Fine Art Portfolio

CONTENT

PORTFOLIO OF JUNWEN DING

PART 1 OIL DRAWING PART 2 INSTALLATION PART 3 GRAPHIC DESIGN PART 4 OBSERVATIONAL DRAWING

PART 1 OIL PAINTING Introduction I base my works around the tiny expressions in my life.

Trying to frame trivial moments and capture fleeting expressions, I experimented between different styles and arrive at a spot between Fauvism, Expressionism and realism. Previously, I worked on a realistic style which is slow, calculated, and time consuming. After viewing an exhibition of a young British artist Dale Lewis, I realized that I am more drawn to the impulsive, chaotic and whimsical ends. Looking at people around me, I quickly sketch down their intriguing postures and subtle expressions in my notebook. Then, returning to the studio, I add colors to the sketches and craft oil paintings while revisiting and elaborating on the tiny pieces of emotion that the sketches captured.

Lava la vita, oil on canvas, 50cm x 50cm, 2019

During the Voyage, oil on canvas, 80cm x 60cm, 2019

It was an accidental discovery during an exam——the boy who sits in front of me is cheating! Covered in sweat, he looks so nervous as if there are bugs crawling on his neck.

I quickly sketched down his gesture on my exam paper and later crafted an oil painting base on this intriguing scene.

The half bald figure with massive eyes, a red ear, and a Pinocchio’s long nose accurately captures the cheater’s anxiety and nervousness.

Persuing A Perfect Grade, oil on canvas, 60cm x 80cm, 2019

Depersonalization is an abnormal perceptual experience of feeling extranged from oneself. I experience this feeling when going through Bulimia nervosa——I am extremely lucid, but cannot control my actions, emotions or thoughts.

It is a mixture of stress, anxiety and fragility. I felt like an automaton.

I cannot escape from this feeling or express it by words, but at least I can capture it via painting after observing myself.

Depersonalization: a Modern Girl, oil on canvas, 70cm x 90cm, 2019

PART 2 INSTALLATION Parallusion Introduction Parallusion is a paraphrase of my daily life as well as my childhood recollection. While browsing through my diaries, I found that reading the record of my own life from a decade ago is like visiting someone else’s life. Certain gaps exist between the ‘reality’ and my memory, bringing me a sense of alienation towards the stories within the diary and an awkward strangeness towards the little girl in the photo booth. as if I am visiting someone else’s life. Several lines of skepticism come to my mind: Maybe what seemed to be real are just scattered pieces of false memory.

It is my first time to embark on film, a media with freedom of expression. I was inspired La Jetée, a 1962 French Left Bank featurette, which tells the story by playing out still images of varying rhythms.

In Parallusion, I used similar technique to select, edit and piece together scattered images and video clips to develop the narrative and revisit my childhood and my daily life.

Process

Storyboard

Final works

Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q500yB5pBGg

PART 3 GRAPHIC DESIGN Characters of the Non-existence Introduction In the late 1990s, with the unstoppable urbanization and development, the Oreqen tribe, a thousand-yearold primitive tribe in Northern China and Siberia, moved to reservations from the mountains. Gone with the last Orequen mountain-based generation was the Tongus language, the mother tongue of the Oreqen tribe, which embodies the survival wisdom that the Oreqen people developed for thousands of years. Without a written script, the Oreqen heritage are in threat as long as the language is lost. Hoping to record the precious traditions that could be lost in modernization and development, I decided to put into action an idea: to create a writing system for an ethnic minority group in China that had no written language.

Sketch

Process

I conducted independent researches on minority groups whose names had been previously vaguely familiar or even completely strange. Reading books and papers on primitive religions, oral mythologies, lifestyles, indigenous arts of those ethnic communities have unfolded in front of my eyes the vividness of lives those people had lived and are now continue living. I invent hieroglyphic characters that could embody cultural legacies and lifestyles of those ethnic minorities without written language. I hope that with a stable writing system, ethnic minorities can pass on historical memories and thus form a lasting identity.

Final works

年轻女孩

人

老年女人

母亲

鄂伦春人 武士，成年人

熊(1)

鹿

爪（鸟），走

v. 守护

鬼

神

山神

跳舞

嘴巴(n.)，吃（v.)

蝴蝶（阴）

盘瓢，狗神，祖先

（v.) 耕地

蝴蝶（阴）

图腾柱，祭坛（n.)

击鼓

云朵

鼓

物有其主，拥有

右 田地

水

树，世界

集体舞蹈，纵歌节

夜袭

火塘

仙人柱=家，家庭

席，聚会

鸟

有人家

有路

危险勿近

（兽）脚 <数>十人

牛，凝聚

魂

(v.)划桦皮船

丰收

联系

<数>一人 （萨满）做法事

松树

集体猎鱼

鱼，新生

萨满

太阳

智慧

熊(2)，勇气

酒

鱼&鸟，融合

许多人

跪下，跪拜

太阳

左

v.守护

（n.)桦皮船

火星，火苗

辣椒，愤怒

火药，战斗

光明

斗争，矛盾，危险

PART 4 OBSERVATIONAL DRAWING