第61期 “表象的迷宫”油画专辑（2009年）
学术主持：付晓东
主题：李大方 王兴伟 王音 李松松 秦琦 仇晓飞 吕山川 袁远
新作：张远 张羽 李碧红 李浩
Issue No. 61(2009)
Theme: A Maze of Representation: Oil Painting Special
Academic Host: Fu Xiaodong
A.T: Li Dafang, Wang Xingwei, Wang Yin, Li Songsong, Qin Qi, Qiu Xiaofei, Lv Shanchuan, YuanYuan
A.N: Zhang Yuan, Zhang Yu, Li Bihong, Li Hao
“表象的迷宫”油画专辑
Fu Xiaodong
虽然我们可以用风格学、社会学等方法，去安全地解读一张充满了符号和信息的写实油画，但这并一定不适用于本专辑所推荐的艺术家。在艺术家开创性劳动的过程中，我更愿意用一种更加深入的方式来观察和描述他们的工作。他们经常按照某种套式去制造某个形象，不是出于逼真，而是通过审慎而节制地选取，指认有限的符号成为再现世界的表象。表象是再现的结果，是一种弗洛伊德学派意义上的无意识的对本质的压抑，真正要被再现的世界被表象自身所隐藏。表象不是指物本体，而是指客观对象不在主体面前呈现时，在观念中所保持的客观对象的形象，以及客体形象在观念中再现的结果。
在本专辑所推荐的艺术家的作品中，图像往往不能作为形象自身所携带意义作为解码，形象的意义被挪移。如果仅仅把形象作为符号交流的手段，或者有待破译的密码，这样往往会简化复杂作品之中的歧义和丰富之处，而是应该把他们看成是一种思维方式的展现，一个个人化的逻辑体系的建构，或者习惯性口语。表象最后成为介于感知和思维之间的桥梁，艺术家利用可以感知的形象制造出一段思维迷宫或者视觉观看符号的谜语，使得形象的表现性行为不可被呈现，形象自身原有的符号逻辑土崩瓦解，从而颠覆观看绘画作品的知识结构中的习惯性定式，以错综复杂的具体元素之间的组合关系，使观看者的思维陷入吊诡之中。
比如王兴伟近期《大划船》的系列作品中，图像和词汇之间的互换关系，画面的形象套用上个世纪七八十年代的中国老漫画的造型，而物品、人物、意义的组合却使用了民间俗语的连接方式，图像成为了一种比喻的修辞手法。他把注意力集中在“意义”的无穷个表演上，以不确定性和多意性来演绎和扩充图像，他的卡通造型如同加标签一样，介于形式和内容之间，介于可视和可读之间，使图像混合成为文本，彼此相互预设与纠缠，成为一个充满不稳定和多样性的表征。而王音则是使用中国近代油画史的绘画方法，延续学院教育的苏派画法，开辟出艳俗波普之后，F4、卡通的市场书写的当代绘画史的一条歧途。即使是一只芒果，在2008年的描绘下，也显得迥然意外。王音使绘画成为一种对绘画史的知识，他通过借用写实画派的人物形象、题材、风景，把具有艺术史典故的少数民族题材和裸体写生进行转化，以悖论或变异的方式组合成一种形式的内容。王音在绘画史巨大的语言储备系统中进行选择，寻找到一个言之有理的亚系统来颠覆现成的主流绘画发生史，用符号内部的参照系统来颠覆符号的系统，使内容、形象的习惯性的和谐组合中发生内在性断裂。
李大方的作品在北方城乡结合部的混合着并不诗意的自然，与并不精致的人工景观之中，始终贯穿着与此相异的另一条叙事性线索。现实被更加低调地再现为冰冷、粗糙和毫无意义的日常景观，而莫名其妙的异物和错位的人物形象的进入，形成了一种互相排斥、互相覆盖的关系。一切都是可辨别的熟悉的对象，是一种再现世界的统治的表象，但是对共同存在空间推理性的统一却在画面中消失，呈现出一种不可捉摸的意义上的丧失。李松松用厚涂和拼装的方式消解图像，画面中可阅读的部分来自于中西革命史老照片、DVD截图、新闻等传播媒介的二手现实。图像多半选择一种日常性场景，街境、饭店，但却由于历史时代的视觉记忆的痕迹，带有强烈的意识形态色彩。图像的复制者与图像的制造者处于不同的历史时期和文化背景，从而产生出外在于图像的立足点对他者的凝视。铁皮拼装的肢解，则用不同颜色覆盖画面，每一块都形成抽象绘画般的色块，从散点透视来获得绘画纯粹语言的快感。吕山川则采用“大叙事”的风格套式，描绘报纸新闻头版照片和广场的历史，这种套式保持着历史的尊严，从不涉及生活和普通民众。仇晓飞的个人化的历史记忆更像是再现的一个缺口、缝隙，滑入到一个被遮蔽的个人世界。代表着物质和精神双重贫瘠时代的家居物品、个人相册和生活经验，成为创作的主题。艺术家在意识形态的概念的缝隙里，建立了自己深入现实的秘密通道，这些个人的、具体的、局部的、琐碎的经验，成为了再现现实世界的确切的表象。
秦琦画面的怪异力量从不隐藏在任何奇异的魔怪之中，他把一些日常熟悉的却极端不相干的东西突然接近，制造出令人困窘和尴尬的场面。他试图找到了一个共同混合的场域，使鞍马与希腊众神像、仙鹤与杨杰的电话号码、空泳池与鲜橙多，能够获得一种协同关系和并置的合理性解释。他为这些只有在语言上能够相遇的东西，打开了一个不可思“意”的空间。当他为这些词的奇异性连接展现，做层层铺垫，煞费苦心的时候，也无意间成为现实的表象。中国的城郊结合部、街道、公园，这一切如同巨大的盆景，再度提供了最糟糕的无序，这些不合适的事物被如此合理地停放、排列和安置。这是一个物品堆积的密集之地，时间、历史被抽空之后的虚无之地，No-place ——一块现实之中的“非地”。袁远的绘画以栅栏交错的形式，将近乎于巴洛克的华丽夜景进行平行呈现，充满仪式化的图式后，是记忆与梦境的投射。静物的景象如同描述性的艺术，直觉的感受如同一种幻觉，他审慎地表达这个世界的表象，而将真实隐藏在其后。绘画在这里提供了一种现象学意义上的表象，以日常的静物进行对现实的逃避，即使人进入画面也应被视为静物。这就是我们的现实，一切毫无意义。
2009年11月
The Maze of Representation: Oil Painting Special（interpretation）
by FU Xiaodong
Plausible as we can to safely interpret a realistic painting full of signs and information with methods like stylistics it does not necessarily apply to the artists recommended by this special. I’m more willing to adopt a more profund way of expression to observe and describe their work during the innovative working process of the artists. They always produce some figure or image according to some mode, not for the sake of the verisimilitude, but for identifying limited signs and turning them into representations which reproduce the world through prudent and moderate choices. As the result of reproduction, representation is an unconscious repression in the sense of Freudian school.The real world which needs to be reproduced is hidden by the representation itself. Representation refers to the image of the object kept in the mind while the object is not presented in front of the subject and the result of the recurrence of the image of the object, instead of the matter itself.
In the works of artists recommended by this special, images cannot be deciphered as the meaning contained in themselves, If the images are treated as means of communication of signs or codes waiting to be decoded, it tend to simplify the ambiguity and abundance of complicated works,. Instead, they should be regarded as the manifest of a mode of thinking, a construction of an individual logical system, or idiomatic oral speech . Representation serves as a bridge between perception and thinking in the end. Artists use perceptible images to produce a maze of thoughts or a riddle of visual signs, making the representational behaviors of representation irrepresentational and the logics of image itself tumble and fall, thus subverting the habitual formula of the structure of knowlede to view the works of painting history and trapping the thoughts of viewers into paradox with complicated combined relationships among specific elements.
For example, take a look at the interchangeability of images and words in WANG Xingwei’s recent serial work The Big Rowing: the images follow the old style of Chinese comics in the 70s and 80s while the combination of objects, people and meanings adopting the linking approach of folk idioms, resulting in images becoming a metaphor. He focused his attention on the countless performances of “meanings” to perform and extend images with uncertainty and multiple interpretations, and created his cartoon to be tag-like, between the content and form, the visible and the readable, mixing images into a text full of uncertainty and variety, mutually predisposed and twisted together. On the other hand, WANG Yin adopted the painting method of modern oil painting history of China, and as a continuance of the Russian Style of institute education, developed a different road from the contemporary painting history styles of F4 and Cartoon Generation after the Gaudy Pop. In the description of 2008, even a mango appeared to be a distinctive surprise. WANGYin turned the painting into a knowledge of the painting history. With the help of characters, subjects and scenery of realistic style of painting, he transformed the s ethnic minorities’ subject and nude portraits as the allusions in the art history into a content of forms in the way of paradox and variation. WANG Yin chose from the hug language reserve system of painting history and found a reasonable sub-system to subvert the current mainstream painting history, subverting the system of signs with the reference system inside signs in order to produce an internal severance in the habitual harmonious combination of contents and images.
LI Dafang’s works present a mixture of outskirts of northern cities and the non-poetic nature, with another different narrative clue throughout the non-delicate artificial sights. The reality is reproduced in a low key to be the cold, coarse and meaningless daily sights, and the inexplicable foreign objects and misplaced characters joins in to produce a mutually repelling and overlapping relationship. All are discernable familiar objects, a representation of the domination of the reproduced world, yet the disappearance of unison of coexistent space reasoning presents a elusive loss of meaning. LI Songsong employed the methods of impasto and assembly to dissolve images, in which the readable parts originate from the second realities of media like old photos of eastern and western revolutionary histories, DVD captures and news. Most of the chosen images show some kinds of daily scenes, streets or hotels, but with a strong ideological touch for their traces of visual memories of the historical times. The reproducer of images lives in different historical time and cultural background from those of the producers of images, resulting in a standpoint outside the image to gaze upon others. The dismemberment of the iron sheet assembly used a variety of colors to cover the image, with each segment turning into an abstract and painting-like color lump, obtaining the thrill of pure painting language through scattered perspective. LV Shanchuan adopted the style of “big narrative” to describe front page photos of newspapers and the history of the plaza, a style that maintains the dignity of history without involving lives and ordinary people. QIU Xiaofei’s personalized historical memory is more like a reproduced gap or breach to slip into a sheltered personal world. The symbols of time of both material and mental barrenness – household articles, personal albums and life experiences, become the subjects of creation. Artists build their secret paths deep into reality in the conceptual gap of ideologies, while those personal, specific and partial trivial experiences become the definite representations to reproduce the real world.
The strange power in QIN Qi’s images is never hidden in any strange monsters and demons. He suddenly put familiar yet totally irrelevant things together to create embarrassment and awkwardness. He tried to find a field for joint mixture, placing pommel and Greek gods, crane and YANG Jie’s telephone number, and empty swimming pool and orange juice together yet achieving a reasonable explanation for this coordination and juxtaposition. He opened an unimaginable space for things that could never meet except linguistically, and his great efforts to show the strange links of those words also unconsciously become the representation of the reality. The outskirts of cities, streets and parks, all of which like a giant potted plant, once again provide the worst disorder – inappropriate things placed, lined and arranged with such reasonableness. It’s a place for cluster of things as well as a no-place in reality while time and history get totally drained out. YUAN Yuan’s paintings offer a parallel presentation of the almost Baroque night views of grandeur in the form of interlacing fences, a projection of memories and drams after the ritualized schema. With views of static objects like a descriptive art and instinctive feelings like an illusion, he prudently expressed the representation of this world while hiding the reality behind it. Painting offers a representation in the sense of phenomenology, avoiding the reality through daily static objects with people entering the image also regarded as static objects. This is our utterly meaningless reality.
Nov，2009
Beijing