Under the sunshine as autumn cooling starting to set in Beijing, I began viewing Zhao Erjun’s artworks one by one silently. I felt myself was pushed by a kind of intangible force, my soul ran through the paitnings slowly, through a deserted city, through lands without boundaries… And I hoped to open my heart to the heart beat of those young figures, standing like powerful scultpures in front of me.

　　It is hard to describe accurately my first impression on Zhao Erjun’s paintings. They are not the ones we often see, nor have the factors of popular art we know today, nor have any fascinating colors. All colors have been rejected and thus she returns purposefully to the simplest black and white. “Five colors can make people blind” Laozi, an ancient Chinese philosopher, said. When paintings shake off all the fancy colors suddenly, aren’t our eyes and hearts feel more clearly? The figures in her paintings look at the world around them, silently, without a word, separated from each other and non-communicative.

　　Sometimes, only when the color is so simplified can a soul be able go to the opposite steadily, without being led by senses, as to be able to contempulate the ultimacy while resisting temptation. As I see in her paintings, similarly, stillness is only a special form of movement. Who would say that the minds of those men and women in Zhao’s are not active at all? On Zhao’s canvas, monotony is richer than richness; stillness is more active than movements; silence is fiercer than fierceness; nothing is much more than something; and the white light is much scorching than the open flame.

　　Look at the bodies of those in the paintings, which are filled with strength that the primitive people fought with animals in the forest, and the strength seems to burst out. The question here is why the painter shakes off the beautiful “clothes” wrapping our bodies and shows the nakedness without reservation? In my view, she calls upon us to return to the reality and nature. Or, we can say, the painter tries to make us see the metaphysics of human existance among the groupings of naked bodies…. On the one hand, there shows the primitive wild force; on the other hand, the force may come from the nervousness of thought. Behind the naked hides the thinking of  contemporary living and spiritual status. The background of ink and washing water, in lack of elegance in traditional brush paitnings, almost gives up all physical images. It is profound and sorrowful. It may also be considered as a kind of metaphor, a symbol of contemporary wild external and internal environment.

　　Now let us stare at their eyes with our eyes. Their eyesights are very hollow, like a speechless and remote world. Furthermore, their eyes have a kind of coldness, not like what people used to say “the windows of souls”.  But after staring at them for sometime, one can still slowly read out the eyesights: anxiety, perplexity, meditation, solitude, loneliness, pathos, despair and helplessness,  looking up at the stars, but unable to confirm anything., staring at the earth steadily, but unable to know any directions. The eyesights are dispersed without any coomunication. Like the bodies, eyesights are tormented, too. Upon seeing them, we are forced to ask about the value of our own existence.

　　Now let us take a notice of their hands and limbs. In Zhao’s paintings, hands are so prominently delicate in rich gestures. Some look like birds’ wings crossing together; some look like roots of trees, fingers clawing deep into the earth … These hands disclose the hearts are experiencing purgative sufferings. Their feet are also immensely in tense. When the hands and feet are expressed together in paintings, they imply a rich spiritual direction, revealing the character of the artist, a tenderness underlying the wildness and primitiveness she strives to demonstrate artistically. 
Of course, finally the souls...

　　This artist used to be like a closed door, behind which hid the unpleasant memories and secrets of her childhood, hid a remote and once prominent family origin shadowed under various political clouds. When young, she dared not open the door. When she gained a new art concept, understanding sufferings and memories as part of a valuable spiritual wealth, she bravely opened toward humanity. Without doubt, her art has originated from her own childhood, but surpassed the childhood; originated from herself, but surpassed herself. However, once again, in a world of abundant material wealth, absurdity remains the same. So is the want of souls. Therefore, a passion for the human race based on non-material values appearing in her paintings becomes all the more significant.

　　The world today has plunged into an “average state” pointed out sharply by Heidegger: pale personality, denile spirit, and weak life. The financial tsunami of last year reflects the predicament of greed and desires of modern people, rather than the defects of financial systems. Zhao Erjun is not a master painter yet. But she definitely will not reconcile herself to a cultural and artistic “average state”. She is an artist with her own thoughts and pursuits.

　　When I first met Zhao Erjun and saw her works in the Shanghai Grand Theater Gallery, I had a sense of familiarity. Later I found out that we had known each other in the late autumn of 1992 in Virginia. She arrived in America just a year before. We met through a mutual American friend. She wore casually a set of red, standing in the courtyard of Virginian Museum, with sunshine splashing on her, just like today.
How time flies!

　                                                                                   　           At Evergreen Hotel, Beijing
　　                                                                                              August 25, 2009
　　Mao Shi’an,  Literature and art critic, director of Theory Committee of Shanghai Artists’ Association