Wang Chen is a Professor of Graphic & Interactive Design in the Department of Visual Arts at California State University, Fullerton.

　　Wang Chen: At your personal exhibition in Los Angeles in 2016, my first impression of your work was bright and stylish. However, when I studied closely, I could feel the deep symbolism behind the surface characteristics of the work. Through the lines and colors of your Gongbi painting reflect the understanding of life, the beauty of nature, and the view of death. It involves not only the oriental religious feeling in the paintings, but also the casual carnal and decorative expressions of the Western secessionist painters such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

　　Recently, I often read high-tech reports on the Internet. Elon Musk's SpaceX has launched a Falcon Heavy rocket to send a red Tesla roadster into deep space. It will soar in space for one billion years. The words "made on Earth by humans" are printed on the Tesla's circuit board. The roadster also came equipped with a dashboard message reading "don't panic," it quotes from the famous science fiction The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. David Bowie's Space Oddity is played in the roadster on a loop. These seem to me to be imagery or artistic. The works of scientists, novelists and artists do not appear to be relevant, but it's amazing to put them together. This not only transcends the times, but also shows a striking similarity in spirit, which explores the infinity of time in a limited life. The difference is only from their respective fields and dimensions. What is the concept of one billion years? What is the concept of deep space? They all go beyond our daily experiences, or we can't observe with the naked eye. You can't see or touch it, but how do you express and understand the real space-time relationship? It requires imagination, courage and "wisdom". Science is not the only way to get wisdom. The mind in Eastern philosophy is inward. In fact, the "imagery" in your work is expressed from the view of oriental religion and visual art. In the limited life, the flowers bloom, the seasons alternate, the life expansion, and the death silence are all full of poetry. You maintain a peaceful mind to observe and describe.

　　Time goes by, the cycle of life, they are the impressions of the circular flow of lines and composition in your work. In the long river of time, blooming buds are put together with the bones that have been stripped of life, as naturally as breathing, like high and low tides, or both sides of the mountain, they are only a transient transition from one state to the other. But the work is splendid, the overall tone is cheerful, no entanglement, and not boring. In summary, your work is a song of life. Both life and death are natural attributes that can be readily accepted. The whole picture is in a vivid state. You have not taken the characters away from the whole natural environment. As your work title says "The All Things on Earth", this is like the classical Chinese philosophy of integration of the universe and humanity. Animals, plants and human beings, all the relationship between life are harmonious and interrelated. Do the symbolic symbols in your work, including the obvious Buddhist forms and colors, have some special implications?

　　Huang Huan: My creative direction and style have been gradually thought, tried, promoted and defined over the past decade or so. Twenty years ago, as an art expedition, I began to travel all over Europe, North America, Japan, North Africa, and China. I am interested in the development of the Asian-African and European civilization along the Silk Road, and I love the religious art of the Himalayas. Although I do not believe in any religion, my interest in religion - the logic of human philosophy has given me the courage to innovate and abandon my original style. I hope my work will explain the mysterious power of life and the universe like philosophy.

　　Religion attempts to explain the logic of the beginning and end of human life, and a journey that we can't realize when the form of life does not exist. How the journey begins, circulates and disappears. This is a very unique human wisdom and conjecture. Because I believe that animals can't explain or think about this dimension, I want to create a logical world with painting that includes everything, such as cells at the beginning of life or a so-called module, monomer. It is the basis of all kinds of matter, such as plants, animals, human beings, air, water and so on. Since 2014, I grafted animal skulls onto Buddha statues. I want to express a sense of respect for life through this religion ritual, the responsibility of mankind after breaking the balance of environment, and a reincarnation redemption for the sin of human beings to control and slaughter animals. In my work, the skeleton as a symbol not only represents death, but also the end of life form, and becomes a relative past tense. In the future, humans will have to pay for what they have done. Therefore, the Buddha I painted implied redemption and reincarnation. My original idea of choosing the skeleton element was not to attract attention or to be scary, but to represent an element and a module in the world of all things. I have expressed a very approachable attitude towards death and the form of death. The skeleton represents the life of the past, the death of the present, and the infinite unknown of the future.

　　For the next few years, I continued to work on the theme of "The All Things on Earth", and other series were a derivative of the logic of "The All Things on Earth". The title of each series shows the difference between the emphasis of the creative concept, but I put in a common logical space that I want to explore: as living beings, humans and animals, plants coexist. In such a proposition, I painted the human figure to melt into the logical space at any time, their tiny bodies in awe held huge animal bones and entwined by the vines of symbiotic plants. The moral is that no matter what the shape of life, man is presented as an animal, plant, human or any state of life. It is only an element or an external form, so the human expression, gender, what kind of animals and plants, are not important in my work, there is no specific literary level of emotion and expression.

　　Wang Chen: Yes. I can feel the religious meaning of your work. My first impression of these works was the accumulation of traditional Chinese culture, such as the influence of Tibetan Buddhism and Dunhuang art, the symbol of lacquer and silk in Chu culture, Chinese painting linear space processing, color texture and so on. Many symbols are used in both Eastern and Western religious art, such as scapegoats, bread, fish, pigeons and grapes. I have enjoyed a lot of beautiful medieval paintings in the West, and they also use a very flat narrative and color space. Of course, this symbolic paintings express the doctrine through the description of the story, on the other hand, they use mathematical theory, proportional relations to express rational order. For example, some painters use geometric figures to express the idea of eternity and ultimate care. It is also the visualization of a logical relationship you are talking about.

　　In addition, at first I wondered why you use silk as a form to express a profound theme. This may be related to your career and research direction. But then I felt that the texture and soft shape of the silk material was consistent with your painting style. Not only the texture and fluidity of silk, but also clothing and accessories are extensions of our bodies, such as bird crests, feathers, plumes, and plant vines. It is also a symbol of personal identity, which can interpret a person's class, occupation, race, and culture. It is also a reflection of personality, taste, and aesthetic standards. But it's really a challenge to get out of the ornamental language and beyond the practical functions of commodity features to convey your deep thinking.

　　A friend of mine said his German wife kept a set of color atlas. This is the color reference for her clothes prepared by her tailor. It shows what color is more suitable for her complexion and hair color. Do you have such a habit of using color? When you choose colors, will you also consider the symbolic meaning of it?

　　Huang Huan: My color education began with the study of Impressionist Western oil paintings. At that time, I was only 16 years. When I entered university, I studied the ancient Chinese traditional painting systematically, and discovered that the Chinese oriental civilization and aesthetics had different color cognition system from the west. "Drawing color adhere to the type" and subjective awareness of everything presented the oriental simplicity, imagery, symbolic collocation of colors, and I was fascinated by them. So I began to refine the color relationship in the early murals of Dunhuang, Kizil and Guge in my own creation, looking for the mystery and brilliance in the visual oriental taste. I always think that the superficial image, color, form, composition and content of art works can't represent the spirit of oriental art, and the styles, color relations and internal logic of composition are the soul of oriental aesthetics.

　　Wang Chen: Speaking of Oriental aesthetics, I find that since last year you began to turn the theme of painting to ancient Chinese historical legends and mythologies, such as Fuxi creating humanity, the goddess of Wushan, Changjie creating Chinese character, Leizu discovered sericulture and invented the silk loom, and so on. What is the reason for this reorientation?

　　Huang Huan: I have always been very interested in ancient mythology. Both Greek and Chinese mythology express a kind of exploration, explanation and ideal of early human beings to the world. It's romantic and imaginative. By chance, I was selected for the National Myth Project in China, and I was invited to create a picture book of mythological stories, The Natural Imitation. Therefore, my theme of "The All Things on Earth" has been extended to a more specific and historical field. After that, I created a large-scale Gongbi heavy-colored work, the Wushan Goddess, which tells the legend of the Mt. Wushan's Goddess Peak in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The Goddess Peak is the place where Yao Ji, the daughter of Yandi Emperor, was buried. She died too young to marry, so she was destined to not meet her lover. After her death, Yao Ji's soul was transformed into Ganoderma lucidum to cure illness and save people, guard the mountain and navigate the Yangtze River boats. She helped Yu to fight against floods with spiritual power, and was respected and worshipped by all. Yao Ji is the protagonist of the poem, The Mountain Fairy, from The Nine Songs, created by Qu Yuan, a famous poet of Chu. The light of her life is full of warmth and love for others. I loved this tragic goddess so much that I revised the draft countless times to make the work more profound and meaningful. In my first creation, the goddess and her lover met in the sky above Mt. Wushan, where the skull of the cow was turned into, and the surging river. In a later draft, I removed the contents of the animal bones and replaced them with more romantic and elegant flowers to hold the goddess and her lover floating in the air, and below them were the distant mountains and canyons. I was still not satisfied with this draft, so in the third draft, I abandoned the theme of love and sat the goddess on the lotus in the background of the ship of the Yangtze River in the Wushan Canyon, and the endless mountains in the distance. In the final large-scale work, the third draft was described in more depth and satisfactory work was completed. The universal love is the most perfect ideal in the pursuit of mythology. In the course of several revisions, a real goddess appeared in my heart, her appearance is not important, I am looking for the picture of fresh and refined spirit.