“无法”—— 王易罡个展

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​文：郭芳

空间站很荣幸的宣布将于2017 年5 月21 日至6 月18 日迎来“无法”王易罡个展。此次将展出鲁迅美术学院教授、美术馆馆长王易罡近年来的抽象系列作品。

表现主义是20 世纪初兴起于德国的艺术运动，强调艺术家的个性和主观情感、反对传统客观再现的现代艺术运动。大胆的色彩，强有力的笔触，放弃画面的和谐，追求夸张、变形、破坏……用任何适合的语言表现真实的内心情感，反映了一战前后德国和欧洲的社会问题和政治危机。1945 年第二次世界大战后，抽象表现主义（也称为纽约画派、行动画派）作为美国第一个艺术运动，结合了抽象和表现主义的共同特征，反对制造幻觉的具象绘画、反对传统的美学和逻辑，强调艺术中的自我表现和纯粹性观念，
它与超现实主义和抽象艺术学派（如立体主义、未来主义和包豪斯）都有呼应。抽象表现主义分为“表现性抽象”（波洛克、德库宁为代表）和“色域抽象（罗斯科、纽曼为代表），前者运用超现实主义无意识、偶然性和自动主义的概念进行创作，强烈直接的抒发、宣泄内心的情感。后者则继承了立体主义和抽象主义的衣钵，运用简单统一的色块来展现内心感受的共鸣。

王易罡的创作源于对西方抽象表现主义的学习，但又不是直接挪用的再发展。这是因为，西方抽象表现主义的出现有其深刻的历史根源，并且受到当时的西方哲学、科技进步的深刻影响，加上两次世界大战后对既有文明的破坏，人的本能作用被重新唤起，荣格“集体无意识”理论的提出也对抽象表现主义的发展产生了影响，这一理论解释了这种包含了人类共同记忆的无意识是如何成为当时人们构造神话、哲学和科学的原动力的。

但是，20 世纪80 年代抽象表现主义在中国的发展却失去了这种上下文的关系，王易罡的艺术创作正是开始于那个年代。西方的抽象艺术在借鉴”日本书道”等东方文化的同时继续向前发展。当时的中国刚刚经历文革，进入改革开放新的历史时期，抽象表现主义引进中国既切断了与西方历史传承，也与东方文化保持一种疏离的关系，可以说，这种借鉴只是从形式语言、绘画风格方面的借鉴，中国艺术家在精神气质、文明特征、社会人文背景方面都与西方存在明显的不同。抽象表现主义在中国的萌芽发展势必存在某种信息的丢失，文献的不完整，甚至某些错误的理解，但是这种“不完整”也为抽象表现主义在中国的发展带来了新的可能。

抽象艺术如今已成为国际性的绘画语言，其主要任务就是用视觉化的图像来表现精神、音乐、力量、关系、自然法则和其他不为肉眼所见的事物。人类有史以来，表现肉眼不可见的事物对艺术家来说一直是个挑战。至于解决的办法，早在抽象艺术形成之前，人们就已经偏向于使用抽象手法。比如讲述神话故事，传播宗教信仰……有趣的是，大部分这些不可再现的思想会越过国界和语言的屏障，使某些艺术家成为在创作中混合运营科学和伪科学材料的大师。

王易罡同时沉浸于两种截然不同的美学世界中：西方艺术的抽象表现主义精神与东方艺术的禅宗精神。他试图创立一种基于自身经验的抽象艺术形式，在创作方法上坚持绝对的独立，“希望在破坏中寻找秩序”，从“定”到“肯定”再到“否定”，如此的循环往复的过程中不断接受挑战。在批判中建立或者重生，对他来说绘画的过程实际上也已成为作品的一部分。艺术家必须不断寻找更能准确表达内心世界的技术和语言，在偶然中遇见必然，批判已有的秩序，在与物质世界的对话中寻找和自身精神世界的准确契合点。

学院派艺术家最容易落入对西方经典美学系统学习的窠臼，王易罡在开始个人创作之初就意识到，倘若只是单纯的对西方抽象表现主义形式、媒介、语言方面的重复，作品最大的成就即是成为西方抽象艺术谱系中的番外篇而已——一个中国化了的抽象表现主义样式。中国的抽象艺术如何立足于本土的文化立场，回归自身的艺术史发展逻辑，捍卫自己的文化身份？王易罡从一开始就选择了反叛学院派固有的美学逻辑，甚至会去从某些不舒服的地方中寻找新的突破点，不愿落入经典视觉经验的漩涡。受到现
代科技对艺术的影响，表现主义者早已不再相信客观事物存在于固定、完整的不变状态，希望用纯抽象的艺术语言表现“纯粹精神的世界”。

王易罡近几年的作品能看到强烈的能量在笔触运动中翻滚，或诗意澎湃，或汹涌动荡，或骤然自持。他在自己的画布空间中倾注着大量的顔料，在长时间与画布的搏斗中，体验着生与死的痛苦与快乐，在无数次的涂抹中感受着创造的过程及生命存在的意义。他每天的涂改可以证明生命依然在延续。这些画作令人唤起个人记忆中某些特殊而强烈的片段，那些愤怒、残酷、找寻、与失落，除了带给我们坦率、真实、直接的感受，又多了一分自在而为的淡然。他的画有时是具有侵略性的，引人注目，有时又顽皮率直，真性情表露无遗。

 

对他来讲，艺术一直是在过程中被感知的，当下的感受充满某些永恒的意义，这是个体和精神存在的证明。艺术世界的较量是不分国界、风格和语言的，作品能否直接打动人，感染人，留下深刻印象，带来美学观念和技术的创新？这是艺术家每天都要直面的问题。如同具象绘画中的代表人物白发一雄用禅宗来理解抽象艺术一样，王易罡这些“无法”无主题的抽象画作，他早已逃离了叙事语言和实证主义的世界，那是艺术史逻辑也很少提及的部分：大相无形。他的艺术就是生活，每分每秒的感受都铭刻于作品，那是一种真实的释放和恒久的陶醉。存在感也许正是抽象表现主义艺术所想表达的终极母题。

 

 

Detached Abstract: Wang Yigang Solo Exhibition
By Guo Fang

The Space Station is honored to announce that Detached Abstract: Wang Yigang Solo Exhibition will be held during May 21 - June 18, 2017. The
exhibition will display the abstract works created in recent years by Wang Yigang, who is a professor at Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, and the curator of the affiliated art museum.

Expressionism, emphasizing the individuality and subjective perspective of artists, and opposing objective representation in modernist movement, was an art movement originated in Germany at the beginning of 20th Century. Expressionist artists, applying bold colors, and strong brushstrokes, relinquishing the harmony of the pictures, seeking for exaggeration, deformation, and destruction etc., expressed their emotions in any suitable language, which reflected the social and political crises of Germany and Europe before and after the First World War.

 

After the breaking of World War II, abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School, action painting), as the first American art movement, which combined expressionism with abstract, and which, by emphasizing self-expression and pure conception in art, opposed illusions made by figurative painting, and the traditional aesthetics and logic, found an echo in surrealism and abstract art school (such as Cubism, Futurism and the Bauhaus). Abstract expressionism is divided into expressive abstract (Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning) and color-field painting (Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman). The former, strongly and directly expressing emotions, works by applying the concept of surrealism unconsciousness, contingency, and automatism, while the latter inherited the mantle of cubism and abstractionism, using simple and uniform color to show the sympathy of inner feelings.

Wang’s creation springs from the study of abstract expressionism, but it is not a redevelopment of appropriation, for western abstract expressionism,
influenced by western philosophy, and the progress of science and technology at the time, has its profound historical origin; and human instinct was
recalled after the two World Wars’ devastation of civilization, abstract expressionism, therefore, was also influenced by Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, which explained how this unconsciousness, implying the collective human memory, arouses a motive power to construct myth, philosophy, and science.
 

However, in the 1980s, the development of abstract expressionism in China lost those backgrounds. While Wang’s artistic creation began in that period, the abstract art in the West had its development by means of learning from oriental cultures, such as the “Japanese calligraphy.” At that time China just navigated its way through the Cultural Revolution, entering a new historical period of reform and opening-up. The introduction of abstract expressionism into China, maintained an alienated relationship to oriental culture, lost its historical heritage in the West. It might be said that those references are merely references in terms of the form of the language, painting style etc., for there are distinct differences between Chinese artists and western ones in qualities, humanity backgrounds, and characters of civilization.

 

There must be a loss of information in the sprout and development of Chinese abstract expressionism- incomplete literature, even some misunderstandings-but this kind of “incompleteness” might bring new possibilities for the development of abstract expressionism in China.

Abstract art, whose main concern is to use visual images to show the spirit, music, strength, relations, laws of nature and other things invisible, has now become an international language of painting. It has always been a challenge for artists to perform things unseen. As to the solution, people have been inclined to use abstract techniques before the formation of abstract art, such as telling fairy tales and spreading religious beliefs... Interestingly, most of these unrepresentable ideas will cross national boundaries and language barriers, allowing some artists to become masters of mixing the materials of business science and pseudo-science in their creations.

Wang was immersed in two entirely different aesthetic worlds: the abstract expressionism spirit of Western art and the Zen spirit of Oriental art. He tried to create an abstract art form based on his own experiences, and adhered to the absolute independence in creation methods, and with “the hope to find orders in destruction” continued to face challenges from “negative” to “positive” and then to “negative.” Establishing or regenerating in criticism, the course of painting, for him, has actually become a part of the work. The artist must seek after more accurate expressions of technology and language of the inner world, meeting the necessity in accidental, criticizing the given order, and seek for a fitting point linking his spiritual world in the dialogue with the material world.

Academic artists in China are often apt to get into a rut of the systematic study of western classical aesthetics. Wang, instead, at the beginning of creation, realized that the utmost achievement his works might reach is to become an extra story, a Sinicized pattern of Western abstract expressionism, sprung from the Western abstract art if only to simply repeat the form, media, language and so on in western abstract expressionism. How China’s abstract art can base itself on the local cultural standpoint? How it can return to its own logic of the development of art history, and defend its own cultural identity? Wang, at the very beginning, chose the inherent aesthetic logic that rebels against the academic, and even sought new breakthroughs in some uncomfortable places, rather than fallen into the vortex of classical visual experience. Influenced by modern science and technology, expressionists have long ceased to believe that objective things persist in a fixed and complete state; and they wish to express the purely spiritual world in purely abstract artistic language.

There, in Wang’s recent works, can be found an intense energy tumbling in the strokes’ movement, surging poetically, or carrying a fierce turbulence, or suddenly self-sustained. He poured a lot of paints on the canvas, and savored the pain and pleasure of life and death in the struggle with the canvas, and experienced the creation and the meaning of life in the numerous smearing. His daily alterations would prove that life is still going on. These paintings evoke from one’s personal memory some special and strong fragments, the fragments of angry, cruelty, searching, and frustration, which brings us into a kind of being indifferent beside frank, real, and direct experiences. His paintings are sometimes aggressive, compelling, sometimes naughty and frank, revealed the nature of emotions. Art, for him, has been perceived in a process; and the instant feelings are filled with certain eternal meanings, which are the evidence of the existence of the individual and spirit.

 

The contest of art goes beyond national boundaries, styles, and languages. The problems that can the artworks immediately impress people, and infect people, making a deep impression, and bringing about innovations in aesthetic conceptions and techniques are problems artists have to face every day. Like Kazuo Shiraga’s understanding of abstract art in the spirit of Zen, Wang’s Detached Abstract paintings had fled from the narrative language and positivism world, which the logic of art history rarely mentioned: grand vision has no set design. His art is his life; and every minute of his feelings is engraved on his work, which is a real release and everlasting intoxication. The feeling of presence may be the ultimate motif that abstract expressionism art is to express.