The opening of the Jing'an Sculpture Park Art Center at the "Dream of Fish" Exhibition: Art is a "fish that leaks through the net"
Following the steps of the Jing'an Sculpture Park Art Center, we arrived at the site of the Lin Mingjie Art Exhibition of "Dreams of Fish". The strong contrast between red and blue, with a distinct personal style of the artist. "Why is it called 'Fish Have Dreams'? The fish I painted is not originally a fish, but our dream, a human dream." Art critic and painter Lin Mingjie said. As one of the important exhibitions of the 2023 Jing'an International Sculpture Biennale, the exhibition officially opened on September 20th and will continue until November 10th.
The exhibition will open on September 20th
Entering the exhibition hall, multiple oil paintings with fish as the theme first caught the eye. Among the exhibited works, the largest one with a length of 8 meters and a width of 1.7 meters, "Fish Through the Net", is also the largest scale painting that Lin Mingjie has ever painted. It was created on-site in the exhibition hall. In the picture, a golden giant net grows from the bottom right corner, occupying nearly two-thirds of the screen space. A swimming red fish tail appeared in the upper left corner, with a hint of net rope attached to it, as if it had just experienced a struggle with the fishing net before breaking free. "The fish broke through the net and escaped. The concept I want to express is that art is a fish that escapes the net." Lin Mingjie explained, "Art not only brings people sensory enjoyment, but its more important attribute is constantly breaking through habitual thinking."
The painting with the largest scale on site
If carefully appreciated, the audience may find that almost all the exhibited paintings are "untitled", and the names of all the paintings have been simplified to "Dream 1", "Dream 2", etc., which is also intentional by the artist. "The painting itself is a visual art that relies on the viewer's eyes to perceive, rather than through text, so I deliberately downplayed the title and text."
Painter Lin Mingjie
It is worth mentioning that in addition to canvas oil paintings, the exhibition also includes paper-based color ink, acrylic composite materials, wood fired ceramics, installation works, digital imaging works, etc. "When planning this exhibition, the first thing that came to my mind was the environment of the art center. It has an industrial era style, with the mottled feeling of exposed cement walls, which contrasts perfectly with the bright colors of my paintings." Lin Mingjie said, "At the same time, I don't want this to be just an art exhibition."
On site exhibition hall
On both walls of the exhibition hall on the next floor, many short sentences are projected. They all come from an article in the art review column of Xinmin Evening News's "Lin Distance", and Lin Mingjie is the author of this column. He used these texts as elements of secondary creation, projecting them onto the first wall. A fish leisurely wandered through the text, creating a special picture. When they reached the next wall, these words and phrases were thrown like bombs onto the screen, and the fish were startled and scattered everywhere. On the last wall, all the words and sentences became blurry, and the fish also became blurry, swimming vaguely in the middle. He wants to express the relationship between art criticism, artistic creation, and time through this work. "In the river of time, there is no absolute truth in art creation or art theory. As time passes, they will all become a semi illusory state that seems to be elusive and specious."
Exhibition works
Exhibition works
The theme of the exhibition is "Fish have dreams", which means "Fish have dreams, I have dreams too". "I don't want to emphasize that what I'm painting is fish. In fact, what I'm painting is not fish. Fish is just a symbolic symbol of human dreams. It's like how ancient Chinese people painted lotus flowers, which symbolized a spirit that emerges from mud without staining. In Lin Mingjie's view, fish is just a symbol of expression. He pointed to a painting on the wall and said, 'This fish has no tail, mouth, or even scales or fins. It's easy to change it into a cat, but it's actually a vague concept.'"
Exhibition works
