Oil on canvas

170 x 130 cm. x 2 66 7/8×51 1/8 in.x 2

LITERATURE
2006, Luminescent - Ouyang Chun, Star Gallery, Beijing, p.228-229
PROVENANCE
Star Gallery, Beijing
5 Aug 2023, Xiling Yinshe Hang Zhou Spring Auction, Lot 1662
Acquired directly by present important private Asian collector from the above

Painting the World of Childhood with Sincerity
Ouyang Chun's Eternal Heart

"The most valuable thing is to use one's own life experience to realise the path of an artist. Other than that, all other calculations, cleverness, and machinations are useless in front of time."
——Ouyang Chun

One of the most popular Chinese contemporary artists, Ouyang Chun always has a child in his heart. Born in Beijing in 1974 and graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in 1995, Ouyang Chun does not stick to the traditional fixed techniques and formulae. He chooses to express the natural and honest world in his heart through a kind of childlike painting without any pretence. His playful, humorous and naive artistic vocabulary is his weapon. His wild brushstrokes and interesting themes have made him stand out from the crowd and gained him many fans and collectors. He has been invited to hold solo exhibitions at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, the me Collectors Room in Berlin, and the Yanhuang Museum in Beijing. He is the first post-70s Chinese artist to hold a solo exhibition in a major European art museum.

Courageous Expression, Fearless of Restriction

At the end of 2002, Ouyang Chun moved from Xi'an to Beijing, where his creative work peaked. It was then that the classic Fear series, with less than 10 pieces, was born. Featuring weeping characters in different situations, the series presents bold and wild ideas with a humorous philosophy of life. The work Afraid of the Clumsy Bird is a representational work from this series.

The background of the work is a bright purple colour. The boy, lying on the ground like a fallen bowling ball, has his hands crossed over his face. His tears burst like a fountain and flowed into a river underneath him. Each teardrop is highlighted with a white thick colour like a large pearl, which has a three-dimensional texture and impact. The boy in the painting is like the twisted and screaming figure in The Scream, a famous work by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, one of Ouyang Chun's inspirational artists. Both of the characters' panicked emotion breaks through the two-dimensional limitations of the canvas and strike directly at the viewer's heart. When the adult world is bound by rationality in every word and action, the natural "crying" of a child seems to have become a luxury. Ouyang Chun's exaggerated and childlike emotional expression interrogates and challenges this dogmatic social constraint, calling for the release of human nature.

What scares the boy is a little bird on his body. It looks at the weeping boy at a loss for words. Its eyes were wide open, revealing a sense of helplessness and innocence. Its thin wings are disproportionate to its round body, which seems to imply that it is a "stupid bird" with insufficient flying ability. The "stupid bird" also echoes the boy's situation. The adult world has always admonished children who have not demonstrated their talents in traditional subjects by saying: "Stupid birds should fly first." This seemingly innocent urge subconsciously labels people negatively. Underneath the humour and childlike innocence of the work is a warm philosophy of life: Perhaps the "stupid bird" doesn't need to fly first, and life is not a straight line. So it is not a bad thing to learn to appreciate the joys and frustrations along the way, and people will eventually find their happiness!

Price estimate:
HKD 300,000 – 400,000
USD 38,500 – 51,300