Minotaur Imprisoned In a Stable

Once I said to Sun Liang: “Your studio will disappear from the map, one day. Then, before it fades into distant memory, I will write a book, chronicling the events and happenings (of the studio).” “I adopt a style of reminiscence or making the story fictional”

Almost ten years has passed but amazingly Sun Liang’s studio is still there. The writing I promised has been postponed. However, many times I have sketched this unwritten bookin my mind; including chapters, inscriptions, an introduction as well as the words for the postscript. I much prefer imagining to writing. I am also fond of talking (with him) and all our chats in his studio are worthy of collection into a book entitled “Conversations recorded in a stable”. Of course it will never be realized because I believe everything that has ever been spoken exists or has existed.Talking and writing can be compared to making love; the pleasure in talking is like that of making love, not always for the creation of new life. However writing should have purpose; like procreation for the birth of a baby.

This makes me wonder about what Sun Liang has done in the studio over the last ten years, day after day? In painting the works, has his fantasy been to facilitate love making? Copulation between pigments and the linen canvas creating babies. The room is infused with the smell of turpentine; the walls are stained with colours; a patch of sunlight casts a shadow on his shoulder. Like a mirage skimming through the air, who can penetrate the vision of his inner world? Can the extensive “stable stories” be viewed as a key to interpreting the puzzles in his works?

I am thinking of the Greek myth of Minotaur; the cannibal with a human body and a bull’s head. Imprisoned in a labyrinth by the King of Crete, Minotaur wanders amongst the scattered limbs, skulls, other human remains and ghosts ….. Oh no, we had better not portray it so dreadfully. Why don’t we imagine his studio as a labyrinth of the reincarnate King of Crete? In these times his jumble is so inappropriate. It is burstingwith the most dazzling creatures, hovering limbs, feather like remains and vacant faces. Is Minotaur not the genius prisoner, confined to the bottom of his heart? Can the Minotaur tell the censure on the transmigration of the final phase; displaying the Danteque scene, only under imprisonment?

Still it is a bloody and violent world, full of fragile lives, transient beauty, spectacular death, cultural incest, while tradition appears to sleep soundly. The superficial changes of our times, in a specific place do not change the thousand year old patterns and traditions. God can merely distinguish the murmurs of his pessimistic sigh on the commotion in the world (around him), as well as the omen of the final phase. In my minds eye all are recorded in the unpublished volume of “Conversations recorded in a stable”. It is God who granted him the insight and imagination to go beyond the society around him, to penetrate the surface of our shallow and ostentatious times and who empowered him to ignore the misinterpretations and apathy of his generation. The changing times cannot account for all his perplexity, fantasy, palpitation and intensity. No matter where and when they come from, it is only the things he can sense which exist for him.

I presume it is his open-minded perception of the epochs which make the Minotaur driven by him; turn the bloody labyrinth, fading though it may be, into a shining paradise. The visual language, reflective of several hundred years, are drawn together in his paintings, the effects including solemn, quietness, fear, doubt, simulation, dissimulation, emotions, sub-consciousness, illusion, symbolization, confusion and co-existence. He dismantles and reconstructs them. He breaks up the images and then reshapes them, echoing ancient Greece, in the way that Dali did in paintings and as Nietzsche said of his skin; it splitting and breaking so as to rejuvenate a new layer. Many a time when I have stood in front of his paintings at dusk, the definite lines gradually fade into patches of blurred light and colour. More often than not I mistake them for some living things which I have never seen and am therefore ignorant of. As the outlines dissolve they permeate one another and then fly free into the imagined space. They seem to exist beyond the world. Given; the birth and extinction of all creatures, the transmigration of existence and emptiness, who can claim Sun Liang’s fantasy is less real than the reality?

Time will be the final judge of the truth; however we have to synchronize the point in time. Let us imagine 50 years from now; that people will take pleasure in talking about the variation of materials and widespread, frequent changes in culture, as if they were a running horse lantern, at the end of the 20 th or beginning of the 21 st century. Naturally, when they recall history some names will be forgotten. I am sure Sun Liang’s name will be one of them since his works bear no cultural symbols or characteristics particular to his generation. Five hundred years on, would the peoples of this new time, show interest in the insignificant history of this insignificant city? They will say what a conventional city it is. Surprisingly a lost individual would emerge; his works once seen too impressive to be forgotten. The works bear no significance to the conventional city of their birth, just a rare chance of some very extraordinary paintings. Regretfully I cannot wait for that day. Likewise they will never see what is taking place in front of me: At the far end of the corridor, between the turpentine and candle light a crystal ball is emerging, ambiguously. Through which pigments, juices mixed with milk, are fantastically scattering across the canvas, flowing on to the floor, magically floating towards the window, towards an unpredictable future … This strange and horrified flashing and a misshapen creature is escaping from its labyrinth …

Wu Liang

Spring, 2004

Translated: Jin Liu Xi

Edited: Mishou