中國當代女性藝術的崛起，之所以具有精神文化意義，就在於它是新時期人性覺醒的一個重要環節。應該指出的是，這個人性覺醒與政治公利化的“婦女解放”是性質不一樣的兩個層次，政治化的“婦女解放”目的在於“解放”了的婦女納入被“宏大敘事”的社會運動中去，是將婦女從家庭、宗族，或者“夫權”等铚錮中解放出來，交給諸如：民族、國家、集體、組織等等概念性的主體，而人性覺醒的婦女解放則是將女性交給自己——即哈克布克的“將人和人的關係還給人自己”。
正因為中國二十世紀八十年代出現的“新時期”，具有這種“新啟蒙”的訴求，它就具有了精神和文化的人性覺醒和人權解放的意義和價值，從這個角度看，我們就能發現中國“新時期”的女性藝術和政治功利性的“婦女解放”式的女性畫家們的作者多麼不一樣！
讀金善的畫，由畫而及她畫中顯現出的情感和精神，就會有一種觸及到她生命本真的感動，你進而會感到女畫家的全部生命的真實都在她的作品中了。
金善是一位出身於延邊朝鮮自治州的少數民族女性畫家，大凡少數民族的男女們多有一種能歌善舞的特質，比較而言，文明先行的漢民族則為一色的循規蹈矩的“內斂”起來，這就是所謂哲人所説的“文明悖論”的問題，盧梭更進一步指出“被文明教養壞了的人”，於是又回到席勒的“理性暴政”那裏去——文明失當地壓制了感性之根，——這就是席勒的美學思想。用這個理論和思想來認識諸如：新疆、蒙古、朝鮮等少數民族為什麼都能歌善舞，都比漢族更接近藝術和感性什麼，就能為理解少數民族藝術、女性藝術和乃至金善的藝術提供一個思想史和文化史意義的背景。
金善的作品最為突出的是色彩的語言的表達，在儒家文化的觀念中，色彩是一個危險的東西：“色能亂性”，從感覺的角度説，色彩，尤其是強烈的色彩，是較線形更能刺激人的視覺官能和視覺感知的，所以繪畫藝術在進入現代之後，首先的變革就是對色彩的強調，以及在表達上的擴充，而金善的色彩語言的特徵就使她首先具有了鮮明的現當代性，從風格上説，她的色彩鮮明而又強烈，善用紅黃暖色，這是她的色彩語言的主體，她的早期寫實風格的作品，如人物和靜物，雖然是表現主義的傾向，但色彩語言的紅黃暖色主調也是明顯的傾向，紅黃主調在色彩學的象徵性上説是對應激情、熱烈、鮮血、壯美、活力等等概念，它最富於感性和生命活力的能量，在金善作品的色彩語言紅黃的暖色主調，常常被處理成和藍綠冷色調的對峙、迴旋、糾結的運動關係中，鮮明的色彩和強烈的動感構成了一個感性活力的生命圖譜。值得指出的是金善的這種色彩和圖像，卻總是指向生命的象徵，而從不指涉社會學的範疇，所以在這裡我們就意識到了金善的作品，雖然在形態上是強烈的，有重量感的，但藝術的本質上，仍然是女性的特徵，她信奉的是生命的哲學和存在的體驗。
和一般的女性藝術所不同的是金善作品的氣度和格局，她的這種氣度和格局體現于她的作品的結構性特徵，她是很重結構性的畫家，也許在這方面她是受到了維也納分離派大師作品的影響，但是我更傾向是她的本性中對“力”的感覺和意識，從而導致了她的作品中的結構性的表達，在這個時候我們甚至看到了金善作品“壯美”的一面，“壯美”作為古典美學悲劇性崇高的範疇，女性藝術家一般不涉及，金善的“壯美”在美學精神上與古典美學的“壯美”同形不同質，她並沒有“悲劇”的自覺意識和悲劇的內涵，説到底是形式的所指，而非精神的能指。
説到這裡，金善作品中的結構性張力就自然成為了她的藝術精神中一個非常鮮明又凸顯的特徵，這一點使她在女性藝術家之中非常耀眼，與時下女性藝術家比較多見的“小女人”式表達形成強烈的反差，作為藝術批評，我不能一般意義地貶低女性藝術家的“柔美”可能，但這決非女性藝術家的整體性特徵，我堅持認為作為人的一半，女性首先是人性，然後是女性，並且人性涵蓋著女性。
這一點在金善的身上和她的作品中看得十分清楚。
金善是一個很有探索精神和探索成果的畫家，她從表現寫實繪畫，到抽象的表現，再又穿行意象到抽象之間，她總是很有激情地探索和推進。分析她的藝術軌跡，我們能夠清晰地看到一種語言的自律性，她是具有一些語言形式上的個人法則的，她的自律性就體現對個人法則的不斷開展，豐富、演繹和完善的運動之中。
她近期的系列作品，是以對石頭為表達對象而展開的，從形態學上説，這實質上一批介於意象和抽象之間的作品，對於這些作品的表達，女畫家在精神上有一種對“石頭”的歷史有“形上”和“形下”的雙重詮釋，在她的作品中，石頭既是“神性”的又是“自然性”的，正因為畫家對“石頭”的精神性和形質性表達二元同構性表達，在她的作品中賦予了石頭以豐富而深度的形式美感和精神內容，而尤其難能可貴的是通過這一個系列作品的創造過程，使她的藝術得到了階段性昇華。
金善同時是一個很有創作活力的畫家，她不斷地有新的拓進和新的意識，作為一個關注她的藝術的評論者，我想有二個問題應該提出，供她參考：一是裝飾性和平面性和精神性的關係問題：由於她所從事的職業關係，當她轉入純藝術的繪畫之後，裝飾性是可以作為表達資源的，但裝飾性需要轉換成現當代性的平面表達，否則裝飾性將消解和傷害精神性和自由性的表達；其二、金善的作品在精神的生成上有強烈的“自然性”特徵，如何在“自然性”上植入主動的人文思想，而避免大哲人康得所批評的“由自然性成熟”而可能出現的後果，這是金善要警覺的。
鄧平祥著名批評家、油畫家、策展人
Perceptual impulse and the true expression of life
Interpretation of Kim Sun’s art
The rise of Chinese contemporary female art is of great spiritual and cultural significance,forming an important part of the awakening of the human nature in the new period.
We are not dealing here with a political movement - the grand narrative of women’s liberation: breaking away from the masculine authority, social clan, the state, even the family. No, we are dealing with something more profound and authentic: through the awakening of their true nature women give themselves to themselves. (Jacob Christoph Burckhardt )"the relations between person and person to person").
The 1980’s opened a new period in China: a true enlightenment and a spiritual and cultural awakening which also ushered in a "new era" of an art created by women painters, art liberated from the dogmas of the past, an art the likes of which had never been seen before.
Getting to know Kim Sun’s paintings, is being profoundly moved by the spirit and emotion which emanate from them. Indeed, we discover in them the essence of what it means to be a woman painter in contemporary China.
Kim Sun comes from the Yanbian minority in the Korean autonomous prefecture. It is believed that the minority people posses genuine qualities in the highest degree and that, in comparison, the Han majority are more restrained, conformist and conventional, due to their long and rich civilization. This is one of the paradoxes of civilization, namely that, according to Rousseau, it disposes of what is genuine in human nature, and, according to Schiller, leads to the “tyranny of reason”. This can help us understand why are the Uighurs, Mongolians, North Koreans and other ethnic minorities, closer to the real spirit of art than the Han majority.
Kim Sun predominantly expresses herself in colors and colors, according to the Confucian tradition, have a potential to stimulate the feelings and excite them sometimes to dangerous levels. Paroxisms of color and emotion are indeed characteristic of modern art and in this respect Kim Sun’s art is modern and contemporary. She shows particular propensity forbright and intense warm colors like the red and yellow which make the main body of her paintings. Her early works are rather realistic in style but with an expressionist tendency. However, warm colors, reds and yellows, already make appearance in them. According to the symbolism of colors, they express passion and energy, particularly red which associates to blood, but also to vitality and grandeur. They are contrasted with greens and other cooler tonalities and these contrasts are particularly suitable to give vigor and dynamism to sport scenes, one of the themes of her paintings. to tangle of sports relationships, bright color and strong action constituted a perceptual map of energy life .Worth pointing out is that bright colors and energetic forms of Kim Sun’s art always relate to real life and never to abstractions.
Possibly under the influence of the Viennese Secession, Kim Sun’s works are solidly structured. One also discovers in them a sense of grandeur, a certain spirit of loftiness and magnificence as it figures in the classical aesthetics. This kind of lofty expression where an elementary force of nature and structural tensions inherent in the work reach to the heights of the tragic, one usually does not associate with female art which we tend to perceive as more gentle and “feminine”.
Kim Sun is an adventurous and explorative painter who moves from the realistic to the abstract and back. However, following her artistic trajectory, one clearly realizes the amount of self discipline in her expressive language which is the subject to certain strict, self imposed laws.
Her recent series, based on the stone as an object of expression, bridges the figurative and the abstract. The stone – an object invested with deep symbolical ramifications of meanings,has a dual significance of a thing divine and natural at the same time. This symbolical dimorphisam of the stone extends to the sexual sphere as well.
Finally, as an art critic, I would like to introduce a caveat. In my opinion, this very creative and adventurous painter should bring certain tendency to ornamental and planarity in conformity with the requirements of the contemporary art. Ornamental can be used as a resource, but the decoration needs to be converted to modern and contemporary graphic expression, otherwise, the ornamental will dissolve and harm the spirituality and the freedom of expression;
Born in Ningxiang, HunanProvince, Deng Pingxiang is a renown art critic and curator. He isa member of China Artists Association, the director of the China Oil Painting Society as well as a member of the academic committee of the Wu guanzhong research center of the Tsinghua University.
Cathrine kang translation