Artists
| Rajesh P Kargutkar |
Archive for the ‘Exhibition Essay’ Category
Exhibition 12: Common Space
Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013Artist Details – Spirits of the Steppe
Thursday, April 25th, 2013About the artists
Erdenebayar Monkhor, also known as Bayar (b. 1968, Baruun-Urt, Mongolia) is a well-known artist in Asia, who received formal art education at the Fine Arts College and Fine Art Institute of Ulaanbaatar. For Bayar, the horse has been the central subject of his painting. Through his semi-abstract horse paintings, he not only expresses his connection for the animal but also uses it as a metaphor for Mongolian identity and as a way of exploring his own childhood memories and spirituality. Bayar has participated internationally in numerous group and two person shows, and has held highly successful solo exhibitions in Bangkok, Singapore, Phnom Penh and Mumbai. He was also selected to represent Mongolia at Beijing’s Biennale in June 2008 and Taiwan’s Fusing Biennale in September 2008. His solo show in Singapore in 2007 was a huge success with nearly all paintings sold out.
Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, or Mugi (b. 1967, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia) is one of Mongolia’s most famous female artists. The female body and its power often inspire her evocative and dynamic artwork. For Mugi, this subject has given her the opportunity to create a profoundly personal narrative through which to explore questions of spirituality. Her work also reflects her childhood experiences, traditional Mongolian medicine, the wisdom of folk tales and legends, as well as the healing power of nature. Mugi has exhibited her works internationally in group shows, two person shows, and has had successful solo shows in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Japan and Mongolia. She was selected to participate in Taiwan’s Fusing Barn Biennale in September 2008. She has also recently participated in Women In-Between: Asian Women Artists 1984-2012 at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum 2012. This will be her first exhibition in Singapore.
Essay – It’s Past and Present – Contemporary Tibetan Art 2012
Friday, April 20th, 2012The LUXE Art Museum features works by 7 artists Bamazaxi, Dezhoin, Han Shuli, Norbu Sithar, Tsering Namgyai, Tsedan Jiumei and Yu Youxin, who make up the exhibition “It’s Past and Present: Contemporary Tibetan Art 2012”. This exhibition denotes the fifth collaboration between the Luxe Art Museum and the Tibetan Association of Fine Arts. On top of inviting artists who blaze new trails and artists who persevere on their paths, the Museum had also specially included a folk thangka painter in this exhibition. The concurrent display of traditional and contemporary paintings facilitates a lucid survey of Tibetan painting past and present, allowing viewers to discern the continuity in Tibetan painting and the constructive nature of its culture. It also makes for an efficient and vivid overview that fosters an understanding for the arduous journey that Tibetan art had made through its evolution from a sacrosanct art to a secularized, human-centered art.
Tibet sits at a high altitude: aloft, and cold with flimsy air. It is also the place that is nearest to the Sun. It is inadvertent that visitors who had just arrived would get altitude sickness. One experiences a sensation of levitation, and becomes bewildered by the illusion that one is unfettered by gravity. One’s soul seems to break free and finds its way out of its worldly confines, taking with it one’s imagination that begins to soar into realms of fantasies and illusions that are mysterious and abstruse. No boundaries of any sort exist. When one approaches the appreciation of classical Tibetan art in such a mind state, one is sure to gain a profound and intuitive understanding of its enigmatic paintings, experiencing a joyous, child-like appreciation filled with innocence, reveling in a feast of the eyes.
The Tibetans draw inspiration from their daily lives. Creating their paintings amidst immense high plateaus, their thoughts become detached from the prosaic, and their imaginations leap into the fantastical. Tibetan artists transform their homeland into a unique painting that is sui generis. One could reside in it, and one could wander through it. This land rivals that of the Pure Land (of utmost happiness) and can truly be regarded as paradise on earth. Through generations, the inhabitants of Tibet had lived their lives to the utmost, treasuring their blessings, and exuding a unique enthusiasm towards life. This ardent sentiment runs deep in the same vein as the Tibetans’ exclusive culture and tradition. To this day, Tibet has preserved and kept alive this rare cultural perspective. Anyone who has visited Tibet with an open mind will undoubtedly come away with a heartfelt reflections and lament the glaring difference between the Tibetans and the world without in many areas, including life philosophy, life attitude, and values. Traditional Tibetan painting sowed its seeds in such deep traditions and was nourished in a latitudinous environment that resulted in an art that is unparalleled and sanguine. Such a wonderful tradition has been ceaseless and endured the sands of time, walking steadily upon its path from Tibet’s yester years (of several thousand years ago) and continues to be vibrant and active in the present amongst its people. Nonetheless, the Tibet of today is experiencing rapid changes as it flung itself open to the outer world. Traditional Tibetan culture that is one of content and self-fulfillment is colliding head-on with an aggressive consumer culture and market. The result of this confrontation is a steadfast and dignified tradition that adapts itself to the market. Take for instance the example of traditional Tibetan painting, the thangka. This classical art form that finds its roots back in the seventh century has finally succumbed to commercialization in the 21st century. The intriguing part is this: the establishment of thankga, through its development and its commercialization, had always been propelled by revolutionary impulses.
Tibetan painters were also pious secular devotees or monks. They whole-heartedly abide by the regulations delineated in the Buddhist scriptures that govern the character and conduct of the painter; they regarded painting as an act of utmost merit, a channel that conveyed the earnestness of their religious belief. In the past, the act of painting was akin to that of a religious ritual: an auspicious date had to be picked, and before the creative act was begun the artist had to undergo a cleansing ritual; incense was burned and sutras were chanted. During the preparation of the sketch, the patron of the painting would make generous offerings, and play religious music to signify that the spirit of the deity had been captured onto the painting. After the painting had been completed, a specific sutra had to be written in calligraphy on the back of the painting, in the same position where the main Buddhist deity had been depicted. A consecration ceremony ensued, wherein a lama would have been invited to chant the sutras and bless the painting. The painting of the deity was then perceived as spiritual and sacred, and regarded as an object of worship. In recent years, thangka painting shops that specialize in specific schools of painting have opened for business. The master ateliers and his students demonstrate the art of thangka painting in the shops, omitting the solemn religious rituals. The sale of one’s creative work is a commercial act tied in with one’s trade. With the adaptation to the demands of tourism, the survival space of this traditional skill had been expanded. It is likely this adaptation became impetus for the transformation of traditional thangka’s creative philosophy, bringing about a transmutation of this art form, radically increasing its potential as a commercial work of art. The sacrosanct principle of traditional painting had finally broken loose of its tethers, mortal beings and the deities alike were able
to enjoy “sweet dew that pleases the eye.” The discovery of this phenomenon in Tibetan art brings surprise and elation.
The Contemporary Tibetan Art today shows due adequacy in the degree of openness. Artists are free to choose their subject and adopt an artistic style of their calling. There is freedom to pursue and embrace the various avant-garde “isms”; here one can almost witness the reactions and responses towards almost every artistic style or school that can be found in the world. Contemporary Tibetan painting steeps in a media saturated era and an age of consumerism. Its artists enjoy similar rights and freedom as their peers in other locations or who pursue different artistic expressions. Take for example Lhasa, it is an art space that brims with a multitude of artistic styles, formats, subjects, medium and artistic philosophies, and as such contemporary Tibetan painting had enjoyed a robust and unfettered growth. However, the deepest driving forces that will affect the future of contemporary Tibetan painting are not the buzz and clamor that surrounds it, but what transpires within the artists: their state of mind as well as the heartfelt effort they bring to their art.
As mentioned above, the tradition of classical Tibetan art has neither ceased nor stagnated. Neither is it xenophobic nor does it seal itself from the outside world. When this unique Tibetan spirit that has deep roots and a long, continuous history is applied in an appropriate manner, it is sure to evolve to a new significance that finds no precedence. Indeed, many contemporary Tibetan artists had benefitted greatly from their immersion in tradition, which nurtured their art creations. When a society hurtles through rapid changes, its culture is often rendered helpless. Tibet’s traditions had already weathered a myriad of challenges put forth by its modernization, how is contemporary Tibetan art to interpret an objective, unembellished face of Tibet in a positive and effective manner? The premise is a realistic and authentic observation of and participation in what the contemporary Tibetans are commonly experiencing in their hearts and souls, and only then can they proceed to engage in an artistic portrayal that conveys their deliberations. Several of the participating artists in this exhibition had responded to this challenge in their oeuvre, each with his unique expression and style; their works sing of the songs reverberating deep in their hearts:
Back in 2008 the Luxe Art Museum in Singapore had mounted a major exhibition “Realms of Purity. Realms of Experience: From Divinity to Humanity, an exhibition of Contemporary Tibetan Art”. The title of the exhibition reveals the academic criteria that the museum used to guide the curation of artists and exhibits. In 2012, the Luxe Art Museum once again hosts an exhibition of contemporary Tibetan painting, pursuing its ambition in promoting contemporary Tibetan art in Southeast Asia. The exhibition is titled “Past and Present: Contemporary Tibetan Art 2012” and is inviting Tibetan artists who engages in a variety of art styles (both traditional and contemporary) to showcase the evolution of Tibetan painting up till the present time.
Essay – The Poetry of Vitality, Restrospective Exhibition by Jia Haoyi
Friday, December 9th, 2011The Poetry Of Vitality
The horse paintings and landscapes by veteran ink painter Jia Haoyi express timeless natural energy and the drama of nature. While his landscapes are often dark, broody places and his figures are engaging, it is the horse that most fully articulates his quest for cultural and emotional freedom.
From Mao Zedong’s talks on art and literature at the Yan’an Forum in May 1942 through to the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, the face of Chinese painting changed dramatically. During the Mao era, art and literature were to “serve the people” and were considered major weapons in class struggle and revolution. This struggle, however, would eventually destroy the lives of thousands of artists andwriters for whom politics was of secondary importance to their art, but it would also plant the seeds for another ‘cultural revolution’ among artists in the 1980s, one that would eventually propel contemporary Chinese art into the heart of the international art world.
By the early 1980s, the struggle to maintain traditional Chinese ink painting as a viable central force in contemporary art was already underway. The voices for artistic freedom in all forms of art—led most vociferously by members of the avant garde The Stars Group in 1979 —established the foundations for artistic change that some now consider more revolutionary than anything that had gone before. As the sculptor Wang Keping, one of the founding members of The Stars Group, wrote at the time, “The darkness of the past and the brightness of the future, this should be our lesson and our responsibility.”
Ink painters, too, felt the breath of artistic liberation for the first time since the early 1950s. By the late 1970s, many ink painters had begun to make art that was not burdened by memories of class struggle, the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957–1960), or the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) but guided by Wang’s words, from “the darkness of the past” to “the brightness of the future.”
Among those for whom post-Cultural Revolution change was a lifeline to a renewed artistic life was Jia Haoyi, who was born in 1938, in Hebei province. Today, he is regarded as one of the major ink painters working in China whose style embraces something of both the formality and experimental of ink’s traditions in his horse and landscape paintings as well as the free expression that is most closely related to Western abstraction. Jia’s art, however one wishes to interpret it, is a sturdy bridge across two art worlds. One can see this clearly in such bold paintings as the Iron Flow (1999), The River (2005), and The Grasslands (Open Country) (2005).
Jia recalls clearly the constant political and social struggles from the early 1950s onwards and how these affected his own artistic production. He says that some of the experiences of his youth are reflected in a number of his works, noting that this is shown in how his work “went from freedom to darkness. The freedom in my paintings then stemmed from my childhood. You know, horses running free and nature, life wasn’t restricted for me. I lived free in it. My memory of this time was always big,” says Jia. “During the Cultural Revolution you painted what you were told to paint. Then there was no theory of human nature, no human feeling in art, no humanity.”
Freedom, the vagaries of politics, and the encouragement of teachers were central to Jia’s later becoming a professional artist. First he emulated his “teacher from primary school. By 1951, I was doing comic art,” says Jia. “When I was in secondary school, I asked the head of the art department when could I become a professional artist, but he told me it would take me too long. So I left school and took the test to be a train driver but could not pass the physical. In 1954, I went to an industrial school. I went to Beijing for the wrong reasons and worked in industrial management. While I was studying, I went to the library to look at books, especially Russian art books. I was inspired by those books and the works in them so I started to paint every Sunday.”
Talking with Jia in his studio in Beijing, which is part of the museum that bears his name, one senses a man who has met the trials of adversity with stoicism. Perhaps this was helped by the fact that in the mid-1950s when he worked for the government, he “had no worries about money. I could sketch people, the town, landscapes,everything. In 1956, I used ill health to get out of my job and I went home to Hebei where I painted. I didn’t copy. If I saw a horse or a landscape or human being as subjects, I painted them until I felt that this was really my own work.”
In 1958, Jia enrolled in the Beijing Art Institute where he trained in the traditions of Chinese literati painting. Here he learned the skills that were the foundation of China’s great ink tradition. Moving around his studio with him talking ink and brushes and color and ideas and plans for new work, one feels that Jia is entirely engrossed at that moment in the timeless activity of one of the richest and lengthiest art histories in the world. When he speaks of the past, he does so with youthful clarity. In Beijing, he says, he studied the masterpieces of many genres of ink painting and murals and frescos, from dramatic landscapes with their majestic waterfalls and craggy rocks to solitary figures and even single items of flora and fauna as well as the importance of the proper use of positive and negative space in creating balance in a painting.
Jia’s intense studies and early professional career not only taught him the skills and techniques of ink, but also showed him its dynamic visual potential and fuelled his desire to develop a style that would speak to a broad audience, to a modern world. Although hampered professionally by the brutal realities of the Cultural Revolution, Jia innately understood that things would change.
“After the Cultural Revolution I knew that my direction had to change and it did. At that time, in the late 1970s, I wondered how to pursue a new direction because Chinese painting was weak then. As a student you had to paint the styles of teachers or the masters. So you were always in the shadow of the teacher or the master. At that time, when I looked around, I saw that people were researching flowers and birds, but not many people were painting people. In the late 1970s, I began to research how to paint figures in a free style. But it was during the 1980s that I really began to evolve and to paint more abstract work. I wanted to let go in my art, to be free and bold in my line and my forms. I realized painting big abstract work was difficult. I went back to large works but they were less abstract. Now I am trying to go back to the bolder, more abstract works that I began a few years ago.”
It took many centuries for the art of traditional Chinese painting to change, which it did from the mid-19th century onwards, leaving behind some of the exclusiveness of the practice of the art form and the masters who perpetuated its values. Jia Haoyi does not reject the tradition and its core values of techniques and aesthetics; indeed he looks to the classical masters of Song dynasty landscape painting, for example, as inspirations. Rather Jia looks back at the way in which tradition was manifested through the copying of teachers’ and masters’ work and so stifled true individual freedom of expression. For Jia, traditions and rules are not only meant to be challenged but are also meant to be broken when the opportunity arises to move such things as technique, form, and aesthetics forward into a new age for new generations to be inspired. It has also always been important for Jia to show a new way to realize and visualize tradition, to show that ink painting does not need to be the studied and calculating art of earlier dynasties but an art that speaks to people’s own emotions and their desire for freedom.
The first impression of Jia Haoyi’s landscape, horse, or ox paintings is of immense natural energy, power, and strength and how the sense and vitality of freedom and deeply felt emotions flow. At the same time, one also notices how much his style might be related to Western abstract expressionism, but it is not of it, rather it is of the art of calligraphy, a form that is deeply important for Jia not just for his art but also for his identity as a Chinese artist.
“Yes, calligraphy is there. It should be there in all Chinese ink painting. As I try to use bold strokes most of the time then the fi rst stroke is as if I am making calligraphy, making a character and I build from there. But I am not painting a mountain, or the land, or a horse or an ox, I am painting my emotion,” he says. “I paint landscape by starting with a sketch but I don’t want to paint realistic landscapes. I want to abstract the form to reveal more of my feelings through my landscape. I don’t know why but I have different kind of emotional release when I paint horses. Perhaps it has something to do with the freedom of horses.”
Jia believes that a painter of landscapes and horses must meet with his subject face to face. So he began to travel to Qinghai and Inner Mongolia to see those places and people that had—and still do—inspired his imagination and his brush. Experience has taught Jia that his art, although increasingly abstract, does not mean that it should be simple, merely because a few lines can capture the physical likeness of his subject however large that subject may be. What has always been essential for Jia is to express the spirit of his subject be it plant, person, landscape, ox, or horse. For, as Jia says, making a physical likeness is more akin to craft than art and if one cannot capture the spirit then the work is not really art. No amount of studying horses and landscapes by the masters or the example of one great individual artist can replace experience. The ox and yak are strong and the horse is sturdy and fast: How does one really capture the spirit of these animals—and landscape—that are so important in Chinese painting if one hasn’t seen them in their natural environment? This was a question that Jia Haoyi had to answer and could do so only by traveling there.
“I went to Qinghai and Inner Mongolia in the early 1980s. I had begun to paint horses at the end of the 1970s. I discovered a number of difficulties in painting horses at that time. One was how to make the horse free. If it was too abstract in form, no one would accept it [as the horse] at that time and I would be criticized,” says Jia. “I had to retain clear forms for people. So in the 1980s I researched figurative art and focused on that but I still experimented with horses and oxen. It was in 1988 that I finally began to feel comfortable with my horses. But there are no Chinese painters who have influenced me in the painting of my horses. For me I can release my emotions through the horse. If you’re a human being, you want to be free. Even an old lady wishes she could run a few steps.”
Jia Haoyi’s horses do not take a few steps. They gallop across the grasslands—powerful, strong, and free: sometimes it is as if they are flying, these beasts of legend that have carried kings to the hunt and soldiers to war. According to the scholar Chen Chuanxi of the Chinese People’s University, during the past 2,000 years the depiction of the horse in Chinese art has gone through four turning points: first in the Han dynasty, the second in the Tang dynasty and subsequent dynasties, and the third in the 20th century with the art of Xu Beihong (1895–1953), and now the fourth with the art of Jia Haoyi.4
There is joy clearly in Jia’s horses. But the expression of that joy starts somewhere, for Jia it is first with perspective, which is essential to everything. “You have to get your perspective first. You get the horse to run, gallop, or just stand, but you must get your perspective correct. It also depends on the feeling of the kind of horse you wish to paint. After the first stroke I follow the line,” says Jia, who has striven for a clear line that is simple but strong, one that helps him to refine essence and emotion in both his representations of horses and landscape. “In previous eras, artists strove, through outlines, ink and color, to portray the physical manifestation of the horse. In contrast, Lao Jia [Jia Haoyi] uses ink to express the essence of the horse. His approach is philosophical and spiritual as well as aesthetic. His deft, forceful and abstract brushstrokes convey action and momentum—his horse live and move— but at the same time, his use of very thick ink and apparently wild, random strokes seem to communicate an outpouring of emotion.”5
One sees all that clearly in his wonderfully vibrant horse paintings, in black ink, such as Iron Flow (1999) and the magical Bountiful (2005), where herds of horses gallop toward the viewer as if to escape the embrace of their paper worlds; and in The Magnificent (2004) and Ballet Dance II (2005), both of which show Jia at his humorous best. When he adds colored washes to the rider, mostly of red and blue, as in On the Grasslands (2005), Woman of the Grassland (2006), and The Magnificent Rider (2006), it adds another spirited dimension to his work. In such works we see human and horse acting in unison, almost as one, as they tear across the land in pursuit of game. The rich abstract-expressionist image lends itself well to China’s new dynamic visual culture.
A landscape such as his Towering (1994) is a dramatic example of Jia’s ability to suggest the enormity of nature with a few lines and colors. Here the immense red, blue, and black forms have a craggy ferocity about them that hints at the primeval forces of nature bubbling below the surface. The large ink-and-color-on-paper landscape On the Grassland (1986), made in Qinghai almost a decade before Towering, has a gentler feel to it. Here the energy and power one feels is not from massive rock formations that reach for the heavens but rather from the sheer sense of space, a world of grassland and river and powerful beasts filling the earth to the horizon. The yak and ox, according to Jia, when grazing and moving, have about their postures a unique strength that is so different from that of the horse. The size and sheer physical power that is an integral part of such works are very different from the physical reality of the man himself.
Although not a physically big man, Jia Haoyi exudes a steady strength and determination in his presence. It is the sheer confidence of a man who knows the secrets of perseverance and overcoming.
“For a man who paints dramatic horses and bold landscapes, his physical strength is measured in his paintings,” says Jia.
No matter how often one may ask Jia about those who have influenced his art directly, he always says, “No one because I have looked at all kinds of paintings and artists, both Chinese and Western, but there was no one who I can say really influenced me,” he says. “There are a lot of artists I have seen who were copying artworks but they can’t find their voice because they are trapped by their master’s works and the masterpieces they copy. I didn’t want that to happen to me.”
According to Chen Chuanxi, Jia “has maintained his integrity” as an artist so that his “success can be partly attributed to his refusal to commercialize his artistic output.” This is a fine tribute to a man for whom art has been a road of personal discovery and a constant search to understand his own emotions and to achieve the freedom, both personal and artistic, that was for so long denied him. Even the terror of Mao Zedong’s talk was not enough to still Jia Haoyi’s brush.
~ Written by Mr Ian Findlay-Brown (Asia Art News)
Essay – Beyond Logic: The Art of Hai Rihan
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010Beyond Logic: The Art of Hai Rihan
As the Chinese art critic Jia Fangzhou has pointed out, it is difficult to explain Hai Rihan’s paintings. The images presented by the artist are suffused with a primitive aspect, a certain wanton bizarreness and wildness. They defy lay viewers’ understanding, and make fellow artists shake their heads. Yet, in a sense, to explicate his paintings is also an uncomplicated matter, because there is no necessity to decipher the school of art to which he belongs, or to delineate the sources of his technique or his symbolism. Hai Rihan does not produce art for art’s sake. His art is who he is, drawn from a secret place deep within him. Just as poets, creative writers and musicians give voice to their emotive worlds through verse, prose and musical composition, Hai expresses himself by means of painting.
Hai Rihan uses paintings to tell us the stories of his life – his inner secrets, daydreams and mysterious thoughts. How do animals see humans? What is comfort? What is furthest away from you? Once you realise that he actually pursues such totally non-logical questions with earnestness, it becomes easy to approach his art.
Mongolian blood in all its unrestrained vigour, and charged with primeval, boundless emotions, runs in Hai Rihan’s veins. The Hulunbuir grasslands nurture his body and nourish his soul. “My grasslands are unlike those envisaged by others. I hope I can present the living grasslands with an aura of wildness.” Certainly, Hai has never given us a straightforward depiction of the “grasslands.” He just will not waste canvas space on simply showing a vast wilderness under a sky that stretches into infinity. His concern is with the living things in this landscape, i.e., the herdsmen, cattle, horses and sheep. Theirs is a spirit tinged with primal wildness, which the artist rapaciously pursues.
The fact is, the pure simplicity in Hai Rihan’s paintings is very evident. Initially, the only figures are he and his family members, including his mother, uncle, wife and daughter. Much of the time, the artist shows himself in the form of a bull, a metaphor for his own soul that appears in almost every scene. On rare occasions, he wears a hat, and sits on the back of a scrawny horse with striking eyes. Jia Fangzhou vividly comments on these figures thus: “They are the denizens of Hai Rihan’s inner world, passionate actors who come at the beck and call of the artist. He only relies on them to create the psychological ambience of the moment, to articulate his psychic reality at the pertinent point in time, which may be one of solitude, placidity or fervour. He never paints anything that has nothing to do with the psyche, for he sees artistic activities as a direct way of life, an experience of life itself, a rumination on everyday existence.” [“A Rover of the Psychic Realm”, in Visits to Studios (1998), pg 2]
From the mid and late 1990s onwards, more nude women come to be featured in Hai Rihan’s paintings as beautiful protagonists. Like elves or a fantasy, they run freely and unabashedly, intertwining and gambolling, while the cattle and sheep around them seem to be overtaken by panic. This is no chaotic fata morgana, for to Hai, the women are a symbol of love – love that is free and uninhibited. Even though the world often responds with a puzzled look, the artist has no qualms about parading the beauty of love, much like the female spirits in his works.
With the onset of the 21st century, the modes of Hai’s psychic expression have grown more diverse. He converses with and romances the characters in his mind via different forms, such as rock paintings, murals, facial paintings and sacrificial rituals. Hai’s soul can never settle down in quietude, but time and again, will take him deep into the source of all things. Whether we call them fantasies or weird thoughts, what have emerged from this fountainhead have to be taken seriously when they take shape on the canvas in various ways, for such imagery is spiritual in nature to a certain extent, and renders mysterious phantasms visible. Hai’s artistic expression is instinctive, wondrous and intriguing to behold, albeit unsophisticated. It comes across as now almost childish, now archaic, now insane.
We sense that Hai is distorting natural morphologies arbitrarily, producing misplaced eyes, stalactitic breasts, detached limbs, and so on. It makes us wonder why. The fact is, Hai never begins with considerations about how his painting will look in the end. That is never what the original consciousness is about. He simply indulges fully in the self-performance of the primal consciousness, and then presents it as it is, in all its authenticity and plenitude. Even though the images we see are devoid of logic and order, and sometimes almost downright bizarre, they are, to the artist himself, the best embodiments of his consciousness and emotions.
In the ink and acrylic pieces from 2007 that are centred around facial paintings (or “masks”), complete formlessness prevails, and the only identifiable objects are the eyes, which are actually a classic signifier in his oeuvre. Firefly-like eyes attached to the heads of human or animal figures [seen in “Autumn” (1995)] were already a distinct feature in Hai’s works in the 1990s. From then on, they gradually developed into an independent entity, showing themselves like ubiquitous wraiths in paintings like “Illusions” (2001), “Tree of Life” (2003), etc. If the figure of the bull is Hai’s body, the eyes would be none other than his psyche. The artist uses his eyes not only to see this dazzling world of ours, but also to listen and to think. Hence, the images he paints do not represent the way things look as initially apprehended by the visual faculty, but have been reassembled mentally, such that they look phantasmagoric, richly colourful and totally altered.
“Impressions” (2000) is of particular interest, as we can finally see here that the artist is willing to adopt a little conventional mentality and paint a “proper” face or two. In the four-tiered configuration of this painting, the most “normal” face is the first one on the left in the third row from the top, given that its eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth and even nasal hair are all in their normal positions. The tightly shut lips and the eyes, partially open and glancing sideways, offer endless attributive possibilities, inviting us to surmise on the mental state of the person behind this face at this precise moment. For the second visage in the same row, however, the artist pays more attention to its general bulging roundness and the indolent facial expression, which is why the brows are rendered haphazardly and the nose is almost non-existent. By the third face, the artist has moved into transcendence; he seeks only to show us a detached, contemplative look with closed eyes. The final face marks a breaking out from the human body itself, as is evident from its misplaced eyes, the tiny hole of a mouth, and the smudge that remains where the nose has been planed off. It speaks to us of a soul that has opened its eyes to gaze upon the world once again. Now, when we examine the other three tiers in the painting, no other “proper” face can be found. Instead, we are confronted by eyes wide open, fuzzy visages or ghost-like images. It does not seem that the artist intends to convey any specific look in the first place. He is merely paying attention, second by second, to whichever part of the body to which his mind is having the strongest reaction.
After all, when one is in a certain state of mind, there will always be certain “elements” that jump out from the pre-established order of things to form new motifs on their own. Eyes are a predominant feature of the face, which is in turn a predominant feature in our life. It is in this transmigration of salient features that Hai Rihan expounds, as it were, on the multifarious intricacies of the inner world. Clearly, his works are not combinations which strive to conform to logic. Rather, his paintings correspond to the need to construct anew a stage for the assemblage of soliloquies.
Hai’s opuses range from the mellow and gentle to the rough and tempestuous. We need to exercise patience in order to appreciate their emotional intensity. While it is possible to appreciate his colourfully decorated images on a superficial level, one has to focus most intently before the internally conflicting aspects thereof truly sink in. Consider, for example, the two pieces entitled “Life I” & “Life II” (2007). The visual pandemonium of colours and shapes here is more than meets the eye; it is really a struggle between beauty and ugliness, and between freedom and panic. As the female nudes writhe unreservedly and unrestrainedly, their sexuality is greatly heightened by their orange skin. However, as beautiful and free as they are, these figures are surrounded by countless gazing eyes, including both soft and hideous ones. While the artist is always eager to portray a world of the unbridled, unencumbered, relaxed and happy, he is often also haunted in actual execution by the conflicts in the depths of his soul. As a result, there is ugliness in the midst of beauty, as well as violent restlessness in the midst of gentle touches.
The artistic imagination of Hai Rihan has been baptized by, and filtered through, his soul, such that painting and dreaming are simultaneous acts. He allows his shapes and images to each take on a life of their own. Regardless of whether they are eyes, hands, thighs or breasts, or whether they twist, rotate through the air or become entangled, the artist allows them to materialise and mutate spontaneously, and does not intervene. He merely sets up a fabulous stage for them, where they may each engage in articulations–of bitter sorrow, excitement, perplexity, privation–or by which they go all out to fulfill themselves through giving expression to souls which have had an emotional encounter. This emotional release is one that breaks free from the gravitational pull of the planet in the midst of a powerful rumbling, as it were. It is essentially a release from melancholic conventions, an entry into the sphere of Romanticism that is wholly at one with the primordial Cosmos.
A case in point would be the Number IV in the “Images of Dunhuang” series (2002). So much is going on in this painting, yet the main theme seems quite unrelated to religion. Here, once again, we see the female nudes that are so readily summoned by the painter’s mind, as well as the entanglement of human and animal bodies. Nothing is what it seems, and one can hardly tell which is what. By painting in a daze, so to speak, the artist has led viewers into his fantasies. I feel excited each time I see Hai’s work. Often, I find myself searching for something on the paper, my eyes wide open. It holds everything, that which is clearly discernible, and that which is somewhat fuzzy. In viewing the painting, one becomes something of a gatherer of flowers or a treasure hunter, enjoying the process and having an adventure at the same time. Art is like the human psyche, and can be so illogical. Art also inspires, despite the fact that it is sometimes abstruse and difficult to pin down.
As the French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) once said, “When an artist expresses emotions, what he creates is a self-contained world. The painting he produces, not unlike a book, bears inherent meaning, no matter where it happens to appear.”
Chen Jiazi
Art Critic
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不需要逻辑的艺术
正如中国美术评论家贾方舟所说，要解释海日汗的画是困难的，在我们面前的作品，充满了原始意味的狂怪和粗野，常人实难理解，同行也会摇头。但从另外一种角度来说，解释他的画又是一项非常单纯的行为，因为不需要为他梳理什么画风流派、技法源头或象征手段，他不是一个为了艺术而艺术的人，他的艺术就是他自己，他内心深处的秘密，就像诗人、文学家、音乐家用韵律、文字或音符来表达他们的情感世界一样，海日汗的表达方式就是图画。
海日汗是用图画向我们讲述他整个生命中的故事——他的内心秘密，他的白日梦游，他的奇思怪想。动物看人是什么样？什么是舒服？什么离你最远？如果你知道他会如此认真地追究这样没有任何逻辑的问题，你也就容易走向他的画作了。
海日汗这位蒙古后裔，流淌着奔腾豪放的血液，蓄积着原始苍茫的情感。呼伦贝尔大草原养育了他的身体，也滋润了他的灵魂。“我的草原不是一般人眼里的草原，我希望能用野性的气息，表现活的草原。”的确，海日汗从未给我们一张直率描写“草原”的画作，天苍苍、野茫茫的景色不足以让海日汗浪费画面，他在意的是存在于这个景色中的生命——牧人和牛马羊，他贪婪地追寻着她们的气息，那些带有几分原始野性的精灵。
其实，海日汗的画十分单纯，最初画中的角色只是他和他的家人：母亲、舅舅、老婆、女儿。至于他自己，大多数是一头公牛的化身，一个几乎场场露面、自我灵魂象征的喻体，偶尔，他也会带着帽子骑在一匹瘦骨嶙峋却大眼突神的马背上，不过极为少见。贾方舟评述得很形象：“他们都是海日汗心灵世界的公民，是画家召之即来的情绪演员，他只借助他们创造他此时的心理氛围，表现他此时或孤寂、或平静、或热切的心灵现实。他从来不画与心灵无关的东西，因为艺术活动在他看来是一种直接的生命方式，一种对生命的体验，对生活的反刍”（“心灵世界的漫游者”《画室探访第二页》1998）。
九十年代中后期开始，更多的裸体女人作为美丽的主人公走进了海日汗的画面，她们毫无顾忌、自由自在地奔跑着、纠缠着、跳跃着，似精灵，像梦幻，而周围的牛羊却是一副惊恐万分的神态。这不是一个混沌的梦幻，对于海日汗来说，女人就是爱的象征体，爱是自由的、奔放的，尽管这个世界总有那些异样的眼光，但画家就像画中的女魂毫无顾忌地展示着爱的美丽。
进入21世纪，海日汗心灵的表达方式更加丰富起来，借用岩画、壁画、脸谱、祭祀等形式，与他心中的角色们谈天说爱。海日汗有一颗不甘寂寞的心灵，这心灵带着他一直深入到万物之源，从这源泉里发出来的东西——无论称之为梦幻、还是怪念——当它通过各种手法展现在画布上的时候，我们必须认真对待它，因为它在某种程度上已经具有了精神性，而且使神秘的幻觉变成了一种可视之物。海日汗的艺术表现是本能的、奇妙的和纯朴可观的，有时近乎天真幼稚，有时显得原始古朴，有时给人疯狂之感。
在海日汗的作品中，为什么我们会感觉到他是在对一些自然形态作任意扭曲，像错位的眼睛，钟乳状的乳房，分解的肢体……。对他来说，他从没有先去考虑一幅画的最后的形式，因为那并不是最初的意识，他尽情地享受在原始意识的自我表演中，然后将它们的真实面貌全盘呈现。尽管我们看到的是无逻辑的、无秩序的、有时又几近怪诞的图像，但对于画家而言，那是他意识和情感的最好体现。
2007年，海日汗画了一批“脸谱”题材的墨彩丙烯画，完全是一种无形无态的表现，唯一能认得的只有眼睛。“眼睛”是海日汗画中的经典符号， 1995年《秋》那种附在人或动物头上似萤火虫般的眼睛，是他九十年代作品的特征，之后眼睛逐渐变成一个独立体，像幽灵一样无处不在，如2001年的《幻》、2003年的《生命树》等。如果说“公牛”是海日汗的形体，那么“眼睛”就是他的心灵。他不仅用眼睛去看这个大千世界，还用眼睛去听、去想，由此，他笔下生出的，已不再是那些最初映入眼帘的原有物状，而是在心灵重新组装过的影像，充满幻觉的、色彩斑斓的、面目皆非的。
2000年的《大印像》颇有兴趣，我们终于看到画家肯用一点儿世俗心写一两个“规矩”的脸相。全幅作四个排段，先看第三排，左边第一张脸是最“正常的”，因为眼、眉、鼻、嘴甚至是鼻毛，都被安放在正常的位置，正是那紧闭的嘴唇与那微睁斜视的双眼，足可让我们用无数个形容词，来揣测这人一瞬间的心理状态。接着看第二个，画家在意的是那张圆肿的脸和一副懒散的表情，所以，眉毛随意乱点，鼻子也懒得画了；第三个，超脱了，要的是一副闭目沉思、任其索然的神态；最后一个，从人体脱壳了，错位的眼睛，空洞般的小嘴，铲平了的鼻子，一个睁开双眼重新审视这个世界的灵魂相。再看画面其它三排，我们再也找不出“规矩相”了，要么只是睁大的眼球，要么只是模糊的脸庞，要么像幽灵一般的影像，画家并没想对一个什么“相”作具体的交代，他只是在意自己内心每一秒钟在那个器官的最强烈的反应。这就像在某种特定的心境中，总有一些“要素”会从它们原来安排好的列队中跳出来，形成一个新的主题符号。眼睛是面相的主体，面相又是人生的主体，海日汗就是在这样一个主体轮回中，阐述千变万化的心灵世界。艺术作品并不是一个讲究符合逻辑的组合，而是需要重新构建一个由各自独白而合成的表演舞台。
海日汗的作品，有温和柔情的，也有粗野狂躁的，我们需要耐心才能把握其中的情感强度，你可以从肤浅的层次去欣赏他用色彩装饰的画面，但你必须全神贯注才能真正领会他内在矛盾的一面。2007年的两幅《生命之一及生命之二》，由色彩和块面引起的视觉骚动只是表面现象，实际上是一场美与丑、自由与惊恐的挣扎：裸身的美女们毫无顾忌、放任地扭动着躯体，橘黄色的肌肤增添了十分性感，她们美丽而自由。然而，就在美丽的左右，无数只眼睛在张望着，有温和也有狰狞。海日汗总是想在小小的画布上，制造出一片放任自由、轻松愉快的天地，然而， 到了具体实行的时候，却总是摆脱不了心灵深处矛盾的对抗：美丽中有丑陋，柔情中有狂躁。
海日汗的心灵，通过他艺术的想象力经受着洗礼和过滤。他作画的行为和做梦是同步的，他允许画中的形状、图像形成各自独立的生命——眼睛、手、大腿、乳房，扭动、飞转、纠缠——他都听任它们任意出现，自行变化，并不多加干预。他只是给它们搭建一个美丽的舞台，让它们各自做着自我完成的表述——凄苦、兴奋、迷惘、落魄，或尽情地去表现灵魂与情感相遇后的宣泄，这种宣泄，带着剧烈震动的力量冲出了地球引力，挣脱了忧郁的规范形式，进入了与原始宇宙浑然一体的浪漫主义世界中。
2002年的《敦煌印象》系列，场面虽然很热闹，但主题似乎与宗教没什么关系，还是他心灵那群召之即来的裸女演员，以及人的、动物的肢体缠绕在一起，似是不是、似像不像。画家在神游中作画，结果也把观者带入到了他的神游梦幻中。我每次看他的画都很兴奋，在那些纸张上，我总是睁大眼睛地寻找着什么，看得清楚的，模模糊糊的，统统都在里面，像采花，像寻宝，既享受又冒险。艺术如人心，又是那样不合逻辑。艺术还予人以启迪，即使有时它很深奥难以捉摸。
法国画家皮埃尔·博纳尔（Pierre Bonnard, 1867-1947）说过：“艺术家描绘感情时，创造的是一个自给自足的世界，他创作的画，就像一本书一样，有着固有的内涵，无论它碰巧出现在哪里。”
陈家紫
艺术评论家
Essay – The Changing Landscape
Friday, February 26th, 2010THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE
The tropical rainforest is identified as a signature of regional landscape. The plant signatures are powerful aspects of the landscape’s vocabulary, enabling plants to make reference to a significant place and to introduce feelings associated with it. Although in Singapore, many location-names are associated with plants, the locations have left no signs of these specific plants, and the names have become insignificant. The extensive built-up environment in Singapore has adversely affected the continuing survival of native wildlife and plants; many have become endangered or extinct. Under the government’s green policies, Singapore has been reconstructed as a garden city. The messy natural landscape—the rainforest—has been replaced by a man-made landscape.
DEFORESTATION
The tropical rainforest contains a very large number of species—insects, birds and mammals which are particularly abundant. A small area of a few square kilometers is likely to have hundreds of species of trees. Balsa, teak and other ornamental woods are from the tropical forest. The rapidly decreasing tropical forest is due to its commercial value, agricultural activities and urban development. Deforestation has caused changes in regional climate and hydrology, and threatens enormous numbers of native species with extinction.
DESTRUCTION
Mangrove-swamp ecosystems occupy coastal areas near the equator and are special nursery sites for many small animals. Mangrove trees also trap sediment, thus preventing many kinds of pollutants from reaching the ocean. The large amount of nutrients deposited by rivers which run into them makes them one of the most productive ecosystems.
EXTINCTION
Human activities have an impact on ecosystems. Native vegetation has been destroyed by land use, hunting and the harvesting of particular species, all of which are major factors which have led to the decline or extinction of native plants and animals.
TRANSFORMATION
Urban and agriculture ecosystems are particularly prone to invasion of exotics plants and animals, when the invasive species that become dominants that cause a massive damage to the native plants and animals communities. The impact includes their ecological distinctiveness and their potentials for competitive displacement, disease transmission, and genetic swamping.
Essay – Thoughts on Recent Works by Han Sai Por
Friday, February 26th, 2010Thoughts on Recent Works by Han Sai Por
When I am working in stone, the immediate contact is physical, the force of hammering, chiselling and drilling hard stone creates heat and energy. The reaction of the particles causes sparks and waves of sound. The appearance of the stone is the result, the consequence of physical reaction. Understanding the character of nature through the physical contact has become part of my sculpture.
Han Sai Por; February, 2002
Eight years have passed since the disclosure was published; yet its pertinence has not weathered, diminished and been cast aside for different approaches, principles and outcomes. On the contrary, we are struck by its validity when apprehending Sai Por’s art today as we might have been back then. Hence, when we read the citation with the aim of culling from it attributes that illuminate formal and symbolic properties which are salient in ascertaining Sai Por’s sculptural practice and her art, our attention is directed to seeing the works on display in this exposition as largely exemplifying them.
For instance, “the appearance of the stone” which Sai Por underlines animatedly, is ever present; in regarding the sculptural forms visually and sensuously, it is not difficult to comprehend them as emerging from intense “physical reactions” or sustained physical labour. In doing so, we encounter objects that are primordially wrought. That is to say, we behold things which are carved from stone, a material that is amongst the earliest utilised by humans, and a method of making that is equally one of the oldest devised by human beings. In these respects, sculpture as an aesthetic category in the world of art is defined primarily by these properties and techniques; what is more, it is esteemed because of its antecedents in the capacities of humans to transform and fabricate materials.
And Sai Por has not deviated from such criteria in advancing and maintaining her practice over these past thirty years, a practice that is deeply rooted in carving. (An exception to this is marked by a 1993 production titled Four Dimensions, in which instance she utilised industrial materials, mechanical procedures and installation strategies.) I have written on these matters in a modest publication issued in conjunction with a project titled 20 Tonnes ; Physical Consequences: Han Sai Por, in 2002. For the present occasion, I draw attention chiefly to the symbolic tenor of the works on display and especially to the display of drawings, which is infrequent in her art. In tracking her preoccupations along these pathways, we encounter serious changes.
Sai Por has declared a topic for this exposition. She has designated it as “the changing landscape.” In this regard, her positions are not new and unprecedented; when they are gauged expansively, we recognise them as stemming from a life-long involvement in nature as a vital force and as a gradually transforming process. Her choice of material (stone) and her preferred technique of sculpting (carving) are profoundly determined by such existential involvements. She subjects material, application, technique, forms and individual intentions into yielding configurations signifying analogies with nature; configurations which embody felt and living principles.
Whereas in the past, analogies between forms as art and natural forms – she describes the affiliations as “understanding the character of nature” – were expansive, inter-related and empathetic, now there appears a marked diminution in scale and scope; the impact is correspondingly tenuous and enfeebled. These are not necessarily due to a depreciation of, or a failure of technical capacities. Not at all! If anything, the artifice in the productions on display is pronounced. The alteration in scale and import are, in my opinion, generated by a strangeness that envelops the sculptures. As formal entities they strike us as mutations, as discomfiting hybrids and as peculiarly shaped.
We could enlist the topic in order to further our thoughts on these prospects. It (the topic) is linked to nature in a general sense although it is cast, in this instance, with reference to matters that are particular to Singapore. In a note accompanying the exhibition, Sai Por observes that “the extensive built-up environment in Singapore has adversely affected the continuing survival of native wildlife and plants; many have become endangered or extinct. Under the government’s green policies, Singapore has been reconstructed as a garden city. The messy natural landscape – the rainforest – has been replaced by a man-made landscape.” Of course the rainforests have been cleared continuously in Singapore over the past one hundred and fifty years, making way for intensely cultivated agriculture. However, the substitution of the natural in recent years has, according to Sai Por and for all of us, led to profound estrangements and severe dislocations. For example, habitats which originated from named associations with plants are now disconnected from their historical wellsprings; they are un-rooted and bear designations that are hollow and devoid of lived significance. Sai Por remarks pointedly that “many locations-names are associated with plants”, but “the locations have left no signs of these specific plants, and the names have become insignificant.”
The sculptures effectively signify these de-natured, divorced consequences of substituting nature with artifice – i.e., the clearing away of “the messy rainforest” and reconstructing a schematised landscape garden. My suggestion that the present sculptural works are enveloped by strangeness, when compared with the capaciousness of earlier productions, may well be linked to Sai Por’s description of constructed nature in Singapore’s urban environment.
The drawings, on the other hand, resonate very differently. They are formally robust and symbolically fecund. Their appearance will surprise many who are familiar with her work. I have not previously encountered Sai Por employing this medium towards any forceful conceptual and technical ends in her practice. This is not to say that she has not produced drawings until now, but that she has not produced drawings with the aim of displaying them as pictures until the present. Ichnographically and formally, these pictures can be seen as foils to the sculptures.
The scope for subjects in these drawings is two-fold. In one, tree trunks, branches and the earth are depicted as writhing, entwining and crackling across picture surfaces. Sai Por zooms in close; the subjects fill the entire picture mightily. Carefully controlled marks and tones register dense, textured surfaces; these settle into forms which symbolise the sinewy vitality, strength and durability of nature. In the other, the cone or the edges of viewing are dilated; we swoop, skim over specified terrain. Even so, we do not forego interest and immersion in minutiae. In these pictures with provisions for an expanded scope, we pore over earth’s formations, absorb shapes and textures, and are transfixed by remnants of trees appearing as brutally truncated stumps. The artifice of constructed nature belies or camouflages a deeper, encompassing and enduring vitality.
T.K.Sabapathy
Essay – 失禁
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009失禁
好象是刚睡着，就被摇晃着一会梦里一会梦外，四周和梦里一样隆隆作响 “地震了，快起来往外跑。。。”是爸爸和妈妈一边抱着妹妹急切的边摇晃着迟迟不肯醒来的我，一边冲我喊着。。。
我的眼睛不愿睁开：从梦中被叫醒通常是因为怕我夜里失禁尿床，可是我这会儿并不觉得下腹部充盈难忍。。。似醒非醒梦里梦外的隆隆的轰鸣声继续着，睁开眼周围很黑和平时不一样。。。
对于地震当时我没有太多恐惧感。那时我家住的院子离马路很近，这条马路从七十年代就开始修地铁。那时修地铁是要刨开地面很深很深的施工。挖掘机，推土机，打桩机等各类机器没白天没黑夜的轰鸣和工人们的喊声交织在深夜里格外响亮。我们平时就好象睡在这个大工地里，六七十年代的人们觉悟高，也没有噪音污染的概念，只知道国家修地铁是为了国防需要，反帝反修造福人民，噪音再大也能克服少有怨言。那时总觉得别的地方的路灯不够亮，因为夜晚聚光灯，探照灯把工地照得如同白昼的同时也把我们住的院子屋子照得很亮。
记得那时我晚上总是没那么黑，想玩儿就玩想睡随时就睡，睡的很深叫都叫不醒。梦里的世界更是美好，好玩事儿好象比现实更多，和梦里那个世界的孩子们玩多久多累都不愿散去，上厕所也是实在憋不住了才拉着和我一样憋了半天的孩子同去，并说好让其孩子原地等着，生怕有人回家不能继续玩。要是撒尿就各自找就近的地方迅速解决，有的找到墙根儿，有的找到电线杆子或树下，我几次都幸运的展转跑到厕所。。。一股热流涌出，那一刻释放的快感刚出现就忽然清醒，来到四周不太黑暗的现实世界——完美的失禁。从床上座起来遗憾和懊脑地回想着刚才还阳光灿烂的世界。梦里的世界也有惊竦的历险，绵绵久久不能越过的恐慌，生死之间变幻的同时强忍着充盈的下腹，跺在黑暗里期待着一步步看到危险的结果，直到再也不能承受。。。那股热流终于涌出，也把我从危险中推倒回到了实在安全的现实世界——又一次完美典型的失禁。
被摇晃的还从梦里到现实闪进闪出的意识在大脑里渐渐开始工作，是否又一次失禁？或是发生在我梦里的一次地震？ 直到从床上翻身下地才彻底醒了，周围很黑是因为整个居民区和外面地铁工地都停电了，隆隆声也不是推土机挖掘机发出的，工地已经停工了。那声音和平时的大分贝噪音不一样，是从地下很深出发出的共鸣声。。。这次不是因为什么别的事被叫醒，是地震——1976年7月28号凌晨4点覆盖京津唐的那次地震。
我跟着大人们使劲往外跑，外面工地的砂石堆上站满了脸上满是恐慌和还睡眼惺忪的人们。大地昏暗，天空呈蓝灰色，渐渐的远出天际开始露出鱼肚白。周围的人们开始议论着他们听到的哪儿房倒屋塌啦，哪儿有伤亡的人啦，马路对面还有人在哭，据说是被突如其来的地震惊的神经失常的一女孩儿。当时我一点也不因为地震恐慌，只是掎在人群中内心切喜这次惊梦醒来不是因为尿床。。。这段记忆印象太深以至于现在半夜醒来偶尔眼前也会出那晚的景象，有时像是照片在药夜里显影一样，在眼前一点一点清晰；有时像是暴光过度的照片一闪一闪的匆匆略过。记忆中也就是从那次惊梦后就再没有尿过床，只是睡觉前紧张依旧。后来我想了想也就是这次大地震了结我偶尔会在睡梦里失禁的少年时光。不过那时梦中我得到最多的是快乐和满足，往往连白天看过的电影，到夜晚自己就会出现在那个故事中，就是失禁尿床后的自责与懊恼始终的陪伴着我漫漫的成长过程。直到后来看到了佛雷伊德先生的一些说词，我才隐约为这种羞耻感和以后的诸多困惑找到了可以释怀的理由。现在不知从什么时候起，发觉我身边的许多朋友和我一样或多或少的被睡眠质量不佳所困扰，甚至被失眠折磨。每每此时我都会怀念那许多年前的偶尔有失禁伴随的睡眠，想起年少时那些偶有失禁的鼾睡竟有那么深入，深入到失去意识能力，失去控制力的身体轻的都能像羽毛一样飘起来，就是掉下来我们也会像飞侠一样轻盈落地，安然无恙。。。如今我们的意识时无刻的不在控制着我们的一切，它不知疲惫四处游荡，从来也不愿意休息片刻，更甚的是竟在开始吞噬我们的美梦，让白天的我们轻飘飘，让夜晚的我们沉重疲惫，让我们常常会为它绵绵不休的抗奋状态而在漫漫长夜里无心睡眠。
史泽平2007—2008年于京郊。
Essay – 儿戏
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009儿戏
通常艺术家有两类，一类在自己的内心世界神游，另一类则更愿意游走在现实世界。我目前的状况应属于前者，但是我们都不可能脱离纷扰的现实世界。只是表达上的差别，我的这些作品专注于表达的一些内心琐事，可能会引起一部分人的共鸣，或者是一部分人对过去认为无趣往事的回望。然而也会令一部分人觉得冷漠。。。无论怎样这些作品都是我内心世界的现时反映。从这个视点上看，选择这样的表现方式和我一直以来都欣赏法国电影导演特吕佛的作品不无关系。您看到的这些作品，是我剪断记忆这大卷胶片的一段段，像在黑屋子里的小孩儿，用手电筒的光亮把这些零散的胶片打在墙上，有图象些让他喜悦，则有些图片让他羞于见人，只是这会他正沉浸其中不能自拔。我相信这个世界有许多这样的小孩。。。我很想进入这些孩子的黑屋子，也想要他们来我这里停顿逗留，应该很多人都会有类似的琐事在记忆里缠绕，只是没有想停下来留连的愿望吧！我不指望我的作品能让他们脚步停下来，但愿他们的脚步能慢一点或回回头。
出现在我画面内的男孩形象，是目前比较合适我要表现内容的选择。之所以把太多的情感托付与这个少年形象，在于借助他能随意进出现实，让我本身游离于现实之外。给我的表现内容以自由的空间，他是能够长久相伴的朋友。借助他的形象我精神世界时而在当下，时而回到记忆中去，他把记忆撞的支离破碎！在这些碎片中你偶然拣起一片，模糊中渐渐会照见自己。拼起来几片，一段时空就清晰起来—-有粉色、有兰色、有灰色—我要做的就是让这个男孩失去理智，用情感拼起来更多的不规则的碎片，并在每幅画中和我一起体验那些应该是我们大家都有过的喜悦、迷惑、茫然。。。
Essay – Forms of Forms: Contemporary Chinese Oil Painting Invitational Exhibition
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009“FORMS OF FORMS: CONTEMPORARY CHINESE OIL PAINTING INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION”
Preface
Jia Fangzhou
The contemporary milieu of Chinese oil painting is rich and varied. The plethora of ideas and a great diversity of styles and schools result in a development trend that goes in a multitude of directions. In this exhibition we are unable to present the entire scheme of contemporary Chinese oil painting. Instead, we have chosen a narrative from a certain academic angle, and will develop our narrative by picking up just one of the threads in the story of contemporary Chinese oil painting.
Contemporary Chinese oil painting traces its roots to the end of 1970’s, with the national “reform and open” policy propelling contemporary Chinese art into an era of unprecedented growth. During this time the oil painters emerged as the fore-runners. Indeed, almost every wave of new thought that arises in contemporary Chinese art has its point of origin in the realm of oil painting. Almost half of contemporary Chinese art history is about oil art. In the development of contemporary Chinese art, oil painting had always been the “head wave” and the oil artists had always been the main driving force of change. Even during the time of “New Wave Art”, when paintings were not the focus, the oil artists proved to be active and crucial elements.
The dominance of oil painting thus points to a consciousness, an awareness among oil artists, that oil painting is strongly related to contemporary Chinese art, including all the issues and obstacles that it faces. Thus, every trend in oil painting is a forecast of what is to come in contemporary Chinese art. It started at the end of the seventies with “Scar Art” and “Rustic Art” and went on to the “Aesthetic Movement” that leaned towards the poetic and the lyrical. Then there was “The 85 Movement”, “Searching for Roots” and “Purifying the Language”. The development of contemporary Chinese oil painting can be encapsulated in the trends of Classical Realism, Cynical Realism and Political Pop; and in its development from the expressions of imagery to its exploration of abstractionism.
In terms of foundation, oil painting was imported from the West only a century ago, thus barely holding its light when compared to the long, deep roots of Chinese ink painting. However, it is by virtue of its youth that it exudes such vitality, sensitivity, and drive. In many important international exhibitions, framed works have been largely displaced by large-scale installation art; but in China, oil painting has just stepped into its peak period. In the twenty-over years since the end of the seventies, every step of its development had become crucial links in the development of contemporary Chinese art.
In general, the structure of contemporary Chinese oil painting is made up of three components: 1. Classicalism and Realism; 2. Representational and Pop and 3. imagery and abstractionism. An overview of this structure reveals how Chinese oil painting continually evolves through a dialogue with reality that involves the reflection and pondering not only of current concerns but also the issues faced by Chinese oil painting.
If attentiveness and concern for the current reality is the basis for exploring current topics, then the consummation of self-definition is a crucial step in the self-disciplined growth of Chinese oil painting.
Gathered in this field is an important force of Chinese oil painting, and right in the core of this force is a group of middle-aged artists who boasts strong academic achievements on their resumes. They are unrelenting in propelling Chinese oil painting towards Sinification. Armed with unflinching academic convictions, they sought to distance themselves from the mainstream art promoted and sanctioned by the government. At the same time, they resist being swept under by the overwhelming wave of commercialism in art.
This exhibition “Forms of forms” picks up on the thread of “imagery – abstraction” as our academic focus. For many years, representational styles and realism were the mainstay of Chinese oil painting. Strongly guided by ideological policies before the eighties, the government had demanded that art shoulder the responsibility of propaganda. Revolutional realism was highly promoted. There was no way for abstract art to realistically or objectively reflect life, and so from its tender beginnings had always assumed the stance of being antagonistic to officially sanctioned art. This results in abstract art standing apart as being culturally adversarial. However, abstract art had evolved to be a new form of artistic expression. It had also attained maturity gradually in the nineties, producing a crop of excellent abstract artists.
We have established “Forms of forms” as the theme for this exhibition. Our objective is to relate how contemporary Chinese oil painting had evolved from the representational to the various types of “imagery – abstraction” and the transformation and changes between the various forms of expressions. Traditional Chinese painting theories abound with many observations on and about forms. This includes: “the form that exists outside of the form”; “a conception that arises beyond the form” and “the supreme form has no form”. “The form that exists outside of the form” means that a painting has departed from the “likeliness” that is representational; it has attained a form that cannot be grasped by the visual sense, and in fact that is a type of “abstraction”. Based on this idea of “form outside the form”, we extrapolate the idea of “form within the form”. That idea refers to those “forms” that border on being abstract and departs from formal representation, yet does not overstep the boundary to become abstract. That is what we call “idea-form” or “imagery”.
Many works of contemporary Chinese oil painting fall into this lingering zone that oscillates between the representational and the abstract. These paintings display the unique characteristic of contemporary Chinese oil painting- from their dwelling on representation, to the “idea-form” that is intimate with abstraction; from abstractionism that draws on symbolic representation to pure abstract works. The repertoire presented by the artists that we have invited is emblematic of these various points along this thread that we are exploring.
Thirteen artists were invited to participate in this exhibition. In terms of age, there are representative artists that were born in the 40’s up to the 70’s. In terms of artistic accomplishment, amongst them we find influential pioneers, accomplished middle-aged artists as well as young artists who are beginning to make their mark. The heterogeneity in representation is a deliberate choice. In this way, we hope to be able to more completely showcase this artistic vein of “idea-form” to the Southeast Asian art world and art collectors. The individual styles and artistic tendencies of each artist can be more apparent by compare and contrast, and we can also discern the overall quality of contemporary Chinese oil painting as it develops on this particular axis from “idea-form” to abstraction.
For works that have morphed from being representational to a rendition that is more an imagery, we can look to the paintings of Jing Shijian, Xu Xiaoyan, Zhang Liping, Yu Ming and Zhao Wenhua. In principle their art has not abandoned the figurative description of its subject matter, yet it is not an objective depiction. They have incorporated elements of subjectivity into their creations. For instance, the “Travelers Three” series by Jing Shijian is realistic and yet not of reality. It is a sequence in time that narrates the literati sentiments of landscape, and concurrently waxes poetic of the misty landscapes. Xu Xiaoyan’s “Blooming” series expresses the imagery of Life a-blooming that is experienced through her observation of the splaying leaves of a wilting Chinese cabbage. Through the attention in realizing her image, Xu portrays her marvel and exaltation of life cycles in Nature.
Zhang Liping’s expressionistic use of colors reveals poignantly to us his passion for Life, and not just a zealousness for the natural landscape. On the other hand, Yu Ming attempts to portray a landscape “of depth”. And so in his landscapes he makes assiduous efforts to present a “peace and quiet” that is far and distant from the city chaos, but this is a sense of “peace and quiet” with an energy force field that is unsettling.
In his “City Image” series, Zhao Wenhua juxtaposes representational and non-representational images to express his concern for how modern city life is being lived out. The artist created nearly forty works on this one theme, examining a topic of current significance today: China’s urbanization and its impact. This is an issue that has global relevance, and this series elicited high compliments from the chairman of the Florence Biennial (Biennale Internazionale Dell’arte Contemporanea).
Shang Yang’s art is overall hard to classify. But we can say that fundamentally his works since the nineties are rooted in the “idea-form”. From the late eighties after he completed the “Yellow Earth Sentiments” series, his art ventured into the abstract realm for a short time. Examples of works produced during this brief phase can be seen in the series “States”. However, his vast and complex thoughts did not allow him to remain in a state that is so clearly delineated. From “Big scenery” to “Project Dong Qichang” his art has aimed to achieve two things: first to reach deep into the pulse of traditional culture; and second, to search for novel concepts and new expressions that can more intimately communicate his ideas.
The works of Liu Hui and Ning Dandan/ Ning Binbin are no longer tethered to the idea-form, yet they are also not pure abstract expressions. They exist in a state that suspends between abstraction and imagery. But pinning down the state is not important, what is essential is the experiences of life that the art is built upon. It is “the most primal and heartfelt impressions that we attained when we exposed our purest, most innocent hearts to our world” (Ning Dandan/ Ning Binbin); it is “discovering a sense of the earth” in one’s “field and garden” (Liu Hui). As they have created their works based upon the foundation of life and life experiences, we can easily sense the “sounds and rhythms” of Nature (Ning Dandan/ Ning Binbin) and feel the “sun, earth, wind, water and the sky” (Liu Hui) through these near-abstract paintings.
Li Lei’s paintings can be categorized as pure abstract art. But upon examination of his inspirations, we find similarities between Li and the above three artists. We may not sense the imagery of nature in his works, but we can experience the vibration of Nature. This is because his works, like Ning’s and Liu’s, originate from “how one feels about the Universe”; it stems from how one “senses and melds with the rhythm of the Universe.” (Li Lei)
The works of the remaining four artists in this exhibition- Wang Huaiqing, Su Xiaobo, Zhou Changjiang, and Li Xiangming- all fall into the category of pure abstract art. And they all orient themselves to seek out the characteristics of abstract art that has been Sinified. They all endeavor to anchor their works in the meaning of art itself. In their early artistic phases, these four artists have all engaged in producing representational art, and after they evolved into their abstract phase they all seek to root their individual art by drawing upon traditional cultural resources, thus welding a profound internal relationship between their art and traditional culture.
Since the nineties, traditional wood-architectural construction and wood-construction furniture had not only provided insights and inspiration for Wang Huaiqing, they had also become the master vocabulary that his art is built and constructed upon. In the years that followed, Wang in his paintings experimented with de-constructing or constructing with these elements that bear genetic markers of traditional Chinese culture. In the age-old structure of pillars and beams that cross and support horizontally and vertically, Wang perceived an ancient cultural spirit of his people. This sentiment is further verified by evidence in his artwork, where he attempts to reach beyond the two-dimensional space. In thriving for an art flavor that is purely Chinese, Wang had even abandoned the advantage of color choices offered by oil painting, choosing instead to focus on black, a concise color reminiscent of Chinese ink.
The paintings of Su Xiaobo and Wang Huaiqing bear similar characteristics of rationality and nonchalance. But judging from the use of symbols and imagery, Su proves to be more puristic in his pursuit of the two-dimensional. I have said before that he is one rare Chinese artist who is truly able to penetrate western abstract art from a linguistic level, and in his thorough grasp of western art, still manages to hold pulse of the Chinese spirit. When I look at his paintings, so western in appearance, I do not perceive cultural messages from the West; instead I see an expression brought to fruition through Chinese sensitivity. Su portrays a profound sense of history and cultural sensibility through his pure artistic language and in his use of raw laquer, a traditional material used by Chinese artisans. In his paintings that describe nothing in specific we are able to fathom the memory of a people; the vicissitudes experienced by a nation; the pursuit of history and the nostalgia for an ancient culture.
Among his peers, Zhou Changjiang was one of the earliest artists to venture into abstract art. His abstract art series “Complementary” has already won a silver prize at a national exhibition in the United States back in the late eighties. In the past twenty years he has continued to extend his exploration of this theme, endeavoring to “make marriage” of this western style with “local culture”. He earnestly sought to “reflect upon my cultural background after studying modern western painting” and “amidst the transfiguration of traditional aesthetical values” Zhou deeply desires to create his “own image of modern art.” (Zhou Changjiang)
Since the eighties, the art of Li Xiangming had naturally evolved and transitioned from representational realism to the renditions of imagery to abstractionism. But to him, what counts is not the change in methodology, but the evolving of an internal sense of aesthetics. This, says he, is also a sublimation of the quality of art. Li’s works have become increasingly simple and concise; more and more they emphasize upon the special “language” of the materials themselves. Three factors come together to channel his art in the direction of Sinification and localization: cultural symbols from traditional sources; local dialects and linguistic expressions and his personal experiences of survival.
