Art can be another world parallel to the reality. In Sun Yao’s painting world, the heavens collapse, stars explode, and visual energy rushes like raging waves and volcanic hurricanes, hitting you head-on. This “startling” visual impact might instinctively make one retreat or could strangely excite one to immerse themselves in it. The complexity of human desires fluctuates and oscillates deep within.
Upon closer observation after calming the mind, these raging fires and waves are meticulously painted with classical realism techniques, with tensioned structures, rich layers and textures, and subtle changes in light and color. The boundary between abstract and concrete is blurred in such images. They seem abstract because there are no specific figures, objects, or narratives. Yet, they feel concrete, challenging the two-dimensional plane with illusions of three-dimensional space, depicting realistic flames, water currents, landforms, skies, distant nebulae, and mysterious microcosms.
Abstract or figurative, the sudden release of energy and intense movement are the themes of Sun Yao’s paintings. After modernism, the linear evolution of artistic language has ended, and artists have pursued their own paths, seeking spiritual fulfillment and linguistic coherence. Sun Yao immersed himself in classical art for many years but gradually carved out his own path driven by intense inner impulses.
Through painting, he harmonizes the mind, brain, eyes, and hand, tapping into the depths of the soul, gazing at the stars, contemplating the universe, and constantly seeking answers. Painting becomes an important way to understand oneself and pursue truth. Regardless of warm or cool tones, his paintings are not gentle or soothing, but they cherish qualities like strength, courage, adventurous spirit, and endurance, which permeate Sun Yao’s works, inspiring and supporting him. Amidst the tumultuous waves and storms of painting, he repeatedly pushes the limits of emotions and willpower, breaking through personal and external barriers, expanding the boundaries of psychology and language.
The forms, colors, textures, and spaces in Sun Yao’s paintings oscillate between abstraction and concreteness, traversing between the external world and the inner self. They simulate the immeasurable universe: stars bursting, black holes fusing, immense energy beams traversing the interstellar space, surging and colliding... They also signify the ever-changing psyche: various emotions and wills fluctuating, complex entanglements and conflicts, constantly changing, difficult to discern...
Vast on the outside, minute on the inside, both are infinitely mysterious. Sun Yao’s paintings externalize and extend his inner world. Through these paintings, the wonders and surging tides of the macrocosm and microcosm merge with the intense ups and downs in his heart.
Various limitations in specific eras and social orders constrain people, but in the world of painting, Sun Yao can freely release himself, allowing the soul to experience intense freedom — the possibilities and boundaries of freedom. Savoring these experiences of freedom integrates into his state of being and influences his reactions in real life. His paintings, with their powerful and intense energy fields, reveal a sense of tragedy in the face of the transient and finite life's struggle against the inexorable fate, closely related to his nature, life experiences, current situation, and, of course, his mastery of the language of painting.