展览时间：2011年9月24日—2011年11月6日

       展览地点：北京季节画廊

       如果这次展览，是以我从2005年到2011年所画作品为线索，可以讲“时间窗”系列记录了我对整个儿童时代生活经历的回忆与重建，“蛋培拉”系列是在对绘画语言与技术的研究基础上，去创建一个属于当下自己内心情境的想象世界。

       但当我把从西九301重新整理的从1983年到1988年的绘画作品与2005年到2011年的绘画作品并置布展时，我发现自己再很难用简单的语句来解释它们。从直观看，这28年来的绘画从没离开过二维平面的造型语言与故事性情节的再现，只是五岁前的画是用生命在画（因为我现在不记的当时是在什么情景与状态下记录下他们的，纸上留下了生命原初状态里的混沌与说不清）上小学后直至现在的画是用器官（手）或思维（脑）在画。

       在这个由绘画记录贯穿而成的展示中，让我思考，对于绘画有没有唯一的审美标准？绘画所承载的内容除了形式的探索，观念的表达还是否有幽默的召唤 ，神秘的实现，宿命的诡异或对生命的光照？绘画的意义到底在于这过程本身还是在于这过程的结果？进一步追问，既然绘画是对生活的印象表达，当生活变化后，那存留在记录痕迹里现在的我与原来的我哪个是真实的？在当下这个绘画处于边缘化的时代，坚持理想还有没有可能？（我爱我的画，我怎么想就怎么画。）

       这个展览是个人化的，是我想通过时空中“西九301”这个坐标点，凭借绘画，重见自我，发现自我，拯救自我，既而了解别人的过程。它真实呈现了我在寻找过程中的困境（不安，恐惧，茫然与焦虑。）

马楠

If the exhibition traces my works between 2005 and 2011, then the “Time Window” series documents my recollection and reconstruction of my entire childhood experience, while the “Tempera” series is the construction of an imaginary world of my current frame of mind, on the basis of further studies in pictorial language and technique.

However, as I reorganize the “West 9-301” — works between 1983 and 1988, and between 2005 and 2011— for exhibition purpose, I find it difficult to explain them with simple language.
Intuitively, the paintings of the past twenty-eight years have never departed from the lingual or narrative recurrence of events on the two-dimensional plain, only the paintings done when I was five were completed with life (I no longer remember under what circumstances they were created, and what is left on paper is the chaos and unexplainable facts of the origins of life); the paintings done after I went to school were painted with my organs (hand) or thinking (brain).

Throughout the exhibition process, linked by pictorial documentation, I start to wonder if there is a unique aesthetic standard in painting. Apart from modal exploration, do paintings convey, in their conceptual expressions, jocular beckoning, mysterious realization, the deceit of destiny and the light of life? Does the significance of painting lie in the painting process itself or the end result of it? To go one step further, since paintings are the pictorial expressions of life, when life has changed, is what remains of me in the painting real or is the original me real? In an age when painting has been marginalized, is it possible to hold on to ideals? (I love my paintings and will paint whatever I like).
This exhibition is individualized. I wish to use “West 9-301” as a spatial coordinate, and to rediscover and salvage myself through painting, so as to understand what journeys other people go through in life. The exhibition authentically reflects my predicament when searching for the journeys (unease, fear, confusion and anxiety).

It also helps me to understand that I am not a mentor of the spirit, but an ordinary fragile man.
I thank Art Seasons for giving an ordinary individual the possibility of believing in the authenticity of 13 water marks in one go.     

 Ma Nan