作者:冯博一
蒋华君 漂·移之十二 布面油画 200×300cm 2007
蒋华君的油画与时下流行的所谓当代艺术显得有些不合适宜,因为他的作品既没有欲望化创作所形成的时尚、浅薄、刺激效应,也没有后殖民话语的全方位泛滥,更没有对西方化审美情趣的迁就或迎合。他的创作更多的是体现了内心深处的非功利性生存的困惑与愿望,也意味着他的创作是针对现实生存的压力与缺憾而努力一种方式。换言之,蒋华君之所以选择这种方式来表达自己对世界的感受和体验,是因为他已觉察到了某些不但值得而且必须揭示的问题,诸如物质欲望的空前膨胀,人文精神的失落,由社会的转型而导致的各种价值观念的失范。尤其是个人身在其中的矛盾、孤独,以及对精神漂移无所归栖的焦虑。从而,展示了这个精神迷惘时代的种种苦难现实,并从存在之因的视觉探析中,表达了他对时代精神废墟的忧患和对人类新生存状态的寻求与拯救。
蒋华君的作品是以一种具象写实的直接性来叩问人精神存在的处境,感受生命欲望在社会视域中所遭遇的煎熬。在他2007、2008年创作的《漂·移》系列作品中,我们可以反复看到一个男孩,或面对着工业化的大型机械装置,或在混凝土空间的倚坐,或面对着水流、烟云,以及在水中的漂泊……“他”被描绘的是那样敏感、脆弱,饱含着一种无人理解的孤独,在没有爱与温暖中静静地注视这个世界。实际上如果从心理学的意义上解释,这个男孩还并不仅仅是艺术家观察世界的窗口,抑或就是他自己的真实写照,同样还折射了他对自身少年时代苦难生活的种种追悼。因为这个男孩承担苦难的能力,穿击生存表象的方式在很大程度上迎合了艺术家本人的思维方式和人格精神,也是艺术家面对悖谬现实的一种不甘的抗争。加缪曾说:“荒谬的人于是隐约看见一个燃烧的而又冷冰的世界,在这个世界里,并不是一切都是可能的,但一切都是既定的,越过了它,就是崩溃和虚无。荒谬的人于是能够决定在这样一个世界中生活,并从中获得自己的力量,获得对希望的否定以及对一个毫无慰藉的生活的执著证明。”(见《西西弗斯神话》第74页,北京 三联书店 1987年)蒋华君正是以此显示了世俗社会对生命本身的冷漠程度,并强调“面对”和对于每个生命的潜在意义。因此,男孩不仅是个视点,还是一个揭示存在荒谬性的艺术具像,他在打开现实中苦难的场景时,又以自身的苦难性昭示着人们的关怀。也许,他深知人既是一个社会的存在,又是一个生命的存在,其群体性与个体性之间的纠葛是生命里一种巨大的困惑;他也明白人的理性与感性之间的斗争更是充满着永远难以调和的悲剧,但他的勇气在于:直面这种不幸,绝不逃离更不粉饰人生本质上的艰辛与苦难,相反,以传统人文精神的姿态审视和感触那种艰辛和苦难的深重与无望。他不是企图在现实面前寻找失语后的代偿,而是在解构现实境域里展示人的生存现状,以确证创作主体对自身之在的关注和认定。在这种对生命存在的本质观照中,他首先将审美目标对准了个体在现实的存在,这些平凡而卑琐的生命,就是以此不断地制造快乐和苦难以证明自我的存在。在麻木、粗俗和无知中浸透了蒋华君对生存现实的无限灼痛。同时,也以直观的场景,象征性地表现出生命苦涩与生命内蕴的力量。
与本能欲求所演绎的种种生存苦难相映衬的是蒋华君还极力通过动物的组合形象,展示作为群体性的病态生命。牠们常常伴随着委顿的生存环境,以近似麻木的眼光打量着现实的一切,空洞地伫立或游走于由蒋华君设置的场景中。这种淡化了人的精神维度和人格尊严的生存方式在本质上消解了文明时代的价值,拟人化地把人的动物性强化到一种新的层面。也就是说,牠们扩充的是人的物质欲望,是一种表象化的生存追求,而将心灵丢弃在一边,漠视人的精神关怀。这也为人之欲望无遮无掩的表演提供了一个广阔的心理空间。蒋华君之所以如此地直面这种苦涩的生存现实,是因为他试图“通过‘个人的存在’这个锁眼对偶遇的世界和时代自我解码”(见“A+A第四回展”画册第102页,偏锋新艺术空间出版,2009年)。这是一种对现代社会所注塑的病态人格的质疑。它不仅表现为肉体上的缺憾,还表现为精神上的畸型。如《世纪公园》(2009)、中那些动物的形象及窥视现实的道具、景观,以及小人物坐在废墟之上的悬疑;《午后》(2008)中大鳄的呲牙咧嘴……这些都在语境深处表明了创作主体对恶俗化的、毫无生机的生存图景的一种憎恶,它消磨了人的创造力和意志力,淡漠了人的奋斗勇气,使健康的人格日趋卑琐和苍白。很显然,这样的超现实表现并不是蒋华君故弄玄虚地刺激人们的视觉,而是对那种病态生命的超感发掘。在这里,尽管其形象本身是强调其外部形态,但人物精神内在的病变和生存的悖谬也已不言而喻。他之所以如此地专注于倾诉那些病态的风貌,有时甚至故意地剔除现实中应该存有的温和与善良,而让作品只剩下恶与丑陋,实质上并不是出于一种绝望的情调,尽管有些氛围的表述相当黑暗而迷乱,人物也时常充满形而下的冲动,但它们最终都是体现了创作主体对精神本体的深切召唤和终极关怀。他的用意或许在于通过对反面性的暴露来提醒人们什么问题不关痛痒,什么问题才维系着人的生存价值。我们常说,先锋并不只是代表艺术本体的前卫性,它更强调精神上站在时代的前列,先锋不是艺术的,而是精神的立场的,他们是一些有勇气在存在的冲突中为存在命名的人,他们的作品正直面苦难与不幸中体现出艺术家对人的生存图景的关怀,并试图以此接近人的本质。蒋华君倾心于生存苦难的叙述,以病态人格的多方位演示,在艺术深层的审美理想上,正体现了他的先锋品质和应有的艺术良知,以及艺术家的操守与守望。
蒋华君直观人生的悲怆,并非是想摆脱苦难对艺术家的自我盘压;他对当代生存境况持以超越的态度,但他并不背叛现实的不幸,相反,他以入世精神和教徒般的自我忍受能力沉浸在现实的苦难之中,探入到人的本质内部,当他一触及到这种本体的痛苦,除了无奈和悲悯,他并没在绝望的气息里遗忘自我的使命和责任,而是在这种精神迷惘的时代,努力寻找着一种存在转换的方式。他的一些作品几乎都在以苦难提示人生自我的解救法则。在我看来,这种法则是以一系列单个或复数般的骷髅给予呈现的。也许脆弱的心灵找不到可以慰藉的家园,他便选择了一种理想的超越姿态——死亡。尽管这是种终极解脱,但蒋华君却赋予了它以诗化的过程,一种历经心灵刺痛后的拯救和逍遥,是苦难帮助他们成功地走向了解脱。其实,他的内心也深知,死亡绝不是一种最好的拯救方式,如果人类只能依助死亡拯救自身,那么存在将变得毫无价值,无论精神抑或肉体都只能是一种虚浮的表象。但他又不愿让每一个灵魂拥有暂时的安顿,对永恒性和不朽的执迷促使他时刻思考着拯救自我的方式却又久久不可得,他不得不在痛憷中选择死亡作为人物摆脱不堪重负的存在。于是我们不仅看到骷髅的堆砌完成了人生最后的仪式,还看到了骷髅的风化,甚至血腥的斑斑痕迹。这既表明了苦难的巨大威力,也表明了艺术家对生命本体深刻体悟后的失望和伤痛,实际上是他是责任心和艺术良知在内心自虐的结果。蒋华君通过画面一次次地穿越死亡地带,正表明他是站在良知的力量上对人类苦难的深渊发出的终极呐喊,因此,对于死亡,他从不作任何形式的解构。当然,这并不是说蒋华君的创作心理中只有死亡迎候着所有的疼痛和罪恶,他在帮助观者认识到自身不幸的同时,同样也提供积极的解救途径。这种拯救并不是对生存困苦的一种摆脱,而是一种积极的承担和容纳,而这种担当正是人类拯救自己的有效方式。他的图式实际上也就是企图把他自己的情操重新扶持起来,以帮助困惑日益加重的现代人们挺直自己的腰杆。
在上述一番的解析中,我们不难发现蒋华君之所以值得关注,是因为在他的视域中一切效仿和摹拟都不存在,他既不像时下某些艺术家们那样广泛地拆解历史的碎片,在玩弄想象中放逐自我的精神理想,也不陶醉于传统文化与“红色经典”的符号之中,更不追踪那种稀释后现代理论的玄妙创作。他在对抗精神普遍拆除深度模式的潮流中,不断地追问消费时代的人类生存困惑。因此,蒋华君从一开始的创作针对性就是人和人的生存,并他把自我完全投射在这种精神内层,以求得人之为人的本质力量。这是一个没有任何技术和捷径的艺术行为,也是人本主义回归的艺术方式。它在关注人自身的思维程式里表明了蒋华君油画艺术的价值与意义。
Keep Watching through Death
——About Jiang Huajun’s Art Works
Feng Boyi
Jiang Huajun’s works is a little bit anachronistic with the popular so-called contemporary art nowadays. Because his works went without fashionable, superficial and stimulative effect formed by desired creation, without full-spread overruns of post-colonial words and even without connivance and catering for western aesthetic sentiment. His creations much more embody the perplexity and desirability of non-utilitarian survival in the cockles of his heart, which means his creation is a way in allusion to the survival pressure and defect in reality. In other words, he just chooses this way to express his feelings and experiences towards world, because he has known some issues which deserves and must be revealed, such as the unprecedented swell of substance desire, the lose of humanity spirit and the anomie of different kinds of values led by social conversion, especially his contradiction and loneliness among these as well as the non-habitual anxiety about spirit drift. However, his creations show different kinds of tribulations in this spiritual perplexed era, meanwhile, express his misery of spiritual relics as well as the quest and salvage of new survival state of human kind.
Jiang Huajun’s works use an immediacy of figurative realism to make inquires on existent situations of human spirit, feel the suffering of life desire encountered in the social horizon. From his work “Drifting·Floating” painted in the year of 2007 and 2008, we can see a boy, who is delineated so sensitive, weak and contains a non-understanding loneliness, stares at this world quietly without love and warmth when he is facing the industrialized large-scale machinery devices, or sitting at the concrete space, or facing stream and cloud, or drifting in the water. Actually, if we saw it from the aspect of psychology, we could see this boy is not only the window who observed the world by artist, but also his real portrayal life. That also reflects his mourn for tribulations when he was young. Because his ability to afford this suffering and the way through the survival appearance in some degree cater for thinking and penalty spirit, also is a kind of unwilling struggle which artist faces the absurd reality.
Camus said: “Absurd people see a burning and cold world indistinctly upon that. In this world, not everything is possible, but fixed. When you go over it, you would find collapse and nihility. Absurd people can decide to live in that kind of world, and then gain his own power and obtain the denial towards hope as well as the persistent evidence of life without consolation.” (See “Myth of Sisyphus”, P74, Beijing, Sanlian Bookstore, 1987) [NextPage]
Jiang Huajun shows secular society’s indifference to life itself by the right of this and emphasizes on “facing” as well as the potential meaning to each life. Therefore, the boy is not only a view point, but also an artistic figure to disclose the absurdity of existence. When he opens the suffering scene in the reality, his own suffering also shows people’s solicitude. For aught I know, he knows people is a social being, also an existence of life, the imbroglio between groups and individuals is a huge perplexity in life. He also knows the struggle between intellect and sensibility is a tragedy difficult to attemper forever. But his courage exists in: he faces this misfortune directly and never goes away and avoid from the hardships and tribulations of human natures. Conversely, he uses the stance of traditional human spirit to survey and feel the hardships and the grave and hopeless of tribulations. He doesn’t attempt to search for the compensation of aphasia in the reality, but to exhibit the survival status of human beings in the field of deconstruction of reality and then corroborate the attention and cognizance of the creative body to self-existence. In this essential contemplation to life existence, first of all, he targets the taste goal at the individual existence. This common and humble life that produces happiness and tribulation continuously is the proof of self-existence. Jiang Huajun’s endless causalgia towards existent reality soaks in numbness, vulgarity and ignorance. Meanwhile, he also uses intuitionistic scene to show a bitter life and the power of intrinsic life symbolically.
Jiang Huajun makes efforts on showing the sick lives as a group by combined figures of animals, in comparison to all kinds of suffering interpreted by instinctive desire. Animals often accompanied with poor living environments, looking at everything in reality with numb eyes, standing or walking aimlessly on the scene set by Jiang Huajun. The living way with diluted human spiritual dimension and human dignity decomposes the value of civilization, strengthening the animality of human to a new level in anthropomorphic way. In other words, they expand the human desire for material. It is a living pursuit in representation, but abandoning heart and ignoring people’s spiritual solicitude, which provides a broad mental space for the performance of human desire without any shelter. Jiang Huajun could face this bitter realities of life, just because he attempts “to self decode to this encountered world and era through the keyhole of ‘personal existence’” (see the catalogue of “the Fourth A+A” on page 102, published by PIFO New Art Gallery). It is an oppugnation of psychopathic personality injected by modern society, not only representing the physical defects, but also a kind of monstrosity in spirit. Such as the animal images, props and scenery which spy on the reality as well as the sprat with suspicion sitting on the ruins in “Century Park” (2009); grinning mouth of big crocodile in “Afternoon” (2008)……These indicate, in the context depth, artist’s abomination to the vulgar and sterile living prospect. They dissipate people’s creativity and volition and deplete the courage of struggle as well as making the healthy personality become beggarly and pale. Obviously, it is not Jiang Huajun’s trick to stimulate people´s visual, but an extrasensory exploration of sick life. Here, despite the image emphasizes its external shape, but the intrinsic disease of character and living absurdity are self-evident. The reason why he focuses on creating pathological characters and sometimes even deliberately eliminates moderation and kindness which should be existed in reality, only evil and ugliness are left in the works is not from a despair mood actually. Although some expressions of atmosphere are dark and confused, and characters are also filled with a physical impulse, but they ultimately reflect the deep calls and ultimate concern of the artist to the spiritual noumena. Perhaps his intension is to remind people what issue is to maintain the value of human existence, and what issue is insignificant through exposure of inverse. We often say that pioneer is not just on the behalf of avant-courier of artistic noumenon, but emphasis more on standing in front of the times in spirit. Pioneer is not artistic, but in the position of spirit. They nominate existence with courage in the conflict of existence. Their works reflect artist’s solicitude to human living prospect in facing misery and misfortune directly, and attempt to get close to the human essence. Jiang Huajun clings to depict living suffering with multi-dimensional presentations of psychopathic personality in aesthetical ideal deep in the art. This precisely reflects his vanward quality and essential artistic conscience as well as the artist´s ethics and watch.
Jiang Huajun stares at life pathetique directly, not in order to get rid of artist’s self-set pressure by suffering. He has a transcendent attitude to the modern living situation. However, he doesn’t betray realistic grief. On the contrary, he is immersed in realistic suffering, exploring the internal nature of human with active spirit and self-endurance ability like a religion follower. When he gets in touch with the pain of noumenon, he doesn’t forget his mission and responsibility in the desperate atmosphere in addition to helplessness and compassion. He takes great efforts to find a way to convert existence. Some of his works always reveals the self rescue rule of suffering. I suppose this rule is presented by a series of single or multi skulls. Tender hearts may not be able to find a comfortable spirit home here. So he chooses an ideal transcendent gesture——death. Although this is an ultimate relief, Jiang Huajun endows it with a poetic process, with rescue and peripateticism after experiencing a heart suffering. Suffering helps they go to disengagement successfully. Actually, they know death is not the best rescue method in their heart. If human beings could only rescue themselves by death, existence should be meaningless, either spirit or body shall be a superficial appearance. However, he is also reluctant to let every soul has a temporary resettlement. The obsession to eternity and immortality prompts him to keep thinking the way of self rescue, but he can not get it after a long-time thinking. So he has to choose death as the existence of getting rid of overburdened pressure in severe pain. So we not only see the pile of skull to complete the final rituals of life, but also airslaked skull, even bloody traces. This not only shows the tremendous power of suffering, but also shows artist’s disappointment and pain after realizing the nature of life. This is actually the result of self-flagellation of responsibility and artistic conscience. By passing through the dead zone time and time again by painting, Jiang Huajun shows his ultimate cry to the abyss of human suffering on the power of art conscience. Thus, for death, he never makes any form of deconstruction. Of course, it does not mean that only death greets pain and evil in Jiang Huajun’s psychology of creation, he helps the viewer be aware of their misfortune, meanwhile also provides a positive means of relief. This rescue is not a relief of living hardship, but rather a positive commitment and capacity, and this commitment is an effective way to save humanity. His schema is an attempt to rebuild his own sentiments in fact in order to help the incrementally confused modern people to stand straight up.
From the analysis above, it is easy for us to find why Jiang Huajun deserves to draw attention, because there is not mimic and imitation in his vision. He doesn’t dismantle the history extensively like some artists nowadays who exile their spirits in twiddling envision. He isn’t inebriated in the symbols of traditional culture and red classics. Furthermore, he doesn’t follow the diluted occult works from modern theory. He keeps investigating the bewilderment of human existence in the consumption era, in confronting the trend in which human minds have generally excluded deep mode. Therefore, Jiang Huajun’s works are aimed at human existence and project himself on this spiritual level in order to achieve the essential power of human as a human being. It is an artistic behavior without any technology and shortcut, also an art approach with the return of Humanism. It indicates the value and significance of Jiang Huajun’s Art Works in the way of thinking which pays attention to human beings.
(编辑:罗谦)
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