Deng Jianjin’s works are always filled with nervous and uneasy emotions. Deng Jianjin’s works look like positive but actually, they are negative. Deng Jianjin more concerns some metaphysical things on academics. Deng Jianjin’s works are “explicit”. His pursue of the aesthetics of violence has been consistent. In my opinion, his concerns on painting are far more than the concerns on reality. In other words, he is looking for a practical way for a kind of ideal of painting. Deng Jianjin is coherent to expressionism, because it is more conducive to his inner monologue and psychological talk. In Deng Jianjin’s recent workWhy Does The Sunset Make Us So Beautiful,we still can see the violence and the hidden bloodiness, but the romance firstly came out in his screen. This brutal and erotic romance different fromAdolescentmade Deng Jianjin accomplish his break. This series is filled with lazy, depressed, agitated and uneasy emotions of the end of the world, reminiscent of Musset’sThe Confession of a Child of the Age. Deng Jianjin still insists on dealing his figures and time-space in the philosophical way of abstract concepts. None of the postures of the figures in the screen is “reasonable”. However, just because of this kind of “fabrication”, the whole screen has the tension pulling out.  The very watchful and controlled use of eroticism, the shadows of the shackles of selfness, and the meteor-like seemingly accidental symbols breaking the balance of the picture, along with the even dealing with the half color, mixed color and even the lowest color, give the series strong vitality and social effect of alienation.

Huang Liaoyuan

 2005

   Although Deng Jianjin’s early works have relation with dream, eroticism, pornography, peeping and narcissism, they don’t have the quality of entertainment. They are the portrayal of an enlarged, very serious and even excessive personal heroism, bearing the historical burden of the civilization of 5000 years and the suffering and oppression of the modern Chinese people. It is an upright salvation with great efforts. In the late 1990s, in the series of Deng Jianjin continues his inherent style of being “expressive” and “secret”, but ridicule and joke become prevailing in the crowdedly colorful screen, opening a door for ventilation for “the pathos of youth” and “worrying emotions”. Afterwards, Deng Jianjin is sophisticated to free his thoughts. In the seriesWhy Does the Sunset Make Us So Beautifulstarting from 2001, Deng Jianjin looks like going through a love showering infinite spring. Although love is to bloodshed, but it’s regretless. Both the float of color and the jump of shape are like cheers and tributes towards a fine life and order. In 2004, the fine and soft lines and “the pure figures” appear in Deng Jianjin’s works, illustrating that the artist has returned to the quiet and calm mind.

Huang Liaoyuan

2005