空间站将于2014年4月12日为您呈现艺术家商成祥的第二次个展《云图》，展览将持续至5月11日。

 

2013年商成祥的作品出现了很多“云团”和“棕榈树”，他说这是一个时期反复在做的一个梦。从小在东北长大，棕榈树林在他的现实生活中并不常见，梦中的七彩树林在风中摇摆，他在树顶穿行，那段时间仿佛每天都无法完全清醒，白天的状态就像《从迷雾中的开始》那幅画一样，床头始终笼罩着一团吹不散的迷云，于是有了2013至今的这些作品。

 

商成祥并不一直钟情于一样东西，从早期的“碎玻璃”、“火箭推进器”，“被炸的房子”，到现在“断了角的鹿”，“带着面罩的羊”，“迷失的斑马”等等，他更喜欢去描绘一些充满陌生感、距离感的事物。在他的画中，现实与幻想的情境交替出现，动物与人时常互换身份，使得我们在这些动物的眼中反观到自己作为人的另一面。

 

商成祥经常以大尺幅描绘一些“不现实”的场景。比如《无法逃脱的梦》中，断裂大船的残骸出现在一望无际的稻田中，孩子被塑胶袋和玩具木马捆绑。《你的样子》中被船桨搅烂的鲸鱼搁浅在海滩，一个女孩想要控制或者抚摸它。《凶像系列》中画得都是温顺的动物，但是他们嘴上的嚼子却透露出凶狠的情绪和想要反抗的力量。这种内在的情绪可以被长期无视，能量也可以持续集聚。商成祥将这些细节小心地埋藏，仿佛一个定时炸弹的计时装置，在倒数的时间中期待你快去发现这一切的不同寻常。

 

然而，一个最为重要的部分是谁是他画面的主角？这意味着观看者将置身于不同的位置：有的人凝视了动物，有的人被画中环境制造的氛围深深包围，可以说，商成祥想讲述一个类似回环的故事，他把这种发现权交给了观众，仿佛画面所提喻的那个场景蕴涵着无限的意义，既是开头也是结局，既是过程也是全部。

 

在你似乎有所启迪的时候，商成祥又把这一切解释为两个分身如影随形的密语，据说他经常分不清现实和真实的关系，如同之前提到他分不清白天要面对的是梦境还是现实。比如《分食——盛宴》中那三只不同形态的羊代表了几种不同类型的人群，很难分辨谁才是最危险的，他们或伪装或凶恶或温顺，但那些也只是表面，或许伪装的最高境界就是没有伪装。画面中的肉代表着利益，背景中盛开的鲜花，暗示着这三只羊将在这花团锦簇的环境下分食盛宴。

 

如果我们把文学性的隐喻全部去掉，商成祥想要表达的东西依然没有消失，这说明他构思作品的方式依然是传统的，纯视觉性的，这与大部分当代艺术家依附文本和观念阐述的方式有所不同。如果我们接着又去掉了先前的那些动物身上的道具，你会发现，作为一个观看者，画面上的那些动物眼中透露的也包括人性。

 

这是一个关于孤独与矛盾，现实与情感的故事。即使我们不去讲述，商成祥在一开始就把我们的目光框定到一个各自可见的范围，可见度不多不少，正是我们正在面对的和内心选择的角斗场，好在这种独处的范围也不再生成过多的寂寞感，只是一个我和另一个世界的我。实际上，这是一种与外部现实一同消失的状态，也是我们走进内心世界的必经之路，那些“云团”正是进入其间的门和窗。摆脱了那个似乎统摄着世界的现实，我们获得了自身存在的位置。另一方面，那些画面上的精神象征之物，也许只是两个自身的絮语。现实和幻想，孤独和矛盾在人生的际遇中如波涛般起伏不定，但主导这些迷茫的秩序似乎又一直存在，时而打断我们过多的臆想。更有意思的是，我们在追求真理平衡自身的道路中又需要这种臆想，这看起来构成了一个去幻想或者去理智的过程，最后，画中的世界和我们各自可见的世界又回环如一，真实的想法和感悟好像只冒出来了一下，又被思绪的大海默默隐去了。

 

 

The Space Station is about to present you the second solo exhibition of Cloud Atlas of the artist Shang Chengxiang on April 12th, 2014. The exhibition lasts until May 11th.

 

The year 2013 has seen many “clouds” as well as “palm-trees” in Shang’s works, the recurrent images in his dream of a certain period. Grown up in the northeastern China, he has not seen much of a palm forest; yet he dreamt that those colourful trees swayed in the breeze and he weaved through those treetops. At that time he found it very hard to sober up every day, which felt like there was always a cloud haunting at the bedside, much like those depicted in the painting Start from the Fog. Thus we have the works from 2013 till the present.

 

Shang’s predilection is not limited from the early “glass pieces”, “rocket booster”, “bombed house”, to the recent “deer with snapped antlers”, “masked goat” and “lost zebra”, etc. He likes it more to delineate those unfamiliar, strange and remote. Reality and fantasy in his works appear one after another; animals and human beings often exchange identities, making us rethink ourselves as human beings from the perspectives of the animals.

 

Shang always depicts some “unrealistic” scene by using large size canvas, like in Unescapable Dream, the wreckage of a damaged ship appears in a vast expanse of cornfield, and kids are strapped by plastic bags and toy horses; Your Face describes a stranded whale wrecked by the oars, and a little girl wants to control or stroke it; Horror Series portrays docile animals, whose eyes and the bits are gleaming with ferocious emotions as well as the strength to rebel. These powers can be either long neglected, or constantly gathered. Shang carefully conceals these details, making them like a timer of a bomb, urging you to discover all the unusualness within the countdown.

 

A most significant question, however, is who the protagonists of his works are. This means that the spectators are placed in different locations, with some gazing on the animals, and some besieged by the atmosphere created by the paintings. That is to say, Shang intends to narrate a quasi-circular story, in which he lets the viewers to discover, as if the depicted scene is pregnant with inexhaustible meanings: the beginning is also the end; the portion is also the whole.

 

Just when you think you have seen the light, Shang explains all these as two separate but closely related selves. It is said that he often fails to distinguish reality and truth, as the aforementioned that he cannot tell whether he is in dreams or reality in the daytime. For instance, in Partake of the Feast, where three goats of different appearances represent several different types of person; it is hard to tell who is the most dangerous, for they are either masqueraded or fierce or submissive, but these are only the appearances: maybe the best mask is without mask. The meat in the painting represents the interests, and those blooming flowers at the background suggest these three goats are to partake of the feast in such a flowery environment.

 

If we disregard all those literary metaphors, what Shang aims to express still remain. This shows that his way of constructing the work is still conventional and purely visual, which is different from most contemporary artists who rely on the hermeneutics of texts and notions. If we go on to strip off those props on the aforementioned animals, you will find, as a spectator, that those eyes also reveal human nature.

 

This is a story about solitude and conflict, reality and emotions. Even if we do not tell it, Shang, at the very beginning has limited our sights within a perceivable scope, so accurate that what we are facing and our inner choice are standing in sharp conflict. Good news is that the scope does not produce much loneliness, but just a world of me and another me. In fact, this is a state void of the real and the outside world, and also the very way through which we walk into our inside world, and those “clouds” are the doors and windows to enter from. Rid of the omnipotent reality that seems to have all the word under control, we obtain our own freedom. On the other hand, those spiritual symbols in the painting may be just the murmur between the two selves. Reality and fantasy, solitude and conflict undergo ups and downs like the waves in our life journey; but orders seem to have always existed governing these chaos, and occasionally disrupting our excessive imaginations which, more interestingly, we also need in our pursuit of the truth and self-balancing. This seems to be a de-fantasized or de-rationalized process; and in the end, the virtual world in the painting converges with our perceivable world, where the real feelings and inspirations spring up for some time and are quickly washed away by the tides of thoughts.