Ziqi Cheng
Critical Reflection
'Shapes of Pain' is the title of my project. I wanted to express my experience with panic attacks (acute anxiety disorder), which involves feelings and emotions, so I wanted to experiment with previously unexplored methods of making work, such as drawing combined with collage, photography, video, and so on. As a result, my primary focus is the investigation of creative methods and forms.
The majority of my work is emotional, such as these pre-project experimental drawings, which appear to be nothing but feelings and emotions and are relatively blank. I want to make my work more narrative while also experimenting with new mediums, styles, and forms, so I am looking into how artists can express pain, emotions, and feelings in a variety of ways. What can I do to improve my work?
These are some of the drawings I tried out in the beginning, but I felt they were too empty, and I needed to add something to the work.
Experiments, 2022, digital drawing, 297 × 210mm
Emotions & Colours & Mixed Media
Firstly, I went to read Beyond the Pain (2020), a book published by the German Museum of Fine Arts exhibition, which invited 12 artists to use their work to investigate how negative physical and psychological experiences can be transformed into a positive attitude toward life. Some of them used text, installation, performance, video, or even a common TV commercial to express their feelings, and it made me think that I could work through more mediums, such as static and dynamic, or simply things I've been exposed to in my own life, rather than just drawing.
Frey, Madeleine [editor.]; Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen [host institution.].Beyond the Pain (2020), Stuttgart : Arnoldsche.
I then looked into other works about emotions, feelings, and pain. Daniel Richter's painting style is wild, and colour is one of his main characteristics; he uses bright, eye-catching colours to express emotions or reflect something that makes people think, so colour is very important in expressing emotions and feelings.
Daniel Richter, Trevelfast, 2004, Oil on canvas,
283 x 232cm
Daniel Richter, Jump from the tower, 2009, Oil on canvas, 60 × 50cm
Berlinde De Bruyckere is another artist whose work is frequently about suffering and death, using physical pain and scarring as the core to explore life and death. She also creates installations out of a wide range of materials, including wax, metal, epoxy, and others.
Berlin De Bruyckere, Marthe (and 1 detail), 2008
Wax, epoxy, metal, wood and glass, 280x172.5x110cm
The preceding research prompted me to consider my own line of work. How can I incorporate the reality of what exists and what I remember into my work while also giving it an emotional expression through colour? As a result, I decided to use collage as a method in my work.
Collage & Photography & Erasing
Collage can be used to enhance colour and texture in a work, it can be ironically interesting or meaningless, so why can't I use it to express feelings? During my research, I met three artists who inspired me to constantly improve the form of my work.
The first was John Stezaker, who frequently uses publicity photos of classic film stars as well as images from books, magazines, and postcards, stitching and overlapping them to create a sense of discontinuity, and his work "Underworld" uses composition to create a surreal and painterly look, which inspired me to see if I could use something in my drawings. It also inspired me to incorporate some "ready-made" elements into my drawings to enhance the overall effect.
John Stezaker, Underworld XVI, 2009, Collage, 23 x 26.3cm
John Stezaker, Sphere VII, 2013, Collage, 26.9 x 34.4cm
The second artist was Ajit Chauhan, whose work inspired me through "destruction," such as erasing old postcards and creating spider web shapes that resemble water drops. Christian Holstad, a third artist with a similar approach, uses readily available newspapers or photographs, erasing the images, and altering them with pencil, using the blankness and blur of the erasure to convey a deeper meaning.
Ajit Chauhan, Wet Web VI, Erased postcard, 2020, 16 ½ x 13 ½ inches
Christian Holstad, Defending Decisions, 2005, Pencil on newspaper, 13 x 18cm
These artists' work has shifted my focus from simple collage to the erasure and drawing of collage. It also reminds me that photographs are an excellent way to document events; however, why do I only use collages in my work, pasting photographs on top of them, rather than transforming them into a form of drawing? I don't want to remove my work from the drawing.
I used the erasure method in combination with photographs in the work "Spreading"
Part of "Spreading", 2022, digital drawing
Drawing, collage, and photography are all static forms of art, but there are also dynamic forms such as video, film, and music. My project's theme is to express the sensation of panic attacks, which include symptoms such as lack of control and shortness of breath. If I want to express this negative feeling of suffocation, I can use video to create a dynamic work, an experimental video, as well as a static work. And my previous method of combining drawing with other media applies to this section as well.
As a result, the next phase of my research will concentrate on experimental film and noise art.
Experimental Film & Noise Art
Video is typically made up of both images and sounds. I always imagined that the image of a film or video could be used as a canvas for a drawing, adding a richer emotion and effect to a simple shot—an idea inspired by my favourite experimental films. Experimental film is a distinct type of film. Experimental film directors frequently use various effects on the corresponding images, which you will find more conducive to capturing the emotions and feelings of the audience. It facilitates the expression of strong emotions.
Dogra Magra (1988) is an experimental film based on Yumeno Kyusaku's full-length speculative novel, which creates a brain-burning, suspenseful, and eerie atmosphere throughout the images. The director uses red light to cover everything in the frame in the film's most important scene, heightening the eerie, tense atmosphere. Other films have used it similarly, such as the Chinese literary film Hello! Mr. Tree (2011), which uses red in its images to express the protagonist's strong negative emotions.
Toshio Matsumoto, Dogra Magra, 1988, Experimental film
Jie Han, Hello! Mr. Tree, 2011, Literary film
The use of bright, eerie, and brilliant colours, as well as imagery to refer to certain emotions and ideas, is a feature of Japanese director and poet Shuji Terayama's experimental films. These experimental films are similar to drawing on a canvas in that you can include whatever colours and elements you want.
Shuji Terayama, Pastoral: To die in the country, 1974
Shuji Terayama, Video Letter, 1982
Due to influence of these experimental films, I enjoy applying various image manipulations to videos to make them look like drawings.
Video & Drawing, 2022, digital drawing, video, 297 × 210mm
Noise artists frequently create videos with disturbing sounds, adding changing noises to the image and thus expressing disturbing, irritating feelings to people.
Akira Yamaoka, a Japanese composer, chose to collect disturbing, uncomfortable sounds for the soundtrack of the video game Silent Hill (1999), in order to amplify the player's senses and double the horror of the game. This prompted me to record my own breathing sounds to represent the suffocation and tension of a panic attack.
At the same time, I realised how important the "environment" was. I needed a depressing environment and a lot of noise to convey the emotions in the video, so I put it in a dark room where I couldn't see anything. It's actually my bedroom, but during a panic attack, you ignore everything around you because it only makes you feel scared and depressed.
Noise artists on instagram
Silent Hill, 1999, Video game
Ziqi Cheng, Experimental video show, 2022
References
Kembrew McLeod, and Rudolf Kuenzli. (2011) Cutting Across Media : Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law. Duke University Press
Frey, Madeleine [editor.]; Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen [host institution.]. (2020) Beyond the Pain. Stuttgart : Arnoldsche
Rees, A. L.. (2011) A History of Experimental Film and Video. BFI Publishing
Kelly Chorpening, and Rebecca Fortnum. (2020) A Companion to Contemporary Drawing. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Tony Rayns. (2017) Where the mountain meets the street: Terayama Shuji. BFI
Katharine Stout. (2014) Contemporary drawing : from the 1960s to now. London : Tate Publishing
Becky Beasley. (2019) Photographer in Focus: John Stezaker. National Portrait Gallery
Daniel Richter. Website for Daniel Richter. Available at: https://ropac.net/artists/74-daniel-richter/
Christian Holstad. Website for Christian Holstad. Available at: https://www.saatchigallery.com/artist/christian_holstad
Berlinde De Bruyckere. (2019) Interviewed by Galleria Continua. Available at: https://www.galleriacontinua.com/artists/berlinde-de-bruyckere-21