Since 2010, CAFA Annual Fine Arts Nomination Exhibition has been held for eight consecutive years, which has increasingly become the annual brand academic exhibition of CAFA and received widespread attention and acclaim from inside and outside the academy. The nomination exhibition is not only an affirmation to the participating artists’ ability of teaching and creation but also a demonstration of their artistic research methods. As a teacher of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, how to grasp the relationship between teaching and creative research, closely combine excellent education and artistic creation, find a balance between the two and make them complement each other, is particularly important in today’s college education. Zhou Jirong and Ye Nan, the two artists in this exhibition, respectively teach in the Department of Printmaking and Foundation Program. They are simple and honest, with rigorous scholarship and substantial achievements, and respected by their students and applauded by their peers. The word “Shi (honesty)” is the high quality of the academic tradition of the CAFA and is fully reflected in them. While possessing profound artistic skills, they start from real life and perceive life from different perspectives, elevating the feelings about life into cultural concern and meditation. Their lasting enthusiasm for artistic creation makes them continually extend this kind of experience, thus integrating various elements such as time and space, individuals and society into their creation. They share the common characteristics of having clam thoughts on problems and philosophized artistic language and upholding rare and valuable tranquility of art in today’s complex social psychology.
Mr. Zhou Jirong has been teaching in the Department of Printmaking for many years, and he has long been engaged in the teaching and researching of printmaking creation and technique language, from which he accumulated rich experience in teaching and individual artistic practice in silkscreen prints, comprehensive engravings, and multimedia materials. His artistic practice derives from the most genuine feelings and thoughts about real life. Since the 1980s, he has been sensitive to the changes in cities and looked for history in the old urban neighborhoods. From the initial “city”, “gate” to the recent “mirage” and “dream”, his series of works represent his concern, thoughts, and nostalgia for the changing cities in different periods. In the process of repeated reflection and examination, he has constantly broken through the limitation of materials, and created works that leads to a recall of history from reality, with images of memories gradually becoming clear in the expression of urban color interlacing the ancient and the modern within a blurry atmosphere, leaving behind a long “Cappella of the History”. Zhou Jirong attempts to employ prints to bring us out of the dilemma of city life, and let people think about living and being in his works.
Professor. Ye Nan has studied in Russia for many years and developed solid modeling capabilities. In teaching, she integrates the advantages of the Soviet-Russian art modeling system and summarizes her own unique teaching ideas. She also injects continuous thinking into artistic creation. Based on the distinctive and meticulous observation and understanding of life as well as her own feelings, she strives to dig the great power of life and spirit through the times. Her works express the existence of life and the power of nature with tense even strong form, calm and rich tone, and heavy strokes, which triggers people’s thinking in the human-nature interactions, enables them to have a dialogue with the era as well as themselves through the works, thus to reflect on the “Limit of the Loneliness”. With profound academic qualities, her works are always based on reality yet beyond reality, particularly showing a female artist’s deep consciousness and high aesthetic quality of artistic language.
The two artists, based on their thinking of life and reality, pursue excellence in the contemporary era and make full use of the two “traditional” media of print and oil painting from a unique artistic perspective, endowing them with new meanings, which can be considered as a kind of good harvest.
Fan Di’an
Director of Central Academy of Fine Arts
Since 2010, CAFA Annual Fine Arts Nomination Exhibition has been held for eight consecutive years, which has increasingly become the annual brand academic exhibition of CAFA and received widespread attention and acclaim from inside and outside the academy. The nomination exhibition is not only an affirmation to the participating artists’ ability of teaching and creation but also a demonstration of their artistic research methods. As a teacher of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, how to grasp the relationship between teaching and creative research, closely combine excellent education and artistic creation, find a balance between the two and make them complement each other, is particularly important in today’s college education. Zhou Jirong and Ye Nan, the two artists in this exhibition, respectively teach in the Department of Printmaking and Foundation Program. They are simple and honest, with rigorous scholarship and substantial achievements, and respected by their students and applauded by their peers. The word “Shi (honesty)” is the high quality of the academic tradition of the CAFA and is fully reflected in them. While possessing profound artistic skills, they start from real life and perceive life from different perspectives, elevating the feelings about life into cultural concern and meditation. Their lasting enthusiasm for artistic creation makes them continually extend this kind of experience, thus integrating various elements such as time and space, individuals and society into their creation. They share the common characteristics of having clam thoughts on problems and philosophized artistic language and upholding rare and valuable tranquility of art in today’s complex social psychology.
Mr. Zhou Jirong has been teaching in the Department of Printmaking for many years, and he has long been engaged in the teaching and researching of printmaking creation and technique language, from which he accumulated rich experience in teaching and individual artistic practice in silkscreen prints, comprehensive engravings, and multimedia materials. His artistic practice derives from the most genuine feelings and thoughts about real life. Since the 1980s, he has been sensitive to the changes in cities and looked for history in the old urban neighborhoods. From the initial “city”, “gate” to the recent “mirage” and “dream”, his series of works represent his concern, thoughts, and nostalgia for the changing cities in different periods. In the process of repeated reflection and examination, he has constantly broken through the limitation of materials, and created works that leads to a recall of history from reality, with images of memories gradually becoming clear in the expression of urban color interlacing the ancient and the modern within a blurry atmosphere, leaving behind a long “Cappella of the History”. Zhou Jirong attempts to employ prints to bring us out of the dilemma of city life, and let people think about living and being in his works.
Professor. Ye Nan has studied in Russia for many years and developed solid modeling capabilities. In teaching, she integrates the advantages of the Soviet-Russian art modeling system and summarizes her own unique teaching ideas. She also injects continuous thinking into artistic creation. Based on the distinctive and meticulous observation and understanding of life as well as her own feelings, she strives to dig the great power of life and spirit through the times. Her works express the existence of life and the power of nature with tense even strong form, calm and rich tone, and heavy strokes, which triggers people’s thinking in the human-nature interactions, enables them to have a dialogue with the era as well as themselves through the works, thus to reflect on the “Limit of the Loneliness”. With profound academic qualities, her works are always based on reality yet beyond reality, particularly showing a female artist’s deep consciousness and high aesthetic quality of artistic language.
The two artists, based on their thinking of life and reality, pursue excellence in the contemporary era and make full use of the two “traditional” media of print and oil painting from a unique artistic perspective, endowing them with new meanings, which can be considered as a kind of good harvest.
Fan Di’an
Director of Central Academy of Fine Arts
2019-03-12
