P resenting a vast, dramatic and engulfing post-apocalyptic vision, Jia Aili’s The Memory of North Liucao Island is a supreme example from the artist’s singular body of magnificent seascapes fraught with chilling terror and devastating poetry. The present work’s titular North Liucao Island situates between North Korea and China’s Dandong region in the northeastern Liaoning Province – the seaside bordertown where Jia grew up. Born one year after the one-child policy in China was implemented, Jia Aili’s sibling-less childhood experience of long and bitterly cold winters influenced his recurrent depictions of chilly horizons and boundless stretches of land: in the present work, the composition is characterized by jagged white lightning tendrils that splinter into glacial fractures within a stormy sea, each gestating a single ghostly, spectral fetus. Three adults struggle to keep a fragile barge afloat, while curious dismembered heads float beneath the water surface, their brows wearily furrowed and their expressions wrought with bleak pain. Notably, each infant’s head is encased in the unmistakable dome of an astronaut’s helmet. The launch of China’s first astronaut into space in 2003 was a symbolic and inspirational event for millions of Jia’s generation – representative of the birth of their new capitalist country and an affirmation of its meteoric rise towards global superpower status. However, this cosmic glory had not yet spread to the entire country. At the time, Jia was still studying at the Luxun Academy of Art in Shenyang province: an area that had once been an industrial stronghold and a shining example of China’s socialist economy, but in the new capitalist environment had become bankrupt and jobless. In the icy palette of greys, blacks, and whites, Jia offers no relief from this sense of solitary melancholic suffering: The Memory of North Liucao Island appropriates a figurehead of China’s technological progress to illuminate the disparities elsewhere, and to compound the melancholic mood.

Born in 1979, Jia Aili graduated from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in 2004 and ranks amongst the most renowned young contemporary Chinese artists working in the world today. While Jia Aili’s training at the Lu Xun Academy was closely tied to the Soviet socialist realism of the 1950s, he was simultaneously influenced by diverse lineages from both Eastern and Western art. Most notably, Jia Aili was strongly drawn to the techniques of classical artists such as Michelangelo and Caravaggio; very early on, Jia Aili started to “emphasise the deep perspective of the picture plane and the chiaroscuro treatment of light, shadow, shape and space, creating his own theatrical approach to painting” (David Chew, ‘Portrait of a Contemporary Romantic’, in exh. cat. Singapore Art Museum, Seeker of Hope: Works by Jia Aili, 2012, p. 10). Jia is often referred to as a contemporary romantic for his painterly work in oils that seems to imitate such nineteenth-century greats such as Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix; indeed the present work shares compositional affinity with Caspar David Friedrich’s iconic The Polar Sea (1824) and is furthermore redolent of the literature of that age. In the solitary bleakness of The Memory of North Liucao Island we are reminded of the work of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Balzac; that the melancholic struggle is eternal and infinite, and that, in many cases, human nature is not destined to triumph.

The singular lexicon of Jia Aili’s images thus derives from a complex engagement with tropes and ideas from Western art history, specifically romanticism and the pastoral landscape, combined with the reality of his local subject matter. The artist is concerned with expressing existential angst on an epic universal and timeless level as well as specifically at the level of the contradictions between contemporary culture and the logic of capitalism. Jia Aili grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, a period in which China was undergoing rapid liberalisation and economic development. Unlike the earlier generation of Chinese artists, Jia Aili is less concerned with reviewing specific incidents or iconography of modern Chinese history, finding inspiration instead within more intimate personal narratives – specifically, his resistance and scepticism towards social transformations, technological progress and a world that is increasingly connected yet also increasingly alienated and estranged. As David Chew observes, Jia Aili “sees himself as a commentator of his age, calling to mind the period of romanticism – this movement that questioned the changes and advancement of society at that time, which saw artists seeing themselves as representing the voice of their time” (Ibid, p. 11).

賈 藹力的海景畫作品系列奇異壯麗，洋溢毀滅性的詩意，令人不寒而慄，《北柳草島的回憶》展現出浩瀚無垠的洶湧景象，彷彿遭逢浩劫，是該系列的典範傑作，而作品標題中的北柳草島位於北韓與中國遼寧省東北部的丹東地區之間。賈藹力生於一孩政策實施後的翌年，他就在這個海邊的邊境城市根生土長。作為獨子，賈藹力童年時常常是獨自度過漫長的嚴冬，這段經歷啟發他反覆描繪冷峭地域及一望無際的疆土。本作的構圖特點在於鋸齒狀的白色閃電卷鬚在狂風暴雨的海面上將冰川分裂成碎片，孕育著一個個幽靈似的胎兒。三個成年人竭力不讓那葉不堪一擊的小船沉沒，而肢解過後剩下來的頭顱在水面載浮載沉，顯得筋疲力盡，他們眉頭緊鎖，表情淒愴而痛苦。在灰、黑、白的冰冷色調中，可見賈藹力無意紓緩這種孤獨而憂鬱的苦難感。值得注意的是，每個嬰兒的頭部顯然被半圓的太空人頭盔所包裹。2003年，中國第一位太空人升空，對賈藹力一代人來說是鼓舞人心的盛事，代表著他們的新資本主義國家正式誕生，預示其祖國正朝向全球超級大國地位騰飛。然而，空前的榮耀沒有傳遍整個國家。當時，賈藹力仍在魯迅美術學院學習，學院所在的瀋陽省曾是工業重地，是中國社會主義經濟下成就輝煌的一例，可是，在新興的資本主義環境中，瀋陽為破產和失業問題所困，泥足深陷。《北柳草島的回憶》巧妙運用了中國技術進程中的棄將來闡明地方的差距，加重了憂鬱的格調。

賈藹力生於一九七九年，二〇〇四年畢業於魯迅美術學院，是現今世上最知名的當代中國年輕藝術家之一。賈藹力在魯迅美術學院接受藝術訓練，雖然大多關於上世紀五十年代的蘇聯社會寫實主義，但他同時受到不拘一格的東西方藝術傳統薰陶。最特別的是，賈藹力對米開朗基羅、卡拉瓦喬等古典藝術家的技法深深著迷；習畫初期，賈藹力已開始「強調畫面深景，並以明暗法處理光影、形態和空間，從而創造他那別具戲劇性的獨特畫風」（David Chew，〈當代浪漫主義者的肖像〉，載於展覽圖錄《希望尋者︰賈藹力作品展》，新加坡美術館，二〇一二年，10頁）。藝術家本人亦明言，在中國及其他地方的現實主義畫家影響下潛移默化，表示：「我原來學畫畫的時候，受過影響的那些具象畫家如佛洛德、劉小東等。這種類型的繪畫其實一直影響著我用一種相對現實的手法去表達一直到現在。劉小東曾經在我學習的時候、 無數次震撼到我、 他把一個當下的社會現實、 社會人群心理表現的如此細膩」（《確定與不確定或未解之謎──賈藹力與馮博一對話錄》，二〇一〇年）。賈藹力常被視作當代浪漫主義者，因為他的油畫造詣似乎藏著西奧多．傑利柯和歐仁．德拉克羅瓦等19世紀偉人的影子。確實，本作與賈斯帕．大衛．費得利奇的名作《極地之海》（1824）有異曲同工之妙，而且使人聯想起當時的文學。在《北柳草島的回憶》的孤寂荒涼中，我們想起了陀思妥耶夫斯基、托爾斯泰和巴爾扎克的作品。他也提醒我們，生命的掙扎是一個充滿壓抑、永無止盡的過程，而很多時候，人性並不一定光榮得勝。