I

　　In January this year, Liu Yonggang gave me one of his painting album named Standing Characters. He said that it was the exhibition album of his individual art exhibition held in National Art Museum of China at early of last year. “Standing Characters” was the subject theme of that exhibition.

　　I did not know Liu Yonggang before but I have been spiritually attached to him for long. He became famous for his works of Shepherdess of Northern Sala in 1980s which once left deep impression on me. It was a folk custom painting which was different from classic countryside pastoral aesthetic style. Instead, it expressed Liu Yonggang’s mental conflict between his deep attachment to and modern confusion of folk custom. The dual forces of modern consciousness and artistic expression enabled this work to be selected as an exhibition in the first Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition in 1987 and win first rate prize. In 1988, Chinese Art Weekly with chief editors of Shui Zhongtian and me once published this works. Since then I got to know Liu Yonggang, an oil painter from Inner Mongolia.

　　In 1990s, he went to Germany for study which made his artistic idea changed a greatly, turning from modern to contemporary.

　　“Contemporary art” and “post modern art” are two concepts with close relation while neither of them can be exactly defined. Apart from raising antithesis against “modernism”, many artistic phenomena almost have no common sense. Therefore, it is better to start from the reality than from definition to see in what sense “Standing Characters” bring out Shepherdess of Northern Sala.

　　The greatest change is not that Liu Yonggang changed from oil painting to sculpture but from oil painting to arts. He was said so because we were not sure he was a calligrapher, an ink painting painter, an oil painting painter, a sculptor, a ceramist or a comprehensive mixed media artist. He broke the constraint of art variety and was free to do whatever he wanted. In other words, Liu Yonggang got rid of the state of being tied to one kind of art.

　　In addition, his sculptures are also different from our familiar concrete sculptures and abstract sculptures. If we say they are concrete, but there are no figures, buildings, landscape, scenery, birds and flowers and inanimate objects and other represent objects and expression objects; if we say they are abstract, however, they have their own represent objects and expression objects—Chinese characters. That is to say, Liu Yonggang breaks through the consideration between being concrete and abstract and developed on the way which was irrelevant to being concrete or abstract.

　　Thirdly, the planarity of his sculptures is against the sense of dimension which is always stressed in sculptures. That is to say Liu Yonggang gets rid of the usual thought and has stronger force of reverse thinking. Liu Yonggang’s sculpture is beyond sculpture. In order to avoid the concept awkward, it is better to simply give it a proper name—word tablet art.

　　Dang Tuo said: ”contemporary art does not have a prior standard which restricts arts—arts can be like anything. Just this point has ended the agenda of modernism.” Liu Yonggang falls into this kind of art situation.

　　Does it mean that “contemporary art” or “post modern art” has got rid of all restraints? No. It is the most important for contemporary artists to blaze a trail by themselves. In other words, they need to make rules, make nets and build cages by themselves. What kind of rules and how to make standards by themselves does not need to follow the predecessors’ standards. Therefore, they are free and unrestrained. But they shall be restrained by the rules made on their own so as to make up artistic tension and achieve their own right to speak among the rising cacophony. In this sense, they are restrained and limited.

　　The direction of the trail blazed by Liu Yonggang is character transplantation. How to make character be contemporary art, what the difficulty of creative breakthrough and so on is the core of his consideration and exploration. As for that it is sculpture or destroying sculpture, painting or destroying painting, pictographic or anti pictographic and understanding or anti understanding, it has become a minor problem whose existence can be decided by creation. Therefore, Liu Yonggang has tried both two-dimensional plane and three-dimensional methods.

　　II

　　Making artistic creations by using latin letters or figures has existed in the west for a long time; Xu Bin, Gu Wenda and Wu Shanzhuan had also achieved success in making artistic creations by using Chinese characters long before; therefore, the difficulty is not borrowing words but how to borrow words.

　　In 1985, 21-year old Liu Yonggang created the oil painting of Rock’s Memory which was the starting of his dream of characters. As he did not find a forceful cutting in method, he could not continue it. He studied in Nuremberg Fine Art College in Germany from 1992-1997 and achieved master degree. Since then, he had the character dream in his oil painting once again. But he still did not find a forceful cutting in method. Till 1999, he finally found his own creative origin or new cutting in method—words stand up.

　　Therefore, his main target changed to sculpture. He created Love Embrace series which was composed of more than one hundred individual work from 1999 to 2005. In March 2007, the sculpture and painting exhibition with the theme of “Standing Characters” held in National Art Museum of China in Beijing and exhibited the creations of this period together.

　　For the contemporary artists, the discovery of creative origin means the real start of artistic life.

　　What does Shi Tao’s “one painting” refer to? In my opinion, it refers to the sprout, growth and the whole developing process of artists’ creative origin. Before the creative origin is found, no matter how long the time is, it is in learning, exploring and searching stage. Shi Tao says his theory is “simple and close”. As he breaks a trail of his own. It is a very simple principle that “I use my own method”; Shi Tao also calls “one painting” as “macro” “great method”. It is because that many people do not understand what originality is. No creative origin means no “one”. Therefore, it is said that “one painting method is created on one’s own.” The discovery of creative origin is like the beginning of the heaven and the earth genesis. Therefore, it is said that breaking through the original and plain principle and painting skills are created by oneself; the new method derives all following things and then it is said to be “basis of all things and root of every phenomenon on earth” and all words and inks start from it and end at it; the discovery of creative origin determines the value of entire artistic life and then is said that “one painting is enough”.

　　As having found its meaning, the enterpriser Lv Zhongli sponsored it enthusiastically, which made Liu Yonggang’s design drafts turn into 102 pieces of 0.56m high small black jade carving and 102 pieces of 3.4m high enlarged black jade carving so as to form an integral character arrays which has visual impact.

　　As having found its meaning, Jia Fangzhou made comments of Standing Characters, Creative Spirit and some positive remarks of some critics.

　　As having found its meaning, Fan Dian, director of National Art Museum of China especially organized the exhibition in a relatively important schedule and collected Liu Yonggang’s works.

　　It must explains that meaning is not in “Characters standing up” but in the relation between “words standing up” and Liu Yonggang’s new artistic life.

　　On various stages of popular ridotto, standing facial make ups, window grille, shadow puppet and bronze patterns……are not scarce. This kind of traditional symbols is boastful. The reason that it cannot enter the creation of contemporary art is that there are no artists seeking the context of art history hard; there are no artists making independent explanations of traditional symbols; there are no artists making highly qualified forms.

　　If calculated from Rock’s Memory in 1985, till 2007 when “Standing Characters” exhibition was held, Liu Yonggang has had a dream of characters for 22 years. This series of works has experienced 6 years. He did so not just because the West does not have Chinese characters but he had found its eternal aesthetic value. He said:” the characters created by ancestor have extraordinary vitality. Especially for the inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells, almost each of them is a painting and almost the invention of each character is an artistic creation.” His 102 “characters” are different from each other and all of them are designed based on the research of seal scripts of inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells, Mongolian and Tibetan characters. Almost none of them are readable. All infection is from the quality of form itself and scale impact. It can be said that if there is no form quality, this series of works cannot be created. If there is no large volume or great amount of character arrays, such kind of grand momentum cannot be displayed. The combination of character structure beauty and the texture of black jade which is forged roughly and grinded delicately make the character arrays like symphony military music.

　　The quality of form itself is a severe challenge of artists’ learning, cultivation, power, ability, talent, courage and knowledge. A popular character symbol of Jing has good originality but it lacks the quality of form itself.

　　In order to enable stone carving to stand firmly, Liu Yonggang designs the bottom part of most characters vertical strokes and separate them forward and backward; Seen from the side, it looks like the character of “ren”(meaning people) while seen from the half side, it is like two walking people who lean close to each other. Therefore, Liu Yonggang names it as Love Embrace series. If the cultural admiration of Chinese ancient characters lies in the internal theme of the works, then the social ideal of caring human beings exists in the external theme of the works.

　　III

　　The discovery of creative origin is the starting point rather than the ending of new artistic life. I often feel disappointed as many artists finally find their own creative origins but they do not develop a following process of forming one into two, two to three, three to numerous and then reverting them to one in the end. As they do not have full recognition of the meaning and value of creative origin, they abandon the creative origin and are engaged in the trifles which they think are more important while actually are not meaningful. The works which they are famous for become their memory forever.

　　I insist that the discovery of creative origin is just the first step of the Long March. After words stand up, Liu Yonggang has many possibilities not only of making new series but also of improving the quality of his works.

　　For this series of works, the method of changing words on two-dimension plane into three-dimension stone carving is relatively simple. There are still many traces of hollows on slabs and the frontality characteristic of the works is excessive.

　　When I leaf through the painting album of Standing Characters for the first time, I asked Liu Yonggang a specific question:” the square sections which connect characters and the base are all frontal. Why don’t you change the angle?”

　　After hearing this, Liu Yonggang was very excited. He gave me a disk in the following day which stored his new works created after the exhibition of “Standing Characters”. The new exploration started from turning character feet. The flatness and frontality became more flexible. At the same time, he had also tried many kinds of metallic materials.

　　If the works in the exhibition of “Standing Characters” can be explained by “words related to stone carving”, then his new works indicate an important change—changing into “stone carving related to words”.

　　Art is difficult. I do not mean that higher rise of Liu Yonggang has arrived but that a new process of significant meaning has began.

　　One painting, finished but lasts.

　　Beijing, April 16, 2008

　　Liu Xiaochun:

　　Famous art critic, researcher in the Chinese National Academy of Arts