CRITICAL WRITING
Against the Norm
Presented from the manuscript supplied by the artist. The English is a translation prepared for this archive. The commentary is attributed to Fang Zhenning.
I saw a work whose pictorial space was extraordinarily empty. Only on approaching it did I notice the concealed lines. A half-naked woman hung from an extremely fine red thread, attempting to move forward with her arms; a sense of suspense arose at once. This was an oil painting by Liu Qiming. It brought to mind Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s celebrated short story ‘The Spider’s Thread’, in which people trapped in hell see a spider’s thread descend from somewhere in the sky and desperately try to climb it. What happens to them? Anyone who has read the story can scarcely bear to think about it. The visual force conveyed by these words has been taken to its limit. This is the writer’s method, and also Akutagawa’s philosophy of the microcosm.
I then saw a series of works by Liu Qiming. Extremely fine red threads constitute the principal language of his oil paintings. This seems already to be Liu Qiming’s painting style, arrived at through a succession of experiences. At this point, two forms of experience overlap: painting and life. Between 1995 and 2006, Liu Qiming’s paintings generally failed to leave a lasting impression. A dramatic change followed, giving rise to the series built around lines that we see here. Like nerves within the body, these lines touch the most sensitive points of life; they also sustain a state of suspension.
Floating, falling, inversion: such states create friction or conflict with order and normality, a conflict that is extreme and charged with passion. Through this ‘red thread’—seemingly fragile, yet bearing the full weight of existence—Liu Qiming transforms the experience of living against the norm, in which people today are suspended between faith and the abyss, into an arresting visual image.