高嶺
2009年9月15-16日
陳蔚的繪畫給人最初的印象非常深刻，因為作為一個八零年代出生的年輕人，她所使用的油畫表現方式在色彩上沉鬱內斂，在技法上疏鬆暢快，在題材上不拘一格，與這些年深受日韓動漫和卡通風潮影響又被國內一些批評家所鼓噪的艷麗化、平涂化和幼稚化的創作風氣截然不同。油畫以豐富的色彩表現見長，特別是當下五光十色、光怪陸離的商業化現實生存環境景觀，更帶給近年來許多年輕藝術家色彩表現上強烈的心理影響，於是明度高、純度大的原色成為他（她）們的最愛，似乎這樣的色彩表現最能夠接近和突出現實世界的媚惑。而陳蔚筆下流露出的色彩卻總是以灰褐色調為主，即便是表現古樹新枝和石榴花果，也難見翠嫩與鮮紅，更多的是調和出的墨綠和黑紅。這種色彩上的沉鬱和保守，似乎在有意識地回避現實世界鮮亮和誇張的色彩招徠。這位年輕的女性，為何把周圍世界的表面光芒表現得這般灰暗？這種困惑從她疏鬆塗抹的筆法得到了一種解釋。陳蔚喜歡用稀薄的顏料在各種繪畫基底上涂劃，説她是涂劃而不是涂畫，是因為她的用筆方式不是由淺入深地一層層、一遍遍通過敷色來營造明暗塊面關係和形體結構，而是類似書寫那樣追求筆勢本身的造型能力。於是，畫面中的形象，擺脫了學院油畫訓練中那種嚴整、規範和莊嚴的幾大面和幾種明暗調子，變得成為身體的延伸，成為身體動作的書寫。這是一種拒絕觀念介入的自動繪畫或者準確地説自動書寫，現實世界的物體景觀的塊面和明暗光澤因為這種時而暢快，時而糾結，時而遲疑，變得不再光鮮和嚴整，一種打磨、過濾和風乾的傷蝕，籠罩在她涂劃出的形象上。這正像中國傳統書畫的用筆飛白，于似斷非斷，欲斷還連中，保持著書寫者的精神意念，早已超越了現實事物原型的物理真實與否。
陳蔚最為喜愛的畫家是杜馬斯，我想原因在於後者用直抒胸臆的簡練筆劃和幽暗沉鬱的色調，勾畫出了人物對象的內心憂鬱和神經質。而當我們仔細閱讀和品味陳蔚的藝術筆記和隨感文字時，我們能夠發現，在她近乎才情四溢的字裏行間，其實表述的不是那些植物們、動物們的現實形態，而是它們在經年更事的時間流逝過程中的所呈現出來的“剝落”與“荒廢”。在《樊籠之味》一文中，她寫下了這樣的字句：“我是以視覺來觸碰世界的，而過分的視覺也把另一個‘我’淹沒了。打撈出另一個‘自己’，便仍可以繼續用單純的態度坦然面對人生。”所謂“過分的視覺”應該是指畫面形象再現現實形象時的準確性、樣式性和風格化，這正是她有意回避或者説放棄的。如果不是通過視覺形象來真實地再現和還原現實世界的景物，那麼繪畫的意義究竟在哪呢？繪畫的意義在於通過視覺“打撈出另一個‘自己’”，這個自己是一個能夠透過人生的歲月感受時間痕跡的知性體，它能夠仰觀星雲替轉，俯察些微凡物，能夠深入到事物的生命脈動之中，和它們同生同死。正因為如此，陳蔚會格外推崇杜馬斯這樣的畫出人物內心巨大變化和歲月滄桑的藝術家，也正因為如此，她會在自己的油畫創作中另辟蹊徑，從中國傳統文化的譴詞造境和書寫形意中，尋求字面與畫面形象之外的另一種真實，哪怕這種真實展現的是侵蝕、剝落和殘敗，而生命原本就是脆弱和短暫的。
生命的無常和短暫，就陳蔚的視覺表現而言，不僅體現在植物們和動物們的飄搖凋零和毛髮叢生，而且體現在它們的殘枝短葉和傷殘截肢。構圖的大膽截取似乎還保存著傳統花鳥畫小中見大的畫意，可突兀的截肢和幹屍，則宣告了藝術家題材為我所用的本意——生命的脆弱和短暫不僅緣自生命本身，而且還緣自生命之外的其他力量和意圖。這恰恰表明，陳蔚的藝術創作並非全然是畫室裏的自我解剖，並非全然不食時代煙火，倒是她寧願將自己感受到各種外界壓力轉換成眼前的這些花草和動物，她要用自己的視覺形式，去觸碰周圍的世界，而這些樹木花草和飛禽走獸，正是她觸碰外界的媒介。
她像一個煉金術師那樣，通過獨到的色彩、用筆和構圖，對這些與個人的成長記憶和內心想像有關的對象展開追問，更將這種追問從平面的畫布畫紙，推進到拼貼、裝置和實物雕塑。她的新近作品《鶴與蛇》，則直接選用了大量的白色皮紙。紙的豐富肌理和撕、拉、揉、扯的高塑性，同樣可以傳遞出生命的內在感覺，它“層層疊疊，細密交織，好似流逝中人剝落的記憶”（陳蔚《紙》）。對陳蔚藝術重內心生命體驗而輕表面真實逼真的判斷，在她最新的綜合材料繪畫《出口與盡頭》中，得到了又一次的證明。這一次，她從可辨形體的外界自然世界抽身而出，進入到一個完全屬於微觀心理的世界裏。這裡的一切不再具有物理世界的等級分類和社會屬性，不再傳遞出植物或動物的生命體徵，也不再充滿著可見世界各種事物的橫向比較和此長彼消的爭鬥與傷害，卻形成了縱向穿越層層包裹的幽暗材料的羈絆，向深處尋找微觀世界精神出口的衝動和壓抑之間的一種較量。這時，畫面上各種材料所形成的視覺形式，不再是用來體現某個具體的生命類型的脆弱和短暫，而是象徵著所有生命形態的內在共同的壓力與衝突——生命本身如果想持久甚至永恒，那麼它的出口在哪？
用視覺去觸碰世界，年輕的女藝術家陳蔚，用她自己獨特的方式，從具體的景物出發，開始進入到景物的深處和背後，發出了自己的提問，在今天快餐化和卡通化的藝術界，的確是難能可貴的。
Touching the World with Vision——On Chen Wei’s Art
Gao Ling
September 15 – 16, 2009
Chen Wei ’s paintings give a very deep first impression because, as a young person born in the 80s, she employs a method of oil painting that is subdued and reserved in color, light and easy in technique, and unrestricted in subject matter, which is a far cry from the glamorized, flat-colored and childish creative trend influenced by Japanese and Korean animations and much bolstered by local critics in recent years. Oil paintings are appreciated for their richness in colors. The vibrant and bizarre contemporary society with its commercialized landscape further strongly influences young artists’ use of colors. Primary colors with their brightness and purity become favored hues as they are most illustrative of the bewitchments of the real world. However Chen Wei’s colors always appear to be on a gray scale. Crisp green for fresh tree branches and bright red for pomegranates are replaced with dark green and red hues. This subdued and conservative choice seems to consciously avoid the vibrancy and colorfulness of the world.
Why does this young woman portray the world in such somber manner? We find an explanation in her loosely applied brushstrokes. Chen Wei likes to apply a thin coat of paint on the base of any painting. That is, she does not aim to create light/dark areas and structures by repeatedly applying layers of paint, but rather seeks the sculptural quality of the brushstroke as if she was writing. Therefore the image in the painting is free from the disciplined and standard norm of academic training, and becomes an extension of the human body, and the output of the body movement.
This is a type of automatic painting, or more precisely automatic writing, that defies the involvement of a specific concept. Because of the sometimes delightful, sometimes entangled, and sometimes hesitant quality of this method, the appearance and brightness of real objects are no longer vibrant and neat. A damaging process of burnishing, filtering and air-drying hovers above the image she creates. It is much like the feibai technique (blank/dry spaces within each brushstroke) in traditional Chinese painting, which maintains the consciousness of the painter despite its seemingly broken yet connected appearance, transcending the physical reality of the object.
Chen Wei’s favorite artist is Marlene Dumas. I think it’s because the latter illustrates the sadness and neuroticism of her characters with simple, telling brushstrokes and a gloomy, subdued palette. And when we read Chen Wei’s writings on her art, her brilliant words do not convey the realistic shapes of plants and animals, but their “flaking off” and “idling” as a result of time passing. In “Dancing in the Castle,” she wrote, “I touch the world with vision, and the over-laden vision drowns me. If I fish out another ‘me,’ then I can go on facing life openly, with simplicity.” This so-called “over-laden vision” supposedly refers to the accuracy, form and stylization required for portraying a real object, which is something she purposely avoids or perhaps abandons. What is the meaning of painting if it is not to truthfully reconstruct and restore something in the real world? The purpose of painting is to “fish out another ‘self’” through visual image, a conscious being which can feel the traces of time through living, one that observes things great and small to deeply embody itself in their inner workings, and to live and die with them. And so Chen Wei particularly praises artists like Dumas who can paint characters of such emotions and hardships marked by time. It is also because of this that she creates a path in her oil paintings, and seeks another type of truth from the rhetoric and visual image of traditional Chinese culture, regardless of whether this truth depicts corrosion and destruction, as life in essence is fragile and transient.
In Chen Wei’s visual representation, the impermanence and transience of life is not only seen in the withering of plants and the lush growth of hair in animals, but also in their broken branches and amputated limbs. The daring composition seems to preserve the quality of “seeing something great in small things” in traditional paintings of flowers and birds, and the abrupt amputation and dried corpse serve to inform of the artist’s choice of subject matter—that the fragility and transience of life does not result from life itself, but also from other forces and intensions outside of life. It precisely demonstrates that Chen Wei’s art is not entirely a self-analysis in the studio nor is it entirely transcendent of the real world. Rather it is her inclination to transform the external pressures she feels into the plants and animals she portrays, through which she touches the surrounding world with her own chosen visual method.
Like an alchemist, she begins a query on objects from her life memories and her own imagination, and further takes this query from canvas and paper to collages, installations and sculptures, through unique use of color, pen, and composition. For her recent piece “Crane and Snake,” she employs large amount of white paper. The rich texture of the paper and its malleability for tearing, pulling, and kneading similarly convey the inner feelings of life, which is “layered and interwoven, just like fading memories” (Chen Wei, Paper). That Chen Wei places emphasis on life experience rather than accurate depiction is again manifested in her newest multi-media painting “Exit and Extremity.” This time she extracts herself from a world of nature and identifiable objects, and enters into one that is entirely of microcosmic psyche. Everything here no longer carries a classification or social attribute of the physical world, or conveys vital signs of plants or animals, nor is it filled with horizontal comparisons and the wax and wane of struggles among things in the visible world. It does, however, form a vertical force that passes through the layered bondage of dark materials and seeks an emotional exit out of the microcosmic world. At this time, all the visual forms created by various media on the image are no longer meant to portray the fragility and transience of a certain physical life form, but to symbolize the internal pressure and conflict shared by all life forms--if life itself wishes to endure or even stays permanent, then where is its exit?
Touching the world with vision, young artist Chen Wei begins with real objects and reaches into and beyond them to raise her own questions, in her own unique way, making her a true rarity to treasure in today’s “fast food” and cartoonized world of art.