Deep Song of the Sunflower Garden: the Artworks of Xu Jiang

The Sunflower At My Heart

There is a kind of plant living in the mind of everybody.

I love sunflower, but there are very few sunflowers in the south of China. When I do see some, they are only two or three pieces that stand in the field or at the foot of a wall, propping very big discs, displaying a sense of being heavy. Its plenty is always his burden, which always makes people think a lot.

In the mid-1970s, in the north of China, I saw for the first time a stretch of sunflower gardens, which were enjoying the shiny setting sun, and like a group of burning torches. The sunflowers shared the same color and the same ground with the earth, and were like a fire burning in the wind, brightly sparkling copper-colored light. The prime and ageing of sunflowers are only between summer and autumn. What I have seen is the debris-like seriousness. Life is so short, but the sunflower has to wait for itself in the plain and wait for a splendid ageing. The copper-colored sunflowers did not turn toward the sun, but turned toward the same direction of the heart and soul. That is once the place where the sun rises. The spirit of the heaven and the earth is activated by this kind of mysterious association and serious expression. The divinity of the nature has shaped this scene forever on the ground. 

Therefore, at the bottom of my heart, there is always a stretch of solemn sunflower gardens.

Xu Jiang

2007/01/01

NanShan