Wenna, a painter, likes to paint immortals
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She will transform the unimportant people and things around her into immortals and weird legends
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Wenna was invited to the first Sanlian humanistic city award to create immortal images for different cities and buildings
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It’s a bit of a surprise and a bit of a surprise
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Wenna didn’t draw immortals this time
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Instead, she drew the city where immortals live
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She put 24 shortlisted projects of the humanistic city award in an ancient map
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Wenna, the painter, talked with Xu Teng, the architect and director of the Institute of improper history, about the process of their co creation of the “humanistic city map”
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Interviewee, Wenna reporter, sun Yidan, Wenna’s “Sanlian humanistic city map”
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Do you have any familiar buildings? Q: You always draw immortals
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How did you draw a map for the humanistic city award this time? A: I didn’t expect that there would be such an opportunity to draw so many buildings
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Since 2010, I have been painting fairy frescoes in Jingdezhen
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I feel that I have surrounded this site by painting on the wall of a place
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This is my most direct perception of architecture
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In the past 10 years, I have created a lot of fairy murals and made up fairy stories all over the world
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This triple humanistic city award came to me
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I hope I can make a fairy map of different cities, including the cities where 24 nominated projects are located
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However, in order to reflect the characteristics of each building and the different characteristics of each city in one picture, the work volume is too large
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So I want to make a map of 24 projects
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Not only to use my own personal style, but also to have a lot of objective architectural modeling and other basic knowledge, which is a new attempt for me
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Q: Have you ever drawn a map before? A: I have drawn a lot of “fake” ancient maps, which are “fabricated” by my own imagination
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Most of them are imaginary space and aerial concepts
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I have never drawn such a specific city map
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Q: is this humanistic city map true? A: So, what is the “fake” ancient map? For example, I used the method of ancient Chinese map to draw the map of Egypt
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I drew the black cat of Egypt as a giant panda, and let the characters standing on the side of the Egyptian painting wear Chinese clothes
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The whole map plate also uses Chinese territory, just like the borrowing of space, which has a sense of dislocation
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“Humanistic city map” is the first time for me to draw concrete and real buildings
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When I create it, I naturally have to respect the architects’ own design and consideration
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So before painting, my good friend Xu Teng, an architect, and the “director” of the Institute of unorthodox history, showed me all kinds of ancient maps of the Ming and Song dynasties
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What attracts me most is a picture of Hainan Island in the Qing Dynasty
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It is a document map with many words about the local conditions and customs of the island, as well as the customs of weddings and funerals
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I like this kind of reading map very much, so I set up an island according to it
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There are mountains above and sea below
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The cities are separated by rivers
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According to the demand of space, Shanghai has the most projects and the most space
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I drew Shanghai first, but Anhui has only one place shortlisted, so I set it up as an island
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Therefore, the overall structure of this map is “fake”, but the buildings and cities are “real”
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Wenna is improvising
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Q: “Director” said “this is a post disaster reconstruction of artists”
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What “disaster” happened when painting? A: To tell you the truth, I was confused when I drew how to add each specific building inside
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At the beginning, I wanted to create “fake” architecture with my consistent style and my own imagination of architecture
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“Green hill” is the first building I planned
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At that time, I wanted to deconstruct and reconstruct this building in the form of an artist, and I wanted every building to do so
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So the first version of “green hill” I drew is a hillside building with layers of tunnels, just like a train drilling a cave
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However, when I showed the painting to the director, he said to me, “the architect will not admit that this is his work.” In the past, I used to improvise, painting while thinking, and never typewriting
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This is the first time that I have “abandoned” a painting
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Q: Then how did you “rebuild” after the disaster? A: at that time, I realized that painting real buildings is totally different from imagining them out of thin air
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“Director” tells me that architecture designed by architects often has a key point and what architects want to express most
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For example, Jishou art museum is built on a bridge and across a river
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This design is the essence of this house, and every architectural work has such a finishing touch
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With so many buildings and so many clever ideas, can I still revise them? So I quickly went to the “director” with the painting on my back
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He patiently “corrected the homework” with a pencil and told me the structure of each building
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On the basis of his revision, I knew what I was lazy and didn’t do
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For example, green hill has green space on every floor, columns below and roads below
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After defining these points, I really redrawn green hill and all other buildings with the attitude of painting architecture
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The fairy images and stories that Wenna made up himself
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Q: Does it mean that every building has a “right answer”? Will this constrain your creativity? A: In the past, I used to paint immortal paintings, and I could change them into anything
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But this map has a “correct answer”
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We should respect the design of every architect and the basic structure of architecture
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This is a learning process for me
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The more I know the details of everything, the more I like it
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For example, when I saw a pavilion in the past, I could see tiles at most, but the director told me how the Dougong of the pavilion was tossed, and how the Dougong of the Tang Dynasty was different from that of the Song Dynasty
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If I used to see the resolution of architecture as mosaic, now it is 1080p
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Q: What’s your new understanding of architecture after painting this picture? A: Maybe many ordinary people understand architecture as I do, thinking that architecture only contains its internal space
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Through this painting, I know that architecture is not only the building itself, it may change a kind of space structure and open up the use of two kinds of space
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For example, Anaya has only a few buildings, but it enlivens a large area of the whole
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This is something I didn’t expect before
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The original buildings will change the whole field
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Q: In addition to space design, human participation is often very important for architecture
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There are several little characters in this map similar to your fairy painting style
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Who are these characters? A: I only drew a few characters in this picture, all of which I had real contact with
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For example, there is a man with a pig’s head holding a knife, which is a pork vendor I met in Guangzhou vegetable market Art Museum
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At that time, he Zhisen showed me around the vegetable market and had a meal with the vendors
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In one day, we painted immortal paintings such as chicken God, pig God, bean curd God, etc
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all the people in the vegetable market were very happy to see themselves transformed into immortals
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Because these immortals are very similar to them and related to their profession
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Mr
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He has been leading his students to run the vegetable market Art Museum
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Art has brought a kind of vitality to the whole vegetable market
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Everyone is very active, just like a family
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In the vegetable market art gallery in Guangzhou, Wenna created their own immortal paintings for the vendors
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I have a lot of feelings for the vegetable market, which can be naturally reflected in the painting
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Next to the pork peddler is teacher he with a drawing
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In this way, the relationship between the peddlers and teacher he is naturally drawn there.
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