The Overlapped Scenes of Memory and Reality

Wang Qiaojun injects her personal experience and stories into her creation. Through memory and reality, she constructs scenes that are both familiar and unfamiliar. It’s familiar as the scenes in your daily life, yet it is also unfamiliar like a scene you have never seen before, because in the same image, there is a bright daylight and a nighttime blur; there is no obvious division of time and season and the boundaries are blurred. As a result, this not only creates a vivid sense of the image, but also allows the audience to feel instead of simply thinking about the content.

Wang Qiaojun began the creation of painting within a painting since graduation. Under the large block of colors, another scene is faintly revealed. The overlapping of the scenes, whether or not it is the intentional coverage or inadvertent coverage to change the image, has become her signature form of expression. This has created the unspeakable feeling, a hidden way to make a more implicit expression. Perhaps such attempts and expression approaching extension are the fusion with today’s split line of the images. In one image, she depicts the scenes in day and night times, as well as different periods of time in the double memories. It’s like her narration. Each image is a memory, instead of merely the landscape. In terms of expression, Wang Qiaojun boldly left the blank space outside the scene to achieve minimal brush strokes, thus pushing the distant scene to the far end, and zooming in the near scene as if one can reach out and touch it. There is no excessive language in the image. It's only the scene she wants to express in a clear way. This is perhaps reflected in Wang Qiaojun’s pursuit of artistic life, to isolate the noise from the lively world and concentrated on the expression of her own inner voice. She also conducts a simple yet intense contrast of colors to catch the audience’s attention. For this reason, Wang Qiaojun's works exude a simple and lighthearted feeling, which easily lead you into the scene and leave you with a beautiful memory.

The exhibited works are a summary of herself after graduation for several years. From her creation, one can notice her transition from a graduate to a liberated artist, and the traces of her experience and her pursuit of life. This is the beginning of her artist career, and a beautiful beginning. It's sure that, with her constant efforts, her art works will become even brighter and more promising.


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In Wang Qiaojun’s painting, there is a dreamy realism, the landscapes in the painting look familiar like reality, yet it’s also like a dream that keeps you at an insurmountable distance, you want to go in, but it’s extremely difficult. They only appear as fragments of memory in your head.

The fragments of her landscape painting would remind you of the alley you once lived in or passed by. It is not a twenty-first century modern city of skyscrapers and neon lights, and there is no broad road with endless traffic; there are only undeveloped small towns at the edge of the city, which looks like a town that was just opened back in the 1980s. House, windows, telephone poles, slender trees, and a few idle people, who are a couple or childhood friends, as well as a toy-like car slowly climbed up the hill road... They form a world of unique poetic life.

Wang Qiaojun skillfully constitutes the scene with points, lines and space, converting it into meaningful images. Chunks of dark sky, small squares of white houses, black lines and dots. It doesn’t follow the inherent color, but freely combines the colors according to the image, revealing a series of bright colors. She doesn’t deliberately express the heaviness of an oil painting, but shows its levels and sensitivity. The free strokes of paints in flat coating or outlines show her thoughtful study and design of the form of composition in a casual style.

By being sensitive with the form and element of the image, she creates a blurry space, which is even reflected in the fact that you wouldn’t be sure if her painting is about the day or night. If you think it was the night, yet the house’s white walls and pavement are painted as bright as daylight. If you think it was the daytime, yet the sky is painted in a dark tone, a deep blue-violet color that only belongs to the night. In order to create this blurry space, the landscape she paints doesn’t even have sunlight, the bright scenes are in the flat light, there is no strong light and back light like reality, and there is no shadow. There are tall trees, yet they do not cast any shadows onto the ground.

The world without shadow is a world beyond the real world. So, this offers the audience the sense of joy and happiness. In this world, time has slowed down, one can temporarily get rid of the anxiety of reality, and be immersed in the warm spring breeze and the shade of willow trees. The path curves, white walls, simple houses, distinctive and bright, as the sea breeze blows. It's blue and quiet. There is romance in a touch of sadness, it's the beauty of the dead and gone

As Wang Qiaojun herself, who possesses the freedom and spiritualism of girls from the south of the Yangtze River, and who in turn, reveals a tranquil and easy-going temperament in her manners. As an outstanding young artist graduated from the China Academy of Art, she is nourished and influenced by Chinese traditional paintings and the West Lake landscape. After seven-year of study in the No.2 New Figurative Painting Studio of the Department of Oil Painting Arts, Wang Qiaojun not only has a comprehensive and solid foundation of painting, but also keeps a keen perception of the contemporary world. During the school time, she learns from masters and talented artists, and gradually form her own painting theme. In the 2 years after graduation, she shows a good state of creation, and constantly explores. Her exhibition to be held in Shanghai is exciting. She will present a new batch of fifty pieces of excellent paintings, telling her stories and the modern people's stories with her landscape.

In advance I wish success of the exhibition! Jiang Liang. 2019.3.22