Night is not Day — Han Qing interview

Time: Night, March 26, 2006

Venue: Tu Ce Studio 798 art district, Beijing

Interviewer: Jiang Ming (Curator，Critic)

Subject: Han Qing （Artist）

Jiang Ming (hereafter JM): When did you begin to create contemporary artworks?

Han Qing (hereafter HQ): It began when I was a student, because I was then involved in rock and Roll but also painting at the same time.

JM: How old were you at that time?

HQ: Twenty.

JM: When did you first encounter painting?

HQ: I liked drawing, and began to draw form childhood.

JM: Did you start to study systematically afterward? What was your major?

HQ: Yes, I graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts College with a major in fine arts education.

JM: Did you teach school after you graduated?

HQ: Well, yes, I spent some time as an art teacher in a Chengdu middle school.

JM: How many years did you teach?

HQ: I left school thoroughly in 1999.

JM: Then you began as a professional artist?

HQ: Not yet, I did something first. I had some part-time jobs.

JM: But you put your main energy on the arts, yes?

HQ: Yes, I left school so that I could focus on my artworks.

JM: When did you begin to draw these artworks?

HQ: I drew some works about disappeared children when I was still at the Academy in 1992, you know, paintings of kids wearing red scarves. Because I often heard reports about pupils who went away from home at that time. I drew some missing persons’ notices for children in red scarves.

JM: How did you create these artworks?

HQ: I just used a photocopier to enlarge photographs of children, and then drew them out monochromatically. It’s a set of artworks. There were some photos of children, such as one drawing called “Two boys went back home reluctantly after school.” They wear schoolbags in a clear place with a high-handed electrical wire on their back. There were a number of works in this vein.

JM: What did you want to show in this set of artworks?

HQ: I wanted to show a social disposition, to show the disposition of children who had been repressed.

JM: To show a social problem, the individual and family problems brought on by transitions in the educational and political systems, right?

HQ: Yes, there were parents at that time who left to make money and didn’t take care of their children.

JM: Educational loss stems from economic and commercial influence. Were you looking to refract larger social problems by looking at children?

HQ: That’s it. Lots of parents haven’t the energy to take care of children, due to the pressures of daily existence and competition. These pressures are brought on by the changes in Chinese society. Afterwards I began to work in self-portraiture.

JM: Was that your second series?

HQ: No, although the subject was different, these works date to the same moment.

JM: Is there anything special about your painterly language?

HQ: I used a palette of blues and grays to show feelings of repression and depression. And I made another work in which a pedestrian crossing the road encounters strong light and has to hold his hands up to block it.

JM: When did you start to create these artworks about the night?

HQ: I started these artworks about the night in 1999. But these works are not in the vein of the very specialized works about night light that I did later. They still contain scenes of people.

JM: When did you first decide to remove the people?

HQ: Beginning in 2001, I began to work in the way I do now, without people, only scenes of lit-up nights. I wanted to create a space people could inhabit, to show how one person can feel lonely on a clear night, a psychological experience in which loss and hope stand contradictory. Night is not day.

JM: After 2001 your paintings had no people, they became merely environments.

HQ: Yes a kind of environment. Mostly they depicted the evening streetlights.

JM: To show a clear feeling and let people feel loneliness and coldness.

HQ: In my opinion, society has been developing is so quickly since 2000. Sometimes people haven’t figured out how to adapt. For example, days are filled with hell-bent work, and this changes your identity and status. The most basic and instinctual things about people are camouflaged. Then at night, people return to their normal dispositions, and this is ever more obvious.

JM: Your canvases have a certain expressionist quality to them. Why do you use this method?

HQ: I’m a very emotional person. My painting is not an exquisite or rational thing. I must enter a kind of state when I’m drawing. I need spiritual to let my spiritual tendencies show.

JM: Do others influence your works? Such as Richter?

HQ: There are some, coming from the art-historical canon, for example the Italian painter Giorgio diChirico.

JM: Your canvases are quite different from his in my opinion.

HQ: Yes, I like deep and serene scenes. And the canvas should have stronger perspective to create a space that can let you in.

JM: But diChirico’s works are so rational.

HQ: I still like a few of his works.

JM: You are interested in the way he makes his artistic point.

HQ: Yes, you’re right, artistic conception is the most pivotal thing in my painting.

JM: In fact, the technique is different completely. Do others influence your painterly language?

HQ: My painterly language does not derive from anyone. I like lot of artists for the way they paint. But in the end I have to find my own expressive method. So I ended up creating my own technique.

JM: What’s special and different about it?

HQ: I paint in reverse. Usually people start by painting dark colors and then fill in the light spots on top. I start with the bright parts and finish in one swoop, at one time. I need to finish while the paint is still watery.

JM: You need an impulse to create! You are rather emotional.

HQ: Yes, my paintings are like pencil sketches that add dark to light; usually one starts with darkness, or from intermediary colors.

JM: The feeling is like develop come out bit by bit.

HQ: My painting use white as base. First I apply a watery white then draw directly. There are a lot of optional and improvisational things. I find a kind of effect to adapt myself, I think.

JM: Do you think you have already found it?

HQ: Yes, I found it a long time ago. So my painting is complete, at least from a technical standpoint.

JM: Do you think painting technique is important?

HQ: Yes, I think that a painter needs to solve technical problems. If many technical problems are left unresolved, the painting is not perfect; perhaps it even fails.

M: What do you think is important for contemporary art?

HQ: I think painting is still about conveying information to people. That’s one concept, one rationale. But how do you present your work through a complete method as a painter? You must answer this question, otherwise you should use other methods. This is the difference between painting and other media like photography and performance. I prefer painting because I have confidence in it. I think this is the temptation, or the charm of painting. It can create the images that I envision.

JM: Painting should have a strong technical character.

HQ: Yes, if painting doesn’t have stronger character, you should not paint. In fact, I’m comprehensive. At the same time I work with painting, I also dabble in photography.

JM: What relation exists between your art and your family?

HQ: No relation.

JM: What do your parents do?

HQ: They are sort of generic corporate employees with no connection to art.

JM: So they have no influence on you?

HQ: I’m sure there are some subtle influences, because when I chose art, they were initially opposed. Parents of my parents’ generation mostly hoped for their children to have a normal stable job, particularly because it wasn’t very easy to get into art school at that time.

JM: What hobbies do you have except drawing?

HQ: Originally, I liked music. When I studied at the academy, I also organized a band, and now music is my second hobby.

JM: Does your music influence your painting?

HQ: Quite a lot. Actually music is quite intense in the artistic domain, especially rock-and-roll.

JM: Why don’t you continue to make music?

HQ: If I continue to make music, it means I’m going to continue to suffer.

JM: Are you afraid of suffering?

HQ: No, but to make music you need to cooperate with a lot of people. Perhaps I am just too much the individualist.

JM: But painting is freedom for individual.

HQ: Yes, it’s most pivotal. Music also needs equipment and other conditions.

JM: In other words it can be restricted by many conditions.

HQ: The third reason I stopped making music was that market space was so limited at that moment.

JM: Do you take much account of the market?

HQ: You need a basic guarantee for your existence.

JM: But choosing art means hardship too. If it’s only about the demands of life demand, you could choose another job and live better.

HQ: I prefer to put my strong suit out.

JM: Do you like reading?

HQ: I’d like to read psychology books.

JM: Do you read much Freud?

HQ: Yes, but I like psychology books about art better.

JM: What do you think is the biggest difference between our generation and others?

HQ: Firstly its idealism, but the ideals seem to be gone today.

JM: I don’t agree with this viewpoint. When other people don’t have ideals, why does that mean you can’t. Lots of people raise this point but I never agree.

HQ: I can have ideals, but they are always affected by environment.

JM: Why do you have to be affected by your environment? You should strive for your individual ideals.

HQ: That’s my greatest disappointment: Due to this whole set of social changes people have lost their ideals.

JM: This seems just to prove that your ideals are not strong enough.

HQ: There just seem to be so many compromises to me.

JM: That’s the most weak-kneed trait of the Chinese cultural intelligentsia.

HQ: One person also needs to adapt to the larger atmosphere of his or her era.

JM: Why must one person must go with the flow of an era?

HQ: One person will be lonelier like that.

JM: If you can really strive for your ideals, why would one care about loneliness? Each person must stay lonely in order to persevere in his idealism.

HQ: I think there is a better method. In my opinion, people should adapt to this society, because they are gregarious animals.

JM: Not every artist can become a Van Gogh. Actually their ideals and ambition is not their real necessity. At a suitable opportunity, the will transfer his ideals to other things.

HQ: Yes, there are many inconsistencies between idealism and realism. Currently there is less possibility to be a Van Gogh. Many people like to compromise toward realism. People consider the good life and there are many things to do. Sometimes you disengage from society only to discover that individual behavior is weaker still.

March 27, 2006

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