In the art world, there are people that dislike conforming to the existing social order and mingling with the common. They alienate themselves from the mainstream, both in personal conduct and creation, and evade entangling themselves in worldly manners.

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            Xu Jingyu is an example of an artist who wants to remain detached from the reality carnival. Her vision stems from independent imagination without any confinement to social reality. Her artwork has a presence of wild indulgence, with qualities of Lolita’s complex and Gothic enchantment. It incorporates an allegoric and surreal context - what one can understand as the direct unfolding of her life experiences and state of mind. It intends to symbolize key images, of angels and sheep herds, thus endowing her artworks with visual force and effect. This reminds me of the words by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin: The angel would like very much to stop to wake up the dead and summon the defeated, but a gust of storm from heaven blows up her wings so that she could not wave them. The storm incessantly pushes her to the future that her back faces, while the ruins in front of her are heaping up to the sky. The consequence expresses the intersection between reality and illusion, the mutual absorption between vulnerability and endurance, and the conflict of such relationships. 

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            Xu’s art does not capture the complexity of reality in an apparent manner. Her detachment from reality helps preserve the details of the creation process, allowing the texture of painting, photography and installation to be seen clearly.

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            One of the most prominent allegorical details in her work includes her immortal angel wings. It symbolizes her aspiration, endurance, and hope in our chaotic world. What’s more, Xu’s goal is to seek for a fragile individual hidden in the vast chaos, through the state of subtle feeling. It is a truthful representation of the imagined inner world, an abstract reality reflected from within. It attaches a value to solitude, free self-expression, and distinction condensed from chaos.

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- Feng Boyi