“I might want everything: the infinite spiral of darkness with each fall, and the trembling brilliance with each ascending step.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)
The vast expanse of the universe defies human measurement; the inner depths of the soul often elude self-awareness. When one honestly confronts the external world and the internal realm, it’s easy to realize: one’s limitations are glaring. Yet, humans can only comprehend everything through their experiences and rationality. As for the transcendent, irrational insights, they are intertwined with the mysterious will of the heavens, encountered but not sought after…
In his aesthetic journey, Sun Yao delves into the unknown through painting: using a language that lies between abstraction and concreteness, he echoes the immense energies permeating the world, releasing the complexities of his own emotions. In this process of response and interaction, the enigmatic gestures of the world and the ever-changing moods of the self transform into vividly tangible light and shadow, texture, layers, and boundaries on the two-dimensional canvas…
The relationship between the abstract “Dao” and the tangible “flesh” is marvelously infinite. Initially, Sun Yao poured his thoughts and honed his skills in representational art. As he increasingly realized that beyond the visible lies the invisible, and the source of material is immaterial, he transformed the invisible into the visible, materializing the immaterial. This impelled him to labor tirelessly at the intersection of representation and abstraction, finding joy in his work and unable to resist. While deeply appreciating representational art, he held onto its functionality and allure. Yet, he was profoundly moved by the path of abstraction, deliberately discarding superficial appearances to delve into deeper layers, reaching the boundary between representation and abstraction. Here, he felt a sense of appropriateness and proportion, aligning with the insights emerging from his soul, and the discoveries guided by the flow of the painting process.
The fleeting nature of life manifests in concrete and minute experiences, where each moment, each fraction, carries absolute distinctions. The fluctuations of the human heart, the dramatic changes in the world, release an infinitely rich array of information. Sensitive individuals receive, filter, and digest this information, expressing it in ways that adhere to the rules of linguistic ontology. Sun Yao lived in an era of rapid economic development, amidst peace and prosperity in bustling cities. However, his innate predispositions, daily life, knowledge structures, and skill reserves inclined him towards the vast and distant infinity of the cosmos. He believed in the omnipresence of this wondrous energy, intimately intertwined with his immediate surroundings and his inner self — seemingly distant yet palpably close, simultaneously external yet profoundly internal. Thus, he harbored a constant curiosity towards the potential of the external world, ranging from mundane objects to the microscopic realm and the distant cosmos. He also introspected upon the desires of his inner self, during moments of calm, joy, emptiness, melancholy, mania, sadness, anger, and fear.
Sun Yao’s understanding of this symbiotic interpenetration, where the external world and the inner self are both external and internal, even to the point of blurring the line between inside and outside. Accompanying this insight is his painting language, where representation and abstraction intertwine, often indistinguishable. In the strokes, textures, and flowing traces of his canvases, the macro, meso, and micro worlds overlap and permeate, representing both the chaos of the tangible world and the materialization of chaotic emotions. Material and immaterial, visible and invisible, intermingle and synthesize within a single entity. Multiple layers of overlap and boundary traversal become aesthetic characteristics of his works.
He can start painting from vastly different sources and end up creating unique and distinctive compositions. When asked about his sources, some paintings are inspired by photos of nebulae billions of light years away, while others begin with sketching a piece of tissue paper or a corner of a tablecloth. Some paintings are moved by classical art, while others evolve from realistic portraiture. Some are influenced by social events, movies, and so on, while others stem from personal life experiences. Throughout the process of painting — condensing, diverging, interpreting, imagining — the desires, impulses, ideas, and imaginations, along with the skills and methods of mastering language, emerge from the abyss almost inexplicably, manifesting as vivid and intuitive spatial forms.
Sun Yao’s paintings often exude a breathtaking grandeur, with immense energy rolling and churning within them, as if the universe is boiling from pole to pole, and everything tangible is about to be melted by fierce flames and shattered by raging torrents. It’s as if it’s the dawn of creation or the eve of universal destruction, appearing both familiar and distant, as if in this very lifetime. The vividness of the illusions depicted on the two-dimensional canvas can make viewers hesitate, fearing being engulfed by them. Yet Sun Yao, the creator of these illusions, remains dedicated, tirelessly immersing himself in his work year after year, always lively and continuously innovative.
The pursuit of security and stability is a common human instinct, yet the illusions created by Sun Yao evoke feelings of wilderness, profundity, and coldness, rendering individuals insignificant as dust, feeble as powder. In Sun Yao’s paintings, the heavens and earth are indifferent, treating all living beings as mere fodder, reminiscent of a desolate world where no one survives. The anguish of suffering and the sublime despair arise spontaneously. However, as he surveys the lively and vibrant present moment, he finds solace, repeatedly gaining the courage to surge forward, to be reborn in the face of death, venturing into the tumultuous waves time and again.
This understanding and action resemble those of a professional adventurer, fully aware of the dangers lurking ahead yet still venturing into perilous territory, facing both the possibility of complete destruction and the chance to retreat unscathed. Sun Yao describes his own mindset: “Perhaps one day I will suddenly be engulfed by a huge wave in some unknown corner of the world, and I want to know what that experience will be like.” Looking back on his work over the past decade, it has not become more gentle and serene but rather more stormy and tempestuous, with violent and fierce energy filling the space between heaven and earth. Whether individuals recoil in fear and retreat or concentrate their efforts and face challenges head-on depends on their personal choices.
Regarding ultimate beliefs, Sun Yao is currently pessimistic: “Nature is simply a state of totality, and I am a part of it. There is no such thing as divinity or supernatural powers as we conceive them.” “The catastrophic event I hope for is the destruction of divinity.” Faced with such a bleak and despairing worldview, he confronts it with the tenacity of life, the resilience of will, and the vigor of energy, akin to the Sisyphean model constructed by Camus.
Thus, one can understand the somber quality and intense tone of Sun Yao’s work. When observing the world from above or examining one's innermost thoughts, the world appears harsh, and the human heart seems untamed. From the moment the paintbrush dipped in pigment touches the blank canvas, Sun Yao’s innate instincts and accumulated experiences intersect, leading him both independently and involuntarily into the world within his mind’s eye. Nebulae, arcs of light, black holes, flares, mountain peaks, ocean depths, ravines, waves, branches, bones, pipes, valves... in each breathtaking illusion, concrete and abstract merge and blur their boundaries.
These images vividly depict Sun Yao’s innermost feelings. Across the vast expanse of time and space, amidst the changing seasons, he laughs and weeps, displaying both calm restraint and reckless abandon, reveling in the uninhibited expression of colors and forms. Artistic expression becomes his intoxicating journey through the depths of his soul, alternating between intoxication and sobriety.
In Sun Yao’s paintings, the complexity of the world and the profundity of the soul intertwine, faithfully depicting and freely exploring in tandem. The entanglement of order and disorder pulls at both consciousness and subconsciousness, reflecting Sun Yao’s state of mind while also guiding him closer to the unknown depths. In the realm of the unknown, there may be ultimate catastrophe, where all life ceases to exist, as Sun Yao expressed: “The catastrophic event I hope for is the destruction of divinity.” Yet, it could also be a situation of rebirth from adversity, a passage from death to life, a new heaven and earth. This transcends human capability — do what one can, accept fate, for there is a divine will that guides all things...
August 11, 2022, Beijing.