Dream talk along the road

    "Painting—it can be fragmented sentences, nouns, or whispers,
　　Heard only by oneself. Painting is like sleep-talking!" —Ding Boyan

　　So, here are ten years' worth of dreamland treasures, all gathered at once.
　　Ding Boyan's first art book, "Sleep-Talking Along the Way," is finally released!
　　It features nearly 150 artworks spanning from 2013 to 2023,
　　Presented across eight themes, with six-color printing, and three types of paper, fully showcasing the worldview of Ding Boyan's art.

　　Having once used "Good Morning Anxiety" as his comic pen name,
　　He is, in fact, simultaneously immersed in "anxiety" in both his conscious and subconscious.
　　It is the common groundwater body for his two forms of creation.

　　His comics absorb and transform emotions through their plots;
　　His paintings, however, bring forth various props and vessels,
　　Allowing unconscious unease to take hold, then taming it.

　　This art book thus carefully selects his favorite motifs,
　　As the basis for categorizing his painting works:

　　Vacuum Exploration
　　Cracked BODY
　　Display, Object
　　Comfort Zone
　　In and Among Books
　　Therapy
　　On the Journey
　　New Memories

In the early stages of his creation, space served as Ding Boyan's important stage. Things that were about to be destroyed, were being destroyed, or had already been destroyed gathered here, their desolation feeding the artist's intricate pencil strokes and sunset-like color palette. By depicting "the end of the road," the artist unconsciously calculated the shadow's position of "the end of the road"—that is precisely where his conscious alter ego stands: beyond the end of the road. This transcendent, or at least detached, illusionary viewpoint neutralizes most of his unease (which might be why his "anxiety" in his works is not verbose or violent, but rather gentle like a large mammal), and the remaining irreducible parts spill over into shallower substances.

For example, the broken, bloody bodily tissues appearing in the "Cracked BODY" chapter; the strange objects and distorted artworks in the "Display, Object" section; the "Comfort Zone" depicting mundane earthly spaces or "rooms" adorned with alien surface textures; the grotesquely textured books in "In and Among Books" that evoke both curiosity and unease; the works in "Therapy" showing us how similar repair and destruction's masks are; the concrete playground equipment-like vehicles in "On the Journey" seemingly simulating the shrunken, regressed imagination adults have of other places, yet also reminding us how symbols brought joy to our childhood selves. They may not have sharp ideas or saturated entertainment, unable to immediately serve a function for the viewer, but their hazy gaze and faintly discernible whispers convey a sense of origin. From the abyss of consciousness, they are projected before us by the artist. Those distortions and omissions are an invitation from the world's backside, a way sleep beckons. A necessary looseness.

Finally, "New Memories" appears, like a timeline conjured by loading the wrong save file. This series of 2023 works combines Ding Boyan's distinct comic portrait style with the aforementioned painting elements, introducing sweet and eye-catching anomalies into a world that was originally diffuse, loose, and harboring cold smiles. The gaze that directly confronts bleak reality and gazes at the filler of emotional voids intertwine and meld here (for example, the juxtaposition of the highly fake-feeling airplane and cute girl in "Before Departure"), creating sparks powerful enough to jolt one awake from a cryosleep device. A movie ending with a hint of a sequel doesn't always bring anticipation, but when you finish the bonus mini-comic in the "Book within a Book" section, you should be very confident: under Ding's command, this train will surely reach a more distant and novel landscape.