飞慢 — 绘画何以继续

时隔五年，空间站荣幸的宣布举办张博夫第二次个展《飞慢》。“飞慢”一词语出画家三岁女儿偶然的创造（“飞快”一词衍生而来），恰好概括了画家这几年的生活状况。在这些年里画家的生活有了大的变故，这些处境的改变使得创作上很多问题被搁置和转化。因惊觉“一直以来我只是在装作面对一些问题”，而无法再将主体悬置在幕帘之后，一段时间无法再面对作为本体的绘画。

在张博夫近期的作品中，出现了树与火的主题作为喻体，用画家自己的话来说，这可能不是一种选择而是需求——“暴风雨中不择港口”。以简单的象征与隐喻，试图将绘画的建构方式归零、归为常规化，直抒胸臆。柏树，是在生活周遭中最常见的树种。梭罗在《瓦尔登湖》中称之为“自由树”，因其生命状态不随季候改变而保持独立如一。时间穿梭过柏树的树冠，便凝流为一体，柏树成为对于超越性的希冀的象征载体。火焰，是个古老的喻题。作为与人类生活息息相关的元素，是人类最早理解世界的基本概念之一。火焰的变动不居象征着生命力的变革与意志的不息。也因物质在燃烧中的状态改变关联着抽象的实体，在一些习俗中人们以火焰作为连接着终极的通道来完成某种仪式，以此来求得精神上需要的慰藉。作为喻体的树与火形态上又有某种相似性，以及在本体上辩证相伴的关系，画家在绘画中有意的加强了感受上两者之间的关联，使之混淆在一个总体内，形成综合的互为转喻的关系。

至此，绘画也就不再因形式问题展开，也不再往复于绘画史文本间性的作用，纠缠于意义间离式的表述，而是生发自主体无法挣脱的生命体验感知，因切身的表达欲望和对控制力底线的需求产生，以此来对沉沦的无力感作出最直接的回应。在这样的语境下，绘画是捆绑于伴随时间发生的一切主体状况的凝指，既是滞结了彼时的他物，也是此在所在的印证。“飞慢”即时间的客观规定（时间性）与个体的内在体认（时间感）的悖论，是直观所触发的暂停时间（叔本华直观超越），是差异的不同步（柏格森内时间绵延），是个体感逝的被困处境。

当个体处于一种无法回避的境遇之中，客观性及其规定也就不再成为问题。面对虚无的深谷，以别无选择的决绝从内部来超逾（列维纳斯）事实有限的边界，以此尝试开启自身的无限之门。面对人生，所有人都是未经事者，因敬畏未知之路而困惑踌躇，也因此不断反思存在与方向。在目前特殊的现实语境下，这既是个体的也是更具普遍性的意义追问。当我们把目光投向不可把握的无际，即望向了崇高，也就望向了真理所在。

The Fled & the Measured: How Can Painting Continue

Five years later, Space Station is honored to announce the launch of Zhang Bofu’s second solo exhibition The Fled & the Measured. The phrase “the fled and the measured” is a serendipitous creation of the painter’s three-year-old daughter and aptly sums up his life over the years, during which the painter’s life took a big turn, and these changed circumstances caused many creative issues to be put aside and transformed. “Because of the realization that all this time I was just pretending to face some problems, I was no longer able to hang the subject behind the curtain, and for a while I could no longer face the painting as it is.”

In Zhang’s recent works, the theme of trees and fire has emerged as a metaphor, which, in his own words, may not be a choice but a demand – “choosing no port in a storm”. With simple symbols and metaphors, he attempts to reduce and normalize the way painting is constructed and expresses his feelings straightforwardly. The cypress is the most common tree species found around life. Thoreau called it the “free tree” in Walden Lake, because its state of life does not change with the seasons and remains independent. As time passes through the canopy of the cypress, condensing into one thing, the cypress becomes a symbolic vehicle for the hope of transcendence. As an element closely related to human life, the flame, being an old metaphor, is one of the earliest basic concepts of human understanding of the world. The change of the flame is symbolic of the change of the vital force and the unceasing will. Also because of the altered state of matter in combustion associated with abstract entities, in some customs people use the flame as a link to the ultimate channel to complete certain rituals as a way to seek spiritual solace. As the metaphorical tree and fire have a certain similarity in morphology, as well as ontologically dialectical relationships, the painter intentionally strengthens the connection between the two, making them confused within a whole and formed a comprehensive metaphorical relationship.

At this point, painting will no longer be developed due to formal problems, nor will it travel to and fro in the role of intertextuality of the history of painting, or entangle in the alienated expression of meaning. Rather, it arises from the subject’s inescapable sense of life experience, the desire for expression and the need for a bottom line of control, as the most direct response to the sense of powerlessness of fallenness. In this context, painting is a condensation-and-reference bound to all the subjective conditions that go with time, i.e., the other thing that is stuck at that time, a confirmation of what Dasein is. The Fled and the measured, as a paradox between the objective prescription of time (temporality) and the individual’s inner knowledge (the sense of time), is the intuition-triggered suspension of time (Schopenhauer’s intuitive transcendence), the asynchrony of difference (Bergsonian La durée), and the trapped situation of individual which is vanishing.

When the individual is in an unavoidable situation, objectivity and its provisions are no longer in question. In the face of the deep valley of nothingness, one tries to open one’s own infinite door by crossing fact-limited boundaries from within (Levinas) with a determination that one has no choice but to do so. In the face of life, all people are uninitiated, confused and hesitant because of the fear of the unknown path, and therefore constantly reflect on beings and directions. In the present particular context of reality, this is both an individual and a more general search for meaning. When one looks to the ungraspable infinity, that is, to the sublime, one looks to the truth.