A Comic Book of America series, as a creative and evolving medium between the exploration of artistic expression and documentation, and the presentation of narrative and surrealism, is less of an illustration in the traditional sense than a manifestation of Jiang Jiaxin's imagination. The origin of these works stems from his exploration of cultural identity and culture immersed in Chinese and American cross-culture. Gradually, they evolved into creating objectified associations with a single image, the imagination of which is itself narrative or non-narrative. Perhaps in these seemingly realistic images, the audience identifies characters or objects from clear black lines and different blocks of color, which gives the audience a strong sense of security in their first visual impression. Subsequently, in the subsequent appreciation, the audience can engage in more specific identification and imagination within the artist's carefully designed atmosphere. These considerations and planning of the visual aspects also stem from the artist's study of photography and its integration into painting.
In terms of themes, Jiang Jiaxin initially explored his own individual cultural identity conflicts and understanding and evolution of culture in China and the United States in his A Comic Book of America series. As the project progressed, the paintings began to explore group identity and change in the temporal dimension, as well as perception and understanding of culture in contemporary social atmosphere. In addition, Jiang Jiaxin has invested a lot of energy in the process of creating collages, recombining expressive content structures, and using and promoting digital media. These are all based on his fascination and resonance with the core knowledge in artistic discussions such as reorganization and deconstruction in artistic discourse, symbolic language, and photographic language. With this opportunity, he wants to cram all of these contents into these images and create a series of interesting and rich pictures.
Jiang Jiaxin uses concise and direct visual language to project his own honesty and humor onto the canvas, allowing the audience to "look" at each work in a relaxed atmosphere and construct their own imagination.
美国连环画系列作品,作为介于探讨艺术的表现与记录、以及展现艺术的叙事性与超现实性的表现中创作与演变,与其说这些作品是插画媒介形式下的作品,不如说他们是姜佳鑫脑中的妄想的画面。这些作品的创作起因于他对于沉浸在中国和美国的跨文化中的身份认知和文化的探讨,逐渐进化为用单一画面创造物化的联想,这些想象力本身具有叙事性或者非叙事性,或许在这些看似现实的画面中,观众们从清晰的黑色线条和不同的色块中辨别出来了人物或者物体,这样在第一视觉印象中,带给了观众极强的安全感。进而在后续的鉴赏中,观众可以在艺术家精心设计的氛围中展开更具体的辨识和想象。这些对视觉的考量和规划,也源于艺术家对摄影术的研究,并将其融合在绘画当中。
在主题上,姜佳鑫在美国连环画系列中,起初是针对其本人在中国和美国两种不同文化冲突下的个体的身份认知探索和文化的理解与进化,随着项目的深入,绘画作品开始探讨在时间维度下的群体性的身份认同和改变,以及对当代社会氛围中文化的感知和理解。除此之外,姜佳鑫投入了大量精力在创作过程中的画面拼贴、表达内容结构的重组、和数字媒介的使用和推广上面,这些都是源于他对于艺术话语中的重组与解构、符号语言、以及摄影语言等艺术讨论中核心知识的着迷与共鸣。借此机会,他想把这些内容都塞进这些画面里面,创作出来一组组有趣的丰富图像。
姜佳鑫利用简洁与直接的画面语言,将自己的坦诚与幽默也投射到了画面里面,让观众们在轻松的氛围中,静静地“看”每一个作品,同时构成自己的想象。