“Invisible Vision”

Shi Jing’s Painting Concepts and Methods

Curator: Huang Du

    In his experiments, Shi Jing has discovered a structural problem in painting, one that  is rooted in the relationship between man and painting. Because of the structure of the human eye and habits in appreciation, man has a set perspective and painting exists within that field. Shi Jing sets out from visual anatomy and visual aesthetic habits, using a new painting method to change people’s perceptual cognition of the visible, invisible, form, abstract, perspective, role, stillness, movement, control and behavior. Because of this, when appreciating the painting, people will suddenly realize that it goes against their habits; the habits have been distorted. This contradiction can reveal man’s past habits, and can also discover other potential.

Shi Jing’s paintings first establish a program and a goal. This program controls people’s visual habits, and changes their aesthetic habits so that when the audience views his paintings they must rely on his established “mobile” visual to appreciate them. The perspective from which the audience views the paintings depends on the perspective set by Shi Jing, while the beholder still has freedom in the process of selecting the perspective from which to view the painting, which is to say that not only is the artist controlling the audience, the audience still controls the method of viewing. His paintings have subverted people’s visual habits; when people view the paintings they cannot stop at a set visual position, but are always moving, and the visual field is endlessly dismantled and reconstructed, creating different perspectives for appreciation and varying visual effects. The best viewing perspective for each person varies with said person’s experience. This kind of interface has constructed a dislocation of judgment experience and viewing experience.

Shi Jing’s recent paintings are a bit different from ones of before – moving from a pure transference of “viewing” perspective to using a combination of lighting, cameras and portraiture. His portraits must be viewed under certain light or through a camera, creating two unique aspects of image viewing. He realized that all paintings are painted under light, with the light leading our vision, so he decided to paint with a single black to change the theoretical structure of color, bringing the color of light into the center of painting to reach a sensory “synesthesia painting”, rethinking and experimentation towards people’s senses – creating a camera with his own eyes, and using the camera to create a painting. What his paintings mock and cast doubt on is man’s system of work; golden lighting has created a false vision, and what we see through the camera is the popular visual principle which has deleted the vision function of the eyes, implying cancellation of the eye’s social function. His question, “Do you need images or do you need pictures” is actually a disproof of social habits.