内容提要
归于宁静
布克曼 博士
瑞士信贷常务董事，公司业务亚太区总代表
严善錞的画面，看似简单通透，但却值得反复翫味。乍看抽象，但各种各样的形状、层次和内容却又演绎出千变万化。细心体会下，它们就会透出清晰却并不浅湿的现实和寓意，宛若和弦，音乐的价值也在其创作过程中展露出来。或许是他有意以恬淡去描摹大千世界，以恬静去表达万种气象，这便是严善錞的独特画风，并一以贯之。素有人间天堂美誉的杭州，以其山水亭台湖光天色赋予了他无限的灵感。人们普遍认为大地、湖水和树木是构成宇宙的主要元素，但严善錞在探索世界的过程中，却体悟到了空气和空间的存在，并为它们所著迷。
早在浙江美术学院学习期间，严善錞就熟稔于各种技法和画风。他早期的习作显示了通过法国艺术而习得了印象主义。然而，这些最初的努力，并非只是为了学习某种风格，而是为了踏上一个试图超越数世纪以来的文化樊篱的旅程。一路走来，他终于找到了一种富有创意的结果：它们融合了西方人的透视观念和借助了近乎水彩风格的油画技法，甚至偶尔还呈现了肖像画和城市风景画中的某些后印象主义的情致。
随后，严善錞辗转求诸自己的传统。昔日的西湖风景，以及历史上的那些画家们对它的描绘，正在成为东方艺术的一个焦点。严善錞的探索旅程也由此进发。他在描绘水天一色之际，虽然舍弃了大量不必要的景物，而山庄村落则依然隐现其间。在着色方面，我们也同样可以看到这样的一种删繁努力，缤纷的五色被青灰、靛蓝和褚黑所替代。
严善錞的思想和方法偶尔会令人想到阿尔贝托•贾科梅蒂。这位后现代主义雕塑大师常常在其大型作品中将艺术主题部分有意缩小、甚至压缩到难以察觉的程度。随其艺术的成熟，贾科梅蒂越来越注重在作品中抛弃具体时空对本质的束缚。最后的主题，往往体现在“看看这张脸，多么幸福！”之类的简短评语中。在严善錞的艺术世界中，更为广泛地拥抱了中国传统艺术尤其是山水画的精义，“惜墨如金”，画家当以精湛简约的笔墨来唤起观众对五彩世界的无尽遐想。严善錞的作品中体现了诸多的中国元素，但他并未完全在精神和艺术上附着于传统。他的作品也洋溢着透纳和戈雅的气质，这两位鼓舞人心的自由思想者用艺术表达了不朽的生命魅力。尽管严善錞的山水所勾勒的是现世，却传达着最本真的欢乐和超脱。对于那些终日在文山会海中疲于奔命的现代人而言，这些作品传达出了超越俗世的乐观向上。
极简使得严善錞作品带有禅意，映现了“过眼浮华皆烟云”的境界。它们给人以这样的讯息：当今中国和世界的经济增长造成了物质秩序的变化，追求资产、品牌和身份―这些煞有价值的行为是徒劳的。对那些无意随波逐流的人而言，严善錞的作品是心灵的宽慰和启示：终极的幸福无关物质，唯有超脱现世的桎梏才能融入宁静寂美的独辟天地。
2010年4月，北京
Discovering Serenity
Dr. Urs Buchmann
Managing Director, Head Corporate Banking Asia Pacific, Credit Suisse
Seemingly simple and transparent in their architecture Yan Shanchun's works never cease to fascinate in a long term encounter. This may relate to initial abstraction that continues to evolve in multiple shape, layers and content. In a more intense dialogue his paintings reveal a multitude of more obvious and also less apparent realities and meanings just as in a polyphonic composition. Music may have been a valuable companion in the process. Possibly because it pursues a lighter approach as far as the material world around us is concerned. Capturing the dynamics of transformation within the more static realm of expression available to painting has formed an early and steady theme in Yan Shanchun's artistic activity. The nature of Hang Zhou, China's Eden with its delicate balance of gardens, ponds and pavilions must have been a steady source of inspiration in this regard. Earth, water and wood are being recognized as the dominant constituents of this universe. Air and space are missing in this sequence and yet they may hold the primordial fascination for Yan in his progressing exploration and discovery of the world around him.
While still studying at the Hangzhou Institute of Fine Arts, Yan rapidly acquired an advanced command in a wide range of idioms and styles. Early works appear to be leaning towards impressionism, a development which may have been helped by a student encounter with French art. However these initial efforts refer more to the onset of an exploratory journey leading across the cultures and the styles they produced over the centuries than assuming an intrinsic value of their own. The voyage has brought about considerable creative stimulus among others marked by a partial integration of western perspective and an oil painting like approach to water color, occasionally reminiscent of post-impressionism, especially as far as a number of portraits and western cityscapes are concerned.
Over time Yan's itinerary has led him back to China. The classical Hangzhou landscape and the response it has cited with China's painters in the course of the country's artistic evolution has emerged as an increasingly focal point of orientation. As the journey has progressed a lot of baggage has been left behind with the sky and water gaining in proportion defining and delineating mountains, lakes and villages. A similar reduction can be observed in relation to the use of color which has migrated from comprehensive scales to an extensive palette of blue to grayish and black tones.
The intellectual and methodological approach may occasionally relate to Alberto Giaccometti's endeavors. During a certain period in his work the sculptor regularly conceived large scale statues, which in the course of an extensive dialogue with the objects in focus were regularly reduced to small and often drastically minimized formats. The transformation to the essential beyond space and time consistently gained in relevance in Giaccometti's work as his search progressed. It is epitomized in some of his brief comments such as "to discover a face, what happiness!" In Yan Shanchun's realm the approach may assume a wider meaning when it embraces the spirit of classical Chinese art and especially landscape painting, which before all demands simplicity expressed with the reduced means of black ink consistently applied in proportion to space left open and on the basis of an advanced command of the brush allowing for an infinitely varied understanding at color. While Yan's dialogue with Chinese tradition is intense he has preserved his mental and artistic independence. The same applies with regard to his encounter with Turner and possibly Goya, two of those inspiring free thinkers that continue to remind us of some of the elementary enchantment offered by life. In their own capacity Yan's landscapes instill an original joy and a sense of detachment in regard to all things now and present. They among others convey an overriding element of optimism to all those who perceive themselves caught in the intricacies of overcrowded schedules and time lines forming part of a contemporary existence.
Some of Yan's minimalist tendencies may have been shaped in the context of Buddhist wisdom and its emphasis on simplicity and the essential conclusion that all riches ultimately entail suffering. It is notably in this context that Yan Shanchun's work offers an important message as regards the changes of the materialistic order that has emerged in the context of economic reform in China and other parts of the world and the futility of a universe defined by an unreflected and thus essentially uncritical accumulation of assets, brands and symbols of formal status and their seemingly existence defining function. For those being excluded from this realm, Yan's work comes as a strong comfort while providing forward looking inspiration: the bliss that can be derived from - and ultimately in - a dematerialized world as yet another point of departure to a new and essentially serene universe.
Beijing, April 2010
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