李爽是個有故事的女人，她曾經在中國自由主義思潮初萌時期就以藝術的形式為自由振臂一呼，她曾在那個封閉嚴肅的年代裏演繹過轟轟烈烈的愛情故事。如今，她帶著她的作品又回到中國，展現給觀者的卻是一個淡然而恬適的逍遙世界。
這是李爽經過百轉千回最終越來越接近的精神世界。在這個世界裏，總有一張神態安詳的臉龐，雙眉溫潤，雙目微睜，嘴角含笑，亦悲亦喜，與世無爭。帶有東方佛教色彩的人物肖像與帶有西方基督教特點的構圖和諧地融合在李爽的畫面中，這不是單純對宗教或神學的讚美，而是通過泛宗教的視角重新發現人類精神世界的普世價值——單純，寧靜，平和，寬容。在這一點上，李爽回溯了人類美術歷史中關於肖像畫的本質，一個肖像並不單純指向一個具體的人，而在於揭示人物發散出來的情緒和精神，憑藉情緒和精神上的感染力與觀者完成對話。李爽的作品完美地將觀者帶入了一個寧靜平和的世界，每個人的情緒和精神都被包裹在這種平和的力量中，祥和的氛圍使每個人都能將自己的情緒投射在畫作之中。而這也正是李爽作品的獨特之處，如同她創作的肖像有著東方佛教造像的神韻一樣，李爽的創作情緒也與古代繪製佛像的畫匠們如出一轍——滿懷虔誠，把自己全身心地交付給作品，最終與作品水乳交融—— “我發現我創作的時刻佔據了我的所有思緒，包括身體，我的內心流動著興衰交換的奇異生命力，把我和時間、物質情感粘合在一起。”
正是這樣的水乳交融，使得作品散發出的情緒與李爽的內心世界一直如影隨形。從最初對種種束縛的強烈掙扎反抗，到寬容地看待世界，如畫中人那樣平和恬淡地體會這個世界；從對生活充滿迷惘，到參透人生真諦，如畫中人那樣與世界乃至宇宙共同呼吸。最終讓自己的生命之光破繭而出，達到逍遙之境。如同那個美麗的故事一樣，莊子也罷，蝴蝶也罷，管它是夢是真，且由它去，只盡情的享受生命就好。
透過這些深刻描繪的作品，李爽不僅回溯了肖像畫的本質，更是讓自己的作品無限接近了藝術之所以成為藝術的本質：藝術是人的一種生命方式，藝術的本質服從於人的本質。人的本質不是歷史決定的，而是人性決定的。作品之所以偉大是因為作品的情緒能夠穿越時代而不朽，藝術家之所以偉大是因為藝術家的精神能夠穿越時代而不朽。李爽的作品正是因為所呈現的人性光芒終於跨越種種文化差異，跨越時代直接進入觀者的內心世界。
文/ 李穎
2010年2月
Nothing more, nothing less than the serene freedom of naturalness
Li Shuang is a woman who has a story. At the beginning of the libertarian wave in China her art was a rallying cry for freedom; and she had, when Chinese society was strictly closed, a sensational love story. Today, she is coming back to China with her works to show the public a free and serene world.
This is the spiritual world to which Li Shuang, after a thousand detours, is getting closer and closer. In that world, there is always a serene face, with eyebrows full of kindness, half-opened eyes, and a smile at the corner of the mouth, half happy and half sad, aloof. Those faces, under Li Shuang’s brush, have a Buddhist and a Christian air at the same time, but they are not merely praising religion or theology: they are a new discovery of ordinary world values like purity, serenity, kindness and tolerance. Li Shuang thus goes back to the traditional quality of portrait in art history, which is not only the representation of a particular person, but also consists in revealing the emotions and feelings of the subject and thereby allows, through a kind of contagion, a dialogue with the viewer. Li Shuang’s works perfectly take the viewer to a serene world which wraps his feelings and spirit, and allows him to project them onto the paintings that he’s watching. This is a special aspect of Li Shuang’s work，by creating portraits of oriental and romantic Buddhist charm, the emotion that flows from her works is similar to that which came out of the Buddha representations that craftsmen of yore used to make: pious works full of devotion, to which the artists devoted themselves body and soul, and with which they were in complete harmony. “I realized that when I’m painting, I am totally engrossed, body and soul, and that in my heart bursts of an extraordinary life strength rise and fall, which merges me in total harmony with time and matter.”
It is this very harmony that causes the emotion that emanates from Li Shuang’s paintings to take the form of her inner world. From her early fierce resistance to anything that fettered her to the tolerant view of the world that one can feel from her paintings today; from a life full of confusion to the deep understanding of human life, the subjects of her paintings all breathe the same air and live in the same world, the same universe. Eventually, the ray of light of her own life appears, and we can reach the realm of carefree life, where the mind is free. It is as in that beautiful story: whether it is Zhuang Zi or the butterfly, whether the dream is true or not does not matter; what matters is life.
Through these profound works, Li Shuang not only goes back to the quality of portrait, she reaches to the quality that make art what it is. Art is a way of life, and the quality of art depends on the personal quality of the artist; and that quality is not determined by history, but by the character of the person. What makes a work great is its capacity to move viewers beyond generations; what makes an artist great is that his or her mind transcends time. It is because Li Shuang’s works, through their human glow, transcend all kinds of cultural differences that she reaches, beyond generations, the inner world of the viewer.
Amy Ying Li
22 February, 2010