|
MAO Xuhui, <Imitation of the death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David>, Oil on canvas, 134x95cm, 1989
MAO Xuhui, <Roaming along the Moat after drink>, Oil on woodboard, 67x62cm, 1982
[China] MAO Xuhui Imitation of the death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David Roaming along the Moat after drink
Mao Xuhui is a representative of the “New Figurative Image” art movement, and a founding member of the “Southwest Art Research Group.” His works were inspired by everyday life, touching on the artist’s concern for the current state of society. Enriched by his complex feelings and imaginations, the subjectivity and objectivity mutually permeated, overlapped and mixed into symbolic icons. Roaming along the Moat after Drink captures the messy, unbearable, inebriated days and nights of the Southwestern artists living in Yunnan, who supported each other on envisioning a path towards a new field that the former generation have avoided: exposing themselves, unveiling the state of people’s lives. Many years later, emulation of Imitation of the Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David has yet again proven, that sincerity awakens the awareness of life, an access to the painter’s wisdom, and representation of an abstract sense of reality through the reality of madness. The Death of Marat in his mind surfaced in a grim tone, the marks of tradition and modernity projected in genuine psychological cues that resist the surreal aspects of reality and spirituality. Mao’s works search for the evidence of physical and spiritual existence, in hopes to discover an exit for loneliness and the oppressed soul. |
