Another Awakening of Self-consciousness—— A further Comment on Zhou Guozhen

  Artists are always making a bidirectional conflicting selection between being attached to the "past" and getting rid of the "past", with torment, because the result of the selection will have a bearing on the true value of the artist's works and his position in the art history. The selection process, in traditional Chinese art history, is referred to as "reform". The so-called "reform" is a denial of the “past” in the artist’s self-consciousness. Only by the repeated painful selection can an artist be able to constantly exceed his own limits. I think that Zhou Guozhen is fully aware of the importance of this selection, for his creation process is full of constant self-denials, each of which makes Zhou's work take a fresh look. You can imagine what courage, talent and perseverance an artist as Zhou needs to make successive transformation and to constantly intensify self-awareness in his own ways in such a closed and conservative environment. That’s the reason why Zhou’s works always display a sustained breathtaking inner vitality.
　　Zhou’s artistic career falls into four phases: "opaque", "aesthetic", " archaic" and "neo-expressive". The four phases are quite separate, or even conflicting. But in the "four phases" there is one thing in common: a display of sense of life and artist’s personality at different level at different times. Virtually, Zhou’s creative process is a process of experiencing his own emotion and life value at different levels. Each phase of the transformation is a Zhou’s new awareness of humanity consciousness, namely new awakening of life.
　　The "opaque" phase refers to the 1950s. Works in this period, such as “Spring Greeting”, “The Breeder”, and “Nice Aunt”， though having opened a new world in theme and content based on real life, boast no distinct personal features, brand in modelling and artistic techniques, insufficient in knowledge of the material. They are just products of direct respondence to frankness and simplicity, kid stuff and intuition.
　　The "aesthetic" phase refers to the 1960s, a period when Zhou began craving for surficial effect of perfect shape and form and gorgeous glaze. Assuming strong momentary visual effects, with strengthened intrinsic appeal, works of this period, such as “Being Independent”, “Spain Dance”, “The Sheep: Mother and Son, and The Daybreak”, compared with those in the first phase, with more self-awareness, are more likely to embody the implication of spirit, shape, reason and inclination.
　　The "archaic" phase refers to the 1980s, since which Zhou, based on the local consciousness, began to seek, time and time again, a life-evoking power from the “Yellow civilization” by shifting his artistic vision to the Northwest culture so as to evoke his "Archaic Phase" series, which represented by “Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots”,“ Bully Temper”, “The mandrill ”and “The Snow Leopard”. Those works, by integrating the “graceful awkwardness” in primary arts, “dynamics” in Han sculpture, “profoundness” in Tang arts and his own emotion, recreate an animal world full of humanity.
　　Later in 1985, Zhou's artistic career entered the so-called “neo-expressive” phase, a revolutionary period during which Zhou rekindled the flame of desires for life and made a point of the externalization of artists’ spirit. He attached importance to the accidentalness and randomness of the choice of material, focusing more on the expressiveness of the material itself and the use of flame. Coarse ceramic materials, a medium Zhou used in the “neo-expressive” phase, brought forth fundamental changes to his works. The coarse material works were made by two different techniques: one kind was clay molding, such as “A Quiet Observance” and“ Warthog”; another kind was clay-strip forming, such as “Zebras”, “Wildebeest”. Both of these techniques weakened the artificial carving and intensified the subjective consciousness and the expressiveness of the earth, making the framework constructed by the works themselves display a visual world rich in profound meaning and emotion.
　　Only by painful speculation after despair and disillusion could an artist acquire the courage to deny himself and the confidence to make new choices; only after a miserable choice could a man make his works, and his life at the same time, "eternal".
　　Zhou’s awakening of self-consciousness indicates that he will constantly acquire new life in arts. I’m looking forward to the further demonstration of his artistic life in the “neo-expressive” age.
（written in 1988)