Art can be closest to the soul

The spiritual scenery is life right now.

I have known artist Wu Keyang for about ten years. At that time, I was still ignorant about art and even traditional culture, but he was already a frequent visitor to European art galleries and museums such as Florence and Paris, and he would go there for more than half a year, two or three years. Not to mention going to the northwest of China to collect art, going to famous mountains and rivers to learn from nature, going to historical heritage sites to pay homage and ask for help, and to find a way out of art by clarifying one's mind and nature.

01

On September 30, Wu Keyang's Oriental Spiritual Painting "landed" at the Palazzo Pisani in Italy for the first time, holding his first international solo exhibition. This was also the first time in the past century that a Chinese held a personal exhibition at the Palazzo Bisani.

Honor the Chinese people and collect Chinese culture

Explore the soul and explore life

I went to get a quick haircut two days ago. While I was waiting in line, I heard a customer tell the barber that he drove to Fuzhou during the National Day. "There's nothing interesting. It's just Gushan and Three Lanes and Seven Alleys."

I listened silently. In fact, many people have such thoughts and prejudices. What he saw was only the natural geographical scenery of Fuzhou. But the scenery is not only natural scenery, but also more important cultural scenery, including folk customs, religion, food, culture and art...

Talent is the best scenery. The soul is the most beautiful scenery. The soul is the most worth exploring.

It depends on the scenery. The levels are different, and the scenery you see is also different.

Wu Keyang originally saw a timeline and painted a dynamic world; but since an accident, his near-death experience gave him a newer and more unique understanding of life: the present is life, and the present is life. Therefore, he painted the moment when his soul was still, which was his "Eastern Spirit".

02

Watch and listen again, and you will see the big soul, the universe, from the small.

This year has been a big change in mentality for me. In the past, if I didn't travel domestically and overseas several times a year, it would feel like a year had passed. This year I suddenly realized that the best scenery is my own mind and my own nature.

And in terms of pure natural and cultural scenery, a city is multi-dimensional. Just like an exquisite city like Xiamen, in fact, as long as we calm down and taste it carefully, we will discover new scenery.

The relationship between us humans and nature, the relationship between us humans, and the relationship between humans and our own hearts are all the most beautiful scenery and the eternal subject of art.

In the past, I loved to travel and just take a quick look at the beautiful scenery, but now I can immerse myself in the culture and art of this city, and stay there with flavor and charm. This is called:

Seeing the big from the small.

Not to mention people like Wu Keyang, who have been exposed to traditional culture very early, traveled around the country and abroad, and viewed the world and life from the dual perspectives of traditional culture and art.

A life-and-death catastrophe made life more transparent; an out-of-body experience allowed him to understand the existence and immortality of the soul better than ordinary people, as well as the meaning of past, present and next lives.

From a visual perspective, his Oriental Spiritual Painting can be regarded as "looking at the big through the small"; but from the perspective of philosophy and even human consciousness, his paintings are "looking at the small through the big".

When we can "see the big with the small" from Wu Keyang's paintings, we will have a world view; when we can "see the small with the big" from his paintings, we will have our own true outlook on life.

Regarding the soul, most of us only get information about it from a few aspects. One is the descriptions and reports of people near death abroad who have come back to life; the other is the various surprising descriptions of their previous lives and parents after reincarnation in some villages in some provinces in China, as well as reports of the search for reincarnated soul boys in Tibet.

Wu Keyang's paintings present the world of the Eastern Spirit after his epiphany, and present those wonderful moments to everyone in the form of artistic lines and colors.

Let us cherish life, live in the present, and cherish fate.

Of course this is just my guess. The charm of a painting is not just one person’s understanding, but lies in the millions of people’s understanding of it.

Wu Keyang's Oriental Spiritual Painting enter Italy, a place with the same ancient culture. It is definitely a cultural event where Eastern and Western cultures blend and interact with each other.

October 27, 2023

【Personal profile】

Xuewen is an art critic consultant to the Lacquer Art Committee of the China Folk Literature and Artists Association; a member of the Provincial People's Association; deputy secretary-general of the Xiamen Film and Television Culture Industry Association; deputy secretary-general of the Xiamen Xiangdao Research Association; and a member of the Xiamen Literary Critics Association. Literary Criticism Researcher at the Intangible Cultural Heritage Research Center of Fuzhou University.