“LANDSCAPE” series is an unvarnished depiction of scenes from an online multiplayer game Survival of the Jedi.

The idea of this series stems from my obsession with games. In Survival of the Jedi, 100 players parachute into a map, land on the ground, search for battle supplies, and kill each other, the last survivor wins. During the battle, the security area shrinks and you have to keep moving to the next destination. One needs to carefully observe and analyze the terrain in the game in order to search for enemies and apply their own tactics during the movement. 

The composite scenery in the game map became more and more familiar to me, which provokes my inner passion to trace it. I thought: do we have such a detailed and clear impression of the landscape in real world? Landscape painting, as a long-born form of art, whose object in nowadays context, is the Lushan Waterfall, Guilin landscape, Suzhou gardens, or the mountains and rivers in the virtual world?

Fighting each other to survive is a rule the game sets for the players. Having players competing with each other, and matching the same level of advanced players, keeps a long-term competitive balance within the game. In the face of such rules, if my game ability continues to improve, I will inevitably meet professional players who make a living by playing games. Encountering  an enemy like this, a victory will be far beyond reach. Can I define the rule on my own way to achieve my own “victory”?

Thinking of this, I raised my brush.

I used the conventional painting method to depict the scenes in the game in a simple way, mimicking the recording creation work of a landscape painter, looking for interesting scenes everywhere, and producing clumsy and sincere painting work. What is important in the Landscape series is the continuous depiction. This action starts from the love of games. As for the end, I want to end at the moment when the game server stops, like a commitment of love.