The Diagnosis of the Great Landscapes 大风景诊断 (No. 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the series)

After completing/starting the Diagnosis and (xx year) Great Landscape painting series in 1994, Shang in the next year conducted another series -- Diagnosis of the Great Landscapes . As the amalgamate title tells us, the new series is likely to distill the most urging themes of the previous two works and to merge them together. In Great Landscape 1994 , Shang resorted to a sectioned imagery of volcano to remind the viewers of potential threat of the post-modern society -- that when different values coexist, conflicts would ineluctable occur, and thus could cause epistemic suffocations (see entry in ZYCCA). Diagnosis is a painting series Shang created to underline the modern social phenomenon of accepting defaulted social values, without criticality (see also the entry in ZYCCA). Diagnosis of the Great Landscapes may essentially want to highlight the same issue as in Diagnosis , but adding a flavor of the Great Landscapes series -- pictorially and thematically -- to give the work\u27s message a smell of urgency, the suffocating sort of urgency. Shang once said : From the various social connections, \u27breathing\u27 has lost its natural state. A modern society that is fully materializing makes all spaces (physical and psychological) appear crowded. The and erosion of \u27breathing\u27 permeates almost everyone\u27s living space and life process. The problem is actually acute and pressing. However, like the unconsciousness of breathing, they have not been truly and clearly realized, and their compelling issue are also here. (translated from Chinese) Think the metaphor of breathing as critical thinking, and think back to the painting series. (Yu, “大风景”：尚扬的艺术世界, 2008, from 《文艺研究》, available on http://www.artnow.com.cn/CommonPage/ArticleInfo.aspx?ChannelID=274&ArticleID=15015) (Jerry Wu\u2723).https://digital.kenyon.edu/zhou/1223/thumbnail.jp