文/ 蔣岳紅
在考察中國當代藝術的時候，如果我們已經習慣了將目光恰如其分地停留在藝術家的作品上，似乎只有在為藝術家的所做找尋到社會現實的根據和藝術歷史的理由時，才算是找到了其藝術作品的適得其所。那麼，在這種看似不留私情的冷眼旁觀和參照分類中，藝術家作為個人的生活經驗和其藝術表達的動機也就被我們主動地忽視和遮罩。於是，我們關於中國當代藝術實踐的提問就會局限在做什麼和如何做上，而為什麼做，即藝術家做藝術的原因以及目的，就因此成為了一個虛設的必然而不再被觸及。
“藝術”究竟意味著什麼，在某些藝術家那裏，會成為一個需要反反覆復思辨究詰的概念。但在更願意自詡為“藝人”而不以“藝術家”自居的李紅軍那裏，前後二十多年的“做”藝術則是一個身體力行的答覆。而李紅軍的“做”藝術，在有意無意，自覺不自覺中契合著中國當代藝術實踐風口浪尖上的脈動——從年畫作品入選第六屆全國美術作品展覽，到畢業創作躋身“89後”油畫現實主義新思潮中的一份子，再到裝置作品成為90年代初從民間到現代，從架上到非架上過渡時期的實驗藝術個案。
追求木版畫效果的年畫作品《春華秋實》入選1984年第六屆全國美術作品展覽。作品以懷孕的妻子為模特，以所倚靠的門楣上“春華秋實”的對聯橫批點題，流露出的是對於生活詩意樸素自然地觀察和表達。此時中國的當代繪畫實踐也正悄然從傷痕過渡到了鄉土，鄉土寫實繪畫的概念正式被提出 。
油畫作品《老婆孩子雞》系列是他1991年中央美術學院民間美術系大專班的畢業創作，在對於個人現實生活場景片段進行關照的後面是自我的缺席在場。作品中對個人日常生活略帶自嘲的焦灼，使得他以鄉土生活現實的描繪而與當年的方力鈞、劉曉東等人的創作實踐一同成為構成中國美術"８９後"獨立指向最明確有力的新思潮 中的代表作品。儘管這一繪畫創作實踐體現的新氣象被栗憲庭稱其為"幽默現實主義"，被高名潞稱為"存在現實主義"，被張曉軍稱為"文化現實主義"，但是在李紅軍這裡看似只有現實，並無主義。比如畫面裏出現的“毛主席像”，作為 “政治波普”的符號被引用，但依李紅軍所言，它就貼在那兒，並不是刻意選擇的。作品體現出的是他的生活現實，也是他的藝術現實。他借助自身對於民間美術造型語言的提煉和把握，事實上賦予了畫面以超現實主義意味。如果説那只女人想抓卻抓不住的用盡渾身解數掙脫的公雞是男人的象徵，那麼在雞飛娃哭妻忙的門外，匆匆而走的雙腿，或許可以看作是藝術家逃離現場的自我寫照。
1992－3年《紅蜘蛛》系列裝置作品中對於“網”的視覺化呈現是對現實生活境遇狀態的體悟，也是在觀唸有效表達上有關語言形式的實質性拓展。系列I是針對網作為容器的功能特質進行的視覺化呈現。網裏網外的穿透與阻隔，出逃與進駐，掩藏與暴露，如影隨形，互為條件，似乎進退就在一念間。系列II是表達和表現上的一次推進。作品不再停留在對於“網”符號的使用上，而是將“網”作為了語言來表達，用網來修補日常遭遇中的缺漏本質上卻是對於缺漏本身的強調和凸現，虛實真偽的轉換間徒勞的修補空留下形式的意味，勞作的意義何在？當時呂勝中策劃的兩次“過渡”展中所謂“腳踏兩隻船”也就是如何從民間本土語言到當代藝術形式的過渡，在李紅軍個人則是從繪畫到裝置毫無後顧的前瞻性實驗，也為其1995年的《道•器》創作預留下了令人期待的表達空間——以日常生活物件留形于書，形而下的物質與形而上的精神因其視覺化地呈現而成為彼此妥協孕生而非相互對峙兩立的矛盾概念。
如果説，李紅軍對於繪畫題材和裝置語言的敏感把握和切身表達，讓他的所做成為了中國當代藝術實踐自身邏輯上有價值的個案。那麼從《道•器》開始的對於“紙”這一材料持續至今的關注和鑽營則正如他本人所言，“那些在紙層夾縫中綿延回轉的空洞，也許就是我的宿命”。紙對於自認“祖上八輩子都是農民”的李紅軍而言，的確是承擔著改變命運的一頁又一頁。墻上貼著的一紙畫被安排來家吃飯的鄉書記和教育專幹相中，高中畢業在下河李村任會計的李紅軍離開了滾驢溝成了鄉里電影院的合同工；一紙陜西風翔師範美術班的中專文憑，這個村子裏的第一個中專生成了千陽縣文化館吃商品糧的幹部；一幅入選全國美展的年畫讓他被寫入了縣誌；一紙文化部培養基層文化館幹部的文件讓他有機會考入中央美術學院的大專班，也讓他由此介入中國當代藝術實踐的發展脈絡；與當代藝術若即若離的十年後，是因著一張中央美術學院的藝術碩士文憑，已經擔任省藝術館主任一職的李紅軍第三次進京，憑藉從無字書中抽離出的一頁又一頁白紙層層建構出的頭和手成就著他與畫廊合作的自由藝術家身份，也成全著他與中國當代藝術實踐的重續前緣。
的確，對於我們任何一個人來説，紙都是一個證據。紙是經濟範疇的同時也是意識形態領域的。是紙見證和建構了我們的日常生活，承載和構建出我們關乎物質和精神的一切想像。然而，李紅軍對於紙的鑽營，卻讓我們遭遇到了紙的陌生化，感受到紙的含糊其辭和意味深長：是形而上的也是形而下的，是可信的也是可疑的，輕而沉，薄而厚，既無還有——《道•器》（1995）中從載道的字書裏看到平常器物；《錢塔》（1996）的鑿紙為幣和《貨幣兌換》（1996）的冥幣換洋/陽錢 ；到現在把自身的三維影像切分為白紙千張之後再重塑“我”的形態各異——如此的陌生化之所以得以呈現和流露出來不是因為藝術家對紙的所指的熟悉而是因為藝術家與紙的能指之間的距離。其實並非是出於紙作為材料在其日常生活中的觸手可及，而是源於紙作為文化和經濟的象徵之物，讓李紅軍切身感受到的距離和強勢，以及因教育與金錢而生發出來的壓力和無奈。關乎這種蘊含于紙的壓力和無奈或許在很多人來説是隱性的，李紅軍卻成功地通過他的作品娓娓道出，完成著一遍又一遍將其顯性化的有效表達。
事實上，無論是“老婆孩子雞”的題材，還是網的象徵和紙的鑽營，都強烈地傳達出李紅軍對其個人生活經驗的詰難和咀嚼。他個人藝術表達的動機始終懸浮和包裹在其具體作品的周圍。他的分身——農民、幹部、藝術家多重身份的並存，是他的現實也是他的選擇。為什麼“做”藝術不僅只是他的癡心，還是他的本能——其間流露出的有對藝術勞作把持的尊重，也有試圖從有形和無形的束縛中抽身的妄想。或許，正是這種對於藝術的宿命感，才讓李紅軍的“做”藝術成為我們在嘗試建立中國當代藝術實踐體系時所珍視的一個特例。
For What: “Doing” Arts
By Jiang Yuehong
In reviewing Contemporary Art in China, if we have been used to appropriately eyeing it, we can hardly position an artist’s piece unless we find certain evidences of social reality and causes in art history to interpret his practice. Well, with such an apparently straight and cold look and referential identification, we will forwardly neglect and screen the artist’s own personal experiences of life and his motif of an art delivery. As a result, our questions on those practices of Contemporary Art in China may probably be bounded to what an artist does and how he does it and as for why he does it, saying, why and for what an artist does an art, it becomes a necessity in name only and is referred to no more.
What does “art” really mean then? To certain artists, it will be a concept requiring a serious consideration time after time. However, to Li Hongjun who prefers addressing himself an “artisan” rather than an “artist”, his own “doing” an art over twenty years long has been an answer in action to the question. On the other hand, consciously or unconsciously of self-knowledge or not, his “doing” an art has been corresponding to the key pulse of the peak of the contemporary art tide in China – from his piece of traditional Spring Festival art selected into the Sixth National Art Exhibition, to his graduate pieces risen up as one share of the New Trend of “After ’89” Realism in Oil Painting Art, to his installations recognized as a personal case of experimental art in the early 90s during the interim from a folk world to the modern world as well as from traditional art to specific-site art.
His piece “Prosperous Spring & Fruitful Fall” with an effect of a woodcut on purpose was selected into the Sixth National Art Exhibition, 1984. In it, the woman is after his pregnant wife at that time, sitting against a door where there pasted is a pair of couplet with its horizontal theme “Prosperous Spring & Fruitful Fall” corresponding to the title. All these reveal his observing and expressing about life in a poetic, simple and natural tone. At the time, the practice of Contemporary Art in China was silently transiting from social wounded traces to farming life in subject and the concept of painting the countryside realistically was formally suggested .
The oil painting series “Wife, Baby, Rooster”, his graduate pieces completed in a class of 3-year-long study in the department of Folk Art, Central Academy of Fine Arts, is an extension that the artist himself has tried quite long to achieve after his previous series “Wife, Baby, Rooster”, and since then, he stops his practice in painting. An absence of self can be traced behind his concerns about his personal daily life delivered by these paintings. With certain slight sense of self-mockery, his anxieties about his own daily life released from his pieces put his art practices as magnum opuses of the New Trend of “After ’89” Realism in Oil Painting Art , which features most clear and vigorous arisen in Chinese art circle, along with those of Fang Lijun, Liu Xiaodong and so on. Although such a new atmosphere created by its practices is named “Humorous Realism” by Li Xianting, “Realism of Existence” by Gao Minglu, and “Cultural Realism” by Zhang Xiaojun, there seems only a reality but no “-ism”-related ideology. For example, there appears a “Portrait of Chairman Mao” in the piece, which is quoted by others as a symbol of “Political Bop” , but, said by himself, it is just pasted there with no special intention. His reality in life and in art is reflected via the series. Taking the advantages of his professional refinement and mastery of Chinese folk fine arts, he endues the painting menus with an air of super-realism. Regarding the rooster playing its best skill s to break loose from the woman’s desire as a man’s symbol , the Out of the door where the rooster are flying, baby crying while the wife busy, there are a pair of hurry legs, which may be regarded as a vivid self-reflection that the artist himself is immediately fleeing from the spot.
During 1992 to 1993, the installation series “Red Spider” presents a visualization of “netting” displaying his realization of the life conditions in reality, which is also an actual development of expressional form in terms of an effective delivery of an idea. Series I is a visualized presentation focusing on the nets as containers in function. Either penetrating or obstructing into and out of the nets, escaping or entering, or, covering or exposing, very closely associated with each other, each serves as a condition to another. It seems that forward or backward is just up to a sudden idea. “Red Spider II” is a development in expression and program. The piece goes beyond the application of “netting” just as a symbol in taking “netting” for an expression. That the netting is applied to make up the shortage or imperfection of our daily life is a kind of highlighted display of the shortage or imperfection. In transforming between truth and fakeness, such a fruitless make-up just leaves us certain sense in form only, and then what is exactly the value of labor to us? At that time, regarded as a manner of “having a foot in two camp”, the two “Transiting” Exhibits planned by Prof. Lv Shengzhong demonstrates how Chinese art was transiting from the form of folk art to that of modern art in expression. As to Li himself, he took predicting experiments from painting to installations with no hesitation, which also reserved certain highly expected room for him to express in his coming practice of the series “Dao•Utensils” ,1995 – the ordinary objects adopted to make theirs shapes into books, where physical material and metaphysical spirit are displayed by visualization, being a concept of contradiction in a compromise of each other for a new born rather than absolutely opposite to each other.
If we say that Li’s sensitive mastery and very personal deliveries of painting themes and installation expressions enable what he has done to be a valuable personal case due to the logics of modern art practice in China, his constant attention and addiction to the material “Paper” since the series “Dao• Utensils” to the present are just described by his own statement: “Perhaps my predestinated life is just like those empty caves continuously through or between those paper layers.” As to Li who claims “his family has been farmers for generations all the time” , paper bears all the pages of his life changes. A drawing paper pasted on a wall was favored by a CPC secretariat of the village and an officer of local education who were both arranged having a meal with his family, then, Li, a high school graduate, left from the Valley Gun-liu-gou to the village and changed his job from being an accountant of the Li-family Village downstream to be a contracted employee in the town cinema. Afterwards, a diploma in art issued to him by Shangxi Fengxiang Normal School, a technical secondary school, made him, the first graduate from such a school in his village, becoming a local cadre in the cultural office of the Qian-yang county and earning the state-paid salary. An oil painting of Spring Festival theme selected into a national art exhibition let his name recorded in the county annals. An official document from National Administration of Culture to select and train certain cadres from grass roots let him get a chance via his success in exam of studying in a class of 3-year-long program in Central Academy of Fine Arts, which also let him step into the developing path of contemporary art practice in China. after 10 years of his life at an arm’s length to contemporary art, it is a diploma of master in art issued by Central Academy of Fine Arts that makes him back to Beijing for the third time with his official rank as Dean of Shangxi Provincial Art Hall left behind. Then, the head and hand constructed by him with the thousand white papers respectively taken from a book of no character let him start cooperating with art galleries as a freelance artist in identity. Such a practice also re-started his predestinated relation with Contemporary Art in China.
Certainly, to everyone, paper is a proof. Paper is referred in economy as well as in ideology. It is paper that has witnessed and structured our daily life, carried and built up all what we image about material and spirit. However, Li’s “into papers” leads us encountering the alienation of paper and experiencing the ambiguity and significance of paper: physically and metaphysically as well, trustable and distrustful as well, light and heavy as well, thin and thick as well, none and ens as well – from the series 《Dao•Utensils》（1995）, those daily utensils identified from the literal books bearing Dao; taking cut papers as currency in Money Tower and using Chinese paper money for the death to exchange for the foreign/worldly money; now, he cuts his own 3-dimensional figure into thousands of white paper pieces and then re-set up various appearances of “I” – it is not because he know the designation of paper very well but because he is in certain distance from it that such an alienation is effectively presented and expressed. In fact, it is because paper is a symbol of culture and of economy as well rather than because paper as a material is so handy in daily life but that Li recognize the distance and force as well as the pressure and helplessness caused by education and money. Such pressure and helplessness borne in paper is hidden to most of people, however, Li succeeds in telling it out vividly via his piece, achieving his effective delivery of visualizing it repeatedly.
As a matter of fact, not only the subject of “Wife, Baby, Rooster” but also the symbolization of “Netting” and the devotion of “Into Papers” all deliver Li’s interrogation and chewing of his personal experiences in life. His motif in art is always suspending and wrapped up around his specific arts. His co-existing identities such as farmer, cadre and artist are of his reality as well of his own choice. For what to do an art is not only his infatuation but also his instinct – which releases his respect to the labor in art and his fantasy of trying to get away from the material or bodiless bound. Perhaps, it is this sense of predestination toward art that lets Li’s “doing” arts become a very special example for us to prize in our establishment of a system of contemporay art practice in China.
( translated by Jiang Wenhui)