by Wang Minan  汪民安

In Xiao Yu’s artworks, the butterfly no longer appears elegantly accompanied with a mellow melody or a melancholy love legend, let alone amid the secrets of natural philosophy or flitting among flowers. Instead, Xiao affixes his butterfly on a monochromatic canvas which is fully occupied by the butterfly. This it is just a simple butterfly as far as the eye can see, or in other words, like a specimen of butterfly stamped on canvas. The butterfly backdrop becomes blurred, it transforms into a butterfly symbol. Xiao paints intricately and delicately on the butterfly symbol, magnifying its details such as nerve and body to make it extremely vivid, which strengthens the butterfly’s fragile beauty.

Such a butterfly becomes a visual image through a static, visible and fixed form. Under such conditions, the butterfly shies away from a specific background, though it is still lifelike. But it is put in an abstract space with no background and history. This is a butterfly vacuumed of its internality. Thus the butterfly’s symbolic meaning has been erased under certain conditions.

　　But the butterfly symbol’s purity and the eradication of its symbolic meaning, doesn’t mean the butterfly has no point. It only means that this butterfly doesn’t have a one-fold point. On the contrary, an empty butterfly symbol brings out lots of meanings and possibilities that can be all fused into it; that’s Xiao’s job. He first destroys all the detailed one-fold meanings and butterfly legends, then treats the butterfly as a free and empty symbol to receive multiple meanings. For a long time, the butterfly has been considered a strong expressive symbol in the Chinese language system. (Perhaps it’s because of such strong expressiveness, that Xiao is enamored of the butterfly.) Only this symbol sometimes carries certain meanings, or is endowed with a certain meaning in a certain time and space. In some circumstances, it represents freedom or love, philosophical chaos, or heart-broken, dilapidated beauty, sentiments about death and rebirth or the dawn of spring, and dreamy melancholy and agitation. Once we put the butterfly in a certain detailed language system, it will immediately be fused with a particular meaning. But Xiao refuses to let his butterfly be put in a certain language system, his butterfly exists freely. However, facing an empty butterfly symbol that dominates the canvas, with what meaning can we endow Xiao’s butterfly?

　　Perhaps we can endow it with everything mentioned above, while we can endow it with nothing. This is the meaning of emptiness. The butterfly, as a form, exists. It returns to itself, refusing any expression. Once unburdened of all meanings, pure beauty is reflected. Xiao paints his butterfly so intricately and delicately that its beauty seems to overshadow its native expressiveness. But Xiao’s fascination with the butterfly has another purpose: he attempts to relate it to the ancient fable [of Zhuang Zi (Ch’uang Tzu)]. He finds himself in the butterfly, while at the same time he finds the butterfly in himself. But different from the ancient fable that tries to erase the boundaries between the outside world and oneself or to mix self, nature and freedom together, he uses the butterfly for a metaphorical meaning. Today we haven’t changed ourselves into the butterfly, but we act like a butterfly. The butterfly is our metaphor, and it is a metaphor of the era we live in. Like the butterfly, we fly in a dreamy world with no direction, we drift and alter. Like the butterfly, we are so fragile, ephemeral and profound. Xiao interprets this era as a butterfly era, and the people living in this era, including himself, as homeless butterflies. We, butterfly-like people, are swirling, dancing and flying. But these movements are not filled with joy in a chaotic epoch; instead, they arouse fervent fragments. We, modern people, butterflies of the present era, are just experiencing what was noted by Walter Benjamin when he described the Paris of the 19th century – we’re “merely the burning ashes of a dreamy world.”

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