Poetry，dry Baguette and restrained passion
by Wu Shengzhi
On the desk in Liang Hao’s studio, there is always a dry Baguette with unknown ages and a few poetry anthologies.
People who have known Liang Hao for a long time are aware, just like his paintings, underneath his slightly dull character, his bashful, calm and restrained passion is hidden. This passion is not easy to be perceived, sometimes he only reveals a little, then immediately takes back. So when looking at Liang Hao's painting, you also have to pay attention like always, otherwise it’s easy to miss this passion.
Liang Hao has written many poems, but he indicated that they were just some sentences he wrote, I haven’t read his poems closely, the general impression is rather of stream-of-consciousness, the flavor of the poems often need searching from between the lines, if it cannot be found right away, sometimes it will just rise up by itself. So to speak, this flavor isn’t between the lines, however it exists in some sort of "blank space", which is naturally an emptiness, as the monk face the wall and meditate, facing against the wall for an hour or two, some notices the nail on the wall, some instead experiences an epiphany. The blank space in Liang Hao's paintings is not the wall of epiphany of Buddha, however it makes people feel there are threads of twists and turns as well as separation and reunion hiding in the story, this unspoken narrative in Liang Hao’s paintings of Liang Hao makes up important factors.
In the picture, there are always one or two incomplete figures appearing, the heads of the figures go beyond from the frame, thus the ambiguity of the narrative is further highlighted. Nobody knows the action of the character in the picture is for what purpose, even less clear is what kind of relationships between the characters, or that between the characters and objects in the image, the obsession with the ambiguous narrative has become a special incomprehensible sincerity in Liang Hao’s paintings, and all the other explicit and intentional expressions are forced to take a back seat, making place for the shot scene like picturial language. The images extracted from daily scenes of everyday scenes after dissociation, become inane and aningeresting, like the Baguette lying in his studio, dry and hard in a thorough way, there’s a kind of absurdity which cannot be told.
The restraint in Liang Hao’s personality becomes the calm, disciplined, rational, sometimes even unreasonable control in the image, which is more obvious in oil painting. The brushwork in the image is flattened to maximum, and the occasional emerging geometry and measurement traces for image further increases the rational mapping elements. This unemotional approach is just what he wants, which eventually becomes the so-called style. Like the frequently recurring explosive and dispersing strokes in his watercolors, in fact, the restraint in Liang Hao’s painting and character is sometimes not that thoroughgoing.
The kind of tone in his images, which is retro and modern, quiet and restless, indifferent and absurd at the same time, occupies most consciousness in time of our life, consciousness constitutes the model of social structure, which is, today's society.
With the fear and confusion of the uncertainty, we deliberately pursue the unrealistic meaning, however all these lost its passion in the nothingness of materialism, evolving into a mechanical formula, monotonous, tedious and bewildering, could it be said that we all lost the ability to be passionate?
Once again I came to Liang Hao’s studio, the poetry anthologies were still on the desk, half leftover dry Bagutte was lying beside the guitar in the corner, I was suddenly stunned: what the hell, he still ate it after all!?
People who have known Liang Hao for a long time are aware, just like his paintings, underneath his slightly dull character, his bashful, calm and restrained passion is hidden. This passion is not easy to be perceived, sometimes he only reveals a little, then immediately takes back. So when looking at Liang Hao's painting, you also have to pay attention like always, otherwise it’s easy to miss this passion.
Liang Hao has written many poems, but he indicated that they were just some sentences he wrote, I haven’t read his poems closely, the general impression is rather of stream-of-consciousness, the flavor of the poems often need searching from between the lines, if it cannot be found right away, sometimes it will just rise up by itself. So to speak, this flavor isn’t between the lines, however it exists in some sort of "blank space", which is naturally an emptiness, as the monk face the wall and meditate, facing against the wall for an hour or two, some notices the nail on the wall, some instead experiences an epiphany. The blank space in Liang Hao's paintings is not the wall of epiphany of Buddha, however it makes people feel there are threads of twists and turns as well as separation and reunion hiding in the story, this unspoken narrative in Liang Hao’s paintings of Liang Hao makes up important factors.
In the picture, there are always one or two incomplete figures appearing, the heads of the figures go beyond from the frame, thus the ambiguity of the narrative is further highlighted. Nobody knows the action of the character in the picture is for what purpose, even less clear is what kind of relationships between the characters, or that between the characters and objects in the image, the obsession with the ambiguous narrative has become a special incomprehensible sincerity in Liang Hao’s paintings, and all the other explicit and intentional expressions are forced to take a back seat, making place for the shot scene like picturial language. The images extracted from daily scenes of everyday scenes after dissociation, become inane and aningeresting, like the Baguette lying in his studio, dry and hard in a thorough way, there’s a kind of absurdity which cannot be told.
The restraint in Liang Hao’s personality becomes the calm, disciplined, rational, sometimes even unreasonable control in the image, which is more obvious in oil painting. The brushwork in the image is flattened to maximum, and the occasional emerging geometry and measurement traces for image further increases the rational mapping elements. This unemotional approach is just what he wants, which eventually becomes the so-called style. Like the frequently recurring explosive and dispersing strokes in his watercolors, in fact, the restraint in Liang Hao’s painting and character is sometimes not that thoroughgoing.
The kind of tone in his images, which is retro and modern, quiet and restless, indifferent and absurd at the same time, occupies most consciousness in time of our life, consciousness constitutes the model of social structure, which is, today's society.
With the fear and confusion of the uncertainty, we deliberately pursue the unrealistic meaning, however all these lost its passion in the nothingness of materialism, evolving into a mechanical formula, monotonous, tedious and bewildering, could it be said that we all lost the ability to be passionate?
Once again I came to Liang Hao’s studio, the poetry anthologies were still on the desk, half leftover dry Bagutte was lying beside the guitar in the corner, I was suddenly stunned: what the hell, he still ate it after all!?