LandEscape Art Review, Special Edition

Chao Ding

My paintings are a diary of things that have happened around me, a preserve of evocative moments and fragments I have experienced. It is the integrity of my perception that involves my emotional struggle, vulnerability, and mental fantasies. I concentrate on revealing unusual beauties and poetic significance from those deserted spaces in my work.The sense of loneliness brought from my upbringing made me always have a sentimental attachment to trashed and non-functional things. When I came to the US, the sense of displacement made me started to explore the abandoned houses where I can gain an inexplicable feeling of rooted. I am drawn into the odor of mystery and memories they produced. The decayed textural layers and subtle colors left by time passing are really appealing to me. This kind of human absence automatically carries narrative possibilities, in a silent way. The traces are the sediment of “dialogues” which are a new level of perfection for me. As a foreign artist, these specificities also transferred a kind of isolation as an echo for me to “speak with”. Through my works, I am longing to bring the forgotten beauties which people usually missed back to their sight, pursuing a universal impression on psychological representation.I look for constructive force and harmony from the “chaos”, discover internal orders. I am intrigued by the visual formalities and vibes that I encountered in casual surroundings, even a pile of trash or traffic cones made me take out the sketchbook. In my compositions, I simplify and structuralize the objects, “suggest” the realities to spectators with my version. I like to excavate the real side of things, like the back of the stores, they usually contrast the gorgeous faces. But this kind of “negative” side give me a strong satisfaction of truth, belonging, and beauty.In contemporary life, things are changing, and moving with super high efficiency, accompanied by less emotion remained. The connection becomes trivial, information becomes like movie trailers. It seems like everything is ephemeral. On the other side, time is silent, soundless, but it always shows up in a brutal way when you realized it. During this flashy period, I would like to collect those remanences that evoke empathy and memory, bring that fleetness and vanishing into eternity on my canvas.