唐骁 TangXiao

用绘画建筑 Build of Paintings

从极限处开始

李建春

大约从2005年开始，唐骁就开始画他的一律名为《无题》的“圈圈”作品了。像日全蚀，光盘，圈套，靶标，指环，宏大叙事的句点，或圣像头上反复黯淡、失落的光环……这些同心圆，像石子击入湖面，又像在黑暗的楼梯间击掌的效果，给观者的感觉荡起轻微的涟漪，又奇怪地不知所终……唐骁的作品常给人庄重的、灰烬的感觉，在色域和材料的决定上，品味颇高。这些千变万化、但万变不离其宗的物质的涟漪，流露出某种兴奋……又总被同一个自闭的句号所终结，什么都没说、又什么都说了。

贾斯伯·琼斯曾有著名的“靶标系列”（综合材料作品），靶标作为“凝视的对象”，被艺术家用于改变对日常物品和身体的视觉习惯，这种挑战、创新的激情，堪称上世纪中叶美国艺术在上升时期的代表。唐骁的“靶标”，树立于一个同样有活力但是又极暖昧的中国当代，由于凝视的对象未明（没有附加物暗示），颇像发生于艺术家和观众之间的“对视”。这些勉强像靶标的有歧义的“制成品”，与其作为服务于某一类主题的视觉修辞，不如说是由颜料和材质造成的一个个微型剧场。至于“剧”的内容，不妨设想为自我与他者、或心物等严肃关系“波动的痕迹”，因“上演”的方式与结果皆未确定，所以未命名。在这位沉稳地激进着的艺术家眼里，故事性主题、写实的图像或观念，甚至某种“绘画性”，似乎不过是一厢情愿而已。

艺术家成熟的起点，始于被果断地确定的终点——传统美学的极限，一个夸张地画出的句号，或圈套；而艺术意蕴的终点，又同样落在这被放大细察的“起点”本身——其实是作者自己克制地停下来，鼓励敏感的读者在充满细节和活力的“面”上继续前行（唐骁认为抽象绘画就是“色彩所覆盖的一个面……追求一种平面空间的创造和纯视觉表达，它是视觉的，物质的。”——唐骁：《关于抽象绘画》）。他的抽象艺术，嘀咕而肯定地宣称绘画确已死亡。格林伯格曾借用沃尔夫林描述巴洛克之区别于古典艺术时所用的一个词“绘画性”，命名了“后绘画性抽象”，以表示脱离了抽象表现主义范畴的“色域绘画”、“硬边绘画”（其他批评家的命名），比如纽曼和斯特拉，都是拒绝表现性笔触、激动的个性和三度空间幻觉，强调材质的真实性和画面的平坦，此类的抽象，往往与环境相融，给人以扩张的视觉感受。我在不同的场合欣赏过唐骁的作品，这些《无题》在墙面上造成一个个莫名的漩涡，挂在他旁边的作品，不管你多么有名或尺幅多大，都是相形失色，仿佛被吸过去了。他的艺术向环境延伸的方式，是表现出一种不动声色的攻击性。这个性质让我着迷，并且思考着：是怎么回事儿？

我的结论是，这位年轻的艺术家有一种强烈的、未曾明说的意志。且略举一下他的艺术历程。早在上世纪末我就注意唐骁，他是2000届油画系最有才华的学生之一。毕业后又出国留学多年。在他的风格形成之前，有几组不错的习作。一组是练习抽象表现的，大刷子快速地涂上色块，颇有层次感，不过我觉得，主要是颜料往下淌的效果让人很不安（唐骁已开始“过分”了）。有一幅画鸽子的作品，从基本造型往外冲的运笔，使得鸽子的形象趋于解体，他“观念地”画了一只高污染中的鸽子。另有几幅完全放弃视幻效果的习作也比较成功。唐骁的家族从祖辈到父兄辈，都是中国著名的油画家、壁画家和美术教育家——如此彻底的抽象，需要一般人难以想象的精神能量（他背叛了写实主义，但没有丢掉学院气质）。

唐骁的色调偏灰偏冷，这使得他的封闭性几何造型缺乏一种向外的快乐的因素。刀笔的动作，边线微妙的擦痕或浸渍效果，辅助色的准确谨慎，对复合板纹理或有机玻璃质地的巧妙运用等等，这些纯粹视知觉的探索，几乎耗费了艺术家的全部热情。但是细赏过后，一种被清空和瞄准的感觉让观者“升华”的愿望倍受挫折。我认为不是什么喜欢画成圆的、或许阶段性的习惯，而恰好是这个缺乏“升华”的特质最值得注意。艺术家已造成了一种让期望落空的效果，受到冒犯的趣味可不止是大众的。在这年头的沉闷无趣中，当代艺术开始把反叛视为一种责任。“反叛”固然像是撒娇，“保守”期待人理睬的方式更让人难堪。唐骁不大可能以喜剧的方式出场。他却默默地拒绝了不同的阵营对于艺术的某些共同的诉求。我不想过分激励艺术家现阶段的图形乐趣和冷感趋向，只是想提示一下，在这个当代中国的语境中，一位“纯语言”艺术家的想法或精神内涵，决不会少于“观念”。因其单纯，所以更复杂。这种让虚热冷却下来的纯粹视觉甚至触觉，与其说是一种自我表达，不如说是走向未名的“别处”，以唤起读画人自己的生命感觉为美学目标。

2009年11月，武昌昙华林

Starting off from the Ultimate Limit

Li Jianchun    translated by Jin Hu

Around 2005, Tang Xiao began to paint his always untitled works featuring the round objects, such as the total solar eclipse, compact discs, springes, targets, rings, the period of grand narrative and the aureole, etc. These concentric circles, like the stone dropping into the lake or the clap in the dark stairway, give the spectators a fleeting aesthetic sensibility, which vanish queerly without trace. Showing very good taste in color and material, Tang Xiao’s works often strike us as Dantesque and cindery. The daedal circles come to an end, but the meaning is inexhaustible.

Taking the targets as “the objects for gaze”, Jasper Johns, in his famous Targets, intended to change the chronic way of looking at the daily objects and the body. The defiant, creative spirit is representative of the American art in the ascendant in the mid-1900s. Erected in the similarly dynamic, suspensive contemporary China, Tang Xiao’s “targets” resemble the way the artist and the spectators look face to face at each other due to the unspecified objects for gaze. These target-like, ambiguous “artifacts” are less the visual rhetoric serving one purpose than the miniature theaters made of color and material. As for the stories on the stage, they reflect the relations between self and other, mind and object. As staging and outcome are both undefined, the stories are untitled. In the eyes of the self-possessed, radical artist, narrative motifs, realist images and concepts, even “painterliness”, are not his love.

The starting point of the artist’s maturity is his established goal——the ultimate limit of traditional aesthetics, such as the exaggerated period or springe. The aesthetic goal is likewise embodied in the exaggerated “starting point”. The artist possesses himself and encourages the sensitive spectators to explore on his dynamic, detailed “plane”. Tang Xiao believes that the abstract painting is “a plane covered by color…pursues the creation on the plane and the pure visual expression, it is visual, material.” His abstract works assert the death of the paintings. In order to break away from abstract expressionism like color field painting and hard-edge painting, Clement Greenberg coined the new term “post-painterly abstraction”, borrowing the term “painterly” from Heinrich Wolfflin, who used it to describe the difference between baroque art and classic art. Rejecting expressionism, individuality and three-dimensional illusion, the post-painterly abstract artists like Barnett Newman and Frank Stella emphasize the authenticity of material and the flatness of plane. Such abstract art, compatible with its surroundings, leaves a vision-expanding effect. Creating a lot of whirlpools on the wall, Tang Xiao’s untitled works make the other works beside his pale by comparison, no matter how celebrated you are or how big the size is. His works exhibit a calm enchantment.

The young artist has a fervent, undefined zeal. As one of the most talented students at Hubei Institute of Fine Arts, Tang Xiao pursued further studies abroad for many years after graduation. He had created several groups of excellent works before developing his own style. One group of works are for abstract expression, which are characterized by color lumps and hierarchy. It seems that he began to go too far. In one of the works, he “conceptualizingly” painted a highly contaminative pigeon, whose shape seems to fall into pieces. The other works that reject visual illusion are also very successful. Given that Tang Xiao’s grandfathers, parents and brothers are the celebrated artists who favor realism, it is hard to imagine that he goes in for such abstraction. He rejects realism but inherits academicism.

With a cold, grey hue, Tang Xiao’s enclosing geometric shapes of works lack open, bright elements. The artist concentrated almost all his energies on exploring the pure visual elements, such as the effects of his painting tools, complementary colors, the textures of clad plate and synthetic glass and so on. Contrary to popular expectation, his works don’t intend to “sublimate” the spectators, which merits our attention. In the depressive, dull years, contemporary artists begin to consider it their duty to rebel. To rebel is like trying to please the public with claptrap indeed, but it is more embarrassing to be conservative. Tang Xiao is unlikely to make his debut in a comic way and he silently rejects some of the common aspirations of different art groups. I don’t want to excessively inspirit the artist to his graphics and coolness at this stage, but would like to point out that in contemporary China, an artist, who favors “pure language”, has no lack of “conceptions”. His complexity lies in his simplicity. The cooling pure visual or even touching elements, are not so much a self-expression as the aesthetics goal of life experience.

Tanhualin, Wuchang, November 2009

用绘画建筑

唐骁

Building with painting

Tang Xiao

绘画与建筑具有一种共生的关系，特定时代的绘画艺术，总是与特定建筑的结构、材料、位置乃至光线的状态相适应。在现代视野中，绘画虽然无法直接改变建筑，但绘画的存在可以对其所处的空间带来一些有趣的视觉和情绪的变化。绘画依附着建筑而存在，而又可以轻易地剥离；它可以让空间变得很美好，也可以让空间显得怪诞。但总的来说，绘画在建筑墙面上的停留和在不同空间的流转，满足了人对于视觉感官和自身情绪的刺激需求。建筑与绘画的关系也是对应的，由于个人化的特征，绘画对于人的影响具有暂时性和区域性；而建筑具有公共性和稳定性，人一出生便生活在城市的建筑群中，建筑在完成其功能性的一面之外，甚至从源头的意义上塑造了其居民的审美经验。建筑的空间不一定要求合理，但必须是安全和耐久的，所以不论是内部和外部结构还是建造材料和工艺都会强制性的趋向一定程度的完美，相对于完美，节制和创造问题是绘画体现人的主体性的更高层次。

Painting and architecture have a symbiotic relationship, and the painting art of a specific era always adapts to the structure, material, location and even the state of light of a specific building.From a modern perspective, although painting cannot directly change architecture, the presence of painting can bring some interesting visual and emotional changes to the space in which it is located.Painting exists attached to architecture, but can be easily peeled off; it can make a space beautiful or weird.But in general, the stay of paintings on the walls of buildings and the circulation in different spaces satisfy people's needs for visual stimulation and emotional stimulation.The relationship between architecture and painting is also corresponding. Due to the personal characteristics, the influence of painting on people is temporary and regional; while architecture is public and stable. People live in urban buildings from birth, and architectureIn addition to completing its functional aspect, it even shapes the aesthetic experience of its residents from the source sense.The architectural space does not necessarily require reasonableness, but it must be safe and durable. Therefore, both the internal and external structures, construction materials and craftsmanship will inevitably tend to a certain degree of perfection. Compared with perfection, restraint and creation are the problems that painting embodies human beings.a higher level of subjectivity.

在近期的创作实践中，我试图将色彩从平面上拿下来，落在空间中的某个面上，但又努力在这个看似非绘画形式的呈现方式中保持其绘画性。从一开始，这便好像是个不可能实现的尝试。我认为，平面的画布和立体的几何结构承载颜料的物理状态都是一样的，不论其形状体量如何改变，它始终是大或者小、曲或是平、一个或是若干个面的组合，只要有面的存在，色彩就有了附着的基础，就会产生色与色之间的边界和层。和平面的绘画相比不同的是，立体的几何结构会因为视角的改变而产生面和面之间阻挡、切割和穿透的视觉效果。这时，墙面除了承托作品的功能之外，还成为了运动起点和止点间的参照物。因为抽象的构成并不以模仿自然为基础，画面中缺乏来自于客观的具体物象，依赖于所处的空间的限定和支撑。那么这个空间就是被天顶、地面和转角围合的一块墙面。在我的这些作品中，所有的面的出发点和消失点都是墙，虽然有着硬直和凸凹的结构，但在每个面上都可以感受到笔的触感。

In my recent creative practice, I try to take the color off the plane and fall on a certain surface in the space, but I try to maintain its painterly nature in this seemingly non-painting form of presentation.From the start, it seemed like an impossible endeavor.In my opinion, the physical state of the plane canvas and the three-dimensional geometric structure carrying the paint are the same, no matter how its shape and volume change, it is always a combination of large or small, curved or flat, one or several surfaces,As long as there is a surface, the color has a basis for attachment, and the boundaries and layers between colors will be produced.Compared with flat painting, the three-dimensional geometric structure will produce visual effects of blocking, cutting and penetrating between surfaces due to the change of perspective.At this time, in addition to the function of supporting the work, the wall also becomes a reference between the starting point and the ending point of the movement.Because the abstract composition is not based on imitating nature, the picture lacks objective concrete images and relies on the limitation and support of the space in which it is located.Then this space is a wall enclosed by the zenith, the ground and the corner.In these works of mine, the starting point and vanishing point of all surfaces are walls. Although there are rigid straight and convex-concave structures, you can feel the touch of the pen on each surface.

沃林格认为，人之所以在艺术作品中可以获得愉悦价值，必定与由“绝对艺术意志”决定的某种心理需要构成因果关系。从传统的操作层面上来讲，抽象绘画应尽可能地在平面中去彻底复现自成一体的材料个性，并将表现与物质的必然性和合规律性结合在一起。但沃林格还提到，艺术活动对与主体经验的需求是与一切抽象概念相悖的。在视觉中，几何规律性对自然原型的复现切实可行，时间和形状在这种复现中可以得到完美的表达。把单体从现实世界的视觉经验中抽离出来，用材料的物理性去复现，那么这样的单体不仅独立于围绕它的世界，而且也独立于观照它的主体而存在。艺术，与艺术家一样，总是在寻找它的“同时代者”，而同时代的共生关系，除了“依附”，必然还有“侵蚀”的一面。从行为上看，“侵蚀”往往比“依附”更富有精神的力度。抽象艺术的实践方法和理论基础来自西方，但是我这些作品从材料的选择到作品的形态，都试图指向一个东方化的思维场景：把建筑想象成一个有机体，比如一棵树，树在被撞伤，树枝折断后的愈合过程中，会长出新的组织包裹创面，最终成为疤瘤。那么我的作品就好像这些外力作用后所生成的变异结构。它们同原来的树属性一致，但又具有两种完全不同的生长模式。这些具有木的质地、突出的体积和可触感的几何形体就是建筑的“疤瘤”，它们又如同建筑表皮上的寄生物，侵入吸附在墙面上成其为有机的一部分，而色彩就是它们的皮肤。我把这种状态称之为“用绘画建筑”。

2015年6月，写于江夏藏龙岛

Wallinger believes that the reason why people can obtain pleasure value in works of art must have a causal relationship with a certain psychological need determined by the "absolute artistic will".From the perspective of traditional operation, abstract painting should try its best to reproduce the self-contained material personality in the plane as much as possible, and combine the expression with the inevitability and regularity of matter.But Wallinger also mentioned that the need for artistic activities to experience the subject is contrary to all abstract concepts.In vision, geometric regularity is feasible to reproduce natural prototypes, and time and shape can be perfectly expressed in this reproduction.Extracting the monomer from the visual experience of the real world and using the physicality of the material to reproduce it, then such a monomer not only exists independently of the world surrounding it, but also exists independently of the subject who observes it.Art, like artists, is always looking for its "contemporaries", and the symbiotic relationship of contemporaries, in addition to "attachment", must also have an "erosion" side.From the perspective of behavior, "erosion" is often more spiritual than "attachment".The practical methods and theoretical basis of abstract art come from the West, but my works, from the choice of materials to the shape of the works, try to point to an oriental thinking scene: imagine a building as an organism, such as a tree, and the tree is being hitDuring the healing process after the branch is broken, new tissue will grow to wrap the wound and eventually become a scar.Then my works are like the mutated structures generated by these external forces.They have the same properties as the original tree, but have two completely different growth modes.These wooden textures, protruding volumes and tactile geometric shapes are the "scars" of the building, and they are like parasites on the building skin, invading and adsorbing on the wall to become an organic part, and the color is themskin.I call this state "building with painting".

June 2015, written in Jiangxia Hidden Dragon Island