紐約專業刊物《畫廊與工作室》（Gallery & Studio）報導展覽、刊登《重造培根——女子角斗》等作品，並發表美國著名批評家邁科馬克（Ed McCormack）文章《中國畫家胡志穎營造他的培根架構》；紐約專業刊物《畫廊指南》（Gallery Guide）刊登《天文Ⅰ》作品和發布展覽新聞；《美國藝術》（Art in America）發布在紐約舉辦展覽新聞。《紐約藝術雜誌》》（NY Arts Magazine）刊登《內典錄》等作品，並發表美國著名批評家亞當·唐納德（Adam Donald）的評論。《國際藝術博覽會報》（Art Fairs International Newspaper）介紹其藝術。
1998CHINA NOW! Tokyo, Osaka, etc., five cities, Japan
1999 油畫《古董》和系列水墨畫《內典錄》，在法國國家電視二台專題節目“Transculturelles in Canton’1999” （“1999年廣州跨文化藝術節”，由法國駐廣州總領事館策劃，國 際知名製片人Robert Cahen製作）中介紹（巴黎）。
1999 His oil painting Antiqueand ink and wash painting series Buddhist Scriptureswere introduced by the world famous producer Robert Cahen in Paris on French National TV 2 in the special program “Transculturelles in Canton 1999”.
It is an individual’s profoundness and independence of this kind that make it possible to truly express freedom, for freedom never comes from external things but instead it comes from within, and from free quality itself. In this sense, therefore, freedom never belongs to common people who follow the trend but only belongs to lonely passengers. They have the common characteristic of keeping away from fashion and making two way exploration in writing about and visualizing ultimate concern. Hu Zhiying is one of them.
——Gao Minglu (“Freedom of a Lonely Passenger”, Haifeng Publish House, 2011)
Hu Zhiying thinks highly of the process of consciousness and represents the state of culture with it. So in his paintings, consciousness is unfolded layer by layer and cultural images emerged; questioning, suspecting and colliding become the cultural consciousness itself.
——Wang Huangsheng (Jiangsu Art Monthly, 1997, Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House)
Chinese art after the mid-1980s does not repeat the course of development of European and American modern art when absorbing and imitating modern art of Europe and America. Instead, it takes an action of imitating “diachronic” things in a “synchronic” way, and diversified modes of art are manifested simultaneously in this action….Hu Zhiying’s Pseudo-Telescope, for its manifold exploration, becomes the focus of public attention and is approved in the painting circles of China today.
——Zhang Qing (Museum of Art Documents in New China, 2001, Heilongjiang Education Press)
When beholding Hu Zhiying’s work, we are impressed by its etherealness peculiar to Oriental art, while we are reminded by the smooth effect of the whole painting that we are confronted with a substantial space. The canvas, the panel and the colors, forms and textures of materials exclude the etherealness we have sensed from the material space.
——Zhao Bing (Contemporary Art, 1993, Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House)
With their novel style, diversified implications and eternal and imposing beauty, Hu Zhiying’s works, very valuable, constitute a “noble world” (Herbert Marcuse). His art is a monologue of his own soul.
The significance of Hu Zhiying’s art lies not only in his combination of Chinese and Western art. He does not make use of classical art in a simple way. What is more important is the reconstruction of classical Eastern and Western art (including traditional and modern),i.e., he reshapes art on the basis of the great artistic achievements of the East and the West and creates his own art.
In Hu Zhiying’s works, it seems that we could sense his uncovering and representing, dissembling and re-grouping of his personal cultural images again and again. While at the same time, these cultural images not only have personal significance, but also refer to wider regional and cultural spaces, proposed rational and willful questions of important cultural structures.
——Wang Huangsheng (The Transiency of Cultural Power – Reading Hu Zhiying, JiangsuFine Arts Publishing House)
Mixed media is used in Hu Zhiying’s works without exception. The lack of direct link between the materials and the artistic meanings they carry deprives the materials of their figurative nature and subjects them to the autonomy of art. A gap arises between the concrete materiality of the materials and the abstractness they manifest in works of art. It is difficult, I am afraid, to decide whether we should base our understanding on the artistic reality itself on a par with the real world or on the explanation of the real world. Perhaps this is a metaphysical problem unnecessary for us to be involved in. Maybe our final aim is to analyse the context of the artistic language.
——PictorialHandbook of Contemporary Artists in China(Jinghua Publishing House, 1995)
Hu Zhiying uses traditional subject matters of China and harmonizes dazzling red and yellow appropriately on his huge paintings with an unimaginable special technique. His art lies in the straightforward expounding of the symbolic meanings in his paintings through diversified aesthetic concepts.
The use of gold powder, silver powder and Chinese lacquer in Hu Zhiying’s paintings brings about a shining effect, an effect easiest to arouse controversy in Chinese art. However, this is exactly where his art lies: making use of foreign cultures but at the same time disintegrating them and incorporating them into his own tradition.
Hu Zhiying’s deep affection for Chinese classical culture is contained in his art. The unusual ways in which he combines this affection with Western contemporary art indicate that his individualized experiment is not influenced by any fashion.
Hu Zhiying’s art skillfully interweaves classical and traditional Western art such as Cezanne’s and Western modern photography such as Ansel Adams’s with classical Chinese art form.
Hu Zhiying’s mode of painting lies in the disintegrating and subsequent integrating of different elements of Chinese and Western art. Hu Zhiying expresses elements of Chinese art with Western materials and enhances the distinct flat effect of the painting surface so that his art is full of multiple modern meanings.
Hu Zhiying’s works illustrate “cultural contrast” as an abstract and concrete field of knowledge. When the viewer tries to discern the origin of this field and identify the relationship between the themes of art and their prototypes, they are likely to lose themselves in the dreamlike realm of the paintings. In my easel paintings on canvas or board, apart from conventional materials like ink, oil and acrylic colors, I apply gold and silver power, Chinese Varnish. These materials, expressing an archaic mood in a multitude of imagines, add substance to the “cultural contrast”. The various materials, the diversity of images and the glossy surface are easily identifiable with the bright yet unstable reality of the world in which we live, and at the same time, imply a dark, mysterious world lurking beneath the dazzling surface.
For Hu Zhiying has subjected the figures in both canvases to considerably more imagistic deconstruction than Bacon usually did, creating a composition that, in fact, appears to reference certain aspects of Julian Schnabel’s abstractions even while retaining the overall compositional thrust and mood of Bacon…Hu Zhiying makes a major statement about the multicultural currents of cross-fertilization of influence, inspiration and innovation that unite painters of the past, present, and future.
——Ed McCormack: Chinese Painter Hu Zhiying Makes His Bones with Bacon (Gallery & Studio, Nov/Dec 2008-Jan 2009, New York)
From Hu Zhiying’s early inks on paper in 1989 to his recent homage to Bacon, he has always travelled off the beaten path, but in a continuous attempt to combine the essence of western and eastern influences. He never had a mechanistic approach, and the associations can be subtle or obvious, but always imaginative.
To me, Hu Zhiying is the ultimate authentic artist, with a fierce individualism and a powerful no-compromise personality. He has a strong well thought-out sense of direction, although he will always surprise the viewers.
In all that, Hu Zhiying’s style and career are clearly uncharacteristic of that of most of the new wave of contemporary art (both Chinese and Western) and much closer to those who have ended up leaving a huge historical legacy.
——[法] 迪迪埃·赫希（Didier Hirsch，《一位非傳統的個人主義藝術家》）
——Didier Hirsch: An Artist as Unconventional Personality:
Hu Zhiying does not follow the currently prevailing practice. He has produced works for a long time in an individualized way with an eye to certain problems he concerns himself with. He may have paid close attention in his works to some cultural and philosophical problems at a deeper level.
——Wu Hong (A Summary of the Symposium on Works by Hu Zhiying and Huang Shaoyin)
Hu Zhiying has produced his works according to his personal need, or rather, according only to his internal need in a certain stage, regardless of other things. In this sense, this accords with the natural instinct of an artist, and also with the requirement of art.
——Jia Fangzhou (“A Summary of the Symposium on Works by Hu Zhiying and Huang Shaoyin”)
For Hu Zhiying, “transiency” means a pursuit of freedom without any convention, a pursuit of a higher state, the state of Tao. To a great extent, “transiency” is a state of Tao, even higher than unrestrained worldly freedom. “Transiency” means surpassing “reason” and reaching the state of “Tao”.
Hu Zhiying’s works of the 1980s are significant in the intertextual relations of art history. They are representative and powerful.
——Zou Yuejin (“A Summary of the Symposium on Works by Hu Zhiying and Huang Shaoyin”)
There are overlaps of space in Hu Zhiying’s works. There is sense of space peculiar to Chinese art and also elements of Western painting. His paintings have indescribable and complex taste, and multiple meanings are created in them.
——Gao Ling (“A Summary of the Symposium on Works by Hu Zhiying and Huang Shaoyin”)
In Western surrealist tradition, the human creativity is free from any restraint, and absolute rather than relative creativity is emphasized. Such is the thing that I have sensed in Hu Zhiying’s works. With dislocation of things in the space, his paintings are something that neither conforms to perspective nor goes against it intentionally. In fact, there is not a fixed point of view. He does not portray or represent anything, or express anything in subjective sense. For him, painting is in fact a process of exploration, and signs are made use of in this process. I am particularly interested in his exquisite use of materials. In terms of materials, he likes to use lacquer and vermilion which remind me of the lacquer art of the Han dynasty in China. They have a historical depth. The effect of multi-layered lacquer strikes one as solemn and solidified.
——Bao Dong (“A Summary of the Symposium on Works by Hu Zhiying and Huang Shaoyin”)
Hu Zhiying is an artist with cultural philosophical meditation and experiences as his motivation for creation. He does not concern the changes on the surface of social reality, and also not the expression of individual psychology and experience. During his 20 years creation, the only thing he emphasized is the exploration of ultimate theme and the infinite approach to some possible transcendent spirit. Under such a driving force, he adjusted the characteristics of various mediums like ink and wash, lacquer, oil and others in his different phases of creation, and he also adopted many symbols, images and indications from various cultures, to imply the transient nature and illusory essence of culture through dislocation and re-creation of representation fragments in different culture systems, his poetic intuition is also reflected out in the crack of these representations.
“Beyond the Chains of Illusion” is a work of Erich Fromm, a philosopher of FrankfurtSchool. In this book, the author connected the theory of Unconsciousness by Freud and the ideological theory of Marx, re-reflected the possibility of human freedom. Here, we conclude Hu Zhiying’s painting language and art realm with the title of this book: to reach some invisible substance through the visible “chains” of a series of visual symbols, images and indications, which is the authenticity of existence that cannot be defined by culture, perceived by experience or touched by language.
Concerning Hu Zhiying’s idea of tracing issues of formalism back to philosophy of Kant, we should say that he is profound and he had taken up the vital point of formalism. Moreover, it also avoided the cultural conservative ideas that discuss “water and ink” in the question of cultural identity, he provided a universal perspective to face “water and ink” problem openly.
——Bao Dong (“The Sublime Aesthetics of Hu Zhiying”)
These landscapes under Hu Zhiying’s brush are very unusual, weird, gorgeous, mysterious and magnificent. They have something to do with the Eastern context and our tradition, and metaphysical elements are enhanced in them.
——Yang Wei (“A Summary of the Symposium on Works by Hu Zhiying and Huang Shaoyin”)
Hu Zhiying’s art is different from the stylized and patternized art in present China. His profound comprehension of both Eastern and Western art enables Hu Zhiying to operate with Eastern and Western techniques of painting with ease in expressing specific ideas and feelings relating to ancient and modern times. In his works we can sense a special psychological desire and experience. His paintings are novel, stimulating and full of tension. They first catch the eye and then touch the heart of the viewer.
Beholding Hu Zhiying’s paintings, you may feel that his train of thought, his ideas and his style are all very distinctive and individualized. His psychological world may be not accessible or comprehensible by ordinary people. This makes his art alternative and special. He is a man in such constant change that you cannot comprehend him easily. He is not an artist adhering to a constant type. He is artistic both in thinking and in temperament.
Hu Zhiying is an independently minded and thoughtful contemporary artist.
Illustrating what he calls the “cultural contrast,” Hu Zhiying brings together traditional Chinese art with the eclectic styles of the West. He combines traditional Chinese symbolism and landscape with the elements of the various styles of Western art all coming together to create something more than art—something equal to the real world. Using Chinese varnish, silver, and gold powder with traditional ink, oils and acrylics, Zhiying is able to create a unique style that pierces into the soul.
In his Buddhist Scriptures IZhiying, using acrylic, ink and charcoal on silk, creates a depth that is ominous, forbidding, and beautiful. Reminiscent of his Astronomy Iand III with the climbing “vines” and landscape style, Buddhist Scriptures Ⅰlooks like the mysterious underside of what we see everyday. In this painting Zhiying shows us his cultural contrast—the bright world with the mysterious other side that can stand along side life and art equally.
——Adam Donald: On Hu Zhiying (NY Arts magazine, 2009)
It is his continuous curiosity that drives him to surpass himself again and again, to lead his own painting into the depth of history to connect with a larger cultural background subsequently. It can be read that when he tried to surpass the real world, Hu didn’t simply care for practical problems any more, but swam in the boundless sea, and brought his own personal reality into the long cultural tradition.
——Yang Wei: The Mirage for a Single Person– About Hu Zhiying and His Art
His solid basis of traditional Chinese art, together with the views of western art opened up by the opportunities of the time and his own art exploration, makes him unlike the avant-garde artists susceptible to the trends, who feel deeply a cultural tensility over their inner lives and art views. To him, both cultural sources of such tensility are extensive and profound equally. He can’t mediate the differential conflict between them deep in his heart, and it seems hard for him to find refuge of soul simply in either side.
I would rather read Zhiying’s pursuit of art and realization of value in such field of the times and such humanistic appeal, so that I can understand the separate formal elements in his paintings that can’t be read and linked up as usual as a collage of the new world breaking though a single civilized view of value and a single cultural cognitive schemata.
In the painting of Zhiying, “cultural diversity” appears as deconstructive profuse “cultural image”, and reflects a “self-deconstruction” of the subject of art without taking a certain cultural identity as a destination. Everything integrated in the painting is just the formal reconstruction of “cultural image” rather than the meaning construction of “cultural identity”. Therefore, his paintings make us continuously feel a tension of obvious tensility, and continuously face the “cultural contrast” of which he is enamored. You should know that, the expression of “deconstructed self” will end up with nothing but “the meaning being complicated and uncertain”; as for the expression of “self-deconstruction”, any psychological reaction or reading comprehension is proper ultimate interpretation.
China’s Hu Zhiying also makes a strong showing with a work entitled “Buddhist Scriptures #1,” in which the ancient medium of ink on silk and the linear fluidity and intricacy of traditional Asian landscape scrolls are put to the service of a thoroughly contemporary, highly imaginative artistic sensibility to create starling primordial nature fantasies filled with electrifying imagery.
——Maurice Taplinger (Gallery & Studio, Vol. 12 No.3, 2010, New York)
I enjoy Hu Zhiying’s Buddhist Scriptures the most. They showcase his facility and also show off his own personal vision and voice. His voice is very powerful and can stand alone.
The character of the mediums used in the art of ink and wash prevents ordinary people from mastering this art. Water is extremely clear and ink extremely dark. They are shapeless and are extremes of clear and dark things. When blended, they will necessarily produce countless effects. But water and ink are capricious and extremely flexible. To manipulate them is as difficult as to command the wind and rain and only people with extraordinary talent can do it. It is a good fortune of the times that Hu Zhiying, using these extremely flexible things, produced Nature’s Mystery. In this painting, he created most powerful images using most soft materials.
Hu Zhiying is an outstanding contemporary artist. He and his works belong to art only, but not to any art group.
——Zhang Wenhai: Resuming the Proper Height of History
胡志穎作品所蘊含的背景知識對於有歷史眼光的觀察者來說充滿魅力。
—— [美] 羅賓·佩卡姆
The contextual interest in Hu Zhiying’s works is fascinating for the historically-minded observer.
Hu Zhiying uses Western mode of artistic creation with elements of Chinese ink and wash painting and imaginations incorporated in it. In his paintings, there are realistic depictions as well as abstract narratives, and rational accounts as well as sensory portrayals. His paintings are impressive for their powerful sweep and have strong visual impact.
——Han Fengshi (“Perceptiveness Bordering on True Colors”)
Hu Zhiying’s Buddhist Scriptures, with Oriental elements and Hu’s own psychoanalysis in it, has broken with old patterns of ink and wash and is at the same time an adventure in the contemporary era.
In the painting circles of China in the 1990s, Hu Zhiying developed a distinctive style characterized by the interweaving of Chinese classic signs of mountains and waters with Western visual images. Presenting an extraordinary relationship with the natural world, this style, full of natural charm, embodied an unusual combination of Eastern art and Western art. In recent years, his works have wandered between beauty and ugliness, between life and death, and between this world and Faramita, sometimes making the beholder alarmed and frightened. I am touched by the strong visual impact and artistic charm of his works.
《內典錄》之四，胡志穎作品