I am confused by how language came from, suspicious about the authenticity of sentiment and especially afraid of the hollowness of a “fake” pedant.

　　--Shen Ye

　　Shen Ye named her first individual exhibition to be held in Today Art Museum, Beijing as “To the Obscure Object of Desire,” while she finished a large oil painting with the same name in 2008. “The Obscure Object of Desire” was borrowed from a film directed by Bunuel, a Spanish Master, in 1976, which was his last film eventually, and rewritten on the basis of French writer, Pierre Louys’ La femme et le pantin. In the film, Bunuel tried to extend a sensation novel full of ups and downs, which described how the noble man—Mathieu tried to pursue after and possess a maidgirl—Conchita, into an in-depth exploitation to human nature, so as to fully demonstrate his attitude towards human nature, love, good and evil. As Bunuel said in That Obscure Object of Desire, desire is intertangled emotions in heart and existing in people’s minds. Inside to others is always obscure, so any clear description to desire is actually a waste of time. Many of Shen Ye’s paintings can be drawn with the same conclusion, in fact, any in-depth observation on Shen Ye can be drawn with the same conclusion, too.

　　Shen Ye, the daughter of an ancient city—Rui’an, Zhejiang, graduated from the “Pilot Class of Figurative Painting” held by the Oil Painting Department of China Academy of Art around 2000. The artist recalled that she had “finished all those courses for undergraduate students very quietly, but accumulated her own energy and strength silently.” The “Pilot Class of Figurative Painting” was a special class held by China Academy of Art at that time. Although belonging to the Department of Oil Painting, it emphasized “pilot” (experimental objective) far more than other departments, in addition to it paid extraordinary attention to “phenomenology,” both of which created the double guidance on creative concept and painting method. As for specific teaching method, Situ Li said, it, based on “basic method of figurative painting” represented by Giacometti, “studies on the method, thinking and attitude to shape the visualized objects.” On the basis, the “Pilot Class of Figurative Painting” at that time, no matter the teachers and the students, was emphasizing to consider artistic creation as persistent pursuit after reality, and to consider the intentional analysis of phenomenology as the base of intensifying painting practice with artistic subjectivity to reveal the objective truth. We can see the characteristics in Shen Ye’s works shared with her classmates, such as fascination on Giacometti’s conceptual expression and formal language, together with other characteristics distinguishing her from others, e.g. Shen Ye has emphasized the “authenticity” behind the so-called “authenticity in front of your eyes” and her personal feeling towards the “authenticity”—“Living and observing, finally something will flow out of your heart…”

　　In fact, as her teacher, Yang Canjun described in an article, “Shen Ye chose human as her subject too, but the establishment of the subject is very difficult,” and he attributed the final establishment to the accumulation of unexpected encounters or mental experience which “finally found the way of expression.” For example, in the “Human•Landscape•Old Man” series finished at the time, Shen Ye clearly emphasized that “human and space had created a dynamic and concentrically contracting state,” which was totally inspired by Giacometti’s comprehension of distance and vanity, as well as his method of “concentrating space” with figurative frontality. Shen Ye, on this basis, tried to depict the complexity of separated but interwoven and intertangled things in a space through creating a scene, while tried to present the connection of an indicative space and the actually-existing objects through arranging the structure of the painting. But the final implementation of the ideas or thinking often depends on the artist’s fundamental attitude towards “authenticity.” But Shen Ye, who always respects personal experience, never wants to look at the world with a pair of “colored spectacles.” As her teacher, Situ Li said, “Writing something just standing in front of you is seemingly easy, but actually the most difficult, even impossible.” Situ Li’s saying is totally phenomenological, since he believes that it is more important that the continued change and generation of consciousness have become the determinant of viewing and viewing method as the world changes. However, since Shen Ye felt that “authenticity” was so difficult to grasp, maybe we should liberate our feeling and experience, even if such a feeling or experience became scattered, such am impression was transient…Shen Ye, in such kind of creation, further intensified her suspect against the expression of “authenticity.” She even gave up the media of oil painting but turned to water and ink.

　　Shen Ye was absolutely in her “paper-based” state around her graduation as a master, e.g. the Ghost Bride, created in 2007, is a painting finished with water-based paints as propulene on imported sketch paper. Shen Ye recalled, the creative subjects of the Ghost Bride were all originated from her “dream” instead of “reality,” through which she mainly expressed “a kind of feeling of being saved,” and in which “there were the emotions in the past when I was young, and thinking today, together with untellable things.” Its connection with previous works is mainly presented as the blur, ambiguity, deformation and occasional effect after the rich trails being overlapped and compressed, as well as the sense of an unfinished work arisen from the uncertain flowing of water-based paint and ink on paper. But in a series of her works including the Ghost Bride, all the images are always intertangled. It seems that Shen Ye more intensified the repeated overlapping of images. Such a handling obviously is not a confusing or hesitating strategy, maybe this is just the “authenticity” between existence and vanity believed by Giacometti, and maybe the so-called “overdetermination” said by Sartre in his Giocometti’s Painting, then pursued by Shen Ye.

　　Indeed, Shen Ye is always interested in small paintings. Then based on continuous practices of small paintings, she shifted her attention, e.g. the Park Sketches in her junior year eventually fixed her attention to figure, together with the “Body” series in 2004 and the “Portrait” series in 2008 seemingly indicated certain changes.

　　Her “Body” series finished in 2004 are consisted of Shen Ye’s characteristic works in the “paper-based” stage, most of which were painting some typical parts of female body on 38×28cm paper. As a female artist, Shen Ye revealed female body’s privacy to fulfill the sensitivity of the serial paintings. Although covering and overlapping were still used as the artist’s creating language, Shen Ye adopted the image as “black and white film” to “record the authenticity,” while highlighted the nature of “sketch,” and reinforced the uncertainty, difference and unfinished sense through clear and ambiguous, confirmed and blurred, stable and flowing, occasional and inevitable.

　　The following “Portrait” series (2008), called as “the portraits of some people of a kind,” is considered as the works since which Shen Ye finished her “paper-based” stage and returned to oil paintings. Those portraits are still small paintings around 40×30 cm, depicting young people. Shen Ye seemed has retuned to her college years, since those works reminded us of the Park Sketches in her junior year. But if analyzed in deeper meaning, there are still big differences: Although still portraits of figure, Shen Ye focused more on herself and surrounding area, from the angle of self analysis but not other’s vision. On specific expression method, Shen Ye again borrowed Giacometti’s method, but under certain extent, since Giocometti’s “erasing and repeated depiction” have been simplified as “erasing” leading to the “singular” appearance from the “plural” characteristics. Thus, the “categorized” portrait expression was formed and the collective analysis on a group was highlighted in the process of erasing details. On the other hand, Shen Ye still maintained the nature of “sketch,” and showed the unique “unfinished” style in response to Heidegger’s words “art is the origin of truth,” which jointly generated each other’s “difference” and intensified the random but dynamic emotion.

　　From the perspective of different stages, the year of 2008 is a very important year to Shen Ye. In this year, Shen Ye not only returned to oil painting creation, but also started working on her “To the Obscure Object of Desire” series. This series and the following “Cross Dressing” series are of somewhat obvious “erotic” characteristics, which may be easily related to the key words, such as post-modernistic “femalism”, “body” and “status.” But Shen Ye said she had never though about other things, only believed “erotic” itself was a“removal” from chaotic and deceptive status quo, as well as certain kind of active discussion over “authenticity.” “To avoid ideation and conceptualization, authenticity may be found in an indeliberate glimpse, everything is there,” said Shen Ye.

　　“The Obscure Object of Desire” series seems obviously larger in size. At the beginning, Shen Ye relied on the experience accumulated from small paintings on one hand, and tried to introduce “paper-based” paintings to a limited extent on the other hand. Consequently, the paper-based works as The Obscure Object of Desire (2008) and the Pink Dream of The Obscure Object of Desire (2008) jointly attributed to the unique serial works with “oil painting” and “paper-based painting” coexist.

　　The Pink Dream and the Magician’s Pocket, the two large paintings finished in 2008, constitute the representative part of “The Obscure Object of Desire” series. Although one is “paper-based” painting and the other is oil painting, there is no difference between each other in the whole, i.e. Clearly, Shen Ye has already broken through the limitation and restriction of materials over her creation. In fact, in the horizontally extended scenes like the “wide screen,” Shen Ye preferred more to try and to deliver more complicated and diversified contexts. Although Shen Ye never believed she herself was a follower of “femalism,” “females” in her paintings had already become the icon in striking positions, while “males” or other objects had obviously been depicted as relatively unimportant image. Shen Ye was deliberately avoiding to describe “body,” but paying more attention to the “status,” then to express “desire” and analyze “desire,” both specifically in herself and in others.

　　The “Cross Dressing” series after “The Obscure Object of Desire” more clearly explores the “desire” through the analysis on “status.” The Cross Dressing series mostly depicted young women featuring beautiful face, charming figure and fashionable clothing in scenes which can be imagined as “club,” “bar,” “masquerade” and “fashion party.” Shen Ye selected large amount of various and diversified image data as supplementary to her imagination on one hand, and as consideration over commonly existing phenomena in a wider sense on the other hand. In Shen Ye’s eyes, “Cross Dressing” is no longer fashion or novelty, but it creates a fancy “atmosphere” instead, which sanctimoniously doubts and limits “desire,” while the “desire” unavoidably puzzles and pulls human soul and spirit down and down…

　　From “The Obscure Object of Desire” series to the “Cross Dressing” series, Shen Ye gradually viewed her creation as a process of analysis. The so-called “atmosphere” she clearly emphasized is both related to daily experience, and concerned with the whole and the background generating a phenomenon or behavior, enabling clear direction and methodology for analysis. The fact is the “Dreamland” series, created in the same period with “The Obscure Object of Desire” and the “Cross Dressing,” deserves our attention as well. It is a serial work cost a long time. Superficially, it is intertangled with the specific Nature, sketching experience and personal memory, depicting the profiles of Shen Ye’s painting practice and daily experience. What is more important, it naturally grows into analysis and practice of language, space and structure of painting, expressing Shen Ye’s “fancy to a certain atmosphere.”

　　For The Desire to Write in 2011, Shen Ye wrote, “The Desire to Write accumulated some experience and knowledge from life and books, on violence arisen from erotic and power, on the voice’s restriction and suppression over the truth, on the personal desire and suppression, on the life burden, on the occasional happiness and transient tenderness in heart…” Undoubtedly, Shen Ye began to emphasize “the multiple meanings of words and images” in painting, and tried to channel the living world, the knowledge system and personal feeling through, by “putting unrelated images on a same scene.” But in fact, The Desire to Write never appears messy and chaotic, because Shen Ye began to initiate the structuring function of consciousness, by which a “singularized plural” visual image structure was created between the consciousness and the objects. From then on, different images were collected in the same “atmosphere.” Just as Heidegger said, “The characteristics of an artistic work is to open and to build a world.”

　　From The Desire to Write in 2011, Shen Ye has successively painted several large paper-based works, which demonstrated certain “free and random explorations.” The Wednesday Light, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and the Under the White Tree, Beside the Parched Well, seem pure and quiet after “relevant images being overlapped, counteracted, and mutually developed,” though Shen Ye still emphasized “multiple meanings of relevant words and images” through more complicated images and structure than The Desire to Write. As a matter of fact, Shen Ye has secretly worked out the “understated style.” Without any prior agreement, but extended from different parts one after another, she only regarded the creation as painting her own experienced world, slowly or quickly, confirming and voicing her own feeling and sentiment.