HYPNOSIS AND FRAGMENTED REALITY

13Hypnosis and Fragmented Reality

Hypnosis generally refers to the use of special techniques to bring a subject into a state similar to sleep. Or rather, guiding the sleeping subject to lose his or her active and positive state, thus leading to a weakening or loss of decision-making ability and self-control. In this state, perception, thinking, will, and sentiment all fall away, subject to the subtle whims of hypnosis.

Li Songsong was born in 1973. When he was three, Mao Zedong passed away, the same year that the Tangshan Earthquake ended 300,000 lives in a single night. It was a fable-like farewell to the reign of terror that had ruled this land for the previous few decades, a valedictory to the brutal realities of class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This era carries a long shadow and left ruins in its wake; its thorough end would take much more time, a long rugged path.

This is an era marked by widespread unconsciousness, ambiguous and hazy, lacking rationality, lacking thought and human glory, lacking moral judgment, lacking any possibility of distinguishing right from wrong. It is a muted gray canvas, in which history has been suddenly cut into a thousand pieces, arbitrarily, suddenly, carelessly. Truth exists only in the details and fragments. In the vast majority of cases, that which is hidden from view outshines that which is easily perceived, and fabrication and forgery outshine true situations and historical fact. Even in the obvious cases where there exist believable truth, moving details, and human emotion, there is an indubitable logic and rationality. These factors make this broken and severed scroll of history miraculously reassume its shape, a hundred contradictions folding into one, impossible to distinguish, utterly intertwined. Like a pile of porcelain fragments, every piece contains a complete image, even if there is no way to piece them together again.

One day at dusk after talking with Li Songsong, on the way from my studio to dinner, I looked out the car window. The night was approaching like any other. The lights had just been flicked on, a light breeze was at my face, people were flowing back and forth. Along the street, store after store, family after family, building after building made up this little part of the built landscape of this city. People were preparing dinner, not really concerned with right and wrong, nor with the affairs of their ancestors or descendants. They weren’t concerned with whether the water in the pool was still or rippled, or where the river would flow in the future. There are too many people here. It is the same under any dynasty, the common trifles, the pains and joys. One thing is constant: these pains and joys are all fragmentary, they cannot be truly described or expressed, they cannot be multiplied or rendered. They can be felt but not described, understood only tacitly. They are utterly shattered, not a single piece unbruised.

This is a city of ruins in the true sense, vast and limitless, extending beyond horizons of space and time. For a long time now, people have been born among them, lived and walked atop them. People’s behavior, observation, perceptive ability, language, vision, sound: none do not resonate with sentiment and attitude. We only live here, grow up here, die here. This is a special civilization, with a special path, like a plant that grows on high ground. In different climates and temperatures, only those that adapt can survive.

The existence of ruins proves that strength and glory can be thoroughly destroyed and obliterated. It proves the weakness and fickleness of rationality, the collapse of the soul, the departure of the spirit, the extinction of the conscience. On this patch of ruins, the old refuse reason, while the young just want to play.

Ruins prove the power of violence and barbarity. The attest to a potential for survival that lies only in weakness and loss of principle. They show the joy and freedom in tragedy. Ruins cannot exist independently, paired by necessity with violence and stupidity, existing alongside fragility and abandonment.

Li Songsong paints with layers thick enough to cover anything and everything. In the past three years, he has painted over fifty works. The early works are essentially monochromatic, with thick, strong brushstrokes. In these black-and-white canvases, the connections among layers and colors carry a definite order, as the rough brushstrokes create and articulate an unusual visual shock. In the recent works, his palette expands beyond the monochromes of the early paintings, into multiple color schemes divided by area, forming a patchwork of colored squares, a scene made of different layers and pieces. Only in a few small works does the pigmentary logic approach the experience of reality, with the use of color in the painting proceeding naturally and without interference. Several other works are painted on sheets of aluminum; the even light of this metal lends the works an air of mechanical coldness and brightness, with silver and gray tones reflecting the environment around them. It marks an introduction of violence into the work, combining with the thick and imposing brushwork for a stimulating visual experience.

If we say that everything will become history, then all painterly subjects will become historical subjects. All painting that concerns reality carries a whiff of symbolism, hinting and guiding it from beyond. All that a painting represents will become the face and color of history. These paintings by Li Songsong—whether historical or non-historical, intentional or contingent, heavy-handed or meaningless in subject matter, eternal or transient—are all forever and inseparably connected to these layers and layers of thick brushwork, their speed, what they cover, how the light shines on the colors. At the same time, they are interrupted and disturbed by a system, broken off and independent from others, floating beyond them. Methods of reading these paintings beget obstacles, interpretation proves difficult, problems arise from the confusion brought on by the desire for interpretation. At this time, excitement and fatigue run side-by-side, and art becomes hypnotic. It makes people disappear while searching, lose desire while wanting, feeling helplessly driven and guided.

Humanity does not allow individuals to exist independent of history. All the traces of truth and falsity that they leave can be seen as traces of history. Sometimes they are clear and transparent, nearly invisible; other times they are obscure and intertwined, inseparable and unclear. Seen from the surface, Li Songsong’s works belong to the latter. But Li Songsong’s painting derives from the Western oil tradition, although it still contains some of the meaning of Eastern painting. These paintings, in the power of their completeness, do not depend on the strength of visual effect, logic, light, and color, but rather come from deep in the psyche, from sentiment and will to freedom. This makes them manifest an uncertainty and distance. Here, color is simply the internal demand of the psyche, ineffable. Brushstrokes are pure necessity. Their quality derives from his handling of the canvas and the tenor of his emotions, disconnected from the objects actually portrayed, but inseparable from the state of his mind.

If today there is a necessary connection between individual expression and the nation-state, national history and the world—if the damaged theories of materialism are indeed correct in postulating these kinds of cause-effect relationships—then our world is full of abandonment over persistence, chaos over clarity, contradiction over moderation. People grow ever more emotional, further from rationality. Emotion is weak but unlimited, but logic is different, stubborn and fragile, clear but devoid of possibility. In this Eastern land, the absent moon is the only real one, an eternal spirit even if it hangs on the other side of the earth. Forty years ago, the moon that man walked on was only another stretch of ruins. People here don’t need to go and discover these ruins again; the moon the Americans spent so much time and energy reaching is not the moon in Chinese people’s hearts.

2006.10.13

Oct 13, 2006