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Lot Essay
Lia Aili, one of the most important Chinese artists working today, unites Surrealism, Futurism, and Minimalism in his monumental triptych Combustion. Referencing both destruction and regeneration, Combustion was also the name of Jia’s first New York gallery exhibition in 2019. Exhibiting a rigorous passion for painting and an eye for evocative juxtapositions (in the vein of James Rosenquist), the present work is at once dramatic, somber, absurd, complex, beautiful, and disarming. A world unfolds before us in three parts: the left panel is a cacophony of colors and forms with an insect-like being presiding over it like an ersatz angel, and the action unfolds in the middle panel with a violent thunderstorm. Death marches on to the final panel, which changes the nature of Jia’s landscape. Emerging from the edge of the canvas are blocks of color that form a wall or fence. What lies beyond this chromatic structure, we cannot know, but in Jia’s universe, nothing is as it seems. In its review of the artist’s debut Manhattan exhibition, The Brooklyn Rail praises this order within chaos, “It is as if we are witnessing some cosmic event happening in a split second and Jia has had the good fortune of pressing pause at just the right moment. By combining sharp, representational renderings with abstract shapes, Jia is able to disassociate his tableaux from the real world and more aptly illustrate his hazy visions and sense of unease” (G.W. Bell, “Jia Aili: Combustion,” The Brooklyn Rail, April 2019).
While Jia is based in China, he also keeps a studio in New York due to the demand for his work in both Asia and the Americas. Artnet News describes this unique position in the global art world, “He is a member of a new generation of Chinese artists, reared in the post-Mao Zedong era, who are known for eschewing the overtly political themes of previous generations in favor of merging classical Eastern modes of art-making with contemporary issues” (T. Dafoe, “Young Chinese Art Star Jia Aili on Why He Filled His New Gagosian Show With Paintings of the Apocalypse,” Artnet News, March 29, 2019). A dedication to formalism does not render Jia’s paintings quaint or merely beautiful. He simply refrains from being confined to art deemed political so that his message can resonate more widely and with diverse audiences.
Jia’s international influence is rooted in his ability to combine multiple strands of art history, not unlike the interwoven canvases of the present work. He cites Caspar David Friedrich and Pablo Picasso as major influences. Indeed, Jia lies between these two artists in his embrace of both Romanticism and Modernism. Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea (1809, Alte National Galerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) comes to mind, considering the allusions Combustion makes to the end of society. Perhaps the Romantic, almost Gothic, seascape is what would remain after the battle Jia depicts. On the other hand, Picasso’s enormous Guernica (1937, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia) captures the chaos of war with humans, ghosts, and animals united in their suffering. A central comparison between Jia and Picasso is their shared use of both detail and magnitude in their large canvases, which creates a dynamic zooming effect. Jia observes, “It is true that the visual construction required for a large work is complex and subjective, but it also benefits from the alienation of visual perception produced by gazing at a small piece of work” (J. Aili, quoted in T. Dafoe, “Young Chinese Art Star Jia Aili on Why He Filled His New Gagosian Show with Paintings of the Apocalypse,” Artnet News, March 29, 2019). The same is true of the human experience, which Jia reveals to be composed of events both intimate and cosmic.
While Jia’s work is not specifically anti-war, he nevertheless wonders about the potential collapse of society. Perhaps Combustion is a cautionary tale and not an unavoidable vision of the future. Aside from the content of his work, Jia has also joined the larger conversation of the intersection between figuration and abstraction that has also occupied Christina Quarles and Nicole Eisenman, among others. Above all, as illustrated by Combustion, Jia believes in myth and narrative as powerful tools, despite the opposite sentiments advocated by conceptualism (though he is of course well versed in all the debates of postmodernism). He earnestly believes that art can tell a story, which is not the same as merely illustrating a concept. In times of uncertainty, artists like Jia reintroduce the unifying power of myth.
While Jia is based in China, he also keeps a studio in New York due to the demand for his work in both Asia and the Americas. Artnet News describes this unique position in the global art world, “He is a member of a new generation of Chinese artists, reared in the post-Mao Zedong era, who are known for eschewing the overtly political themes of previous generations in favor of merging classical Eastern modes of art-making with contemporary issues” (T. Dafoe, “Young Chinese Art Star Jia Aili on Why He Filled His New Gagosian Show With Paintings of the Apocalypse,” Artnet News, March 29, 2019). A dedication to formalism does not render Jia’s paintings quaint or merely beautiful. He simply refrains from being confined to art deemed political so that his message can resonate more widely and with diverse audiences.
Jia’s international influence is rooted in his ability to combine multiple strands of art history, not unlike the interwoven canvases of the present work. He cites Caspar David Friedrich and Pablo Picasso as major influences. Indeed, Jia lies between these two artists in his embrace of both Romanticism and Modernism. Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea (1809, Alte National Galerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) comes to mind, considering the allusions Combustion makes to the end of society. Perhaps the Romantic, almost Gothic, seascape is what would remain after the battle Jia depicts. On the other hand, Picasso’s enormous Guernica (1937, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia) captures the chaos of war with humans, ghosts, and animals united in their suffering. A central comparison between Jia and Picasso is their shared use of both detail and magnitude in their large canvases, which creates a dynamic zooming effect. Jia observes, “It is true that the visual construction required for a large work is complex and subjective, but it also benefits from the alienation of visual perception produced by gazing at a small piece of work” (J. Aili, quoted in T. Dafoe, “Young Chinese Art Star Jia Aili on Why He Filled His New Gagosian Show with Paintings of the Apocalypse,” Artnet News, March 29, 2019). The same is true of the human experience, which Jia reveals to be composed of events both intimate and cosmic.
While Jia’s work is not specifically anti-war, he nevertheless wonders about the potential collapse of society. Perhaps Combustion is a cautionary tale and not an unavoidable vision of the future. Aside from the content of his work, Jia has also joined the larger conversation of the intersection between figuration and abstraction that has also occupied Christina Quarles and Nicole Eisenman, among others. Above all, as illustrated by Combustion, Jia believes in myth and narrative as powerful tools, despite the opposite sentiments advocated by conceptualism (though he is of course well versed in all the debates of postmodernism). He earnestly believes that art can tell a story, which is not the same as merely illustrating a concept. In times of uncertainty, artists like Jia reintroduce the unifying power of myth.