• conment
  • interview
  • formulation
  • THE CAPTIVITY AND ANTI-CAPTIVITY OF THE CANVAS
  • XU XIAOGUO
-
THE OVERFLOW OF ORDER
  • Xu Xiaoguo’s “lines”
  • Critique Pure Truth of Xu Xiao Guo
  • Critique on Vision of Humanity
  • New Painting of Xu Xiaoguo have the following characteristics
  • The Reality and Unreality in Xu Xiaoguo’s Works
  • Performance in Waiting
  • FROM "CONCEPTUAL PAINTING"
TO "CONCEPTIONS OF PAINTING"
  • Xu Xiaoguo ：The possibility of flowing
  • Xu Xiaoguo: Flowing Process, Solidified Evidence
  • Xu xiaoguo and Wangyou in interview
  • Traces of the Sacred: Interview with Xu Xiaoguo
  • 15 paintings Readme
  • "Tomorrow" work readme

    • Critique Pure Truth of Xu Xiao Guo

    2012-05-28

    -By Dai Zhuo Qun
    The newest work styles of Xu Xiao Guo were differ from his past classical humanism styles, he threw away all the possibilities from the past, and turn into a complete agnosticism, in which he tries to reconsidering all the values of the reality. The changes of his ideas were basically from his self examine and questionings, but it is the basics of his earlier works like "Artificial Landscape", "Stage", and "Traces of The sacred". The series of works above are full of classical characteristics and ideas, while the artist shown us a virtual world different from the presence of the image, and created an independent art order towards our reality.
    From the establishment of the ancient Greece philosophy to the Hegel philosophy system, classical philosophies were believed to have an absolute truth, but philosophers like Conde, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche overthrew this tradition, and completely overturn the belief for the absolute truth. The "new-born" philosophers both completed the deconstruction and criticism towards their philosophy idols, and also completed their criticism towards the historical collusiveness, the worlds itself is spontaneous, co-incidental, and unknown.  
    The truth of the classical philosophy can be considered to be an accordance towards the language and things, from the "ideas" of Platonic, Conde's " things in itself", and Schopenhauer' s idea of " things in themselves", philosophers pursue to understand how this accordance can be possible. Things can be very realistic and materialized, but language is abstract, we need to find out the evidence towards the form for the world of sense and the world of intellectual.  
    Based on those concepts, Xu Xiao Guo started a new search and reflects on the relationships between the classicism of the image and the meaningless image. From the classical confirmed idols, and the unchallengeable rules of the idols, also those idols who were openly overthrew by artists.
    Therefore, could we make it into a pure form, turn a meaningless form into a classic, and also put this pretentious classics into the original language meanings, it became Xu Xiao Guo's newest painting concepts. The topics and characteristics of the painting became the most blurry and uncertain figure, figures like Mickey mouse, box, cap, ladders, balls, Stalin, chairs, tiger skin, skull, monkey head, flowers, cage, and lobsters, all those unrelated figures were all in an unreal meanings, and make the artist find it's intellectual existence. 
    From the form of human senses, in another words make the time and space into a dimension, just like how we sense things from it's mass, size, shape, and color. Without those characteristics, we can't spread out our imagination towards the figure. Therefore, the accordance towards the language and things can only be possible within our consciousness. It also means the change is only within human's consciousness. It might be impossible for us to understand the truth of things, all we can understand is only the surface of things. 


    Beijing 2012. May the 28th