“浮游”：中国当代艺术的一种文化属性和视觉语言特征

范迪安  柳淳风

“Floating”: A Cultural Nature & Visual Language Feature of Chinese Contemporary Art

Fan Di’an   Liu Chunfeng

    进入21世纪的中国艺术，正在与中国社会进一步向世界开放、经济快速发展的整体状况一样，呈现出活跃的生机。中国当代艺术与国际艺术界的关系也越来越密切，并且受到国际艺术界的关注，其中中国当代艺术与韩国当代艺术的交流在近年尤其显得密切，各种展览与学术研讨活动相继展开，增进了中韩两国之间的相互理解和对话，也引动了人们关注基于东方文化传统的当代艺术发展。

    After entering 21st century, Chinese art is showing active life, resembling the overall situations that China’s society is further opening up to the outside world and her economy is fast developing. Also, Chinese contemporary art has been enjoying a closer and closer relationship with and attention from the international artistic world. Especially, in the past few years, the communication in contemporary art between China and South Korea has become much closer and different exhibitions and academic discussions have been launched one after another, which has boosted the mutual understanding and dialogue between China and South Korea and stirred up people’s attention on the contemporary art rooted in the oriental cultural traditions.   
 
    “浮游——中国艺术新一代”（Floating—Art of New Generation in China）选择40余位中国艺术家，110余件作品，展示的是新一代中国艺术家的创造特征。首先，展览的标题“浮游”反映了中国新一代艺术活跃的、丰富的面貌，同时也象征了他们的艺术具有不确定状态的特点。在全球化的形势下，特别是在消费社会的背景下，年轻一代的中国艺术家敏感于世界的变化和生活现实的丰富性，在他们的作品中，表达了个人与社会、自我与他人、本人与世界复杂的关系，他们的精神世界具有一种与现实生活一样变化多端的飘浮感与游移性。这可以视为信息时代和都市化进程中视觉艺术新的文化属性。第二，我们还可以将“浮游”理解成艺术语言的时代特征。年轻一代艺术家对自我心理情感的表达和对未知世界的探求，使得他们的作品往往具有一种超现实感和陌生化效果。他们敏感的内心世界在作品中表现为一种种多变的、浮动的形态，也具有与现实世界在视觉上的关联。可以说，年轻一代的艺术家们很难形成某种艺术流派，因为他们相对独立和享受孤独，但这种状态从某种程度上来说更有利于艺术家对艺术本体进行较为深入和透彻的探求。年轻的艺术家就像一个个飘离的个体，体会着不同以往的生存感觉，如果说现实生活如同涌动的大海，年轻的艺术家就是一个个飘浮的浪花，呈现出丰富的自我表达景观。

    The Exhibition of “Floating—Art of New Generation in China” has selected more than 110 works created by over 40 artists and revealed the creative characteristics of new-generation artists in China. Firstly, “Floating”, the title of the Exhibition, has demonstrated the active and abundant features of new generation of art in China and symbolized the uncertainties in their artistic creation. Under the circumstance of globalization, especially under the background of a consumption society, Chinese young generation artists have sensed changes of the world and diversity of the reality, and expressed the complicated relationships between the individuals and the society, between oneself and others, and between themselves and the world. Their mental world has mirrored the same fickle floating feeling and vacillation of real life, which, in the information age and during the process of urbanization, can be viewed as the new cultural nature of visual art. Secondly, we can also understand “Floating” as the time characteristics of artistic language. Young generation artists’ representation of their inner feelings and exploration of the unknown world often inject the cultural effects of surrealistic sense and strangeness into their works. And their sensitive inner world is presented as diversified fickle and floating forms in their works and bears the visual relations with the real world. It can be said that it is hard for the young generation artists to form some school of art because they are relatively independent and enjoy the loneliness, but such conditions are much more beneficial for them to explore the noumenon of art deeply and thoroughly. Young generation artists are like floating individuals and experiencing different senses of living from those in the past. If the realistic life is described as a surging sea, the young artists are like floating surfs that bear abundant self-representation landscape.
          
    似乎还可以更感性地理解“浮游”的含义。“浮游”的形态可以很轻，很透明，能捧在手心，也能从指缝间流逝，在艺术表达和语言形式上代表了年轻一代艺术家轻松而愉悦的创作状态；其次，它也可以很沉重，但它是一种莫名而不能名状的沉重，无所谓缘由但却实实在在，与年轻一代艺术家不同以往的生存环境息息相关。信息爆炸的消费社会和从未停下脚步的都市化进程，使年轻一代的艺术家感受到生命中不能承受之轻一样捉摸不定的沉重感和责任感，我们可以从这些艺术家的作品中看到飘浮、轻离背后的压抑和内省。再者，我们还可以将“浮游”理解成一种气态，它蓄发各种能量和生命，这种状态和许多青年艺术家的创作情况、生存感觉以及整个中国当代艺术的状态具有一致性。我们常说某些青年人很另类张狂，正像是少年维特之烦恼，高速发展的经济社会给他们带来的压力，他们对未知因素的探求心理以及种种复杂骚动的生理与心理情绪，都驱使着他们创作出可能很沉默但具有内在爆发力的作品。这些作品的形态可能是多变或抽象的，看似静止的空气，但其中蕴藏的力量却很可能是凝结了这个时代的亚文化精神，而气流般质感的思绪就如他们创作的源泉。或许年轻艺术家的不成熟性本身就是一种特性。一些有价值的生机就在不成熟的状态下散发出特殊的光芒。

    Maybe we can understand the meaning of “Floating” in a more sensible way. The “Floating” form can be very light and transparent, stand in your palm or slip through your fingers, and represents relax and joyous creation conditions of young generation artists in artistic representation and language forms. On the other hand, “Floating” can be very heavy, but it is an indescribable and real heaviness without reasons and closely relates to young generation artists’ living environment different from that in the past. The consumption society full of information explosion and undisturbed urbanization process have made the young generation artists experience the freaky heaviness and responsibility like the unbearable lightness in life, so we can feel the inhibition and introspection behind the floating from their works. Furthermore, we can also understand “Floating” as a condition of spirits that can store and generate different energy and life and bear the same consistency like the creation conditions and living feelings of many young artists and the overall situations of Chinese contemporary art. We often describe some young men as special and wild and arrogant, just like the sorrows of young Werther. Their pressure brought by rapid economic and social development, exploration of the unknown factors and complicated physical and psychological moods all drive the artists to create the works that may be silent but full of inner explosive power. The formation of such works may be changeful or abstract and seems like static air, but it may contain the power that is the quintessence of the sub-cultural spirits of the times, while the airflow-like tactile thoughts of the young artists are the fountain of their creation. Maybe the immaturity of the young artists is a kind of special nature, and some valuable life radiates special brilliance under such immaturity.
                 
    一个展览的作品数量总是有限的，但是为了展现出“新一代”中国当代艺术的完整性，我们在艺术家和作品的挑选上力图体现这一时代特征的多个层面。在曾梵志、杨千、武明中、黄渊青、何文決的作品中，我们可以看到艺术家试图把图像的观念性和艺术的本体语言结合起来，用个性鲜明的艺术风格来改造和诠释公共图像，以达成艺术家自我见解以及对表象的批判。这几位艺术家用看似传统的方式进行艺术创作，其实是突破了现代主义或后现代主义的巢臼，用他们独特的关注和视点在艺术本体语言上创新，并将观念注入其中，形成既经典又独具一格的关注现实的艺术现象。例如曾梵志的“乱画”，杨千的“透视画”，武明中的“玻璃画”，黄渊青的“朦胧画”，何文決的“绿水画”，其实都代表了艺术家的独特观点和视角。

    The quantity of works displayed in an exhibition is limited, but in order to demonstrate the completeness of “new generation” of Chinese contemporary art, we select the artists and their works with the purpose to show the multiple facets of the time characteristics. From the works of Zeng Fanzhi, Yang Qian, Wu Mingzhong, Huang Yuanqing and He Wenjue, we can note these artists’ efforts to connect the ideology of the pictures with the noumenal language of art and transform and illustrate the public images with the artistic styles full of distinctive individuality, aiming to form the artists’ self understanding and the critiques of presentation. It seems as if these artists take their artistic creation in a traditional way, but actually, they have broken the beaten track of modernism or post-modernism and initiated innovation in the noumenal language of art with their attentions and viewpoints and injected the concepts into the innovation, and thus there have emerged classical and unique artistic phenomena focusing on reality. The “random drawing” of Zeng Fanzhi, “perspective drawing” of Yang Qian, “glass painting” of Wu Mingzhong, “obscure painting” of Huang Yuanqing and “green water painting” of He Wenjue all actually reflect the unique viewpoints and visions of these artists.    
 
    史金淞、许仲敏、李晖、邵康、陈文令、陈志光这几位艺术家都是用雕塑的方式来呈现他们的观念，他们往往用一些写实的物象符号和直接的物质材料来传达意义。他们以现实生活中的各种形象来比喻社会中的问题，比如李晖的船，许仲敏的蛋形，史金松的树，陈志光的蚂蚁以及邵康的假迷宫。这些形象是人工所造的“第二现实”，事实上这些形象恰恰折射了这个世间的万物。艺术家们是切实地从生活中感受和目睹了种种社会与自然界的变革以其所带来的陌生感，才创作了这些作品。而这些作品置放在公共空间里，更具有一种对现实真实性的迷惑力量。

    Shi Jinsong, Xu Zhongmin, Li Hui, Shao Kang, Chen Wenling and Chen Zhiguang express their viewpoints through sculpture, and they often choose some realistic object-image signs and direct materials to represent the meanings. They use different figures in real life to reveal the problems in the society, such as the Boat of Li Hui, Egg Shape of Xu Zhongmin, Tree of Shi Jinsong, Ant of Chen Zhiguang and Artificial Labyrinth of Shao Kang. Such figures are man-made “Secondary Reality”, but actually they just represent the things in the world. The artists do have experienced and witnessed different social and natural transformations and the strangeness brought by the transformation, so that they can create such works. Placed in the public space, these works are full of the puzzling power to the authenticity of reality.    

    邢丹文、曹静平、张小涛、陈文波、“他们”这几位艺术家的作品是当代视觉图像的新景象，也是传统艺术语言蜕变为当代艺术语言的表征。在中国一向拥有现实主义艺术传统，中国高等美术教育注重造型基本功训练的传统也使艺术学子掌握了扎实的造型能力与技巧，但是，新一代艺术家不满足被动地记录现实，而是以观念支配语言，以观念决定语言的用法，因此，近几年来，带有观念性的绘画和摄影成为一种趋势和显流。艺术家关注的并不是描绘的事物本身，而是事物背后和画面背后的社会学和政治经济学。以“他们”这对艺术家组合为例，他们不仅把自己视为别人眼中的“他们”，而且总是把室内发生的事件和窗外都市的景观“并置”起来，让人们同时看到自身之外社会的“他们”。这种新的宏大叙事不是传统现实主义的叙事方式，而是如詹明信所说的后现代主义的后叙事。这种叙事往往没有史诗般的壮丽，但像一花一世界那样具有具体的可感性，也包容更多的现实性，从中可见年轻一代对现实的个人表达。

    The works of Xing Danwen, Cao Jingping, Zhang Xiaotao, Chen Wenbo and “They” are the new sights of contemporary visual image and the characterization of the conversion of contemporary artistic language transforming from traditional artistic language. China has been boasting the artistic tradition of realism, and the tradition that China’s senior fine arts education focuses on the training of the basic skill of shapes have armed the art students with solid shaping abilities and techniques. But the new generation artists are not satisfied with the recording of the reality passively. On the contrary, they use the perceptions to control the language and to determine the usage of the language, so the perceptive painting and photography have become a tendency and apparent flow of the tide in the past few years. The artists do not focus on the things that they paint but the sociology and political economics. “They”, a group of artists, not only view themselves as “they” in other people’s eyes but also “juxtapose” the events happening inside the room with the urban landscape outside the window so that people can view “them” outside their own circles. Such new grand narration is not the traditional realistic narrative mode, but the post narration in the post-realism as put by Zhan Mingxin. Such narration does not bear the same greatness or glory like the epic, but it does possess the same specific sensitiveness like the world hidden in a flower and contains more reality, from which we can see the personal representation of the reality of the young generation.   
        
    何森、迟鹏、陈庆庆、黄彦、王轶琼、颜开也是观念性很强的艺术家，值得注意的是，这几位艺术家的作品中都多少包含了中国元素，他们有的从古代典籍中汲取灵感，再造了一个虚幻的世界，如黄彦的《山海经》系列；有的是古典传统的符号运用，如陈庆庆的作品；有的是传统山水画意境的脱胎，如王轶琼、颜开的数码图像。正如中国艺术界现在经常讨论中国当代艺术是要“本土化”，还是其本身就是西方殖民主义的产物等等问题……中国当代艺术势必要找到自己的方式和方法，不是简单的挪用传统和借用西方所熟悉的中国符号，而是要从本土文化之根出发，由内而外的找到自己的语言和语境。从这几位艺术家的作品中，可以看到他们坦诚的实验。

    He Sen, Chi Peng, Chen Qingqing, Huang Yan, Wang Yiqiong and Yan Kai are the artists with strong perceptions. It is noteworthy that the works of these artists somewhat contain Chinese elements. Some works draw the inspiration from the ancient books and re-create an illusory world, for example, the series of “Books of Mountains and Seas” of Huang Yan; some works are the application of ancient traditional signs, for example, the works of Chen Qingqing; some works are the conversion of the artistic conception of traditional landscape paintings, for example, the digital pictures of Wang Yiqiong and Yankai. As for such questions being discussed in Chinese art world as whether Chinese contemporary art should be “localized” or it itself is just the product of western colonialism, Chinese contemporary art must find its ways and methods and its own language and context starting from the local cultural roots and then to the outside world instead of simply imitating tradition and resorting the Chinese marks familiar with western world. We can notice the sincere and honest experiments from the works of these arts.  
   
    朱冥、朱加、崔岫闻、喻高、李伟、赵半狄的作品很恰当地体现了当代人的肉体迷失与心灵飘荡的生存感觉。在越来越膨胀的城市空间中生存，人与人之间的疏离必然产生一种本能式的孤独感。每个人都像罩着一个无形的气球，虽然看的见别人，别人也看得见他，但却无法真正的接触和沟通。人们在这个自我保护却脆弱的空洞的气球中随波逐流，飘到一个美丽的地方，可以享受阳光美景，漂浮到一个风暴交加的地方，就只有心惊肉跳。更多的时候，是漂浮在一望无际的滚滚红尘之中，任那些琐碎无聊的浪花拍打，这个时候唯一要做的就是防止绝望。朱冥的系列作品可以说正是一个时代漂浮者的寓言和缩影——艺术家用视觉和行为的形式具体地呈现了当代人的生存状态和感觉。

    The works of Zhu Ming, Zhu Jia, Cui Xiuwen, Yu Gao, Li Wei and Zhao Bandi properly reveal the living feelings of modern people characterized by flesh lost and heart floating. Living in the expanding urban space, people have to taste the loneliness resulting from the alienation among one another. Each person is shrouded by an invisible balloon, so he and others may see one another clearly, but they cannot enjoy the authentic contact and communication. Drifting in the self-protection, vulnerable and hollow balloon, people may float to a beautiful place and enjoy the sunlight and nice scenery; while they may float to a place full of heavy wind and rain and have to suffer the creeps. Most of the time, people are floating in the endless surgent human society and lapped by those tiny and senseless surfs, and what people can only do is avoid the depression at the time. The serial works of Zhu Ming can be viewed as the fable and epitome of a floater of the times—the artist has presented the existing status and feelings of modern people through visual and behavioral formation.   
     
    图像时代必然改变着人们的视觉生存方式，大众文化趣味也必然影响艺术家的视觉表达方式，这就有了所谓“卡通的一代”的诞生。这种情形在现代化加速度的东亚国家先后展开，中国也不例外。受到流行和时尚图像的影响，也置身于流行文化的海洋，新一代艺术家们的感觉中浸染了卡通图像的影子似乎是必然的。在陈可、俸正泉、熊文韵、Pulpo小组、韩娅娟、关小+尉洪磊等人的作品中，可以鲜明地看到这种时代的潮流。

    It is certain that the image age will change the living modes of people’s vision and the cultural interest of the public will influence the visual representation modes, and thus the so called “cartoon generation” come into being. Such status has been spreading successively in countries of Southeast Asia with an accelerating speed, and there is no exception for China. Influenced by popular and fashion images and swimming in the ocean of popular culture, the new generation artists have inevitably had their feelings mixed with the cartoon images. Such tendency has been distinctively revealed in the works of Chen Ke, Feng Zhengquan, Xiong Wenrun, Pulpo Team, Han Yajuan, Guan Xiao+ and Wei Honglei.  
 
    作为一种文化属性和视觉语言特征，“浮游”是艺术家们关于自我的表述，但是，在中国社会变革的大潮中，“浮游”又同时是艺术家连接自我与外部世界的通道，这种状况或许可以从三位艺术家的作品中分别找到证明：在年轻的女艺术家郭燕的笔下，飘浮的城市恋人是具体的，甚至是艺术家自身的体验，他（她）们飘浮在城市的上空，沉浸在超离现实的想象性空间之中，在那里找到自给自足的幸福；对于已经著名的艺术家繆晓春来说，“浮游”可能是人类的宿命。他这几年持续创作的数码作品《最后的审判》以宏大的画面展示了人类的“浮游”，超越种族区分的芸芸众生正遭遇历史和时间的审判，经历着升腾或沉落的命运；展览也选择了同样在国际画坛已经著名的艺术家展望的作品，尽管这不是一件新作：他将不锈钢“假山石”置放于公海之中，试图让其浮游于文化边界，而成为“世界”的作品，多少表明了中国艺术家意欲关联世界的愿望……。在这里，我们可以说，“浮游”为人们对当代艺术的认知提供了多元的想象方式。

    As a kind of cultural nature and visual language characteristic, “Floating” is the artists’ expression of themselves. However, in the tide of China’s social reform, “Floating” is also the channel through which the artists connect themselves with the outside world. Such status may find its proofs from three artists’ works respectively: in the works created by young female artist Ms. Guo Yan, floating city lovers are specific and even her own experiences. The lovers are floating over the city and immersed in the surrealistic imaginary spaces where they find self-sufficient happiness; as for famous artist Mr. Miu Xiaochun, “Floating” may be the destination of humankind. “Last Judgment”, the digital works he has been creating in the past few years, presents the “ups and downs” of humankind with grand pictures in which people, regardless of their races, are undergoing the judgments of history and time and experiencing the ups and downs in life; the Exhibition also selects the work created by internationally famed artist Mr. Zhan Wang, though the work is not a new one. He places the stainless steel “rockery” in the open sea, intending to make it float along the border of culture and become a “world” work and expressing Chinese artists’ wishes to interact with the rest of the world. “Floating”, in our point of view, has supplied multiple imaginary methods to learn about the contemporary art.