显微：一种生命的形式

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文：付晓东

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“后人论道者曰：‘体用一源，显微无间。”——明 李东阳 《泉斋说》

 

“显微”意指显著和隐微。杨鑫将细小的微观世界用叠加、克隆的方式得以凸显，借助艺术表达的显著之相，引导观众察觉到生活中最幽微的生命之理。这些偶然的和必然的矿物质颜料，在透明玻片上凝结、渗透，如同神秘的生命，不断的繁殖、分裂。这些彩色的斑点天工偶得，妙趣天然。杨鑫在分子层面上重构了貌似真实的仿真现实，进行分解、剖析、控制、放大，再现生命力。正是通过这种新的可视化的形式，生命得以在分子层面上被思考，成为一系列可以理解的生命机制。杨鑫的工作室如同生物科学的培育室，实验室里的器物，针头、试管、培养皿、搅拌器，都成为她的绘画工具。艺术家透过光学显微镜细察微观生物的结构，始终探寻着生命内在所隐藏的变化与关系。对于技术理性的重构，生物科学的探索，杨鑫对生命和繁殖的有效元素的进行观测和研究，生命用细胞器作为本体语言进行绘画，这一个令人惊叹的，天然完满的功能性形式，一个为了成就生命而造就出的精妙的安排。杨鑫揣度着造物主的智慧，用植物和矿物的无生命的原料，再造了一个生命的形式。她用生命科学的理性严谨的认知方式，再现了技术和系统偶然间形成的美感，生命中的要素可以脱离细胞、器官、有机体和物种的联系，进行自由的流通，和其他元素结合。一种新的认识论的变革正在发生，一种深度的生物学，杨鑫试图展示封闭的生命系统潜在的有机法则。艺术家在本次展览中将呈现试验创作的过程与多个系列作品，营造出一个实验室属性的美学空间。

 

杨鑫的《原》系列作品分解并纪录了生命物质的单位形态、观察生命体单位的结构特征，她进行了严谨的染色试验并绘制于盖玻片上，最终筛选部分成功的玻片标本保存下来。这是在生物切片的概念上发展的系列作品，在创作过程中艺术家研究矿物、化学和生物颜料在混合配比后，所产生的化学反应对于显色的影响，从而控制温度、湿度、时长和计量，让每一滴颜色在盖玻片上碰撞、反应、生长。艺术家创作过程对绘画语言和科研观测的双向结合。《试色管》是杨鑫在周而复始的创作中，将染有或剩余颜色的试色管进行收集装裱。这些残留在试色管内的颜色在干涸后留下了丰富的变化，蒸发过程的肌理标记着时间的印迹。杨鑫以新奇的方法，直观的呈现着裸眼无法察觉的浩瀚无垠的微生物的海洋，在信息交织的系谱中，试图依赖“自然的”创造与生效。

 

在《谁来制定游戏规则》、《博弈》系列作品中，杨鑫注意到了生命与偶然性的博弈。在正常与病态之间，免疫系统的各种因子都如反射弧般自动与病菌进行抗衡，稳定与失衡，则成为生命的种种症候。艺术家制造了一个“生命的规范”，健康在器官中过沉默的生活，而疾病则在各个境域里不确定性的痛苦中产生反作用力。隐藏的、遗传的、易感染的体质，病变激发构成格局的重组，人们广泛的提出过一种正派的、节制的生活方式，控制身和心的生命过程，会抑制或阻止病变，使激化的几率降到最低。易感性则成为一种新兴的生命形式。基因的精确度和遗传的筛选制度，使可能的，不受欢迎的未来进入现在，使之可以被预测、被优化。

 

杨鑫最新的创作《谁来制定游戏规则》，大胆地创造了一个生物的种族。艺术家把自身的梦境与记忆输出为创作的体验转换。这些摆脱过往规整的排列顺序，突变、选择、基因漂变，最终形成的干涉图案，糅合进了杨鑫自身潜在的潜意识产生的感官频率。在空无之间，意念中所产生的生命的形象。杨鑫通过对微观世界的再生产，挣脱了严谨的科学结构的客观观察的机制，探索着自然法则与意识的结合的新的形式的诞生。

 

生命技术改变了人之为何？生物为何？伴随着风险进行了新的个体和集体的主体化。实相，就在显著与隐微之间。

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Space Station is to present “Yang Xin Solo Exhibition: Micro” on November 26. It is her first solo exhibition, which will last until December 25.

 

Micro：A Form of Life

 

“Posterity who talk about Tao said, ‘the thing-in-itself has the same root with its function, and there is no gap between the significant and the implicit.’”

 

——Fountain House Collection, Li Dongyang (Ming Dynasty)

 

Here “Micro” means significant and implicit. Yang, by the significant artistic expression, highlighted the microcosm in the way of superposition and cloning in which the audiences are guided to aware of the subtlest secret of life. These accidental and inevitable mineral pigments, condensed and penetrated on a transparent slide, continually reproduce and divide just like mysterious life. These colored spots are even in nature. At the molecular level, Yang reconstructed the seemingly realistic simulation of reality by decomposition, analysis, control, amplification and reproduction of vitality. It is through this new form of visualization that life can be considered as a series of intelligible life mechanisms at the molecular level. Yang’s studio is like a biological science incubator: all laboratory utensils, such as a needle, test tube, petri dish, stirrer, may be her own painting tools. The artist always explores the hidden changes and relations in life by microscopic observation of the structure of microorganisms. For the reconstruction of technical rationality and exploration of biological science, Yang observed and researched the effective elements of life and reproduction: the life paints with organelles as the ontological language—this amazing, natural perfect functional form is the elaborate arrangement for the achievement of life. Conjecturing the wisdom of the creator, Yang recreated a life form with plants and inanimate minerals. With the rational and rigorous cognition of life science, she reproduces the beauty that technology and system are formed by chance: the elements in life can be separated from the connection of cells, organs, organisms and species so that they can circulate and combine with others. A new epistemological revolution is taking place: a kind of deep biology by which Yang attempts to demonstrate the potential organic laws of closed life system. This exhibition will present the process of experimental creation and series of works to create an aesthetic space with laboratory property.

 

In observation of the structural characteristics of life units, Yang’s series of works Original decomposed and recorded the unit form of life material. She carried out enormous rigorous staining tests and painted the results on a coverslip, the final screening part of the valid specimens preserved. This is a series of works based on the concept of biopsy. In creation, the artist studied the preparation ratio of chemical and biological pigments, and the effects of chemical reactions on coloration, thereby controlling temperature, humidity, duration and metering, so that the drops collide, react, grow on the coverslip. Hence a two-way combination of painting language and scientific observation. The work Test Tube results from collection and decoration of the remaining color adhered to surfaces of a test tube. These residues, after drying up, present a rich change: the texture of evaporation marks the imprint of time. Yang, in a novel way, intuitively presented an ocean of microorganism population that cannot be perceived by naked eyes, and tried to rely on “natural” creation and effect in the interweaving genealogy of information.

 

Yang noted, in series of works such as Who Will Develop Game Rules and Game, that the game of life and of chance. Between the normal state and the pathological one, various factors of the immune system, just like a reflex arc, automatically battled against bacteria and virus. Stability and imbalance, thus, became various symptoms of life. The artist created “a norm of life”: health leads a silent life in the organism, while disease produces a reaction in the indeterminate pain of various realms. Since hidden, hereditary and susceptible physique, together with the intensification by pathological changes, consisted in reorganization, it is widely proposed a decent, modest lifestyle, i.e. a life process by body-mind control, which will inhibit or stop lesions and reduce the probability of intensification to a minimum. So susceptibility has become a new form of life. Genomic accuracy and genetic screening systems allow a possible, unpopular future accessible to the present so that it can be predicted and optimized.

 

Yang’s latest work Who Will Develop Game Rules created an exotic biological species. The artist transformed his dreams and memories into creative experiences. These experiences detached from the old regular order, mutation, selection and gene drift; accrued to the interference pattern in which Yang own potential subconscious sensory frequency blended. It is in empty that these figures of life were produced by ideas. By the reproduction of microscopic world, Yang broke away from the objective observation mechanism of rigorous scientific structure, exploring the birth in the form of the combination of natural laws and consciousness.

 

Does biotechnology change how mankind is? What is the organism? With the risk of a new individual and collective subjectivization, the reality was found amongst the significant and the implicit.