His paintings allude to Japanese manga, Western pop culture, and Chinese traditions—with a dollop of fashion and camp.
Visiting Ding Shilun’s studio, in an industrial area of west London, is like stepping into a dream—or, possibly, a fantastical nightmare. In one huge canvas, a naked man leans back on a chair waving something that the artist identifies as “Voldemort’s wand,” from, and spitting a fountain of water that is meant to represent human souls. Four other figures grimace and shriek, and if you look closely, fairies are pulling some of them by the hair—a reference to the film, Shilun explains.
The artist responsible for this cross-cultural, decadent mash-up is a soft-spoken, 25-year-old wearing a fluffy paisley sweater. His paintings aren’t straightforwardly allegorical or biographical; they represent scenes from Shilun’s own personal mythology, which alludes to Japanese manga, Western pop culture, and Chinese religious and cultural traditions. There is also a generous dollop of fashion and camp. “I consider camp as the perfect combination of spirit, body, and materials,” Shilun says.
a sugar-coated bullet. It looks sweet and delicate but when you come closer, you’re like, what happened here?”Shilun says that he has vivid dreams, though he never refers to them literally. He has no idea what a work will be until he starts it, often by painting an eye. “It’s like a puzzle game, it comes piece by piece,” he says. “Sometimes I finish a painting and I don’t even know where I started from.” He points out that the drive to create narrative is as old as art, mythology, or religion.