In 1990, Cai Jin, a newly admitted student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, wore a floral shirt and big leather boots, and rode a red-painted bicycle between Xuewei Hutong and Hujialou, which was one of the most eye-catching scenery in Beijing's old city. Unbeknownst to the 24-year-old at the time, she had broken into the history of Chinese contemporary art.
Cai Jin is one of the contemporary artists who cannot be ignored in the 90s of the 20th century. Compared with contemporary artists of the same period, Cai Jin only "uniquely" walked on the international art stage with his works, covering Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Australia, and United States. Art theorist and critic Liu Xiaochun once commented, "She does not first personalize the theme of life, but points to universality from the perspective of individual life." ”
Having worked in the art world for 30 years, Cai Jin has an almost rustic love for creation, and faithfully "executes feelings". In addition to being an artist, she is also a teacher and a mother. Identity is a supplement to life experience, and Cai Jin's creation is based on the individual's subtle feelings about the outside world. However, due to the limitation of her identity, she was temporarily outside of creation.
At present, Cai Jin has entered a new stage - she retired from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, and her daughter who grew up with her has grown into a young artist, and she is also in the 59th year of her life. She is not a person who cares about "meaning", but when the small memories of the past 30 years come and go like a tide, Cai Jin wants to find something "lifelong". "I want to go back to some kind of creation, to my own world. Every time I think about it, I feel a sense of excitement. She said.
Cai Jin, 59, said she wanted to paint for another 10 years. In the past, she loved to paint cannas; Now, her work focuses more on the landscape. The red plant of her youth, still vigorous, stretched its branches high and explored the edge of the sky.
feel
Artists have an innate sensitivity to the world. Cai Jin always uses a curious eye to peer outward, and then creates from an introspective perspective, through the observation of life, presenting the here and now, thoughts and thoughts into his works, marking his own personal brand. "Feelings" is also the word Cai Jin mentioned the most in an interview.
She loves nature and flowers, and Canna is her most representative series. Since 1992, Cai Jin has painted more than 400 stylized banana leaves on canvas and ready-made materials.
1994 "Bijin Sho 48" 200cm×190cm
Artists, painters, professional audiences, non-professional audiences, when different people look at "Canna", they get different interpretations. Life, vitality, and health coexist with decadence, corruption, and death. Some people see blood vessels, muscle tissue, the exploration of sex and the body, while others understand it as a metaphor of consciousness, placing Cai Jin's work in the narrative of the times.
"Canna, a plant native to the tropics and subtropics, has been given the meaning of a beautiful woman because of its Chinese name, and Cai Jin has evolved it into a very personal narrative of the feminine experience...... It is a major characteristic of contemporary female artists in the West to use flowers as a symbol of women, either glamorous or sexually suggestive, to satirize and criticize the power discourse of patriarchal society that treats women as playthings. However, Cai Jin's flowers mainly focus on the life process of the canna itself, and if there is any metaphor, it is not through social words to illustrate a certain critical meaning, but by depicting the texture and mutation process of the flower itself. ”
Gao Minglu
However, the imprint of the times is only Cai Jin's palette, not his work, and the images in the depths of his memory are transformed into the background color of the canvas one by one in his creation.
Canna was originally inspired by chance. "I found it in the abandoned courtyard of my home in Hefei. I was struck by the unique shape and texture of the dried canna in winter. "This is a moment of inspiration that most artists can't hope for, and at a quick glance, she feels the softness and vitality contained in the plantain leaves, so she picks up the pen and restores the feeling on the drawing board." Spiritual and sensual and spreading, it flows from my brush. Cai Jin said.
2004 "Bijin Sho 210" 80cm×80cm
The value orientation of the artist will always be clearly present in the creation. Cai Jin's works focus more on parts and details, even the pauses of brushstrokes and the shades of color. For her, "feeling" is meaning in itself. It's something that is more important than the technical knowings, the expectations of the market, and the grand narrative.
In fact, Cai Jin was not directly influenced by Western surrealism, but her artistic expression was somewhat similar to the "psychological automatic" way of surrealism. Before the content of her paintings has entered the conscious level, it has directly changed from her subconscious layer to the image on the screen. Her work is visually figurative and spiritually abstract. From this, it can be said that "surreality" is not an ism, nor is it a method, but a function of her Bingfu. ”
Van Di'an
And Cai Jin has indeed been following his feelings.
sheer
Thirty-five years ago, an art teacher at a middle school in Hefei had a premonition that "I think I should be an artist", and she resigned and went north to be admitted to the fifth oil painting workshop of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2000. There, Cai Jin, who is in his early 20s, plunged into the soil of art and absorbed the nutrients of various genres and everyone.
"A lot of people have a hard time associating my paintings with me." Cai Jin's original style of work was extremely expressive. When the boys in the same class faced a small-scale painting and drew it carefully with a pen, Cai Jin would walk into the studio with a frame of nearly 2 meters, listen to the music of Teresa Teng and Qi Qin, and create with a big spatula. She was the youngest student in the seminar, perhaps guided by the hormones of youth, "At that time, I was full of confidence, I was not afraid of anything, and all I thought about every day was to express what I had learned and seen in my paintings." "You can see the shadows of Dalí, Luau, and Magritte in Cai Jin's oil paintings, but they are digested and honed into one by her. Bold colors, exaggerated brushstrokes, surreal, dreamlike, all come from a silent and thin young female painter in front of her.
1993 Cai Jin, Tianjin
Cai Jin feels the impact of the outside world, internalizing it as a lyrical expression while finding his own style. It wasn't until 1992 that the first canna plant was born on her canvas and the bright colors were still there, but Cai Jin's gaze had shifted from opening and closing to the details.
The more detailed the feeling, the more subtle the understanding can often be. The inadequacy of the subject matter reflects the profound humanity and the extension of any meaning of life. In the mid-90s, Cai Jin and her canna entered the mainstream Western context in a way that transcended regions and nationalities.
She began experimenting with installation painting, painting cannas on readymade objects. In 1995, at the "Women's Art Exhibition", Cai Jin's installation works were presented to the public for the first time, Simmons mattresses, bicycle saddles, leather chairs, ...... They replace the canvas as a new carrier of canna, and they are also Cai Jin's extension of the painting space. From these new materials, the outside world can see the transformation of canna from prosperity to decay, and by extension, the artist's personal experience and thoughts on feminism.
1997 《美人蕉134,135》丝绸被面 320cm×280cm
Cai Jin denied it. Nearly 30 years later, she can still clearly remember how she felt when she encountered each of her materials when she flipped through the album, but her choice was not specific for specific expression considerations, but only based on feelings and instincts. "Every step seems to have come just right. It's not a coincidence, it's just that my cognition and practice are matched at this time. Cai Jin doesn't think it's a big deal, her creations are just "like embroidery" simple and pure.
stage
In addition to the feeling of creation, Cai Jin is also feeling the matter of becoming a mother.
In 1997, Cai Jin went to the United States, slowed down the pace of his appearance in international exhibitions, and entered a period of "disappearance" after giving birth to his daughter in 2000. For Cai Jin, the most avant-garde and sensitive artist at that time, creation ranked second, and the first important thing was to become a mother. She does not shy away from the "sense of absence" brought about by her 10-year career in the United States. "I'm one of those people who have been drawing their own things and need time, and I don't care much about the environment or what other people around me are doing, and it doesn't have a big impact on me."
1998 "Half the Sky", Women's Museum, Bonn
On the contrary, she sees her daughter as everything and enjoys it. "When I first had my daughter, I didn't have any perception or idea of what I was going to do or what else I could do at that time and in the future, and the whole person was completely on her." In Cai Jin's album "Cai Jin", a famous artist in the art world writes a short biography for her, with a preface and inscription, and the latter page is full of graffiti of her daughter and a photo of the mother and daughter.
"My daughter has changed the way I feel about life and creation." Cai Jin said. From a baby in her arms to a toddler, when her daughter was 3 or 4 years old, Cai Jin took her to various countries to hold exhibitions and give interviews. In the photos of that period, Cai Jin, his works, and his daughter always appeared together, "Where I am, she is there".
The child's growth is a process of continuous separation from the mother, but with the increase of life experience, parents and children will once again gain a similar symbiotic experience. Cai Jin's daughter is also an artist, and mother and daughter cherish the moments of looking at each other and cherishing each other.
"Yi Yi likes to look at my paintings and evaluate them sincerely. She said to me before she went to United States, 'Mom, you can paint well now and get back all those years because of me.'" I seem to have some of these feelings, entering a new state, returning to a certain kind of creation. "I want to focus more on myself and consciously isolate some voices from the outside world." Painting for another 10 years is not a problem. ”
Sensing the foreshadowing of the next stage of his life, Cai Jin reflects it in his creations. After teaching and retiring at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, she has gradually withdrawn "canna" from her creation in recent years. In 2017, she brought her first video installation to Cai Jin's solo exhibition "Flower Fairy Collection" at Triumph Gallery, · Art Gallery, in which Cai Jin's iconic "canna" bloomed and slowly disappeared in the all-black exhibition hall.
2013《风景37abc》300cmX450cm
Instead, Cai Jin's recent "Landscape" and "Flowers" series of oil paintings. Her style is on the verge of abstraction, with the figurative depiction of the natural world gradually fading out of the picture in favor of the use of lyrical abstract expressions for sensory creation, continuing the emotional core of her earlier works. Cai Jin said that this may be the ultimate purpose of creating these "canna" works over the years—the picture leaves the picture and opens up another future, looking for the most authentic feeling in the flowing changes.
We met Cai Jin in the solo exhibition "Impression of the Brocade Room". In a corner of an old bungalow in Shanghai, her works are skillfully integrated with the surrounding furnishings, decoration and atmosphere. Cai Jin spoke softly, and when asked a question from the other side, she would always unconsciously extend the answer, and then stop and ask "Is it not good enough?"
2024 蔡锦：锦室意象 DG art space上海
In the interview, the image of the student who was in full swing at the Central Academy of Fine Arts 30 years ago always coincided with the middle-aged Cai Jin in front of him. She has the same long black hair and bangs as she did 30 years ago, looking for the clips that moved her 30 years ago. In addition to experience, what is left for Cai Jin over the years may only be the feelings themselves.
When we look back at the artist's 30 years of creation and life, it is like seeing the life course of a red plant, growing naturally and vigorously. Cai Jin's name has the meaning of "many patterns and beautiful", she reminds people of a lyric: "You say that life is gorgeous, I have no objection", rain, sunshine, storm, bear the spring and winter, feel everything you can feel. Now she is stretching her branches to a high place, exploring the edge of the blue sky.
The following is an excerpt from the conversation between Forbes China and Cai Jin:
Forbes China: Could you please tell us about your experience from the Fourth Engineering Bureau School of the Ministry of Railways, to the Fifth Oil Painting Workshop of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and then to the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts?
Cai Jin:
I graduated from Anhui Normal University in 1986 and chose to work nearby. Although my job as an art teacher is a professional match, I still have the dream of becoming an artist. Therefore, during the three years of teaching at the School of the Fourth Engineering Bureau of the Ministry of Railways of Anhui Province, I did not give up creating.
At that time, the Central Academy of Fine Arts set up a seminar for young and middle-aged painters and teachers who had already undergone undergraduate professional education to carry out high-level art re-education. There was fierce competition among 2,000 people, and in the end only 20 people were admitted. It is a great honour to be able to return to campus and study at the nation's top art university. During my two years of study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, I felt the infinite charm and profound heritage of art, and the teachers were the best artists in China, eager to learn.
On the occasion of my graduation, I had the pleasure of having a solo exhibition. Under the recommendation of Mr. Wen Lipeng and Mr. Pan Shixun, I was accepted by the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts as a member of its teaching team, and continued to explore the dual exploration of teaching and creation at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts.
Forbes China: Compared with your contemporaries, you are not the first wave of artists to break into foreign markets, but like most of them, they have returned to China after the new century. How did you manage to create and interact with foreign markets during this time? Why choose to return to China for development?
Cai Jin:
The reasons for my going abroad and returning home were actually different from those of the artists of the same period. Between 1994 and 1996, although my works had gone abroad, they were all short-term exchanges. Until 1997, I had exhibited in many cities in the United States, about five exhibitions and one event, so my stay was significantly longer. Coupled with the shift in the focus of my life, I decided to stay in New York temporarily, and because of my position at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, my daughter Xu Siyi returned to China when she grew up.
Even in New York, my art is not affected by geographical shifts and market developments, and I want to capture inspiration wherever I am. Therefore, despite the change of geographical location, my artistic practice and the rhythm of life remain inherently continuous.
Forbes China: Your works often start from a detail and let it extend naturally, how did this creative concept of "starting from the micro" come about?
Cai Jin:
This creative concept was born in the process of studying at CAFA, in the traditional sketch teaching, students often tend to quickly outline the overall outline and general relationship, although this habitual practice can effectively construct the picture framework, but it is easy to ignore the subtle details of the object, resulting in the works tend to be similar, lack of personality and depth. The sketching instruction I received at CAFA challenged this conventional path, encouraging us to abandon the dependence on existing techniques and return to the visual authenticity, re-examining the subject from an almost beginner's perspective, and by stripping away the automated reactions brought about by proficient techniques, we were prompted to capture the uniqueness of the subject with a more open and keen eye. Later, this habit followed me for many years.
Forbes China: What do you think about age and gender? You don't seem to care about these two things, how does that affect your work?
Cai Jin:
Yes, I don't deny being a female artist, but I've never been a slogan about gender. In my creative logic, I observe from the subtleties to the daily life, but I happen to be a woman, so what I record is just a woman's self.
I was born in 1965, I'm 59 this year, and I'm almost 60 years old, but I think I'm in a really good state at the moment. On the one hand, because there are often exhibitions and interviews, I am constantly accepting new things, but also because I feel that there are more creations that I need to do, and I will do better. Canna is a watershed moment in my creation, landscapes and flowers are a new beginning at this stage, and I want to return to some kind of creation, to return to my own world, and there is a sense of excitement about gearing up.
Forbes China exclusive manuscript, please do not reprint without permission
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