意识弥漫中的虚幻美——吕顺艺术作品观后感，吕顺

　　我是几年前通过一个偶然的机会结识画家吕顺的。当时他正在宋庄小堡倾心创作他的“空中玫瑰”系列。那是一组探寻超脱、追求思维回应的作品。站在画前静心凝视一番后，就能感到一种理想主义者所特有的对现实的忧虑惆怅之情正透过画面在意识的空间中弥漫。

　　Several years ago, I got acquainted with Lv Shun by chance. He was involved with his creation of ‘Rose in the sky’ series at Xiaopu of Songzhuang artistic village. This series of work showed a pursuit of nirvana and spiritual response. Stand before the pictures and stare at them with a peaceful mind, you could feel the permeating melancholic concern in the pictures about reality of an idealist in the space of sense.

　　对于当代前卫艺术，在经历了源自20世纪80年代末90年代初的文化反叛、现实反讽等几波思潮后，再一味简单地追求那种滑稽的精神戏谑或形式突兀的观念启蒙就容易使人产生视觉或者心理的疲劳了。现在，除了专业人士外，越来越多的前卫艺术欣赏者是那些受过良好教育、有独到见解的社会精英。对于艺术品，他们不单希望得到视觉上的愉悦，也喜欢沉浸在由此而触发的思绪联想、精神慰籍和意识升华之中。因此这种使观者产生思维互动、意念发挥的作品就会格外令我关注。

　　After several ideological trends from late 1980s to early 1990s including Cultural Rebellion and Ironic Realism, to go simply after those ridiculous spiritual cynicism or pursue formally abrupt conceptual enlightment in contemporary avant-guard art would readily engender visual or psychological fatigue. Nowadays, except for professional peoples of art circles, more and more admirers of avant-guard art come from elites of society who have received good education and hold personal insights. These elites not merely hope to obtain visual pleasure from artistic works, they also love to immerse themselves into the meditation, consolation and sublimation of spirit and sense. So works lead to interaction of thoughts and response of notions among viewers could arouse my concerns quite a lot.

　　在那时的绘画作品中，吕顺通常是用简约的表现手法营造出一种迷离致幻的意境;在深邃的苍穹下，凋零的玫瑰挣扎着展现出飘忽的魅力，一种难以抗衡的意念从浓重的云雾中滴落，你无从知晓它是在使美好成为腐烂还是在催生新的幻觉。空中零星有一两只变异的飞虫，像是挥之不去的烦恼，窥视着可能的机会。画家用沉静的蓝色刻意渲染出隐隐的神秘伤感氛围，让画面呈现出一种整体的朦胧和诱惑。玫瑰这种通常被人们用以寄托理想表达心念的花朵，在这里作为特有的画面形式符号，向观者传递着若隐若现的观念上的心理暗示。画家在此不将其特定的思想或观念通过透彻明晰的美学形式表现出来，而是在内容表达上留有余地，故意要让主体观念在受众的意识背景上忽去忽来以期获得多种角度的欣赏和不同层次的解读。

　　In paintings of that period, Lv Shun usually constructed vague and illusory lofty realms with succinct pictorial representation. Withered roses struggling under the deep firmament are floating glamorously, an idea which is difficult to contend with dripped from the dense cloud and fog, you have no way to know whether it is rotting the fairness or bringing about new illusion. Sporadically, one or two variant winged insects fly in the sky, like lingering misery peeping at possible chances. The artist rendered a looming mysterious melancholy atmosphere with calm blue and represented an integral misty and alluring pictorial effect. Rose is a kind of flower usually used by peoples to express their ideal and belief; here it is used as a special formal symbol in the picture to convey a gleaming conceptual psychological suggestion to audiences. Lv Shun didn’t expressed his thought and idea with thoroughly clear aesthetic form, he left leeway in delivering his content, in order to make the subjective concept drift about on the ideological background of the audience, thus appreciation from various angles and interpretation from different levels could be acquainted.

　　其实那个时候吕顺已经将其自身的风格炼造成型了，在手法上多为简约的具象表现;在思想上是一种对寄生在现实社会上的精神世界的审视、担忧、感伤和厌烦;在形式上则是一种基于现实的臆想呈现。 整体给人的感觉恰恰符合海德格尔给艺术下的定义：“艺术就是真理在作品中的自行置入”(Die Kunst istdas Sich-ins-Werk-Setzender Wahrheit)。而这种真理“是存在的真理。美不出现在真理之外。当真理自行置入作品中，美就出现。显现，作为艺术作品中真理的这种存在的显现，作为作品的显现，这就是美。”我认为，海德格尔所说的“存在的真理”很大程度上应该是指艺术家头脑中生成的观念、影像、形式和色彩之类的意识，将头脑中的这些现有存在以独到的方式置入于作品之中既是一次艺术实现的过程。这种独到的方式是否具有有效的表现力，感染力和说服力则是作品成败的关键。我们的确能从吕顺的作品中感到一种直观的形式美。

　　In fact, Lv Shun had already shaped out his own style at that time, he usually use brief figurative expressionist skill and show his observation, concern, sadness and boredom against the spiritual world parasitizing on the social reality, and formally, a fantasy based on reality is always presented. The integral sense is precisely in line with the definition of art given by Martin Heidegger: ‘Art is to put the truth into works by oneself’ (Die Kunst istdas Sich-ins-Werk-Setzender Wahrheit).This truth is ‘a truth of existence. Beauteousness does not appear beyond truth. When truth was put into works, beauteousness would appear. The visualization of the existence of truth in artistic works and as artistic works is just the beauty.’ In my opinion, the ‘truth of existence’ talked about by Heidegger should to a great extent pointed to consciousness about concepts, videos, form and color generated in the artist’s mind. When he put these currently available existences into his works with a personalized way, a process of realizing art is finished. Whether this personalized way has effectively expressive, appealing and persuasive is the key to the success of artistic work. To be honestly, we could perceive an intuitive beauty of form from Lv Shun’s works.

　　在接下来的一系列创作中，吕顺将一些具有更强象征隐喻特征的东西引入到其作品中，从而使整个画面像是一则感慨现实的寓言。在“快乐的小猪”系列中，画家用表面轻松的色调和笔触勾画出一群自娱自乐的生存的思维单纯的小猪;在最近的“天籁之音”系列中，画家则着力描绘了一些安然自在纵情享乐的青蛙。 照旧是天网恢恢，无所不及的意志笼罩着尘世;照旧有变异的飞虫在秉承主宰者的旨意发出嘶嘶恫吓。从天际过渡而来的绿色在到处布施着使人迷惑的繁荣以呼应玫瑰凋零时的虚幻娇美。那些盲从的动物则在幽幽发散而至的无奈与焦虑中欢快地吞噬着美好阴影下的腐败之物或是忘乎所以地欣然交配……。

　　In the following series of artistic creation, Lv Shun introduced some objects characterized by much more intensive symbolistic metaphors into his works, and made the whole picture like a fable sighing over reality. In his ‘Happy pigs’ (Kuaile de xiaozhu) series, the artist delineated a flock of simpleminded pigs living happily with seemingly easy tone and brushstrokes; and recently he exerted himself in painting some frogs peacefully enjoying happiness in his ‘Sound of nature’ (Tianlai zhi yin).The ubiquitous will is still hanging over this earthly world. Variant flying insects are making threats embodying the will of dominator as ever. Green color comes in gradation from the horizon, Enchanting and puzzling prosperity is being offered by this color in response to the illusory delicacy of withering rose. Meanwhile, those slavish animals are swallowing putrilage under the shadow of fineness or mating happily with a looming helplessness and anxiety.

　　在传统的中国文化中，猪是一种具有双重象征含义的动物。在现实生活层面，它是富足完满能招财进宝坐享其成的象征;在精神意识层面，它是蠢笨懒惰逆来顺受得过且过的典型。青蛙留给人的印象要么是空间意识局限，要么是被作为实验品。尽管有诗人将青蛙宣示生存权利统驭欲望以及诱唤配偶时的鸣叫赞誉为悠扬，但它终究是不能于动荡心灵的天籁之音等同。所以我对此类主题折中一点的理解是：作者也许是借此揭示幸福快乐的真正本源是来自自身的感知和想象;客观上意识空间和生存维度的局限造成了主观对生存权利的不同要求与满足。而敏感的人则一定会去细细感触涌动于色彩下面的现实批判的脉搏，去探讨画家所要表现出来的感慨到底是发自对现实社会过度文明化、商业化而招致的异化现象的担忧，还是源自对传统文化意识形态的不健全所造成的社会腐败现象的不满，当然也许是兼而有之。实际上，我们难以分清楚吕顺在他的作品中所表露的是理想主义的不愿屈就的执著和由此派生的使命感，还是一种虚无主义否定现有价值的意识形态。

　　Pig is an animal with dual symbolic meanings in Chinese traditional culture. On the real life level, it stands for abundance and satisfaction and brings wealth and success, while on the spiritual ideological level it’s typical of stupid, lazy, meek and living perfunctorily. Frogs give people an impression of limitedness in conscious of space, or are always used as ‘guinea pigs’ in laboratory. Although the croaking of frog which is in fact a call for the right of existence and luring mate has been praised by some poets as melodious, but it could not after all be equated to the sound of nature which could move and cleanse our soul. Thus my eclectic understanding about this kind of theme is: maybe the painter is revealing that the real source of happiness comes from self-perception and imagination. The limitation of objective space of conscious and dimension of existence engendered various subjective requirements and satisfactions of right to life. However, sensitive people are sure to be moved by the criticism against reality under the colors and probe into the questions about whether the sentiment presented by the artist was worrying about the variant phenomena induced by the excessive civilization and commercialization of the social reality or being discontented with the corruptive phenomena of the society originated from the distemperedness of traditional culture and ideology, or maybe both. In fact, it’s difficult to say whether what Lv Shun expressed in his works was a persistence of an idealist who was unwilling to give in, or was a nihilistic ideology which was negative to existing value.

　　总的来说，近一时期吕顺的作品总体上日趋成熟，表现形式也更加流畅。尤其是一些大幅作品，得益于画家以前专攻摄影奠定的宏观布局根底，整个画面舒张有序，既不空泛也不零乱。那种为观者设计的超脱景物的视角很容易促成思维的汇集和意念的升腾。吕顺自己认为里希特的艺术思想和实践对他作品风格的形成影响较大。他将里希特早期在绘画中运用的虚幻、模糊、非客观等因素引用过来在其作品中恰到好处地予以发挥。而里希特利用照片于绘画之间的相互关联转化关系为绘画展现的新的方法论也为吕顺的艺术实践提供了理论依据。他试图在其作品中展现足够的自由度去包容理性或感性上具有反差关系的元素，并使之最终在形式上相互协调于画面之上，比如美好相对于腐烂、现实相对于虚幻等。

　　Generally speaking, Lv Shun’s artistic works of the recent period are on the way to be mature and the form of expression is with more fluency. Especially those large sized works of him are well ordered in pictorial effect due to his sound foundation of macro-layout established in his major study of photography in earlier years; they are neither vague nor messy. And the transcendental perspective he designed for viewers readily promotes collection of thought and advancement of idea. Lv Shun believed that his artistic style was largely influenced by the artistic thought and practices of Richter. He borrowed and well developed some elements used by Richter in his early works like illusory nature, vagueness and non-objectivism in his own works. And the new methodology presented for paintings by Richter in utilizing the relationship between the correlated photography and painting which could transform into each other also provided theoretical basis for Lv Shun’s artistic practices. He tried to subsume elements with rational or sentimental contrasts in his works with enough freeness and harmonize in form on the pictures at last, for example, he harmonized contrastive pairs like fineness vs. rottenness, and reality vs. illusory.

　　一次有个欧洲艺术专业人士造访吕顺的画室，看到画面中的小猪似乎得到某种灵感上的启示，便站在画前凝目端视良久。我问他可看到象征的东西，他回答说，所有的表现都很直接。然后便不再多说。其实这并不奇怪。对前卫艺术的观视实际上就是对自身心里的映照。每个人都会根据自身的经历、知识和信念对作品给出独特的反应。这也正是前卫艺术的魅力所在。不一定非要准确地了解画家的真实意图，对我们来说必需的只是视觉的愉悦舒畅和意念的触动回应。其他任何多余的问题都可能会是对这种心灵默契的干扰。

　　Once a professional figure in artistic circles from Europe visited Lv Shun’s studio, it seemed as if he was inspired by the little pigs in the pictures, he stood before that painting and gazed at it for a long time. I asked him whether had he seen anything symbolic in it, he only said that everything was directly represented. This is not strange; viewing avant-guard art is in fact a reflection of one’s self-psychology. Everyone would make his own special response to an artistic work according to his personal experience, knowledge and faith. The charm of contemporary avant-guard art exactly exists in this. Precise comprehension of artist’s intention is not necessarily needed. Visual pleasure and spiritual affection would be enough for us. Anything redundant would disturb this unspoken consensus of psyche.