"The faces in the paintings are strangers met at random and stored in my memory. Every face can express an emotion, a story and each small-sized person is a key to a story. The unknown things of our lives attract me. The unknown is a beautiful state, like the black box of a human being; you can know what ‘really happened’ in the black box. I try to express a sense of unknown and strangeness through my paintings. It’ s the estrangement that people feel about the world and about themselves. As Socrates said: ‘The only thing I know is that I know nothing.’ I would rather express an attitude of curi- osity, of admiration and of reverence rather than setting up a correct answer in the painting. I hope that every viewer could see himself in my painting.”
In traditional Chinese culture, “black” is not a pleasant color. But in Lu Chao’ s mind it is the richest and densest color. The present exhibition carries over the previous three shows’ title and themes by having “black” as its starting point and as its conclusion, as its simplest and most complex element. Therefore the artist hopes to continue exploring this system，and to investigate it in a persistent and meaningful manner. With regards to Lu Chao’ s subjects, he operates a transition of his focus from “people” to the more general topic of “life” .
Worthy of mention is the fact that this exhibition features the first 10 meters long painting of the artist. Regardless of the pictorial dialectic or the subject of the works, they all possess a more meaningful content as well as a more open outlook than before, leaving a profound impression on the viewer.
We specially invited critic Sun Dongdong to interview Lu Chao. Sun Dongdong mentioned that “Lu Chao is a conventional artist and a ‘historical’ person who narrates in an ambiguous way, although his works never show an actual event. In his paintings, our sense of history is the experience of the cycle of life which, encountered in certain scenes, can evolve into a general sense of reali- ty. Thus, Lu Chao is obsessed with the portrayal of crowds. For him, numer- ous people reflect more closely the truthfulness of life. This so-called ‘reality’ suggests an order of human affairs. When Lu Chao creates a natural and cruel environment for his paintings, it suggests that he is aware of the essence of modernity---we can say that the transformation of Lu Chao as a painter begins here, but this transformation doesn’ t come from the painting itself, but from his understanding of the meaning of illusion in a dialectical way.”
Born in 1988 in Shenyang, Lu Chao is a graduate from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and of the Royal Academy of Art in London. Lu Chao’ s works are neither fashionable nor academic, they gracefully use a subtle technique to prompt a profound feeling of mystery and imagination. Received numerous supports and have been widely exhibited in galleries and institutions in China and abroad. Recent exhibitions held in London, Paris and Beijing were widely acclaimed including at Hadrien de Montferrand Gallery in Beijing, Galerie Nath- alie Obadia in Paris, Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery in London, in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chengdu, the Today Art Museum, at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Art Chicago, Art Geneva, Art Brussels etc. He was recently nominated at the Saatchi New Sensation and the England’ s Painter-Stianers Goron Luton awards among others.
