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| The Wandering Poet Who Watches the Tides--On Ren Xiaolin’s Art |
| By Ye Yongqing |
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  t’s been said that Ren Xiaolin spent his childhood in a baby chair. To give the lonely child a bit of action, the adults lit a lantern on the wall to his side. The curious sideways glance at the flashy light is a posture that Ren Xiaolin has maintained to this day. The now successful Ren Xiaolin is considered as one of the representatives of poetic, expressive painting. I don’t see any conflict between coolly observing the world and painting expressively. It is actually an attempt to finally dispel dark and twisted experiences, and live forever in the warmth of fantasy.
I remember when Ren Xiaolin tested into the Oil Painting Department at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art in 1982. I had just graduated and taken a job in the faculty, and was assigned to teach sketching for freshmen. At that time, Ren Xiaolin displayed a remarkable grasp of form: demonically intelligent, relaxed and sensitive, exceptionally talented. But with the Academy swept up by the rustic realism trend, this natural talent went under the radar. Perhaps great minds do think alike – we struck a deep and lasting friendship. We were all typical angry youths, eschewing the influence of mainstream trends, looking down on all that was celebrated, engaging in frenzied bursts of creativity in forgotten corners, washing it all down with drink and stubbornly sticking to our ways.
Many years passed, and Chinese art went through many commotions and changing tides that crumbled into nothing, with so many accomplished swimmers disappearing without a trace. Through all of this, Ren Xiaolin kept to his bystander stance, always building on his unique temperament. Looking back, Ren Xiaolin was not totally disconnected from the trends, it was just something about his personality and temperament. I can’t say for sure whether it was mildness or arrogance, but Ren Xiaolin always followed a path that others saw as marginalized. In 1986, Zhu Bin, then editor of Art Trends Magazine, asked me to write an article about southwestern art, and in it I described Ren Xiaolin’s state in the “85 period”: “Through his creation of the ten meter long oil painting Requiem, we can see that his behavior in conquering the canvas hints at the ideal of the individual stubbornly pushing forward in the midst of contradiction. In his duel against appearance, he has come to understand his power and affirm his manhood. In the suffering of sacrifice,  he has cleansed his spirit, and has attained a brilliant level of harmony.” During the Kunming “New Figurative” and Southwestern Art Study Group event in 1986, I presented slides of Ren Xiaolin’s works as representative of new trends in Sichuan Province. At the Huangshan Conference of 1988 I brought a batch of slides from artists in Chonqing and Sichuan for my lecture. From those, Gao Minglu and Li Xianting selected the works of Zhang Xiaogang, Gu Xiong, Wang Yi, Ren Xiaolin, Yang Shu, Xin Haizhou, Shen Xiaotong, Guo Wei, Kong Xiang and Zhu Xiaohe to be included in the China Avant-Garde Exhibition held at the National Art Museum of China . But Ren Xiaolin didn’t really start to take off until the early nineties. He had returned to the city of Guiyang, and his Colorful Land, which was particularly striking, won a Bronze Award at the Seventh National Fine Art Exhibition. Like the work of Cao Li, a classmate also from Guizhou Province, his style, marked by decorative tendencies and local flavor, attracted a lot of attention in the art scene. Also, Ren’s trademark strong colors and thick smearing techniques along with his simple forms became an influence for many who followed. Come to think of it, I find that if we look back on the history of style, all of the major styles to emerge in different periods began by bucking the overarching trends. Ren Xiaolin’s artistic path and the uniqueness of his style are a testament to that.
Whether he was in Guiyang or when he later moved to Beijing’s Huajiadi neighborhood, Ren Xiaolin’s heart never left Guizhou. That is where he grew up, and it is the wellspring of his creativity. When talking about changes in life, Xiaolin always conveys the peaceful, laid-back and individualist atmosphere of his hometown. He is always able to calmly enjoy a kind of life that is unfashionable, even outmoded. For instance, he often goes out for long walks, or to  a mountain cabin to take in the scenery, walking a very long distance just to brew a cup of tea and enjoy the beautiful solitude. Xiaolin has recently learned to drive, and he often drives his Golf alone along the old roads that have gone empty because of the new highways, turning a random corner and driving to some village deep into the forest…. As an observer of real life and cultural trends, Xiaolin’s long-term seclusion in a remote corner has not made him any more close-minded, nor does he seem narrow or dull. To the contrary, moderate separation has given him an above average level of sensitivity. In his studio, oil paintings of all sizes exude an odd sense of tranquility: ancient mountain forests, fat women in revealing poses, lonely leaves falling through the sky, oddly skinny and fresh-faced boys, exposed boulders on a riverbed, autumn prairies, lonely and outsized crowds…all of this reminds me of what the poet Ruan Ji, one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove , slowly wrote in Expression: “I sit alone in an empty room / Who could ever make me happy? / I head out and face the endlessly stretching road / I can’t see any people or carriages passing / I climb to high ground to look out over the homeland / All I see are vast fields / The birds and beasts silently taking leave.” This bitter imagery, this expressive and somewhat pathological painting repeatedly managed by the painter’s palette knife and tone of brush, these are just right for baffling social critics and historicists. Most artists are weak of spirit and have worrisome temperaments. In a world where morals are universally on the decline,  artworks with expressive tendencies seem even less prescient, and are destined for ridicule and cold receptions. It is because of a small minority of artists like Ren Xiaolin, who have persisted in their untimely disdain for those artists weak in spirit and fragmented of mind, those artists who read too much and experience too deeply, who think too much and act too little, that certain principles of expressiveness still survive today. This situation is not unlike the contribution made by Francesco Clemente of the ‘Three C’s’. Expressiveness has found development along a new direction, and the premise for this is doing away with direct perception of reality’s circumstances, placing the lonely spirit into dreams and games, using poetic vocabulary to recreate expressive space and expressive subjects. Moving through endless desolation towards a past dynasty, paying homage to that which has withered away, listening intently to warm language that has been wiped out by time, talking with imaginary things and past memories, the ancient scenery reemerges clear and bright, like a mirage unfolding from a labyrinth of air, bringing limited joy to the dreamer – this could describe his life, the artist and expresser, the wandering poet carrying a brush, who is sometimes a spiteful person, but for the most part is a grievous one, one who praises life and purges death, one who reflects on the frustrations of reality.
Ren Xiaolin’s recent works mock the tendency towards fractured personalities among intellectuals, himself included, as well as the viewpoint of the  infinitely solitary discourse. Since the Wei and Jin period (roughly 300-500 AD), immersing oneself in the natural landscape, ascribing to utopianism and feigning unfettered freedom and harmony have been the admired path for Chinese literati with aspirations towards hermit-hood, and through a dialectic method of feigning madness and idiocy, it has become woven into a happy mask for duplicitous people. Man lives in the world, and is full of extreme terror. After awakening to a peaceful dawn, one never knows whether dusk will ever return. Living is like walking terrified across thin ice, and one must still show a mad and idiotic face to the audience through all of this. Unconsciously, Ren Xiaolin’s visual lexicon has revealed the tragic destiny consciously approached by Chinese literati. These deep perceptions and thoughts, drawn from long and repeated rumination on details, sometimes suddenly enlighten the artist, who sets out and paints a work of astonishing genius; sometimes they enlighten people, bringing them the sense of release from the body.
The value of retreating from the world and seeking out the imagination is the artist’s romanticist standpoint: though we cannot change the circumstances of reality, aside from the play we used to engage in, what else can we do? Ren Xiaolin has found for us another path for expressiveness: stubbornly  galloping towards the depths of living emotion, trying to reach an internal harmony between the modern spirit and ancient expressive atmosphere, unconstrained indignation and abnormally pure language, the timeless value of love and themes from common life.
Now, living in Beijing, the remarkably fortunate Ren Xiaolin is situated even closer to the heart of the action. His life is surrounded by related people at the center of fashion, a position that is the envy of countless young students of art. Just as the Ren Xiaolin I first came to know, he still cocks his head while taking in all the action around him. Trends and anti-trends are not the focus of his attention or gaze. He just lives naturally, creates, and doesn’t consciously pursue anything, just watching and grasping the poetry of the details of life around him. As is often the case, he exudes a clear personality, perhaps the details are the ones displaying their personality. Like a geological explorer or geographic surveyor working his way into the depths of the heart, Ren Xiaolin often stands patiently in front of the canvas, meticulously etching out some small river in Guizhou, a small mountain, a village, a person, or something from daily life, all hidden inside of him. If it weren’t for the immense amount of emotion involved, no one would ever be able to invest so much effort, patiently depicting and tirelessly persevering. In an era of so much change, there is nothing we can grasp beyond the details and tidbits of life. In a time when it is so easy to lose everything, only by grasping onto these and slowly polishing and excavating them, can we gain something real, and this realness, in a time of globalization where it is easy to imitate and copy each other, appears even more special and individual.
 Ren Xiaolin, with his massive quantity of poem-like paintings, takes the stance of a cold observer of trends, standing apart from the trends of the era. He reminds us to think about what details and tidbits of life we should really uphold and protect. As I see it, one should hold on to a specific scene, setting, and atmosphere, or a special regional background and set of cultural traditions. By holding on to these instantaneous perceptions in a set place and sincerely expressing them, we might find happiness in a sprig of grass, a branch, a brushstroke. That is to say, we will have found belonging. That is because the individuality, uniqueness and creativity that artists spend their lives pursuing and preserving lie within it.
Translated by Jeff Crosby
 Ren Xiaolin, 1963 born in Beijing. Graduated from Sichuan Fine Art Institute in 1986. "Somniloquy--Works by Ren Xiaolin" held from November 29 to December 21 in Hexiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, which is an important solo exhibition for the artist. For more information, please go to: www.hxnart.com
 Ye Yongqing ：Famous artist and art events organizer. 
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