Still Life: The interweaving of flow and eternity
The longer a thing is stared at, the more it seems to detach from itself. The object itself, as an everyday carrier of our subconscious awareness and feelings, becomes a vessel for the concepts projected by both the creator and the viewer. The process of painting a still life is a way of deconstructing those understandings that have long been formed with one's own ideas from the perspective of perceiving the world. Traditional still life paintings are always composed of life and non-life, and the life behind the image is coming to an end. In between the clash of life and death, hope and despair, a poetic and silent moment is captured.
Xiaoling Zhang张晓玲
The still lifes in Zhang's paintings are well-behaved and silent. It seems that even when they move, they do so extremely slowly and quietly. They are outlined only in childlike lines, with unvibrant colours. Placed in an almost casual manner, they are detached from their original narrative in this context.
Jacopo Pagin
Jacopo Pagin's twisted, slim glass still life with its bionic curves gives it a stagnant, immortal beauty to me. The surrealistic palette and the dark, flowing background create a realm of 'nothing'.
San Yu
San Yu, a Chinese painter who went to France in the 1920s to study painting, combines the flavours of both Chinese and Western painting. There is a kind of introverted nobility and shyness in his paintings, like hidden threads that, if viewed carefully, can be drawn out bit by bit with the gaze to reveal a thin vein of the artist's ego and purity that exudes an intense beauty.
Eight goldfishes （1930-1940）
From his still life paintings I can imagine a life full of solitude and a sense of freedom. His use of colour is not diverse, but only the two or three that are exclusively necessary. Space, object and colour, the most valued factors in still life painting, seem to be unthinkingly abandoned in his pursuit of self and innocence; all that remains is the expression of purity, absolute authenticity.
Although space and the ontological nature of life are dissolved in San Yu's paintings, the brushwork textures, colour deposits and details such as the pattern of the tablecloths immerse me as if this is the way to really see.
Filippo A.L. Cegani
In Filippo's unusual still life paintings, his subjects are inorganic objects created by humans to satisfy their fantasies or accompanied by technology, such as ceramic dolls, robotic toys and plastic animal models. In the portrayal of objects, Filippo honestly and deliberately retains a sense of disconnection between inorganic life and humans; this is often reinforced by the contradiction between the objects and the space in which they are placed, often against a background of inkjet waves, blurred landscapes, mushroom clouds, or oddly checkered tiled rooms.
Fake ego death（2022）
In my paintings, objects are also often placed in a situation of logical contradiction, which I see as an act of resistance to the causal schema of our world and history. Philosopher Steven Shaviro expands on this:” Fabulation emerges in conditions of emergency; it works to preserve us from the dangers of excessive certainty, or of' pushing too far' with our rationalisations.
Craigie Aitchison
Craigie Aitchison's still life paintings have an intense, mysterious poetic feeling that fascinates me. Spaces unfold from near to far, with large spreads of colour punctuated by tiny flashes of light, plants, animals, or often crosses. Religion permeates his paintings. I love the implication of unobtrusive piety that lends an eternal lustre to the transient organic life.
Lily Still Life （1974）
