Solitary – Tan Jun and His Zoo

Text / Chiachi Jason Wang

Seemingly natural, though not quite so. Tan Jun (b. 1973) usually paints animals based on images that he has collected, and very rarely paints from real life. He has painted the ape and the crane, which would naturally remind one of a famous work from the Southern Song Dynasty by Muxi Fachang (active in the 13th century) of the same subject. However, in reality the works by the two artists are extremely different. Tan’s style is more polished, and the animals depicted in his paintings are also evidently more self-aware. Taking the crane for example, its expression is closer to the works of Bada Shanren (ca. 1626-1705), though his technique and style are both very different from Tan’s. Animals depicted in Bada Shanren’s works have an unusual look in their eyes, most of the time, only the white of their eyes are visible, looking isolated, as though projecting the way the painter himself faces the world. When Tan considers the forms of the animals, he has the tendency to make them human-like, the most representative of this is his painting of the ape.

Perhaps it is more than just a reflection of his state of mind; the animals depicted in Tan Jun’s paintings are almost always alone. The atmosphere is serene, and the animals also seem to be at ease. However, there is an indescribable sense of detachment within this calmness. As though there were an accident or a sudden moment of silence, the human-like animals are in fact alert, suppressed, and not completely at ease. They are not content, but rather, anxious, or perhaps even alarmed in the pretence of being calm.

The animals depicted in Tan Jun’s paintings are not the birds and beasts that are commonly seen in Chinese traditional paintings, even though the topic itself is very similar. Traditionally birds and beasts often signify rare and strange animals, they symbolise good fortune and are closely connected to religious images related to Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Perhaps court painters depicted this subject to reflect scenes or events from everyday life and as a metaphor for the prosperity of the empire. However, naturally there were also scholar-officials who were concerned about the well-being of the country and employ such elements to insinuate their political standpoints. Although Tan Jun’s works are not far from being traditional, and he has chosen some commonly seen animal forms as seen throughout art history as his subject, looking at the scenes that he delineates, Tan’s animals seem to be closer to the fate of animals in the modern era as described by the late British critic John Berger (1926-2017).

Berger has pointed out in his essay Why Look at Animals? (1977) That there has been a rupture in the relationship between animals and humans starting from the nineteenth century. Into the twentieth century, at the age of corporate capitalism, animals have been disappearing from earth following mass hunting and domestication, or have been becoming living specimens in zoos. Animals as the colonized, have been isolated and have experienced alienation just as humans have in modern society; they have become the object for the human gaze and domination. Viewed in Berger’s perspective, Tan Jun’s awareness is modern, as though he has taken in all kinds of animals that are in distress or in danger, and Demi Paradise is the name he has given to his zoo.

On the one hand, animals represented by Tan Jun seem to be solitaries; on the other hand, they also seem to be vulnerable beings with their freedom and wild nature taken away. Tan has chosen animals as his subject, to be a metaphor for the modern world dominated by humans. Through painting, Tan has provided a safe place for the animals that he cares for, where they could be temporarily sheltered, and where they might have even adopted humanised expressions.