As the most well-known emerging pop artist in China today, Du Qiurui continues to observe and understand the urban society in his creations, projecting small and hidden personal emotions and memories into them. His works reflect the spectacle society imbued with consumerism and objectification concepts. Through symbolically shaping images and concretely depicting abstract popular concepts, individuals, identities, and emotions that have disappeared in the vast social landscape are given the right to be magnified and discussed. Looking back at all the works Du Qiurui has publicly exhibited, we can see that 2019 was an important year for him to transition from student to professional. In his solo exhibition A Bizarre World, held at the Van Der Plas Gallery in New York in 2018, Du Qiurui's paintings were heavily influenced by Western comic-style Pop artworks. The characters in the paintings had strong identity features and were filled with cultural symbols that conveyed stereotypical impressions of mainstream ideas. In the painting Aerobics No More (2019) exhibited in his solo exhibition Plastic Spring, we can see the traces of his previous artistic style, such as the handling of colors being less transparent compared to his later style and the characters still having significant facial features.

In 2019, Du Qiurui attempted to transform the image of someone wearing a colorful raincoat, which he had always treated as a 'decoration' into the main character of his work. The magnification of this image became a crucial turning point in determining his style thereafter, and also indicated that he had added a layer of emotional analysis to his initial observations of people and society. He was no longer fixated on depicting the varied appearances of urban society because he realized that the image people present in public is undoubtedly a carefully crafted appearance that we deliberately show to others, and the real is the one wrapped in a raincoat, fragile but still trying to put on a smiling face. Therefore, Du Qiurui said that the figure wearing a raincoat is himself but can also be anyone else.

Like professional social researchers, all artists who use social observation as their creative material translate and convey reality through their actions. Du Qiurui has found a balance point to establish effective communication with the public by reducing the difficulty and obscurity of artistic creation and adding a bit of humor and wit in the early stages of building relationships. Just like every viewer who sees Du Qiurui's work gives the same response: "His work makes me very happy." This simple answer from many viewers (rather than professional art practitioners) - at the moment of hearing it - makes me truly feel the powerful persuasion far exceeding that of reading a professional review article.

In the lively atmosphere, bright colors reflect the various aspects of life: people are crying, laughing, whispering to each other, celebrating for unknown reasons, and countless plastic flowers symbolize 'plastic relationships'. Through his pieces, Du Qiurui aptly satirizes human nature, consumerism, and materialistic society. He draws attention to often overlooked identities and events by focusing on these seemingly trivial matters, and reminds people who live in urban society to be vigilant against abandoning their emotions too easily.

French writer and theorist Guy Debord saw the art revolution as a lifesaving straw to escape the spectacle's domination in his book The Society of the Spectacle. He believed that art could be an essential weapon to destroy the normalized spectacle of life, freeing people from numbness and bringing them back to the real world based on emotions . We have all thought about how to break through the homogenized daily life in the city, and we try to do so, but we eventually return to the homogeneous starting point. Facing this question that has yet to find the answer (or may never have an answer), Du Qiurui records his experiences through painting and makes these interpretable images appear as frequently as possible to the public. What is certain is that in Du Qiurui's works, the people are honest and vivid, however, they also go with the flow in reality - just like us - when facing the individual's helplessness, Du Qiurui chooses to expose various predicaments through his identity and rights as an artist rather than choosing to remain silent. That is his method of fighting against emptiness in the current era and his way of daring to express himself.

About The Writer

Wang Yaoli is a curator, writer, and media worker based in Beijing, the director of BONIAN SPACE. With an MFA degree in Curatorial Practice from School of Visual Arts (SVA), New York, and a BFA degree in major Art History and minors in Psychology and Japanese from the University of Miami (UM), Florida, USA. She focuses on the practice of emerging artists and the development of the contemporary art market. Her academic research focuses on the development of ecological art and biotechnology in the post-human context, as well as geo-folk cultures and mythology in contemporary society.

Guy Debord. The Society of the Spectacle[M]