Lu Mingjun: The first time I saw your works was at that small solo exhibition in 2012 in Guangzhou. Have you had any solo exhibitions since then?
    Tang Dayao: That was the one you saw in 2012. I later had a dual exhibition with Shi Yijie, titled Parallel to Reality , at the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, curated by Liang Jianhua. I also took part in a group painting exhibition at Antenna Space. That's about it. I haven't been in many exhibitions. 
    Lu: Not every artist needs constant exposure. Do you think things have changed much in these past few years?
    Tang: I think I've grown a bit older.
    Lu: But it seems your change has been more progressive than revolutionary. Looking at your early paintings, I think they had two key sources, one being classical, academy-style painting, and the other being the influence of Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter. How do you balance these choices and their relationships to each other in your creations?
    Tang: When I first graduated, I was obsessed with Francisco Goya. My attitude was that of a student. I then studied Giorgio de Chirico, and by then my attitude had already begun to change. Then I came across Tuymans and Richter. This progression is quite easy to understand. For instance, you may want to put some more lifelike phrasing into your creations, but that is difficult with Goya. You always have to extract it from life and put it in a different way. It is much more convenient and direct for Richter and Tuymans. Of course, I am talking about my understanding of them. There is no need for balance here; it is a very natural internal transition.
    Lu: This approach seems intellectualized or textualized. One might even venture that painting begins with knowledge or text. Would you say that?
    Tang: I don’t think you can. I think my approach tends more toward research, experience and perception. Of course, I don’t think that painting begins with knowledge or text, either.
    Lu: Does this approach influence your perceptions and experiences of life? In other words, are you consciously directed at particular issues?
    Tang: Not so much. I feel that life experience and perception is more important. My approach is adjusted at each stage according to this perception. I’m not directed at any clear issues. This would be difficult for me. Even if I come up with some issue, I will not go on to direct my work towards it. The issues are buried in the work.
    Lu: In your work since 2014, one clear shift has been that the traces of Tuymans and Richter have diminished, and the subject matter has become more connected to life and experience. It’s not like before, when your subject matter was more rooted in established art history or other artists’ works. What was your thinking behind this shift?
    Tang: That phase passed, and I became a bit more relaxed. I did have this intention to relearn modernism, but not to build my work upon it. A lot of the art history texts you see are ones that cut their way into my work in the process, though a few are cases in which I had a strong wish to intervene in art history out of a desire for self-determination. Other times, it was forced on me by others. Art history is just so powerful. You can’t always hide from it.
    Lu: In this process of change, your paintings seem to have taken on more richness and vitality.
    Tang: It is perhaps connected to the richer brushwork.
    Lu: Your works seem to be laden with many strategies and tones from art history. What was your thinking on this? Why did you return to Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne and Diego Velázquez?
    Tang: A lot of the tones were not intentional. Perhaps a lot of my understanding of art history naturally found its way into my creative experience. That is because if I want to say something specific in the painting, certain techniques from Manet and Cézanne are worth drawing from.
    Lu: Next, let’s talk about a few specific case. Let’s start with the 2014 painting Embrace . 
    Tang: The first thing that draws me in about this painting is the set of structural relationships. Linguistically, I was drawing from Cézanne, which is actually quite easy to see, such elements as that person’s arm in The Card Players, but it is not latched onto this woman’s body.
    Lu: This arm really is quite overbearing, quite strong. Where is the base image from?
    Tang: The image is from some photography website. It was a shot done in a nostalgic style. I didn’t take a specific approach to rendering it. The facial expressions are quite random.
    Lu: Is the yellow of the woman’s hair referencing the source of light in the painting?
    Tang: This was probably subconscious.
    Lu: Did you intentionally reduce the defining facial features?
    Tang: My rendering of the faces is quite formulaic. It’s kind of like when a child draws, and uses the same curved lines for the eyes and faces.
    Lu: It seems the brushwork changed a bit here.
    Tang: If you look closely at this painting, it actually has a lot of brushstrokes and details.
    Lu: Was it at this time that you began using smaller brushstrokes?
    Tang: Right now, I have brushstrokes that are vertical, horizontal, slanted, all kinds. My brushwork has changed quite a bit in the past few years. Sometimes I just do it however I want. It’s a lot freer than it was before.
    Lu: These black margins are a bit like the early periods of Manet and Cézanne.
    Tang: Perhaps.
    Lu: What do you think the relationship is between original image, painting history and your individual experience? Do the three tend to cancel each other out?
    Tang: I of course hope that individual experience can drive the other two, but this is a complicated question. If the information content from art history is higher, the resulting work may spread more rapidly, but it will have less connection to art, and for the individual, it can become a heavier burden. As for the original image, that is up to destiny. What attracts you to it is how it fits with your mental state at the time. Of course, these three elements can be combined very well.
    Lu: What about these two paintings titled Xiao Wu ? Are they connected to a film?
    Tang: They are from Jia Zhangke’s film Pickpocket. As I painted them, I thought of Velazquez’s Portrait of Sebastian de Morra.
    Lu: What kind of scene, specifically, is this?
    Tang: Xiao Wu is sitting on that woman’s bed, smoking, somewhat embarrassed. The light shines in from behind, a very dry light. He’s wearing a plum red wool vest, and is wrapped up in a blue suit that’s a bit too big for him. That look reminds me of artistic youths in small towns in the 1990s. I had a cousin who was one of those artistic youths. I hung out with him a lot when I was young. I intentionally shrank the legs. His upper body is larger, weighing down on his legs.
    Lu: It doesn’t seem to fit the usual principles of perspective.
    Tang: Right. I wanted to make him look a bit like a dwarf, a bit top-heavy.
    Lu: What is that yellow there?
    Tang: It’s the curtains. This may have been the first time I consciously set out to use yellow.
    Lu: I see a lot of yellow appearing after this. Before, it was all green.
    Tang: After a lot of experimentation, I felt I could make use of this yellow. I came to like it. In my earlier paintings, I wasn’t really aware of the yellow.
    Shen Mo: I would like to interject here. In Embrace, there is a block of blue at upper left. I find it quite striking. The overall tone of the painting is quite dark, but this block fuses with the rest of the painting.
    Tang: It’s because of a painting by Manet. There are many people dancing at bottom, and in a corner of the upper balcony, you only see two legs. I think that corner is very important. I think perhaps my color came from that painting.
    Lu: Masked Ball at the Opera? I actually think this is closer to Music in the Tuileries, because that painting also features a patch of bare sky.
    Tang: I think so. I forgot the name.
    Lu: Returning to Xiao Wu, I feel that your work is actually not established upon simple experiments in horizontal flatness, but instead touches on art history, film and various other resources within a system.
    Tang: First, I have a certain perception regarding this object. Sometimes it is an image, sometimes it is something imagined, sometimes I am partially referencing a photograph and partly drawing from memory.
    Lu: What is the connection between the temporal aspect of film language and your painting? Do you think about the connections between the properties of different mediums?
    Tang: There are no specific connections. Perhaps my tendency to solidify certain moments leads to the illusion of time.
    Lu: Is there a connection between Velazquez’s Portrait of Sebastian de Morra and Xiao Wu, or how do you view the potential connections between the characters of Xiao Wu and the dwarf from an emotional or experiential perspective?
    Tang: I actually don’t know much about the specific background of Portrait of Sebastian de Morra. All I have is a rough art history impression. I don’t think the connection between Xiao Wu and the dwarf is important either. If we fix that in stone, it won’t be fun anymore.
    Lu: What about High Noon ? Where did the image come from?
    Tang: That was a news photo from the internet. I personally feel this painting is quite important.
    Lu: What is the scene?
    Tang: In the photo, a group of farmers were digging and came across a nest of snakes. One person had lifted up two snakes with a pole, and the person behind him, scared, was running away. Another person stood to the side. There were actually a lot of people standing in the background, but I removed them. This pole is very important. When you look at it from left to right, it seems to have a fan shape, or maybe like the poles in a foosball table. That pole crosses the entire painting. This kind of structural relationship can allude to the development of certain events.
    Lu: What was your motive in selecting this photograph?
    Tang: First off, it was of course because this scene is interesting. Then, it was the overall narrative of the image, which I think has an interesting way of unfolding along this axis.
    Lu: Is this a narrative in linguistic structure?
    Tang: I think so. The pole drags out a fan-shaped plane to the left. The person running away has been turned back a bit. This spatial relationship is quite intentional.
    Lu: There are many such linear relationships in Manet’s paintings, such as the shutters in Manet’s Balcony, or the bench in Madame Manet in the Greenhouse. There’s also a Gauguin-esque symbolist tone.
    Tang: It seems so. I hadn’t paid it much attention before. This is probably a very natural painting experience. I actually don’t know why this painting has a touch of Gauguin. I wasn’t really thinking of Gauguin when I painted it, but when I went back to look at Gauguin, he seems to have taken a similar approach to such relationships, this blocking within larger shapes.
    Lu: Why do you “design” these invisible formal relationships and visual structures? Or is it that they gradually emerge in the painting process?
    Tang: Sometimes, when doing a study for the painting, I like to use a few lines or large blocks to convey the feel. That was the case with Strange Visitor . Of course, I also don’t like when the formal elements are so strong they derail the content, so I will often be quite reserved about it, concealing these relationships. Sometimes they gradually emerge, because during the painting process, certain information gradually becomes clear, such as the rhythm of the painting, and then the overall structural framework needs to be adjusted.
    Lu: Something that’s interesting is that your paintings don’t seem to contain any clear gazes. The faces are either highly generalized, with no expressions, or sometimes even faces, or the people have their backs to us, at most only partially looking back, as if they dare not gaze directly at something. What kind of mental state is this?
    Tang: I don’t know how to say it. I can’t express it.
    Shen: I there’s a deeper issue, a subconscious one. Do you close yourself off from others?
    Tang: I wouldn’t call it that. When I face these things directly, I am a bit embarrassed, a bit unconfident. I don’t have the confidence to bring my things out to show people, at least at this stage.
    Lu: You’re hiding, afraid of letting others see.
    Tang: To some extent. I am highly conscious of the relationship between myself and the painting. When facing others, I have no grasp of their relationship to the artwork. So when you mention the people looking back in the painting, it is a mental prompt for me. It’s like a role reversal.
    Lu: It seems there is a bit of psychological unease or uncertainty.
    Tang: Yes. There is a component of doubt here.
    Lu: Is Strange Visitor conveying the same kind of mental state? Or is it a sense of distance in this case?
    Tang: I would call it a sense of estrangement. It is as if there is something shrouding reality, so that it is not so real, and yet it is. For me, this sense needs to find its way into the narrative.
    Lu: Could you describe the narrative of the painting?
    Tang: The painting depicts my hometown. When I was young, I was always locked up in our courtyard, studying or whatnot. Our home was always quiet, so I always looked forward to visitors. Last time I went home for the holidays, a beggar came to the gate. Our dog ran out to bark at him, and then my brother ran out to scold the dog. It reminded me of when, as I child, I always hoped someone would visit. The relationship between that person and the dog resembles an exclamation mark, while the person next to him is like a vertical line. It is a vertical stroke. It is a very simple form, but it makes the structure of the painting.
    Lu: It is a very symbolistic rendering.
    Tang: When I was painting the rice paddy themes, certain things led old memories to resurface. I was thinking about people like myself, born in the 1980s, who had come to Guangzhou from the countryside. It seems when it comes to the city, we have trouble finding a place to fit in, and often either follow international trends, or become quite rustic. I think both paths are quite fake.
    Lu: Do you think that being urban is fake?
    Tang: I find it quite fake. For instance, I was talking with Mr. Chen about this. Artists such as Liu Yin and Lu Yang handle these themes quite naturally, and quite sincerely. That is rooted in their experiences. I don’t have these experiences, so I am different.
    Lu: You graduated in 2005?
    Tang: I graduated in 2006. I actually left home in 1997 to go to middle school, and rarely went home after that. I left home in my teens, so I have always had this kind of impression. The reason this painting is important to me is that when I finished painting it, those feelings found a place to land.
    Lu: This was painted from a photograph. Did you take the photograph?
    Tang: I referenced a photograph, but I wove these three subjects together.
    Lu: When weaving the painting together, aside from form, what other considerations did you have?
    Tang: I’m thinking about what I really am, and my relationship with the contemporary, not just with contemporary art, but with the contemporary times, with life.
    Lu: An existential relationship.
    Chen Haitao: I feel that when he got to this point, he began to gradually mature, or to consider his own situation in a mature way. This is perhaps a result of his life experience.
    Lu: His earlier work tended toward the knowledge side, but now he tends toward life and experience. Of course, he is also utilizing art history resources.
    Chen: That is why I think this is a phase change for him.
    Lu: Strange, familiar, forced to leave, this is a complex, conflicting set of emotions.
    Tang: It is. For example, when I was painting this, my feelings were quite indistinct. I didn’t set out to shape a lot of the details. I felt they should stay in that murky state. There is also another kind of “strange visitor,” which is that, when I touch on new subject matter, and begin a new painting, it is like entering an unfamiliar realm, waiting, welcoming. This can be a very rich situation.
    Lu: The sense of the unfamiliar is also an understanding towards painting, as well as a part of your own life experience. The connection between painting and these two lies within this inner structure.
    Tang: Correct. Zhang Jiaping understood this as soon as he saw the painting. He knew that inside, it wasn’t just about the countryside and life experience.
    Lu: Do you see this method as temporary?
    Tang: Of course. All methods are temporary. I want to put a lot of different methods in, and I don’t know what they will turn into in the future. Right now, it is about opening up. There’s no point in being too careful right now.
    Shen: So this amounts to taking a risk?
    Tang: It’s not so much taking a risk as setting the ground for the future. I think there are always many different methods available. I don’t want to stick with just one set approach, and I don’t want to do that in the future either.
    Lu: Beyond knowledge, a sense of culture is also quite important. Tuymans was quite in tune with Eastern European culture, which we can see in the atmosphere of his paintings, the war background and the political elements. He did utilize art history, but his generalization of the details had a strong sense of reality perception.
    Tang: It seems as if our discussion has missed a key issue, which is that no matter how you paint, it touches on the grasp of emotions, the control of forms, and a wide range of issues. It is not a simple question of methods.
    Lu: It is comprehensive. For a painting to stand the test of history, it must return to the dimension of history. But at the same time, this thread of history is not closed or self-sustaining. It encapsulates society, your life experience, your sense of culture and your political attitudes. For instance, Michel Foucault and T.J. Clark had completely different interpretations of Manet’s art, but you can’t really say that one is right and one is wrong.
    Tang: Our sources of experience are different. It’s best if we can complement each other.
    Chen: One very important element in your painting is shape. You create many shapes in your paintings. Characteristics such as these are very important for artists. They come to form differences in character.
    Tang: I’m not against characteristics, but I don’t think it’s a good thing to talk about them in isolation. It should be something deeper. There’s another thing I’m not sure is right, which is that the environment is cultivating these surface characteristics. It’s almost like production. In the end, you draw further and further away from the artwork, and end up simply following an empty framework for an artwork. Of course, the contemporary environment is very complex, but I tend to maintain a closer connection to my artworks. I think that, in shaping a person, this sense of characteristics or defining traits can be destructive. When you constantly emphasize that, you can end up forcing yourself into a corner.
    Lu: Can it become a form of self-limitation?
    Tang: Yes. I want to enter into a subtle relationship, a little more here, a little less there, a little more relaxed here, a little tenser there. I think that, with this subtlety, it is fine if people don’t remember the whole painting, or only remember a particular detail. The painting might be a successful product in the eyes of the gallery, but that’s not really what I want.
    Lu: This seems like a point of contention between artist and gallery.
    Tang: Right.
    Chen: There are a lot of contradictions, but you cannot say that art with strong characteristics isn’t good. Many things can exist in tandem, but some things among them must be stronger.
    Tang: I understand your meaning, but I have yet to find a set of methods where I can handle both at the same time.
    Lu: Are you perhaps talking about the way it is with Wang Yin? He has a giant system, much like a system for topical research and practice, one that has strong directedness. Wang Xingwei also has his own system. The system itself forms his defining traits, even his style.
    Tang: I think I should put it this way—at this point, I cannot figure out what my own system is like. It may have already begun, and sometimes I sense certain embryonic forms of it, but I try my best to discard them, because I feel that this may not be beneficial to my creations. When I hear a lot of people talking about systems, it strikes me as if they are talking about how to hold a bag open so that they can stuff it full of things, but the issue is how the bag is held up. I care about the experience accumulated from each painting I make, or how my state changes along the way. For instance, painting a tree may not be as difficult as it used to be, or expressions may begin to appear on people’s faces. I care about the little details like that. Of course, the reasons I paint in the first place are quite complex, but I don’t think it’s because of a system. Also, I don’t really have an affinity for the word “system.” It makes everything sound systematized. At each stage, I just follow that state. As you have said, painting is a slow process.