Who would not smirk at the word ‘creativity’? 

Who still believes in Greenberg’s confidence in purity of art? 

Who dreams of Utopian Esperanto in visual art today?

Art has surrendered to capitalism in which the market system became a major driving force behind the art world. Art has already been popularized and commoditized which no longer confines itself inside the galleries and art museums. Wasn’t it a dream of the avant-guards to have as many museums as department stores? This enormous arcade created by capitalists blurs the boundary between art and commodity creating “art as an element of commercialism.” Art no longer is ethereal or revolutionary. Yet, it became the most monotonous and systematical “menagerie of vanity.”

In the 21st century, most alternative ideas are already commercialized and avant-garde is already less than reactionary in China. The success of Chinese Contemporary art is more of an industrial development than an artistic achievement. Art market may have rapidly developed but the progress of art has a cultural entity may have retreated.

Jin Yang Ping enjoys such disillusionment and disgust which manifest in his “B-Level Paintings.” “B-Level Paintings” portray the fragility of contemporary humanity, and shared vulnerability of human spirits. It illustrates the artist’s tendency to publicly attack mainstream values and already established equations through his distorted and subversive paintings. 

Like Deconstructivism’s criticism to the oppression of Stalin’s Socialism, and annihilation of Neo-liberalism’s metadiscourse, Jin simultaneously raises questions about China’s contemporary art’s form and content. He has no interest in exhibiting his talent, but pokes fun at the idea of creativity or originality, and shows no attempt at achieving the final completion. A completely constant self-identity does not exist, but identity can always ‘diffuse’ and through such diffusion one continues to conceive self-identity and therefore Jin’s works are illustrated as incoherent, irregular and fragmented. To confront and fight against the dominating power yet refusing to become a mainstream, that truly is a ‘subversive philosophy,’ and how this ‘B-level artist’ paints his works.