顧振清

雷子人的畫總有清新、率性之感，畫中的人物就像鄰家的女孩、男孩，親切，感性，好做夢，體現了當下青年人在日常生活中所揮發、耗散的一種詩意。飄忽的夢境與幻覺，作為他童年記憶的延續，早已成為他一塵不染的精神家園。這個家園似乎可居可遊，他隨時可以遁入，也隨時可以逸出。雷子人自由出入于現實與超現實這兩個空間，對他而言，其中並無界限、阻隔。他骨子裏又是一個浪漫的唯美主義者，從現實生活到內心的往返過渡和穿梭，雷子人可以在畫中不動聲色地加以實現，由此，那些面目不清、神似而形不似的水墨人物形象漸漸沉潛下來，傳神地揭示出青年人尤其是青年女子心理層面上的隱秘。

儘管在雷子人作品中，既可以看到文人的學養，又可以覺出西學的功底。但他對傳統文化元素的浸淫、刷新和再生産，使他輕易地超越了一些陳舊的水墨文本問題，開創出自己認知並表達現實世界的個性話語和語境。在雷子人輕鬆營造的上下文中，現實中的種種慾望與躁動，都訴諸於質樸、純凈的視覺經驗。但他在逼近自然、逼近生活原生態的時候，仍然只截取、篩選他自己感興趣的切片、因素。無論是青春期的感傷和迷惘，還是獨對宇宙和人生的孤獨感，他都以個人方式加以解決。為挑戰畫面駕馭能力，他在寧靜中暗藏騷動，在和諧中設置衝突，以打破平衡的方式來追求新的畫面平衡，從而在對立中獲得統一。雷子人一直用這種獨特的個性話語與既有的審美習慣、認知方式保持距離，拒絕水墨畫的條條框框。他的創作很難用新文人畫、都市水墨、新表現等概念來框定，他的風格演變也難以規律來描述。2002年至2003年創作《入境無語》等作品階段，他畫的是現代社會背景下的男女。雷子人將法常、八大等一種特殊的傳統文化精神與歐洲現代派大家夏加爾、馬蒂斯等的圖式影響融會貫通，運用各種介質、方法、形式的實驗，淬煉成自己潛意識層面的豐厚積澱和敏銳直覺。這一時期的大批作品已形成無需爭論的視覺事實。2003年的《女人味》系列，他興之所至，畫了大量的女子形象，使用了馬頭等許多隱喻的符號，平添了幾分情色成分。雷子人試圖打造一種個人話語優先的語境。即便是表達的一種幻想、一種寓意，使用的仍是同樣的語匯，使用他最熟悉的女孩、男孩形象。這其實就是一種“入境”的努力，他對表達真實有所期許，並帶有一定的文化反省和社會批判的態度。他的人物具有莫名的孤獨感。即便畫面有兩人、多人也互不應對，狀態迷茫、疏離。表面情色的畫面，卻無激情燃燒。觀者在畫面上真正看見的是裸露的人性，以及人與人之間心理鴻溝。這些畫面人物並不真實，但卻真切地指向全球化社會條件下的每個個人。2005年《水性》系列、《新古意》系列和2006年《聖水》系列，則代表了雷子人試圖回到中國傳統人文精神上的一種努力。對他而言是“出境”。他以逃向精神家園的方式，完成對現代社會所有難題的一次逃避式的超越。古人的閒情逸致是這一觀念的最好注腳。雷子人進得去、出得來的活躍身段，使他成為一個頻頻跨界、觸犯保守規條的藝術家。這也令他獲得自我批判的勇氣。

雷子人的“出入境”，進入的是自己，走出的也是自己。而每一次迴圈，也許都會給藝術上的脫胎換骨帶來機會。

Gu Zhenqing

Lei Ziren’s paintings sustain a fresh and candid quality. Figures in his work appear as intimate, sensible and dreamy as neighbor girls and boys, reflecting the poetry today’s teenagers attain in their daily life. As the continuity of his boyhood, the trance or the illusion has made an immaculate spiritual homeland of his. It is an open place where Lei can shuttle in and flee away whenever he feels like. And such a free access stands in between the real and the surreal space, or the artist sees no border at all. Lei, a romantic perfectionist in his own right, achieved effortlessly on the paper the odyssey between the real life and the internal world. And those ink-made characters – produce déjà vu with vague faces– eventually came to the fixture and reveal to the core the private and mysterious inner-side of the youngsters, especially the girls.

In spite of his erudition and the deep insight of western culture, he has broken through the ink-text cliché with his good yet renovative command and reproduction of traditional cultural elements, and reached the distinctive discourse and context that finds its root in artist’s cognition and mirrors the real world. Within this easily-constructed context, desires and agitations of all kinds in the real life have resorted to the austere and pure visual experience. Upon his approach to the nature and primitive lifestyle, Lei captures and selects the segments and factors that interest him. And he tackles in a personal way with the melancholy and confusion during the puberty as well as the loneliness towards the universe and life. He imbeds the turbulence in the peacefulness, the conflict in the harmony to tighten his grip of the composition. A new balance therefore comes out of the collapse of the former one as the unity out of the oppositions.It is the unique distinctive discourse that helps Lei stay away from the existing aesthetic and cognitive practice and cut loose from all the conformities in ink painting. Terms as neo-intellectual-painting, urban ink, neo-expressionism and the like fail to define Lei’s art, while his approach refuses any regular label. Between 2002 and 2003 when he produced works like An Dumb Entry, he eyed on the men and women against the background of modern society. In Lei’s art the culturally vintage mind (i.e., Fa Chang and Ba Da Shan Ren) meets the pictorial influence (i.e., Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse): he experiments with various media, methods and forms so as to heighten the subconscious dosage in his work and forge a keen intuition. And inarguably, arrays of work of this phase speak on their owns. The series The Way Women Are (2000) was then made on the spur of the moment. He produced a bunch of female images, applying horse and a number of other metaphors that breathed into the work an air of eroticism. In an effort of constructing a specific context in which individual discourse enjoys the priority, the artist favors the same vocabulary and images of girls and boys he is familiar with as well, even when he may refer to an illusion or an emblem. Hence such an effort tells about his move towards the inner side. The artist retains some reflection upon culture and social criticism in addition to a little hope for voicing the truth. And his characters are suffering from the ineffable loneliness. No interaction can be found between two or more persons who are stuck in a state as lost and estranged. Voluptuous as his work appears, it never burns emotionally inside. It is the naked human nature and psychological divide between people that viewers can trace on the paper. Fictional are the figures, but the circumstance coincides with everyone living in this globalized society. And other series like Water’s Nature (2005), Neo-vintage (2005) and Holy Water (2006) show Lei’s endeavor of returning to traditional Chinese art pursuit. To him it means the exit. His retreat to the spiritual homeland marked an evasive transcendence over all the social implications ever. And the ancients’ easy-mind gives a perfect footnote to it. Lei’s flexible approach has rendered him an artist who constantly succeeds in the crossover and offbeat practices. It is where his courage for self-criticism lies in.

Lei Ziren’s coming in and moving out both are going round through himself. Each circle will bring his art to a higher level.