展览：  自我地形学
策展人： 劳尔•扎穆迪奥
艺术家： 孙尧
时间：  2010.12.4-2011.1.2
开幕酒会：  2010.12.4 6:00pm-8:00pm
地点：  其他画廊 上海空间
  上海莫干山路50号M50创意园区9号楼1楼

EXHIBITION: Topographies of The Self
CURATOR:  Raul Zamudio
ARTIST:  Sun Yao
DURATION: Dec 4th 2010– Jan 2nd 2011
VERNISSAGE:  6pm-8pm, Dec14th, 2010
VENUE:  Other Gallery l Shanghai Space    
      101, Bld9, Moganshan Rd,M50, Shanghai

 

 

自我地形学
作者：劳尔•扎穆迪奥

画家孙尧的个展题目“自我地形学”影射了风景与身份之间的共生关系。地理在历史上被认为是无染的、客观的，并且超越了文化的界限。因为从某种意义上来看，我们出生于文化，而非自然之中。然而，这是一个误区：不仅是因为地域与我们的自觉意识紧密相连，而且，在全球化的背景下，任何环境，无论是一个国家还是一座城市都能通过其居民而超越其地理界限，因为这些居民能够将这个地方的某一个方面带入世界的广阔区域。例如，一个西班牙的葡萄酒商或者一个纽约的商人都在某些方面代表了各自的文化和地域，即便一个来自乡村，而另一个来自城市。因此，当他们走出国门的时候他们就会附带着，并且打开这种社会性的包袱。当然，这一点变得更加复杂，因为文化和地域往往判然有别，而非合二为一，例如，区域性受到了通讯与电脑科技（例如互联网）的影响而不断变化。

随着全球化的出现，不同的地域和文化都变得越来越近在咫尺，新文化的结构正在不断变化，就像后现代的自我状态那样，既是确定的、本质的或者固定的，但也是流动的、易变的和开放的。“自我地形学”这个展览不仅是对自我和场所之间的共生关系的探索，而且也探索了个人与集体的联系，以及二者与其环境的分离。通过崇高、自我的偶然性等多种概念，此次展览告诉我们，自然绝不是天然的。

孙尧的绘画强调，我们身在其中的这个世界与我们的心理有着内在的联系，就像某些风景画家那样。例如，德国浪漫主义艺术家弗雷德里希（Casper David Friedrich）就在自己的作品中赋予了自然一种崇高感，尽管还带有一些形而上的意味。在他之后的英国画家透纳（J.W.M. Turner）对崇高感有着另一种理解，他们采取了不同的方式来表达这种感觉。弗里德里希将崇高表现为超验的延伸和显现，而透纳则将其解读为道德绝对性的延伸。但不管怎样，二者对于崇高性的看法都可以追溯到哲学家伯克（Edmund Burke）那里。在《关于我们的崇高和美的观念起源的哲学研究》（A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful，1756）一书中，伯克提出，崇高和美是彼此排斥的，但又矛盾地联系着。伯克认为，崇高是对于自然美的敬畏，也是对于自然不可控的暴力的恐惧，在自然之中的人只能任其摆布。

也就是说崇高具有两种性质，一方面是指宏伟庄严，另一方面包含了恐惧，这种特征体现在一切可怖的天灾之中，尽管具有毁灭性的自然灾害令我们感到惋惜和失望，但是我们也会被那些表现毁灭和灾难的图像所吸引。在YouTube上有很多关于海啸、火山爆发、暴风雨、地震等自然灾害的视频，从中我们可以看出，对于自然的那种恐怖的毁灭力，人脑既反感又着迷。在面对自然带来的大量死亡的时候，那种表面的、普遍的应对办法是将其解释为“神的行为”。也就是说，自然的残忍暴力带来的生灵涂炭是如此的深奥费解，因此只能将其归于神意。伯克争辩道，我们之所以不愿意看灾难的图像并不是因为我们对生灵涂炭有一种病态的心理，或者麻木不仁，而是说崇高对我们的反感和吸引的二重性类似于人类的审美本能，对于美好事物的认识内在于人的意识之中，这也令我们很难将视线从自然的暴力上移开。这一点对于理解弗里德里希和透纳作品中的崇高感而言至关重要，也是理解孙尧的艺术为什么如此令人心驰神往的关键所在。

孙尧的作品有力而富有诗意，这种特质在一定程度上得益于他利用了风景传统，并赋予其新的形式。如果将弗里德里希的《海边僧人》（The Monk by the Sea ，1808-1810）和孙尧的《密林 No.15》 (2010)并置起来的时候就会明显看出这一点。后者是《密林》的一部分，大体是关于植物与人体结合的各种解读，这幅作品既让人联想到了水，也联想到了陆地。之所以能达到这种效果在于孙尧对颜色的处理和对于明暗法的精妙运用：在他的作品上，以及在图画的空间中，颜色回旋流动，并且像无序的蔓藤花纹那样“爆发”。他通过薄厚的丰富变化营造了丰富的绘画性。另外，孙尧的作品总是带着一种壮观，这也创造了一种类似于《海边僧人》的气氛。
 
在弗里德里希的这幅名作中，一位僧人庄严地站在海边，他仿佛陷入了神圣的冥想，并且望着远处壮丽、苍茫的无限空间。这位僧人被大海包围了起来，就好像孙尧所创造的拟人形式那样将无形的树木凝结了起来，使人无法辨认哪棵在前，哪棵在后。那么，画面中的人物和风景孰重孰轻？孙尧创造了一个模棱两可的审美谜语，他赋予了作品超出视觉的含义：精神似的幻觉效应赋予了作品以生机，我们仿佛看到了一个变幻莫测的投影幻灯正在从无意识的深渊浮现出来。我们的确在观看一幅绘画作品，但却能感受到画面的底下或者画面之中存在着某种东西，这种东西既吸引着我们，同时也创造了某种审美的散逸。和孙尧一样，透纳也创造了一种崇高的感觉，但他的作品往往充满一种伦理的，即便不是道德的东西。

透纳的《奴隶船》（Slave Ship ，1840）也许是这位英国画家最著名的作品之一了。那些奴隶贩子在海上遇到了狂风骇浪，船翻人亡。但是这幅作品却并不是19世纪版的好莱坞灾难片。画面内容与作品名称相吻合，透纳不仅仅只表现了恶劣天气所导致的翻船，而且也影射了奴隶制的灭亡，摧毁这种制度的并不是古已有之的大海，而是神对于人奴役人这种做法的惩罚。显然，孙尧的作品也隐喻了人的境况，他呈现给我们一种戏剧性的场面，涉及到我们在世界中的正确位置等关于存在的问题，其中，我们不仅有时和自然发生冲突，甚至也与自己分道扬镳。

孙尧的这件作品与他的其他作品一样都可以被看做一面镜子，反射了不稳定的人性，也许甚至反映了一种失衡状态。孙尧通过诸多方式在形式上和观念上强调了这种效果，包括作品右上角投来的波动强光，它直接打到了画面的左下角，形成了一条对角线，同时也在植物的轮廓和边缘创造了蜗旋状的光芒。这种光线瀑布倾泻而下，将物质的东西固定，但同时也向四面八方散播。光与影交织在一起，形成千变万化的效果，在孙尧精彩绝伦的构图上，二者彼此印衬，有如寂静之于声响、凿离之于雕塑。在孙尧的单色画面上，暗部与亮部的两极之间层次繁多，创造了辨证的相互作用和平衡关系。这幅作品与《密林》系列的其他作品一样，其黑白的形式都来源于历史语境，并且融合了传统的艺术形式，最终形成了属于孙尧自己的艺术风格。

孙尧的作品让我想到了另一位艺术家马克•坦西（Mark Tansey）。他的作品虽然也采用了单色的形式，但是却有着具像的主题。坦西的画面叙述具有精神性，这种叙述消解了单色画法的历史，而以往，单色画法总被认为是极少主义和早期纯粹形式主义、几何抽象的专利。而孙尧则不仅驾轻就熟地采用了这种艺术的修辞方式，而且他的作品也追溯到了灰色画（grisaille，全称为“用灰色画的单色画”，灰色画常用于临摹浅浮雕，因此特别适合表现建筑主题。希腊画家们由于还没有明暗法，主要依赖灰色画表现调子的造型。此后，一些哥特时期的细密画家也用过灰色画的方法——译者注）的源头。出于实际的和审美的原因，美术史上的很多艺术家都采用了灰色画，其中包括哥特式艺术家让•皮塞尔（Jean Pucelle）和乔托（Giotto）、文艺复兴时期的老彼得•勃鲁盖尔（Pieter Bruegel）、曼坦那（Mantegna）和矫饰主义画家与雕刻家亨德里克•戈尔齐乌斯（Hendrik Goltzius）等等。众所周知，灰色画非行家里手而不能为之，这也意味着与彩色画相比，灰色画更能体现艺术家的才华。

孙尧的单色绘画彰显了他的才华横溢，因为单色画更好地体现了艺术家对于媒介的掌控能力，我们知道，明暗是他艺术实践的核心。和他的其他作品一样，在《No.15》中，光起到了重要的作用，它不仅给画面增加了形式的质感和构图的活力，而且也提升了画面的情感内容。正是在这个意义上，孙尧与先前的那些浪漫主义艺术家相脱离，并且将自己的艺术带入了一种更具有当代气息的艺术境界，他的审美语汇更接近于安塞姆•基弗（Anselm Kiefer）苍茫的风景画。然而，孙尧的绘画却有着多重的面目，他将这些作品带入了一种更加开阔的叙事当中，以一种诗意的方式探索了那种聚集了地理完形的个人情境。他的森林图像充满了拟人的形式。观其画，个体都仿佛被蒸发了，因为他注入其中的不仅仅是人形的幽灵，而且人物与风景的浑然结合使情感得到了释放。我们不妨通过他的另一幅作品《密林No.14》来观照这种体验。

《No.15》以一种恢宏大气的方式表现了密林，而这种飘渺的感觉也注入了他这个系列的大部分作品中。有形与无形之间的辨证互动赋予了作品以轻盈和重量的视觉诗意特征。如果说《No.15》以散播的绘画性方式集中体现了明暗与疏密、中心与边缘的混合，那么《No.14》则采用了一种更加朴实的物质形式。孙尧采用了一贯的森林与幻景作为主题。与《No.15》相比，《No.14》中的面孔与身体能够产生不同的共鸣，因为面孔处在地表，而身体则潜入地下，孙尧正是在这样的地形上表现了丰富广阔的人类情感。他采用了身体与面孔的多样复杂的图像，并且赋予了它们同样的内聚力，然而，他似乎也可以用另外的方式处理这种造型。例如《No.7》，其中那张巨大的面孔占据了整个画面，因此身体和树林等植物似乎都变成了它的附属。

这是一种原型的幻觉面孔：看着这张巨大的面孔我们不由地会想到荣格的心理学和原型。这位著名的心理学家提出，这些原型正是从集体无意识当中浮现出来的。同样，《No.7》的各种形状连接在一起，共同构成了眼睛、鼻子、嘴巴等等，以一种更加直接的方式面对观者。虽然他的其他作品也采用了利用树木的能指拼合面孔的方式，但是《No.7》却是其中最令人感到不安的一件。尽管艺术家从来没有提到这种绘画形式的来源或者意味，但是我们可以猜测这张上面带有其他形象的巨大面孔就是艺术家本人的肖像。这并不是传统意义上的肖像，因为这幅肖像并不像艺术家本人，但这张面孔占据了整个画面，并且构成了一个循环母题，因此有可能是艺术家的他我。在这个意义上，孙尧又回到了原点。虽然其他艺术家也表现过崇高的题材，但都呈现为外在的自然，而孙尧的崇高则是内在的。

孙尧的艺术仿佛是深入到我们内心最深处的旅行，那是我们不愿前往、面对，或者与之妥协的地方。这不仅是由于我们的自满，而且也因为我们背离了苏格拉底“认识你自己”的主张。然而，认识自己绝非易事，需要极大的真诚，而孙尧的绘画正是他艺术真诚的体现。他从事艺术活动不仅仅是出于审美的原因，而且也是对生命，以及包括存在的本质等哲学问题的探索。在他称为艺术的朝圣之旅上，他通过这些美丽的作品告诉我们自我是晦涩难懂的，因为我们本身就是自我。我们越是疏离自己，自我就越是遥远。如果说孙尧穿梭在想象的森林之中，那么他的作品就是诗意的视觉地图，简言之，这也就是自我地形学。

策展人简历
劳尔•扎穆迪奥（Raúl Zamudio），纽约自由策展人、批评家。曾在美洲、欧洲和亚洲策划了70余个展览。包括：2010利物浦双年展（联合策划）、“流动的社群：2009北京798双年展”（联合策划）、“2008首尔国际媒体艺术双年展”（联合策划）、“2008丽水国际当代艺术节”（艺术总监）。他出版、合作出版了40余部书籍和展览图册。

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topographies of the Self
                              By: Raul Zamudio

Topographies of the Self is a solo exhibition of the painter Sun Yao, whose title alludes to the symbiosis between landscape and identity. Geography has been historically thought to be untainted, objective and generally outside the bounds of culture; for in one sense we are born into culture as opposed to nature. This, however, is erroneous: not only is place tied to our sense of self, but in our globalized milieu any environment be it country or city, for instance, can transcend its geography by virtue of its inhabitants who bring an aspect of that locale to far flung areas of the world. For example: A Spanish vintner or a New York businessman embody aspects of their culture as well as their geography, regardless whether one is rural and the other urban which, in turn, is the social baggage they pack and unpack when travelling abroad. This, of course, becomes even more complicated since culture and place are more often than not heterogeneous rather than monolithic as attested by the protean nature of the local engendered by communications and computer technologies such as the Internet.

With the advent of globalization in which disparate geographies and cultures become more and more accessible, the fabric of the geo-cultural is ever changing, in flux, and  analogous to the postmodern condition of the self. That is, that it is not something deterministic, essential, or fixed, but fluid, mutable and open-ended. Topographies of the Self is an exhibition that is more than an exploration of the symbiosis between self and place as it investigates how deeply the individual and the collective are linked and at the same time severed, from their environments. It explores this through myriad ideas including the sublime, the contingency of the self, and the thesis that nature is anything but natural.      

Sun Yao’s paintings underscore how the world we inhabit is intrinsically connected to our psyche, much like other artists who have explored landscape’s affectation. The German Romantic artist Casper David Friedrich, for example, depicted nature as sublime, albeit as embodied with the metaphysical. Another artist who came in the wake of Friedrich and conceived sublimity differently is the British painter J.W.M. Turner. Both artists differed in their articulation of the sublime; the former configured it as extension and manifestation of the transcendent, while the latter interpreted it as an extension of the moral absolute. Regardless, Friedrich’s and Turner’s idea of sublimity can be traced to the philosopher Edmund Burke. In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), Burke proposed that beauty and the sublime were mutually exclusive, but yet paradoxically connected. The sublime, for Burke, was as much about being awed by nature’s beauty as it was about the fear engendered by its uncontrollable violence in which humans are seemingly at its mercy.

The dichotomy of the sublime where one aspect refers to the majestic while the other embodies terror is underscored in any horrendous natural disaster; and though we regret and are despondent when humans perish as a result of natural calamities, we are often mesmerized by images of destruction and the havoc that it can cause to life as well as the built environment. One only need to see on Youtube the many viewer’s hits of filmed tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and so forth to understand how the human mind is repulsed and concomitantly attracted to nature’s terrifying destructive powers. An ostensible universal coping mechanism in the face of the absurdity of nature’s infliction of mass death is when we construe it as an “act of god.” That is, that nature’s brutal violence resulting in the wanton loss of life is so inexplicable and so unfathomable that it is attributed to providence. Burke would argue, however, that it is not a case of humans being morbid or insensitive to the loss of human life that keeps us from watching images of destruction, but that the dichotomy of repulsion/attraction as sublime is analogous to human faculty for the aesthetic; that the recognition of the beautiful as intrinsic to human consciousness is also what makes it difficult for us to turn our eyes away from nature’s upending aggression. This is crucial in understanding how sublimity works in the paintings of Friedrich and Turner, and intrinsic to the mesmerizing artistry of Sun Yao.

The powerful and poetic quality of Sun Yao’s work partially stems from a reworking of the landscape tradition into wholly different configurations. This is apparent when juxtaposing Friedrich’s The Monk by the Sea (1808-1810), and Sun Yao’s N0. 15 (Series: Deep Forest) (2010). While the latter is part of the corpus known as Deep Forest and generally concerns various interpretations of the confluence of flora and the human body, this painting alludes to the aquatic as well as terrestrial. This may have to do with Sun Yao’s handling of paint and his hypnotic use of chiaroscuro: pigment swirls to and fro and explodes like chaotic arabesques across the surface of his paintings and within pictorial space. And the execution of this painterly exuberance runs the gamut of thin, almost diffused simulated washes to heavy graphic marks as well as thicker passages of impasto. There is also the monumental format of Sun Yao’s paintings in general that create a similar ambiance to The Monk by the Sea. 

In Friedrich’s famous work, a monk stands at the shore of the sea while solemnly pondering divinity and looking out into its glorious yet gothic infinitude. The enveloping presence of the sea that engulfs the monk is analogous to how Sun Yao creates anthropomorphic forms that congeal against the amorphousness of trees making it difficult to tell where one supersedes the other. Are the individuals that populate the landscape more prominent or subservient to the latter? In creating an either/or aesthetic conundrum, Sun Yao inscribes this painting with meaning beyond than what meets the eye: phantasmagoria of spirit-like entities pulsate and animate the picture as if we are glimpsing a fleeting magic lantern of projections conjured from the deep recesses of the unconscious. To be sure, we are looking at a painting yet there is something underneath and within it that both beckon us as well as creating a sensation of aesthetic dissipation. Like Sun Yao, Turner too, developed a particular notion of the sublime but his work was often imbued with an ethical if not moral imperative.

In Turner’s Slave Ship (1840), which is one of the most famous works by the English painter, traffickers in human cargo are horrifically meeting their demise by virtue of an uncontrollable sea storm. But this work is not just the nineteenth-century equivalent to what is known in Hollywood as the disaster film. To be sure, what is occurring in the picture is what the painting’s title alludes. Turner, however, is depicting something more than just the dreadful fate of a ship at the mercy of tumultuous weather; for it is also the institution of slavery that is being destroyed, not so much by the pristine sea but by divine retribution that condemns that enslavement of a human by another. It is apparent that Sun’s picture is a metaphor for the human condition as well, for he conveys to us the drama of what it is to deal with existential questions of as to our rightful place in a world where we are sometimes in conflict with nature, but also even at odds with ourselves.

Stated differently, Sun Yao’s picture, like his other works, operates like an opaque mirror that reflects humanity unsettled and possibly even in a state of disequilibrium. This is formally and conceptually underscored in a plethora of ways including the painting’s undulating prominent light that comes from the upper right hand corner and sharply cuts a diagonal down the center to the bottom left hand side. It concomitantly creates a swirling mass of illumination set against the contours and edges of flora. In turn, this photonic cascade seems to anchor and simultaneously diffuse matter multi-directionally. Effervescently kaleidoscopic, shadow and light are equally as contingent to each other in this masterful composition as silence is to sound, as negative absence is to a sculpture’s presence. Interplay, dialectic, and point/counterpoint between darkness and its other, as well as the manifold gradations in between these two poles are germane to the overall monochrome of Sun Yao’s palette. This work, as well as the general corpus of the Deep Forest series, takes the monochrome from its historical context and conflates it with an older artistic from, consequently arriving at a distinct aesthetic that is unquestionably the style of Sun Yao.  

One artist that comes to mind who similarly works with the monochrome but within the context of thematic figuration is Mark Tansey. Tansey’s psychologically driven narratives undermine the monochrome’s history that was often thought to be solely the register of Minimalism and earlier forms of pure, geometric abstraction. Sun Yao, however, not only tropes these with verve and deftness but his work also reaches farther back to the genre of the grisaille. The Gothic artists Jean Pucelle and Giotto, as well as those from the Renaissance including Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Mantegna, and the Mannerist painter and engraver Hendrik Goltzius, were just a few among many that worked in grisaille for practical and aesthetic reasons. Another aspect of the grisaille that is the consensus is that in lesser artistic hands, the inferior artist is quickly revealed. This has to do with the fact that the artist cannot obscure his talent or lack thereof, behind polychromatic painting.

When looking at Sun Yao’s painting with their monochromatic palette and attendant grisaille reference, it becomes apparent the breadth and depth of this artist’s talent. For in reducing his color range to the singular, it not only underscores his mastery of the medium, but one understands how germane light and dark is for his artistic practice. Light is a key factor in No. 15, as it is in Sun Yao’s other pictures, and adds formal texture and compositional buoyancy while heightening emotional content. This is how Sun Yao breaks from his Romantic antecedents and moves his practice into more contemporary artistic registers whose aesthetic vocabulary is akin, for example, to the desolate landscapes of Anselm Kiefer. But Sun Yao’s paintings are, however, polyvalent and lend themselves to broader narratives that poetically explore the condition of self as an aggregate to a geographical gestalt. His arborous imagery is, of course, offset by the infusion of anthropomorphic forms. Individuals seem to vaporize before our eyes as the artist interjects more than humanoid phantoms; for their emotive qualities are cathartically conveyed through the coupling of figuration and landscape. Look, for instance at another exemplary work from the Deep Forest series such as No. 14 (2010)

No. 15 is arborous yet evocatively atmospheric. Most works by Sun Yao from the Deep Forest series have this ethereal quality to them; the dialectic between the tangible and the seemingly vaporous gives the paintings a visually poetic temperament of levity and gravity. But whereas No. 15 has these attributes of lightness and density, of an admixture of both center and periphery through a painterly dispersion, No. 14 takes on an earthier material form. Continuing with Sun Yao’s mainstay of forest and phantasmagoria, this work may be characterized as being more terrestrial if not subterranean. It transmits materiality much more than other paintings of these series via what appears to be a vast underground interiority. The faces and bodies in No. 14 have different resonance than No. 15 by virtue of their association within and above the geography on which Sun Yao portrays a wide range of human emotions. Varied and complex, most of the artist’s iconography of bodies and faces of both genders, work ostensibly in equal cohesion; here and there, however, it seems that he can also paint this configuration the other way around. In No. 7, for example, a monumental face seems to dominate the composition to the degree that bodies as well as the forest and flora are subservient to it.

The hallucinatory visage is archetypal: because of its overpowering presence, one cannot help think of Jungian psychology and the archetype. And like the famed psychologist’s theory of the collective unconscious from where these archetypes emerge, the forms that make up No. 7 and that gel together to make up eyes, nose mouth and so forth confront that viewer in a more direct manner. Other works generally have this larger face that meshes with arborous signifiers, but it may be that No. 7 is the most unsettling. While the artist has never mentioned as to the source or what this or any other forms mean to him, it would not be out to the realm of possibility that the monumental face on where is placed other figures may be a self-portrait. Not self-portrait in the traditional sense, because the rendering is not close to the artist’s likeness, but it could be that the overpowering visage that dominates and is recurring motif, is an alter ego of the artist. In this sense, Sun Yao has come full circle. For though other artists had grappled with the sublime as manifesting in nature externally, Sun Yao’s sublime is one of interiority.

Sun Yao’s art is a metaphorical journey into the deepest recesses of our being where we may dread not to go, confront, or come to terms with. The reason for this is as much our complacency as it is a negation of what Socrates once stated in the affirmative, to know thyself. Self-knowledge may be the most demanding undertaking for it takes a brutal honesty. Sun Yao’s paintings are testament to his artistic authenticity; he creates work not only for aesthetic  reasons but is deeply committed to a practice that is engaged with life as well as philosophical questions including the nature of being. In the pilgrimage that he calls art, he is telling us through this beautiful complex body of work that it may be that the self is elusive only because we are it. The farther we move away from ourselves, the farther the self becomes. Sun Yao’s paintings are visual poetic mappings if his own peregrination through a forest of imagination; in short, it is a topography of the self.
                                                               
 

Curator’s  bio:

Raúl Zamudio is New York-based independent curator and critic, and has curated  more  than 70 exhibitions in the Americas, Europe, and Asia; including co-curator, “City Without Walls,”  2010 Liverpool Biennial; co-curator, Constellations: 2009 Beijing  798 Biennial,  co-curator,   Turn and Widen: 2008 Seoul International Media Art Biennial, and artistic director, Garden of Delight: 2008 Yeosu International Contemporary Art Festival. He has authored, co-authored, or contributed to more than 40 books and catalogs. 
               

“密林”—关于我近期的绘画
作者：孙尧
人类越来越习惯于将自己置于任何事物之前，理性的力量似乎能让我们足够确信为世界带来某种秩序，然而我近期的作品却拷问这一自信。
在这一组名为“密林”系列的绘画作品中，我故意让自己重拾浪漫主义艺术的情怀，甚至回溯欧洲北方文艺复兴时期艺术家对世界的理解来重新审视作为主体性的自我和世界的关系。北方文艺复兴艺术家疏远对具体人之事物的表述，却对风景表现出不同寻常的兴趣。他们更关注自然之物中所蕴含的对于人与世界之终极命运的象征意义，在德国Danube School画派的艺术家阿尔特多费尔Albrecht Altdorfer的作品中，我们能够察觉作者对于自然中所蕴含的原始能量的深刻洞察和体验。这一时期的艺术家们偏好于在作品中大量描绘无限的旷野，广袤
森林以及晨夕更替的自然图景，而将人世之事的发生埋藏于画面里自然的日历表中，哥特艺术的深刻影响更让艺术家们将对宗教的理解和体验投射入诸多的自然对象之中。因此，目不穷极的山峦，变幻莫测的云气，枯朽而仍然高耸的橡树成为寄托人对消亡和重生体验的象征之物，而在意识到生命的短暂和终究无法与自然的无限之力抗衡的无限失落中，人找到了自身的悲剧性宿命。然而，这一悲剧性的失落体验也正是当时的艺术家所竭力维系与肯定的，人的主体意识也是在这一生命终极体验中而得到某种相对的稳定。

启蒙运动对理性的推崇以及科学主义思维的强势让人的主体性从虚无缥缈的无根状态中获得了独立于世界之外的地位，人史无前例地意识到自身对世界所赋予之终极命题的摆脱，能够转而为自然立法。早期蕴藏在与自然的交融中那种原始的神秘体验消失了，自然成为了物的化石以及人类的游乐场，人在迫切需要摆脱无根性的挣扎中将自然与自身的最后一丝联系割断了。
现代图像与信息技术延伸了继文艺复兴以来所提倡的“窗口视觉”。定点透视学的运用在画面上为我们打开了一扇观察世界的窗户，而视频和图片的应用进一步拓展了这一视点，让人能更从容地站在一个旁观者的视点来看待世界，而自然则成为透过许多扇窗户之外的图景。即便是早期文艺复兴时的北方绘画与德国浪漫主义的作品中也依然存在着人由己向外的“窗口视觉”。人们几乎无法在自身和自然的交汇中找到更合适的感知途径，而更多的是依靠视觉的面对面来把握对于世界神秘力量的体验。而基督教对自然之力的理解也并未对此做出过多的揭示，人只能够通过外化到自然物中的象征性来体验无形之上帝的原始驱动力。这也是我们得以在Caspar David Friedrich的绘画中经常感受到的浩瀚苍穹和渺小的人之命运的对比，以及将自身投入由这一对比关系被无限放大所造成的情境中来体验上帝的审视，同时也触发了作为自然之子的人对终极命运的深切自觉。然而，“窗口视觉”的姿态注定了如此的“看”终究无法企及来自经验世界背后的所谓彼岸。世界在眼前仍然是被把握为对象的存在，对象的变幻无常导致了浪漫主义者在精神上希望超越现实的世界，而超验的世界作为对象来说却又无从把握，因而只能寄托于自然的实存形态来达到对某种彼岸的幻想。
     世界要么是作为迷雾横亘在迷茫的人面前，要么是作为丧却了神秘灵性的标本成为科学主义手术台上的质料。当技术进步论割断了现代人对于基督教关于重生理念的最后一丝情愫之后，所有对于环境危机问题的论调与担忧则蜕变成为单纯的求医问药。
  我近期的绘画，从早期欧洲文艺复兴关于自然风景的作品中获得了某种体悟，怀着同样对自然的无限生命驱动力的感悟和宿命论中对死亡和重生的心灵体验，尝试着将知觉投入对自然的记忆之中来幻想人之内心世界的结构，并通过这种幻想的体验来回归世界之初人与自然的交织状态。这一交织不仅仅是单纯的共生和谐，而更是某种同质性的相互蔓延，正如梅洛-庞蒂所认为的身体作为知觉世界与内心的中介那般，世界通过我对自身心灵的洞悉得到展现，而我内心的肌理则散漫到世界的万物之中，“密林”正是对自我内心肌理的一种隐喻；同时，画面也并不成为注视世界的窗口，而是我们反观自身的镜子，在这一反观中，记忆与幻觉中的自然图景悄然地追寻着自我心理中对应的结构，而我对这一结构的表述也始终在自觉与不自觉的矛盾交叉中进行。画面是我努力体验的结果，试图在记忆与知觉的交织中确立某种熟悉的秩序，而呈现出的却只是零削琐碎和此起彼伏的图景。我的作品也是关于风景的描绘，而这一风景缺乏我们在Caspar David Friedrich作品中所熟悉的无限延伸的透视空间，并依托这延伸的空间所营造的场域来寄托超越现实的无限渴望，抑或是在Albrecht Altdorfer的作品中所感受到的蕴含在自然中的上帝之眼对人类的审视；“密林”背后往往是无限与混沌的不确定地带以及被时间的记忆所编织起来的维度，因而，我的画面是缺乏固定视觉纵深的，也正是由于这种缺乏，让我的追问得以不循着线性的思维而展开。
空间的表现在我的画面中显得错乱和陌生，或者只能说是对心理空间的可能性描述，我们往往在欲表述时才发现表述的困难。因此，我的“密林”始终是一个期望建构自我内心面孔的尝试，在人类将目光投向与外部自然的协调相生之时，我却将注意力转移至自身，用藤蔓和荆棘以及记忆中的奇山异石来模仿与编织起身体乃至内心的原初结构，通过回归这一原初质地的过程来感知自身同世界的紧密纠缠。“密林”也传达着一种来自于林中的召唤，让我们能够如同拨开群山迷雾般地剥离横却在我们灵魂深处的浓枝密叶，将我们傲慢的理性外衣丢弃在我们开始的地点，从而得以获得片刻的聆听。                       

Deep Forest – On My Recent Works
By：Sun Yao

Man is used to place himself above everything, holding the belief that his reason is absolutely capable of bringing an order to the world. It is exactly this self-assertion which I am questioning in my recent works.

In the series entitled Deep Forest, I recover the Romanticist mentality, and trace back as early as to Renaissance artists in Northern Europe, in order to examine the relation between subjectivity and the world through their eyes. Those artists seldom showed any interest in portraying man and relating affairs, instead they were zealous in landscape, in which they found symbol of the ultimate destiny of man and the world. In the works of Albrecht Altdorfer, an artist of Danube School, the artist’s deep understanding and experience of the natural power is so intense to the viewers. The artists of that epoch prefer to include in their paintings wide moor, expansive forest, dawn and dusk, concealing earthly affairs in the natural agenda through their depiction. This tendency of projecting religious idea and feeling into the nature is further enhanced by the influence of Gothic Art. Therefore, ever-extending ridge, changing weather and sere yet still erecting oak tree are frequently taken as objects of representing man’s experience of vicissitude. In this realization of fleeting life and inability of resisting the juggernaut of nature, man feels lost and finally found the tragic fate of his own. However, this tragic experience of feeling lost is acknowledged and maintained by the artists at the time, and man’s subjectivity was stabilized in a certain form in this ultimate experience of life.

The dominance of reason and .scientism thinking in the Enlightenment elevated subjectivity from homelessness to a state of independence from the world. For the first time in human history man is able to break the restriction of fatalism and instead make law for the nature. The mystery in the interaction with the nature disappeared; the nature is fossilized into commodity and became a fun fair of man. In his struggle to get rid of homelessness, man cut off the last connection with nature.

Image and information technology in modern times extend “window perception” originated from Renaissance. Linear perspective in paintings opened a window for us to observe the world, and correspondingly nature became a scene outside the window. The popularization of video and image further expanded this perspective, and nature is then seen from uncountable windows. This perspective is obvious even in the paintings of Northern Europe Renaissance and German Romanticism. There seemed to be no better way of encountering the world than face-to face perception of its mystery. In Christianity the understanding of natural power was not progressed; man could only feel the intangible power of God in its manifestation in the nature. This is the comparison we see in Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings between infinity of the universe and triviality of man. This comparison is magnified to create a situation into which we can cast ourselves to feel the gaze of the God, at the same time trigger man’s awareness of his ultimate destiny as the son of the nature.

But “window perception” doomed this attempt: man will never touch the truth hidden behind the empirical world with this very effort of perception. World in front of man was still taken as objects, and these protean objects drove Romanticist to resort to transcendental world as spiritual solace. But as this transcendental world was so hard to grip as an object, they eventually turn to manifestation of the nature to accommodate their fantasy of the truth.
 

 

This world is either shrouded in mist in front of the perplexed man, or put itself on the operation table of scientism and treated as demystified specimen. When technological development cut off modern man’s last nostalgia to the Christian ideal of Reincarnation, all the discourses and worries about environmental crisis are reduced to mere seeking quick-fix solutions.

Inspired by landscape paintings of early Renaissance, my recent works are driven by the same experience of nature’s infinite creative power and of death and rebirth of fatalism, represent my attempt to conjecture man’s mental structure through projecting perception into memory of the nature, and further recall the harmony between man and nature in the primeval times. This harmony is not mere symbiosis; it is more of a certain homogeneity, in which body plays the role of medium connecting perceived world and soul, as Maurece Merleau-Ponty believed, and world reveal itself through man’s introspective examination, meanwhile aspects of man’s inward world pervade the whole world. Deep Forest is just a metaphor of this inward world. At the same time, pictorial plane no longer serves as a window to the world; instead it becomes a mirror, reflecting the image of our own. In this reflection, images of the nature in my memory and fantasy try to correspond with my certain mental structure, and my presentation of this structure constantly proceeds along contradictory lines of consciousness and sub-consciousness. I try to establish certain familiar order in the interplay of memory and perception, and the paintings are the outcome of this effort, but I end up creating discrete and echoing images. My works are also depictions of landscape; but this landscape lacks either the infinite space in Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings, and the equally infinite aspiration to transcend the reality with this created space, or God’s gaze upon man, as embodied in the nature, in Albrecht Altdorfer’s work. In Deep Forest there is an uncertain zone and a dimension composed of memories about time, hence the absence of visual depth in my painting. It is this very absence that enables me to base my quest on a route other than one decided by linear thinking.

The space in my painting seems strange and in disorder; or I can say that this space just represent a description of possible mental space. It is when we are trying to say something that we found the difficulty in expression. Therefore Deep Forest is always my attempt to construct the mental image of my own. While man focus on the symbiosis with the world, I shift my attention to myself, using liana, bramble, oddly shaped mountains and rocks in my mind to imitate and construct the original structure of my body and my soul. This returning to the basics allows me to feel the fusion of the world and me. Deep Forest also conveys the call of the forest, urging us to remove the thick braches and leaves blinding our soul, like sun dispelling the thick frog shrouding the mountain, and to leave the shell of our reason when we started, just in order to get a moment of hearkening.

By: Sun Yao
2010