black-white-grey color scheme, which frees the objects on his canvas out of their complicated appearances and brings them back to the simple and unadorned status of still life. Within Wu’s private set-up of objects, we see no temper, or even, no desire. Painting, as to Wu, is like a way of releasing the pressure or healing the wound. He let his stroke go to release his inside burden and he tastes joy and pleasure when he creates and constructs. To Wu Xiaochuan, painting becomes his self expression. Through painting, he gets to take care of his inside emotion and resist in his own manner, the cruel shadow of collective unconsciousness. It is painting that preserves the self conscious of Wu Xiaochuan and let it grow and prosper. Wu is one intellectual type of painter who cares about changes and revolution and creation, which can be easily observed in his recent series of works. Wu Xiaochuan is climbing up the ladder to heaven of no bounds. Apparently, he is climbing toward the Kafka-style spirit castle. This castle is not only the warm homeland that he guardes, but also the superstructure for his solo dance.