内容提要
序
欧亚平
上海外滩美术馆董事会主席
在我认识的艺术家朋友中，张洹是非常独特的一个。我还记得2007年底，我第一次拜访他位于闵行的工作室时，他的“工厂”的庞大规模、创作和分工的多样化和专门化，完全不像一般的艺术家工作室，这种经营艺术创作的方式给我留下了深刻的印象。然而，最让我感到震撼的还是他的作品。无论是香灰画、版画、木雕门板、铜雕，还是生牛皮造型的雕塑，都具有一种原始、朴素而生猛的气息，有些作品甚至乍看会给人以一种不舒服的感觉。但回过头来看，我认为这种气息和感觉正是他的作品带给我们的启示之一：艺术的作用，并不在于取悦我们的眼球，甚至也不在于取悦我们的思想，而在于拓展和丰富我们心中的“世界”。
从早期的行为表演开始，张洹一直扮演着与主流社会的价值观格格不入的另类角色。他的作品经常具有一种让人无法回避的、生理上的直接性，好比切肤之痛。以这样诉诸于肉体感官的方式和力度与其所在的环境进行对话，对于从90年代起至今仍然纠结于意识形态和价值观嬗变的中国社会，或者对于2000年以后日益沉迷于全球市场和消费主义的欧美各国，或者对于不断向体制化演进的艺术界本身而言，都是一种貌似倒行逆施，但又尖锐彻骨的刺激。毕竟，从文艺复兴和工业时代开始，到今天的商品化、技术和媒体时代，人类正在加速被自己所创造的文明成就所异化。在这个背景之下，张洹就像卢梭所说的“高贵的野蛮人”，把自己当作人类文化与自然，以及文化与文化之间的矛盾和冲突的载体，以自己的身体和作品不断质问人类所孜孜以求的目标与方向。作为结果，他的创作在向我们展示了艺术家赤裸裸的自我的同时，也提示了我们也许还应该有另一个，与当前发展的主流现状和趋势相对立的，但正在被忽略和遗忘的世界：一个真正属于人性和自然的世界。
《问孔子》表达的，正是张洹对这一乌托邦主题的探询。作为外滩美术馆重新开放的后的第一个展览，我希望《问孔子》能够再次带给我们对所处社会的现状和前景的思考。正如两千多年前诗人屈原的《天问》一样，我相信这些超越了个人生活常规内容的提问，以及对于人类整体命运的关心和忧虑，是构成人性以及人类力量的基本要素之一。此外，我也希望这些独具语言意味和形式美学的作品，能够给这个高速运转的社会中辛勤奋斗的人们带来片刻的欣悦和领悟，享受到观看、思考和讨论的乐趣。我想，这既是美术馆的目标，也是艺术家的愿望。
感谢张洹给我们带来的这一切！
2011年8月
Foreword
Thomas Ou
Chair of the Board, Rockbund Art Museum
Zhang Huan stands out among the artists I know as friends as one of the most distinctive. When I first visited his studio in the Minhang district of Shanghai, I was profoundly impressed by the ‘industrial’ methods he employed in his artistic creation; the enormous scale of his ‘factory’ and the variety and specialisation in the creative work and division of labour were entirely unlike anything one might encounter at the studios of more usual artists. It was, however, still Zhang Huan’s works that had the greatest impact on me. Be it his paintings made using incense ash, his prints, his carved wooden door panels, his copper statuary or statues made from rawhide, all impart a sense of the primitive, the plain and simple and an intense vigour; certain of his works even create a feeling of unease, no matter how one looks at them. Yet in retrospect I believe it is precisely this sensibility and these feelings that constitute one of the messages Zhang Huan’s works have for us: the function of art is not to delight our eyes, nor even to delight our thoughts; it is rather to expand and enrich our inner ‘world’.
Beginning with the performance work of his early period, Zhang Huan has consistently played the role of an alternative figure entirely at odds with the values of mainstream society. His works often have a directness that brooks no evasions, their effect almost physiological, like some keenly felt pain. The mode and dynamic of his work engages our physical senses, and enter into a dialogue with the environment the work is situated in: with Chinese society still embroiled in the evolution of ideology and values that began in the 1990s, or with the nations of Europe and North America since 2000 ever more immersed in the globalised market and consumerism, or with the world of art itself as it becomes progressively more institutionalized; Zhang Huan’s mode and dynamic can appear to be only a counter-current in dialogue with these, but they are also a penetrating stimulus. After all, beginning with the Renaissance and the industrial revolution and on to our present era of commodification, technology and mass media, humanity is being ever more rapidly alienated by the achievements of the civilisations it has created. Against this backdrop Zhang Huan resembles Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’, taking upon himself the role of bearer of contradictions and conflicts, between human culture and Nature and between different cultures, using his body and his artworks to continually question the goals and directions humanity so diligently pursues. Being the outcome of such a process, at the same time as Zhang’s creative work shows us the naked self of the artist it also reminds us that perhaps we ought to have a different world, a world that even though it is being ignored and forgotten can stand in opposition to the mainstream reality and trend of our current development-a world that truly belongs to humanity and Nature.
The exhibition Q Confucius is an expression of precisely this inquiry Zhang has made into such utopian themes. As the first exhibition to be held at the Rockbund Art Museum subsequent to its reopening after refurbishment, we hope that Q Confucius will be able to provoke contemplation of the present state of our society and the prospects for its future. Like the Warring States poet Qu Yuan in his Questions to Heaven two millennia past, we believe that to ask these questions that go beyond the parameters of ordinary individual lives, and to show an interest in and concern for the fate of humanity as a whole, are basic elements of what constitutes our human nature and our strength as the human race. We further hope that these art works, with their unique linguistic implications and formal aesthetics, can bring moments of pleasure and insight to audiences more usually occupied with the struggle to make a way through our rapidly turning world, allowing them a chance to enjoy the delights of viewing, contemplating and discussing. This is, I think, both the goal of our art museum and the artist’s own aspiration.
I would like to thank Zhang Huan for bringing us all of this.
August, 2011
|
