As China’s traditional cultural symbol, seal stands for not only social status but also power, showing exactly the Chinese values. This is also why Zhu Yiqing and Xue Yongjun are determined to paint with seals: to respond to the complex collision of Globalization with the multi-meanings of seals from elementary language to token of status. As the artists explain, “We choose those representative ones and deconstruct them to present the pixelized features of computer age. The deconstruction endows the images with internal connections, making them carriers of the subjects that the artists require for the artworks.” In other words, the composition of seals is in its simplest form what the artists try to express the process of cultural collision, shatter, variation and melting, appropriately expressing their unique perspectives towards cultural interaction.

Given the concept of cultural collision, transforming the political flag and celebrities, classical paintings of great cultural meanings and celebrities in popular culture into seals designs of cultural and commodity symbols, Zhu Yiqing and Xue Yongjun are implanting those Chinese-style vocabularies into the paintings, expressing with which the resistance to foreign cultures. Using the superimposition of images, they’re gaining more and more attention with the paintings featured by digital era.

Excerpt from Guard on the Cultural Print and Notch-On Paintings of Zhu Yiqing and Xue Yongjun by Andre Lee