Jia Aili

initialled in English and dated 2009

Platform China, Beijing
Acquired by the present owner from the above
Private Asian Collection

This work is generally in good condition. There is a speck of paint loss near the centre on the white stroke on the right side. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
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A Whirlwind of Change
Jia Aili

Born in 1979, Jia Aili has doubtlessly become one of the most renowned young contemporary Chinese artists, his work embodying the mentality of a whole generation born after the Cultural Revolution. With his vividly imaginative compositions and virtuosic painting techniques, he has forged a new space for contemporary Chinese art and influenced many subsequent young artists. Commenting on Jia’s solo show at the Singapore Art Museum, the prominent critic Karen Smith writes that “Jia Aili’s works have not only been successful, but also recognised as an essential force in transforming the new generation of Chinese painters.”¹ The lot on offer, Wasteland Series No. 1 (Lot 1040), is from Jia’s eponymous series, the most important in his early career. The signature lightning-like brushwork here visually expresses the ever-changing age of information. The gasmask-clad figure, standing in for the artist himself, suggests his complicated and conflicted emotions. His anger and unease fully, lucidly inhere in the supremely expressive brushwork.

In contrast to artists who came of age during the Cultural Revolution, Jia Aili was born in 1979 and grew up in the 80’s and 90’s. In this period, collectivist communism vanished under China’s liberalisation, leaving little behind but old portraits of Party leaders. It was difficult to keep pace with China’s rapid economic development. Unlike the earlier generation of artists, Jia Aili is uninterested in reviewing the traumas of modern Chinese history, and instead finds inspiration within himself, by exploring the purpose of individual existence. With his robust and even explosive brushwork, and in his fantastical scenes of apocalyptic ruin, he draws a psychological portrait of a young generation and shows the new horizons of contemporary Chinese art. In fact, Jia is similar to some Western artists who hail from post-Socialist countries, such as the East German-born Neo Rauch and the Romanian Adrian Ghenie, in that they all work with familiar iconographies of the past. Although they live in different social contexts, they all possess a unique sense of history and provide unique perspectives on the past. Dandong, Jia Aili’s hometown in Liaoning Province, recurs as a theme and a stage in Jia’s work because it is a point of contact between him and history. Separated from North Korea by the Yalu river, Dandong borders past (North Korea) and present (China). Consciously or not, Jia uses his memory of Dandong to convey his thoughts on China’s past and present and thereby grasps the shape of time and reflects his perspective on history. “For me, a work of historiography, no matter how objective, always hides many secrets and invites my exploration. What it implies is precisely the hidden themes that I want to pursue.”²

Jia Aili graduated in 2004 from the oil painting department of the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts. An inheritor of the Academy’s tradition of Soviet social realism, Jia underwent rigorous training in figural painting. Although a virtuosic oil painter, he refrains from showing off his technique, but has rather worked towards generating a sense of epic tragedy on his canvases. In 2008, he began the enormous We Are from the Century, which measures 15 meters in length and 6 meters in height and has the compelling and absorbing presence of Italian Renaissance murals. Indeed, Jia Aili has never concealed his passion for classical Western art. He has said that if he lived in the past, he probably would want to be a muralist. Jia’s works are infused with the spirit of Renaissance paintings; they possess Rembrandt’s and Leonardo’s sensitivity towards chiaroscuro, the world-saving magnanimity of religious paintings, as well as a profound sense of tragedy. Wasteland Series No. 1 is the fullest expression of the aesthetics that Jia Aili has created and refined persistently over the years. 

The person in a gas mask is a recurring figure in Jia Aili’s early works. In the present painting he is dwarfed by a vast environment, which is dominated by a greyish blue and seems to emotionally repressive to the extreme. “My favourite scenes are of the desolation following a big group celebration, when the joyful laughter of a moment ago seems to linger.”³ An important stylistic element in these Wastelands is the lightning and etching-like linear brushwork, of which Wasteland Series is a notable expression. Here irregular lines explode from the centre to occupy most of the canvas, seemingly disorganised but actually full of energy. They convey the artist’s fears and are the concretisation of a chaotic world, their expressive powers recalling the deeply, energetically fraught brushwork of the important 20th-century painter Francis Bacon.

Human existence is insignificant. Hidden behind a gas mask, the figure has nothing but solitude and helplessness, and isolation is his only possible state of existence. Jia Aili has said, “human thoughts are very insignificant. Beneath heaven and above earth, whatever one does pretty inconsequential.”⁴ The gas mask is an armor and a symbol of the fear of injury. “A kind of hopelessness. From afar the world is beautiful, but when you go closer to look at its flaws, it makes you sad beyond yourself.”⁵ Full of prophetic symbols, this scene is itself a riddle and a fable. Everything is collapsing in this chaotic, disjointed world. For the artist, painting seems to be the only way to hold on to existence. “When I’m alone in the studio and commit this melancholy to canvas in paint, I do feel quite happy.”⁶

Wasteland Series No. 1 reveals Jia Aili’s response to his time. “When I first studied painting, I was influenced by figurative painters like Freud and Liu Xiaodong. Their kind of painting has actually always inspired me to paint in a relatively realist manner, even today. During my student years, Liu Xiaodong shook me to the core again and again with his exquisite renditions of social reality and social psychology.”⁷ Indeed, Wasteland Series No.1 embodies the artist’s melancholy and unease in his youth, and indirectly reflects a new generation’s rejection of and escape from a society in total transformation. “People at my age were repressed and depressed, and I was melancholy… I didn’t have any concrete contradictions in front of me, but only an inchoate feeling.” There were uncertainties about the future, too. “I thought those adults who had given us hope wouldn’t give us answers for tomorrow anymore… In this new era we would live ordinary lives.”⁸

Karen Smith believes that Jia’s works “articulate a vision of the world that encompasses everything from the universe to specks of dust,” with Shakespearean grandeur and sensitivity. Indeed, although born long after Shakespeare’s time, Jia Aili has created a record this era of interpersonal isolation in painting. Without excessive political and social consciousness, his works veer towards the private and the secretive, and his emotional expression is restrained and calm, perhaps even cruel. These stylistic characteristics are echoes of the individualistic age in which we live. If art is a mirror of life, then Jia Aili’s paintings indeed reflect the vanities and insecurities of contemporary China, and bear eloquent witness to an entire people’s experience of these times.

1 “Jia Aili: Seeker of Hope,” New York Times website, August 17, 2012.

2 “Jia Aili: Towards a Chaotic Reality—In Dialogue with Zhu Zhu,” 2010.

3 “The Inexplicable Melancholic: A Conversation with Jia Aili,” an interview with Jia Aili by Fu Xiaodong and Sun Ning, March 2006.

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7 Determinate and indeterminate or unsolved mysteries: Conversations between Jia Aili and Feng Boyi, 2010.

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