Picture source "Beijing Youth Weekly"
Interview | Li Liu
Editing | Southern Books
Typography |
Speaking of Jia Wei, people who are not in the product circle/design circle may not know him.
But you must have heard or even used the 55° cup designed by him more or less,
I have eaten the Haidilao self-heating hot pot designed by him, bought the Himalayan Xiaoya speaker designed by him,
Even when I went to the Forbidden City, I couldn't help but bought the "Forbidden City Cat" blind box.
As the founder of Rococo Innovation Design Group ,
Jia Wei led his team to win the German Red Dot, German iF, American Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA),
Japan G-Mark, China Red Star Award and other internationally renowned design awards;
He is the only designer in China who has won five global design gold awards.
In 2020, he founded the artificial intelligence design company Jellyfish Intelligence ,
Hope to make the design more digital and intelligent. Just like Lao Jia's original words: let ordinary people also use professional design.
Today, he aspires to return his status to pure art .
Compared with an industry that focuses on goals and strives for revenue, this is softer and purer.
This time, his work is "Like a Flower in the Wild" . He wants to heal himself by interpreting the power of "wildness" and "freedom".
A painting born after a fire
Compared with the products designed before, paintings seem to be able to show Jia Wei's rich and sensitive heart.
Especially when creating the image of Ruhua, which symbolizes "running hard and growing wildly", Jia Wei put a lot of effort into it.
In fact, the birth time of "Like a Flower in the Wild" is very special to Jia Wei. It is on February 2, 2021.
It happened to be his birthday that day.
"The fire almost destroyed my career. Since then, I have become a little depressed, uninterested in anything, and depressed. Painting seems to be the only way to redeem myself. It started almost at the end of 2019 , I used colored pencils to draw a lot of animals, such as owls, puppies, etc., and felt very healed. On my birthday, I suddenly had an idea from my heart, and I especially wanted to draw an image. "
Jia Wei said that at first, the image that suddenly emerged in his heart was somewhat vague and indescribable.
He needs to constantly "peel the cocoon" out of the shadow of his heart to describe the general appearance.
For him who has not yet recovered, it is tantamount to peeling an onion.
This is the pain of birth like a flower.
But in order to visualize her, he kept drawing:
Those with noses and those without noses, those with ears and those without ears,
big eyes, small eyes, long hair, short hair,
There are hundreds of sketches drawn for various images of little girls.
"I don't know why I started to have such an impulse that day."
And every stroke is like revisiting the fire that affected Jia Wei:
On July 8, 2018, the main office building of Rococo founded by Jia Wei accidentally caught fire.
The flames lasted for half a day before being extinguished. All computers, servers and drawings were swallowed up, and the direct economic loss exceeded tens of millions of yuan.
What made Jia Wei even more indignant was that some ongoing projects and proposals were lost forever due to the damage of the server.
All financial documents used for listing were also burned.
"Without that fire, I would have been arrogant, ignorant, and undisciplined."
After the fire, all employees did not stop and continued to work in the cafe. Three months later, he moved everyone to the new headquarters.
Since then, he has started to heal himself with spiritual practice, painting, and writing poetry.
"I can only be thankful for that fire and the series of disasters it unleashed. Without that fire, I wouldn't be slowing down my career, going to more outdoor events, getting back into the crowd, and not Just standing on the stage. I wouldn’t be where I am today. In other words, the disaster has accumulated the thickness of my life. If there is no thickness in life, it will be so smooth. Maybe that old Jia is not so wonderful. ”
In a sense, "Ruhua" is not like a child "born" by Lao Jia, but more like himself reborn by him:
"I yearn for freedom and break free, maybe she is a sense of break free."
Ruhua and I are both twisted
But after finishing the first "Flower Forest", Jia Wei didn't dare to put the painting in the bedroom.
Because this painting fully interprets Jia Wei's depressed state of mind at that time.
The protagonist of the painting is a little girl with exceptionally long hair that blends infinitely with the silent and dark forest.
In the red dress, she sat alone on a crumbling branch, her angry hair grew wildly between black and green, and under her forked eyebrows, she projected only disdain and cold eyes to the outside.
Jia Wei laughed at himself and said that he painted the little girl's eyes like wolf eyes with yellow pupils, making this flower look like a "Badashanren" looking at the world.
But Ruhua's cheeks were covered with blush from left to right, which still expressed some warmth.
"I still want her to be cute."
Looking at Ruhua in the painting, he waved his hands angrily. Jia Wei felt that the little girl was too lonely, so he added a sloth to her.
But the sloth became "dying" again against the little girl.
All this seems to reflect from the side that when creating the painting "Forest of Flowers", Jia Wei and Ruhua were both in a twisted state, not so relaxed.
After the painting was born, he was silent in the room for a long time, and added a poem:
in the proud forest,
smelling of disdain,
I (like a flower) sit on a tree of ignorance,
The hair is tightly wound around the trunk,
In thoughts of desire,
Undisciplined to grow wildly.
Jia Wei thought for a long time, what exactly caused this disaster? Only after looking at this painting did I realize that,
"She was in an arrogant forest, expressing my arrogance, ignorance and self-discipline at the time. It was these three reasons that led to my disaster."
When he finished painting "Flower Forest", he originally wanted to hang the painting beside his bed, but when he saw the stubborn eyes of the little girl, he intuitively felt that he was "a little scared", so he gave up.
But after splashing out the paint and thoughts, it still had an obvious healing effect on Jia Wei.
"Flower Grassland"
Hence Jia Wei's second work "Flower Grassland", the main colors are still black, green and red.
As an Aquarius, he has begun to vent his emotions more mischievously, but this method is still a bit cruel:
"Like a flower hanging upside down on a tree branch, it looks like the little girl is playing a prank, but in fact it is to drain the pain in her head."
He said frankly that although he did not make many drafts when painting this painting, he felt more relaxed after painting, and even wrote the poem "Flower Grassland":
upside down,
Pour out the pain that fills my head,
twitch,
shake off my wounds,
cold-eyed,
Tear off my hypocritical mask.
Looking at it now, this painting with obvious movements is more direct in terms of color and state.
The small animal in the painting has also changed from a lazy sloth to a small bat with wide eyes.
But he said that there was a scar on Ruhua's cheek, and the bat was like a small mask for camouflage.
What is Ruhua pretending to be, is she trying to cover the wound? Jia Wei was also a little confused.
The third piece, "A Sea of Flowers", further expresses the "sense of escape" that Jia Wei longs for:
A ray of light, passing from behind me,
hit me splashing,
like slapping on a rock
proud waves,
I turned and filled the ocean,
flickering freely,
singing joyfully,
Me and myriads of me embrace each other.
In the painting, Jia Wei and his countless selves turn into fish, yearning for freedom and breaking free.
When creating this painting, he had already set off for a business trip to Shanghai, and he was in a good mood. An intuitive point reflected in the painting is that there is light, and the overall painting style has begun to become brighter.
In the painting, there are many fishes following the flowers, and there is also a colorful turtle, which more or less reflects Jia Wei's emotional changes.
Perhaps it was then that he realized that he needed to get out of the previous disaster and seek the light source.
If we say that the first three paintings are about Jia Wei's own emotions.
Then the fourth "Like a Flower Garden" wants to express more "everything", or to return to the concept of the crowd-everyone is like a flower, I have found hope and happiness.
It took almost a year and a few months to complete these four pictures. At this time, Jia Wei's mental strength finally recovered more than half.
there's a girl in me
Different from other paintings, the eyebrows and eyes of the little girl in "Like a Flower in the Wild" have their meanings.
The shape of the eyes is different in each painting.
The crossed eyebrow is actually a scar, representing rebellion and the possibility of rebellion.
Jia Wei said that he wanted to present Ruhua with more wild traces to the audience in terms of perception.
Ruhua is not a human being in our real life, she is more like the truer self in each of us.
During the epidemic, Jia Wei also created "Like a Flower in the Epidemic", which means that his paintings began to have more social elements:
"Like "Schindler's List", the colors and levels of the picture are presented in different blacks and grays, but there is a touch of blush on the cheeks. Although the (early) Ruhua is gloomy, it still conveys the power of life all the time."
"What I want to express is that even in the darkest moment, Ruhua is still alive and affects every little animal around. I hope that in addition to expressing the painter's emotions, painting can also commemorate this era in reverse."
As Jia Wei regained his cheerfulness, the flowers in his works became more and more "healed":
In "Like Flowers and Grass", the little girl starts to hug the owl, and in "Like Flowers in the Snow", she plays with the rabbit on the snow.
Gloomy, venting, happy, playful, rebellious... With Jia Wei's brushes, flowers shuttle through different worlds.
Why are there so many lovely flowers?
Jia Wei said bluntly because:
"There's a little girl inside of me."
Intuitively projected onto the works, Ruhua looks small and harmless to the world, but her arms are thick and her hands are like chicken legs, very powerful. Just like that kind of strong man, he also has a very gentle side in his heart.
"Like a Flower Swing" Partial
Ruhua's red dress is also a conspicuous feature. Jia Wei's favorite color since childhood was red.
"Red represents boldness and strength, and has the breath of life."
After starting the creation of the Ruhua series, Jia Wei's negative and gloomy emotions began to be released slowly, and his mental state gradually improved. From Jia Wei's inner Ruhua, he began to express everyone's inner Ruhua.
Jia Wei said that the exhibition "Like a Flower in the Wild" mainly expresses the blooming of a flower in nature. Later, he will try to create some surreal themes and expand the expression forms and themes of the painting. The next batch of flowers may be in dreams, in the interstellar world, or even travel through time and space.
As the metaverse and NFT have attracted more people's attention, Jia Wei is also known as the artist of the metaverse. This time, he also created many digitally native NFT Ruhua works and the upcoming book "Metaverse Force Aesthetics".
Just like what he wants to express, like a flower in the wild, blooming freely, he still has wildness and strength.
I hope that one day, as he imagined, from Jia Wei as a flower, to everyone as a flower, to everything as a flower, it will be a blooming world.
little surprise:
From April 23rd to June 18th, 2022, Jia Wei's "Three Lives Like a Flower·Metaverse Art Exhibition" will be held at Lab, UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing.
Teacher Jia Wei's studio hopes to create a "free and blooming world". Welcome to 798 check-in.
We also won 5 tickets for fans, which will be given out to 5 friends who commented randomly.
Have you ever had a rough time? How to reconcile with negative emotions? What would you like to say to Mr. Jia Wei?
Welcome to tell us in the message area.
One-click triple "Share", "Like" and "Comment"
Which big companies want to see in-depth secrets?
tell me next issue is you
*Copyright statement: [Except for original works, the articles, pictures, videos and music used in this account belong to the original right holders. Due to objective reasons, there may be improper use. For example, some articles or part of the quoted content of the article are not If you can get in touch with the original author in a timely manner, or if the author’s name and original source are marked incorrectly, etc., it is a non-malicious violation of the relevant rights and interests of the original obligee. Please understand the relevant obligee and contact us to deal with it in a timely manner, so as to jointly maintain a good network creation environment]