Hetero-Imagery ¨C A Kind of Psychology of Urban Image
By Wang Chunchen
Today, as China has integrated into the world system, there appears a phenomenon where visual images are more and more similar with each other. Our social space has become more and more influenced by visual images, and even touch and taste, however, at the same time, our emotions and ideas are conquered, or even replaced by nonchalance. The result is that everything is duplicated and flattened, which means personality is disappearing. A completely spectacle-oriented world occupies the supreme seat, and symbolizes our existence. The division and distance between subject and spectacle are hidden in the fast-rolling wheel of time. As a matter of fact, people don't want to be buried in a messy forest of visual landscapes; instead, they strongly yearn for a break from the everyday surface of the visual images, which is the reason for the existence of hetero-imagery.

This imagery is so full of change, uncertainty, temptation, and challenge, that the world becomes very mobile and transitory. People's psychology and the world they live in interiorize each other, so that we often feel ourselves integrated into the spectacle around and become a moving item lingering in the city space. It is also because that the vehicle of modernization is the city, the latter then becomes the representative of the spectacled society and individuals, symbolizing modernization and indicating the existence of a kind of modern culture. Time and again, the city pioneered ahead of culture and pushed forward modernization revolutions. Stepping into a city means an imagined abundance, happiness, and future. The functions of the city are changed once and again, every time assigned with too many realistic desires. Therefore, the city becomes a symbol of power structure and status promotion, which is the origin of the city hetero-imagery.

Faced with spectacle and cities, artists keep reflecting, hoping to transcend the shackle of the city by their thinking and imagination. They try to break the limit and nervousness of spectacled society and reveal the contradictions and overturns imposed on intellectual thinking by a flattened world picture with their most direct and sensual cognitive method. At the same time when they escape from the meaningless existence of the spectacled society, they try their best to break the numb shell of the bound language, show the image expression that language cannot reach directly to the world, remind people again of returning to the language that enables them to recognize themselves, and combine the existence of image meaning with humanity, through which they achieve a break from the city image, allowing hetero-imagery become a creation. Thus, urban image takes on a psychological meaning, highlights artistic hetero-imagery's transcendence of and reflection on visual spectacle, and deeply reflects the psychological image of the personalized city. This is the meaning of image psychology.

Melancholy and Myth. This series of Liu Jin's works look for a sense of civilian myth, putting reality into the absurd, which seems to deliver a melancholy song and makes the image story a puzzle forever. Thus, the historical answer becomes an eternal question.

Wonder and Fantasy. Liu Ren brings along a fresh image reading with youth dreams, showing the capacity of a new generation of artists to catch daily visual images and to fly free imagination in the urban sky.

Denying and Questioning. Thinking on his own, Xu Changchang keeps seeking the existence and evolution of cities, vividly explains the resignation of the city for drawing away from people, which is a historically archaeological questioning in advance.

Mystery and Terror. Shen Yang applies a tender extrasensory method to create a mysterious atmosphere wherein every existence is conquered by destinative history as they linger on in urban space, thus shows that cities deliver more terror than comfort.

Formality and Thinking. Jia Youguang breaks the numerous urban spectacles and focuses on the most typical of them all - windows that lead to the unpredictable and private space, puts on a great play of history and reality that involves both the tragic and comic sides of the city.

Spectacle and Hypothesis. Works by Chen Zhuo and Huang Keyi are of huge sizes and portray very spacious scenes. With extra-realistic virtualization, they combine real splendor with real virtuality, and present a criticism of vanity.

Soul and Self. Qiu Zhen tries to find a true moment, so he wanders along the urban streets and lanes and finds that the city has given people dual identity: the self and the soul. Just because of the materialization by the city, they lose the shelter of the soul.

Veiling and Transparency. Liu Jiaxiang skillfully uses iron wires as a metaphor to tell people that the splendid urban landscapes are actually covered. When the curious desires encounter doubt, it is the conceptual power of hetero-imagery that really shows us all.

The Past and the Future. Korean artist Sung Ji-hoon presents huge dinosaur skeleton amid the busy modern city. Remote history strongly metaphorizes the possible future, and the juxtaposition of time and space brings forward philosophical thinking on life and non-life.

The author is art critic and curator,
working in China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing