The Old Prince

Duan Jianwei: Yan Cong's paintings are a bit like the "Nouveau Roman”, unlike the old-school ones that rely on plot and story. Commonly speaking, comic strips tend to be plot-oriented. Still, Yan Cong diluted the plot and took out the stylistic components, relying on the painting material's power to transform comic strips into paintings.

Dongmen Yang: Your paintings share some similarities that the narratives are carried out by the refinement of figuration, and that what’s left on the canvas has gone through your screening.   

Duan Jianwei: For a while, I thought paintings should not tell stories, or else they would seem backward. But I can't paint without a narrative, and the story always served as a framework or an excuse. If I paint afloat subjects, which doesn't have a before or after, yet the characters are specific and regional, I felt at a loss with what to do.

Yan Cong: Duan and I would spend a lot of time on form, and neither of us is the kind of painter who can quickly render stunning tableaus. We are well aware of our difficulties with our practices, and then we figured out how suits our personalities. For me, this way is precisely in line with the highest feeling of art creation, which is a pretty amusing pursuit.

Dongmen Yang: The narrative in Duan's paintings is not overt. In other words, the narrative is about the composition revolving around the structure of the paintings. Through amalgamation and extraction, they become innate and restrained. For example, in the "Girl with a side profile making an OK gesture," it looks like something is happening. The girl's eyes and hands gesture the viewer's attention in two different directions, but nothing is happening.

Duan Jianwei: When I was young, I was excited by the passion of life. In the past few years, when I re-visited the early Renaissance paintings, I think I  found something more important, more important than living itself, something that had already been discovered by people that I could share with. The purpose of painting is none other than painting itself, and neither does it try to achieve anything. Painters should perhaps learn more about the possibilities of this medium.

Yan Cong: I think it's a matter of changing mindset that allows one to thoroughly reconcile with the subject matters and approaches of one's artistic expression.

Duan Jianwei: Definitely. For example, I painted subject matters that revolved around rural areas that didn't necessarily give me a sense of pride and seemed out of context with the current time. But later on, I gradually felt art itself is open, and it's a matter of how the artist addresses specific issues. In that sense, the problems are about the self. If you fail, it's because you haven't achieved a certain level or have not brought out the essence of your painting.  

Yan Cong: This sense of self-agreement is quite essential, just like my comic strips. I used to feel rejected by this peripheral genre that had nothing to do with painting, but now I don't care about that at all.

Dongmen Yang: Relatively speaking, the concept of art today is broader and more inclusive. If I were to organize a meeting of all contemporary art practices, I would put you in the front row even if you may not want to sit on the podium.

Yan Cong: Maybe we’ve always been sidelined, so we didn't participate in the discussion of painting at all.

Dongmen Yang: Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that your paintings are not the popular or iconographic works that critics are concerned about and often escape from the recognizable range.

Duan Jianwei: Although not everyone sees it that way.

Yan Cong: It seems our conversation progressed to talking about our journeys. Dongmen, you don't have to think about these things, focus on presenting an interesting exhibition. Many things shouldn't be forced.