Ding Shilun

A picturesque scenario from my head. 

I’m in Galerie Maria Bernheim, dressed in a stand up collar black jacket, and a Ding Shilun piece interrupts my stroll. I’m with one other stranger, sharing a moment of raptured curiosity. At first his paintings appear sweet and delicate.  Inspiration for my own picture books for my stuffed animals! Until…bam! Up close they reveal unsettling details –grotesque creatures, distorted bodies, and absurb juxtapositions that capture the anxieties of modern life. Scenes of cafes, parks, or a bathhouse shift into dreamscapes, haunted by monstrous beings. (Even better :) )

Ding Shilun, a contemporary Chinese artist born in 1998 in Guangzhou and now splitting his time between London and his hometown, crafts expansive works that blend myth, absurdity, and vivid dreamscapes. He paints large scale intricate paintings that fuse folklore, contemporary pop culture, and personal experience into imaginary realms. His canvases are playful and ominous, often populated by fantastical characters that act as avatars of the artist himself–what he calls “projections of my inner self, reflecting my confusion living across different cultures and ideologies as well as my desire to construct my own reality”. His influence stretches widely. The delicate layering of traditional chinese gongbi painting, japanese manga, the dream logic of Goya (who I adore greatly).  and even the visual chaos of films. To mimic water based pigments with oil, he paints in translucent layers, a painstaking process that leaves no room for error. The result is imagery that feels fluid and ethereal, almost dissolving yet saturated with satirical bite. Ding describes his practice as “a sugar coated bullet”.

His technique is quite unconventional compared to styles I have been taught in art class. He paints without preparatory drawings, often starting with a fragment or just an eye–and letting the canvas grow like a puzzle piece by piece. His process echos his philosophy that myth making is as old as humanity itself, a way to transform the unknown into a shared story. With his person fables, Ding Shilun a mythology for the 20th century , one where absurdity and wonder coexist, and where the boundaries of culture, memory and imagination collapse into a single vivid spectacle. 

In my Irish Literature class, my professor talks smoothly of mythologies and Sidhe. A practical and realistic person, a practical and scientific school. Yet hearing him talk about monsters as he truly believed it, and how the class was raptured by his words, similarly to Ding Shilin brings people together through “unreality” and “liminality” with the beauty of moments that may appear insignificant, yet rather, words cannot do such justice. It is rapturing how much you can let in if you choose to believe. In my head, I cannot stop thinking of how it reflects the 3 outlooks of life by philosopher Immanuel Kant (Phenomena vs. Noumena). I could pour days sipping hot chocolate, brooding over such topics. One view suggests that humans have overcomplicated existence, where life is simpler than we make it. Another view sees life as exactly as complex as humans shape it, molded by our perceptions and actions. The third view suggests that life is more than what humans make of it, vibrant and vast beyond our understanding–an outlook often held by the realist, the optimist, or someone with a deep sense of melancholy.