1918 ArtSPACE will be dispaying the last series of paintings by Chinese emerging artist Song Yonghua.

The show is curated by Irina Pavlov.

"Piercing colors of the inner contradictions"

Song Yonghua belongs to a group of Chinese emerging artists. His energy and youth depict burning traces of colors on canvases. For him colors are the strongest medium to mirror his own emotional landscapes. The explosion of colors is used not only to picture nature and natural environment as the last resort for body and soul, but also to freeze the silent moment of human interaction. The nature is the escapism Song Yonghua is aiming at.

The vast space on paintings filled with fireworks of colors gives a broad perspective on man-toward-nature attitude. The absence of human figures on them doesn’t mean that Song Yonghua is not referring to the man, but quite opposite. Nature gives us a comfort; it’s a soul asylum from constant tiring clashes with present social and cultural realm. Song Yonghua sees nature not as a backdrop of our existence, but as an equal fragment of our inner selves. He shares his inner sceneries by portraying nature in its full frontal view. And that’s where the contradiction starts…in a wish to portray nature as a disjointed part of us, Song Yonghua finds people so distant from the nature.

Song Yonghua’s landscapes are monumental on different levels. The size of canvases is firstly offering us a space broad enough to ask ourselves and to contemplate on our own position in the nature. Space is giving us the broadness, not the distance from the nature! Song Yonghua organizes space on paintings in highly complex rhythms. He is occupying our attention with a single focus on a painting, a center that encircles our mood. Center is a perplexed hank of emotions gushing from a mountain’s womb, an island, a sea. At the same time, that very center is surrounded by a calm and peaceful background somewhere far away. His landscapes are turning into abstract forms created by heavy brush strokes rich in color. There we see continual collision between colors in Song Yonghua’s desire to show mood changes. His paintings boil with emotions stuck in strong and severe brush strokes. Thick layers of colors have the same purpose of emphasizing composite feelings. The absence of details in the composition and the structure on the paintings is replaced by a rich palette of colors.

Being educated in Chinese traditional way of thinking, Song Yonghua is familiar with Chinese traditional art forms. In his creativity he firmly fosters the feelings for the Chinese calligraphy, traditional poetry, paintings. His landscapes are full of “Chinesness”, namely Chinese connotation and Chinese essence in art. As his subject relates easily to traditional ideology, the execution finds something new. Song Yonghua’s paintings have been likened to visual poems capturing the wonders of nature on canvas. Empty space contains the possibility for transformation. It reinforces the main subject while being of vital importance for the structural composition of the paintings. Melancholy, sadness, loneliness, emptiness, confusion, infinite inquiries…they are all equal elements of Song Yonghua’s landscapes.

Every painting veils (buries) layers of stories hidden underneath. Those stories, those meanings haunt us, because they are layers of our own memories. Some of the motives and images are easily recognized on the surface and others are buried forever…Song Yonghua’s paintings ask us to recall our own dreaming, and then to reach time before it, a prenatal stage, because only at that stage we can recognize ourselves as an impartible fragment of nature.

Text by Irina Pavlov

1918艺术空间将展示松永华近作.
策划人: 伊利娜 - 琶夫罗夫

"穿透内部矛盾的色彩"

宋永华属于这样一个群体，一群总要斩头露角的艺术家. 他的年轻和能量在画布上燃烧着的色彩痕迹中流溢出来。对他来说，色彩是倒映他自身情感风景的最强力的媒介。色彩的爆炸不仅被当作身体和灵魂的最终手段去抓取大自然和自然环境，它还冻结了人与人之间互动的寂静瞬间。自然是宋永华所追求的逃离之歌。

画面中的广阔空间充斥着五颜六色的火花，传达出了人与自然观点的广阔远景。当中人物形象的缺失也不意味着宋永华没有关注人，事实恰恰相反。自然带给我们舒适；它是当今持续的令人疲劳的社会和文化领域冲突的一个灵魂避难所。宋永华所见的自然不是我们存在的一个背景，而是我们内部自我的同等的片断。他用正面全景描绘自然景物的方式分享他的内在风景。而那也是矛盾开始的地方---带着将自然作为我们脱离出的一个方面来描绘的愿望，宋永华发现人离自然是如此的遥远。

宋永华的风景作品不管在什么水平上说都可称得上是宏伟的。画布的尺寸首先就给我们一个足够广阔的空间去扪心自问并深深自考在自然界中我们自己的位置。空间虽然给我们广阔度，却并不拉大我们和自然的距离！宋永华以高度复杂的节奏组织画布上的空间。单用一个中心聚焦，他的绘画就能够锁住我们的注意力，这个中心点紧紧缠绕住我们的情绪。中心点则是一个情感的迷团，情感从山的子宫中，从岛内，从海上喷薄而出。同时，那个中心点也被那远方的冷静和平和的背景环抱着。他的风景画演变成了刷子的沉重笔触下丰富色彩制造的抽象形态。在当中我们能找到宋永华显示他的情绪变化的欲望，在色彩之间的那持续的碰撞当中。情绪卡在了强力剧烈的笔触当中，画面和多种情绪一起沸腾。上色的厚度也是为情调这种复杂的情绪服务的。而作品中细节的缺少和画面结构的简洁也被调色板上丰富的色彩所取代。

受到中国传统思想教育的宋永华熟悉中国传统的各种艺术形式。在他的创作中，他稳固地培养他对书法，古诗，绘画的感觉。他的风景处处有“中国味”，也就是艺术中的中国精髓和本质。因为他的主题和传统思想有密切的关系，在执行上也有新颖之处。宋永华的绘画可以比做抓取自然奇观的画布上的视像诗歌。空间的留白包含了质变的可能性，作为绘画结构创作上的重中之重，它起到了加强主题的作用。忧郁，悲伤，孤独，空虚，困惑，无限的责问—这些都在宋永华风景画中扮演同样相当的角色。

每幅绘画作品下面都埋着不同层次的故事。那些故事，那些意义萦绕着我们，因为它们藏在我们自己的记忆深层。有些作品的形象和动机在表面上就被轻易辨出，其他的则永远地被隐藏在深处…宋永华的绘画要我们去回忆我们的梦想，然后穿梭到我们尚未诞生的时间中去，因为只有在那里，我们才能发现我们自己只是自然当中不可分割的一个小小的部分。

字: 伊利娜 - 琶夫罗夫