Bingyuan Lu – Q1 Art Competition – Artist Portfolio Magazine

• Artist Portfolio Magazine Q1 Art Competition
• Bingyuan Lu – Beijing, China

Born in 1992, Beijing, China

2008, at the age of 16, starting art creations within oil paintings
First solo art exhibition in Beijing, named “Flying – Solo”
Begin of studying abroad in U.S.A

2009, performance of oil painting in U.S.A
Solo art exhibition in Beijing National Day School, which both the principals of BNDS and Wasatch Academy attended and since then started the international corporative relationship between the two schools

2010, admitted by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Decided to leave college after 2 months of studying there
Oil painting show-case together with Chinese pianist, LangLang, on BTV (China Beijing TV Station), stage and television

2011, Artwork series “Lonely Gypsy”, based on Hungarian Rhapsody No.2, Liszt
Artwork series “Farewell”, based on Etude in E Major, Chopin

2012, private art assembly in Beijing
Joint Art exhibition in Hong Kong Cultural Center
Started working on art project called “Babele”
Artwork series “The Man in the Mist”
Artwork series “Circus”

2013, solo art exhibition in Rome, named “Sulla Strada per Roma”
Artwork series “River and a Rose in Crevice”
Artwork series “Beyond Star River”

2014, art assembly in Beijing, named “INCONTRO CON L’ARTE
– Lo Straordinario Mondo di Bingyuan Lu”
Artwork series “Horizon”
Joint art exhibition in Beijing (Old Town)

2015, joint art exhibition in Beijing (CBD)
Working on developing the idea of BIAC, “Babele International Art Center”

2016, artwork series “I am Everything”
Working on developing the educational program
My name is Ali. When I was just born and my father was working at the first 5 star hotel in Beijing, one traveling family from San Fransisco gave me an English name, Alysa. Years later when I was working with Italian people and learning the Italian language, one day listening to the piece out of Nabucco by Verdi, “Va Pensiero, sull’ali dorate”, meaning “may the thoughts fly, with the golden wings”, I decided to shorten my name to Ali, which means wings.

I became a student of a very international high school in Utah at the age of 16. Before that, I suffered a lot from the Chinese education system. Well, it is called education, but it is actually, as now that I understand, a behavior modification system. As a young teenager, each day I was getting more depressed and confused being forced by the pressure coming from society and family, to live under the judgments which had nothing to do with my personality or any quality. Maybe it was because I desired so much those that I couldn’t find in my real life, I developed a habit to travel with my mind, within music, stories, and images that I picked up from books and TV. Imagination took me to a lot of places where I had never actually set foot in. It created a world just for me, in which I could always find myself being truthful and passionate and being accepted and understood. Even though it seemed so far and had no way to get to, but I believed that it would come true in my life. I thought if one day I could go away to live a different life, I would never take it for granted.

I was always a good painter since very young. But in order to get into any art college in China and become professional, I had to follow the system, which has nothing to do with art, but only the ability to paint and sketch like copying machines. I entered in the training program anyway. They made us believe, robotic drawing technique is the key of becoming artists; following the rules made by the authorities is the way to arrive to the position of ‘artists’. They used that trick to manipulate our notions like they always do, to switch the meaning of ‘being an artist’, with ‘being called or labeled as an artist’. So we all just did what we had always been trained to do, follow. I didn’t know if that was the way to go to get me to where I wanted, but that was the only way I had. Until one day I received the news that I could go to America. Few weeks later, one day I decided to paint, not in the way I’d been taught to, but in a way that I’d never done before, a way that I had not yet known.

It took years for me to break free from the standard of judgements I was chained to. It didn’t happen only when I was living in the U.S., for years I didn’t even know quite much about the U.S., probably only the impressions and stereotypes been given to me by the Chinese. When I was a student of SAIC in Chicago, I discovered that non of the teacher’s praises could make me feel any more like an artist. I’d always been so sure that I was looking for Art, at least something called art, but suddenly I realized that for those that I seek, they can not be found within theories or positions that I might use to get approval, or decorations and covers that I might use to create impressions on front of people. I knew that to find it, I need to look within myself.

It was a long process. In the past years, through time and experiences my vision of life has been renewed continually. I’ve followed several different projects in Italy, Senegal and China. They were about art & culture, industry such as monorail, technology such as HHO. What I value the most about them is that I had the opportunity to observe different people in different societies involved in business and politics. Through the observation of human behaviors, step by step my thoughts went through the meanings of Value, Happiness, Freedom, Fear, Love, Awareness, +/- Energy, Universal Force, Meaning of Life… And art has become my way, more and more precisely, of expressing my deepest and strongest feelings toward those thoughts.

I’ve met people who helped me and inspired me and people who oppressed me and others for their own satisfactions. I see more and more clearly the falseness being around me and within my past. I was angry at first, eager to overturn them. But then I felt sorry for them. Remembering the concepts once have been enforced on me, power was the only measurement that they were based on. Power of control which may secure some people to take more and more, it emerges from and feeds on human’s fear. Living for escaping from fear may never lead anybody to happiness. Their power can get strong, can bring frustration upon people, their manners of control can prevail, but now I know, I am led by something stronger within me.

So here is my statement: art is the way through which I wish to connect and share my own energy with the world. And my goal is to help the young people who are oppressed by the power of control to find themselves, the meanings of their lives and their ways to freedom and happiness, by the manner of non formalistic education (which may also include the sharing of art), to guide and to offer.