唐骁 TangXiao

抽象之为方法

李建春

抽象主义作为一个历史的概念，产生于20世纪初。在抽象主义创始人之一蒙德里安看来，毕加索、布拉克等人忽略对物象的忠实描绘，转而强调画面构成，这已开启了揭示自然内在本质的方向。立体派创造性地误读塞尚的名言，用圆锥体、球体和柱体建构画面，将视觉信息以这种抽象的方式归序，而不在乎其写实性的“表象”，因此抽象，对于立体派来说，主要是一种方法。但是蒙德里安希望反过来以抽象本身作为目的，在他的影响下，一般的艺术史常将立体派视为抽象主义的准备阶段。康定斯基更是反复强调点、线、面、色等本身就是象征性语言。克莱门特·格林伯格总结出一条持续地剥离主题材料、错觉和绘画空间的主线，认为现代主义就是不断地从空间深度走向平面化，艺术家应自觉地在其媒介的独特性内寻求“纯粹”。循着这条形式主义路线，合乎逻辑地就有了“后绘画性抽象”，格林伯格用“后绘画性”表示“线性”。此即后来的极少主义艺术。极少主义不仅抽空了绘画的情感内容，将纽曼、罗斯科等神圣色域（“绘画性”）降解为颜料自身（过份突出线性和无情感的平涂），甚至将画面的构成因素也游戏化为如魔方、拼图、迷宫、代数几何。当然，这已极大地解放了视觉（比如在索尔·里维特的艺术中），并且从中又萌生出观念艺术，也就是让精神、思想重新成为艺术。看来抽象主义正如其对立面——发明于文艺复兴、终结于抽象派手中的透视学一样，也是转了一大圈后又复归原位，尽管这“原位”已历史地改变了，也就是辩证法所谓的否定之否定、螺旋式上升。

站在观念主义之后的当代艺术的立场，我们不禁要赞同立体派的态度：将抽象作为一种方法而不是目的，从而顺利地延伸到当代总体图景中抽象艺术的现状。那么抽象主义作为一个现实的概念，已不再是固执地将形式要素作为逻各斯的依托，而是坚持视觉艺术必要的审美品质；对于一部分当代艺术家，抽象，在图像学上还意味着已没有必要再回到写实主义，因而也是这一部分当代艺术中必要、但不充分的方式——至于所提出或解决的问题，则因人而弃。

Rhythm Section（韵律部分，节奏组）听起来像不管你做什么，你总应该有一些Rhythm特点，即坚持艺术作品必要的审美品质（在此无所不能的环境中），因此Rhythm Section是一个不放弃美学信仰的当代艺术团体。“韵律与方法”（Rhythm & Method）的参展艺术家，多半是Rhythm Section在中国和德国的成员。2010年初，湖北美术馆举办过一个有良好反响的抽象艺术展“无物之阵”，“韵律与方法”可作为“无物之阵”展示当代抽象艺术成就思路的延续。不过本展的中文标题，有意无意地落在“绘画”上，或许正因为一部分艺术家显著地展示了非传统绘画方式。比如亨瑞特·冯·胡格、唐骁等突破了绘画的平面限制，余小真、尤利娅·科瓦突破了材料和绘画方法的限制，库罗斯·奈冦颜和李占豪则分别借助于有机形或装饰性图案，以展开对抽象艺术可能性的思考。本展的德方策展人劳拉·桑切兹·塞拉诺女士，已在她给我的信中提到这些不谋而合的现象。毫无疑问，本展仍然是一个抽象艺术展。

由于在开幕之前劳拉和我都没有条件看对方的原作，我这里主要谈一下中国艺术家的作品，但是也不妨根据德国团队的图片有时作一番联想。亨瑞特·冯·胡格、唐骁和库罗斯·奈冦颜的一部分作品，都突破了绘画的平面限制。亨瑞特和唐骁着眼于从不同角度展示其视觉效果的兴趣，干脆将绘画制作成真正“立体”的，这让人联想到当年立体主义的产生，其实也是为了表达从不同角度观察对象的印象；奈寇颜将已画好的硬纸片制作成物件展示，这种对绘画的奇特运用，已表明绘画本身也是艺术方法，何况抽象？但是唐骁的作品中有更尖锐的地方。绘画的本质存在——“面”被唐骁作为一个问题重新思考：“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”， 因此他将色彩从画框上剥离出来，落在空间中的某个面上，这样就产生了对绘画性的某种颠倒，因为作品的构成因素必须事先设计出来，交给木匠实现，然后再来“绘画”。有趣的是，在极少主义中，比如弗兰克·斯特拉的成形画布，是由于在观念上已指定了作品非情感的平涂性质，但是唐骁并不反对“绘画性”，反而是在坚持，他的困难在于，如何在这些已折好的边边角角内实现它？这就产生了更奇特的一幕：他将“中国抽象”和表现性抽象所特别强调的“书写性”也从绘画行为中离析出来，事先用丙稀酸溶液（塑形膏）制造“笔触”，待其干后再以丙稀颜料承接和强化之。由于“边界”已是物理性的，这种“规训”与“表现”在观念上的张力已远远大过了工艺困难，特别是，当“边界”已内化为作品的结构时。当然唐骁是考虑到抽象艺术与建筑的关系，他试图像一位拜占廷艺术家，将绘画还原到某种原初层面，但是产生的意味竟不止于艺术本身，似乎已影射到当代政治和文化。其实他早先的圆构图作品也有这味道。唐骁可谓是一位不动声色的观念画家。

中国团队中的诗意画家，除了可与斯蒂芬·谢首构成比较的李磊以外，这次出人意料地应该加上李鹏。李磊对中国文化、艺术传统有长期深入的思考，他的内在意象往往是具体的，而精神内核则是历史性的，正如他爱用的诗意标题，已包含了对我们身处的文化境遇多层面的思考。他对水性材料的使用，来自对中国绘画本质的领悟，创造性地将“气韵”从传统绘画中提炼出来，以“意”的有象制造“韵”的无象（此之谓“抽象”）。李磊可以粗略地归入表现性抽象画家一类，与斯蒂芬·谢首相似，但也正是在这个比较中，他的东方悟性的一面显示出来，因为他的表现，不同于生命感觉的直接表现，而是参合了不可忽略的东方美学元素。李鹏与陈若冰、余小真一样通过抽象追求一种平静的喜乐，在绘画性（按沃尔夫林和格林伯格的理解，指色彩和面）上力求纯粹，但他不像黄拱烘通过颜料的强力和姿态性书写，而是以滚筒替代画笔，一遍一遍地滚出空间分割，滚出浅淡丰富的色层，正如他在自述中说：色彩和空间分割“……像一杯白水一样必要，一样清淡。但水还是有味道的。……保留那不太平滑的底层就像水与水味道之间的差别。”李占豪则完全是一位反诗意、反绘画性的画家，他以冷酷的制作性见长。用铅笔以无限的耐心画有机形局部或装饰性图案，这实际是创造一种凝视。沃林格曾在《抽象与移情》中指出，把单个物体从与外在世界的依存关系中解脱出来，用“材料个性”去复现它，观赏者所享受的不是类似于自身生命的东西，而是一种“必然性”，这就是抽象。这种抽象是焦虑的产物。与李占豪有可比项的是库罗斯·奈冦颜，不过画有时只是后者作品的一个环节。

我常常思考陈若冰的艺术：为何这些几乎无一例外的色彩二元合奏，能保持常新的魅力而不让人厌倦？我的结论是，他在画中已预置了一个观者的在场，因此他的作品实际是三元的。这有点神秘。你不妨再想象：一束阳光透过瓦缝投在墙上。光吸引了你。你呆呆地看着这光，时间在凝视中停滞了……陈若冰所表达的正是这种经验。巴尼特·纽曼表现光自上而下、开天辟地的崇高神秘，陈若冰的光，则是在沉思中内聚并显现的。从他早期游动的“墨团”边透出的亮色，到成熟后被某种灰包围的光团或光束，再到近作中仿佛眼花后令人惊喜的光环，陈若冰表现了一个过沉思生活的人的生命历程。他的唯一的对象，是光！在艺术修行中看见的光！余小真用针线替代画笔，意味着她必须发明一套全新的个人语法，就像从十进制转到二进制，一般人难免会蔽于转换本身的创意，而意识不到艺术家实际已做了什么，即，没有一种真正有意义的视觉效果是可以“便宜地”得到的。坦率地说，即使如此贴近，我仍然惊讶于她的视觉想象力：前期以线制造面，宁静的色彩氛围让你意识不到短而直的线所蕴涵的女性意志；从画布上抽线，再织在画布上的观念性，依托于朴素的几何形和单色画的高品味，毫不张扬；她的纸上小作品直接利用代数几何形，却回避了极少主义的冷硬感觉，自有灵性流露于腕下；而近期的“自由线”大幅作品，表现性的书写总也掩不住短针的理智，这针脚的瞻前顾后，与总体图景的性情化之间，多重意味被缝入一针见血的可触的画面中。

2013年5月5日，武昌昙华林

abstraction as method

Li Jianchun

Abstraction as a historical concept emerged in the early 20th century. According to Mondrian, one of the founders of abstraction, Picasso, Braque and others ignored the faithful depiction of objects and instead emphasized the composition of the picture, which has opened up the direction of revealing the inner essence of nature. Cubists creatively misread Cezanne's famous sayings, using cones, spheres and cylinders to construct pictures, and ordering visual information in this abstract way, regardless of its realistic "appearance". Therefore, abstraction, for Cubism Basically, it is a method. But Mondrian hoped to use abstraction as an end in itself. Under his influence, general art history often regards Cubism as the preparatory stage of abstraction. Kandinsky repeatedly emphasized that points, lines, surfaces, colors, etc. are themselves symbolic languages. Clement Greenberg summed up a main line of continuous stripping away of subject matter, illusion and painting space. He believed that modernism is constantly moving from spatial depth to flatness, and artists should consciously seek "from the uniqueness of their medium" purely". Following this formalist line, it is logical to have "post-painterly abstraction". Greenberg used "post-painterly" to mean "linearity". This is the later minimalist art. Minimalism not only evacuated the emotional content of paintings, but also degraded the sacred color fields ("paintability") of Newman, Rothko and others into the paint itself (excessive emphasis on linear and emotionless flat painting), and even reduced the composition of the picture. Games are transformed into games such as Rubik's Cube, Puzzle, Maze, and Algebraic Geometry. Of course, this has greatly liberated vision (such as in the art of Sol Rivette), and conceptual art has emerged from it, which means that spirit and thought can become art again. It seems that abstraction, just like its opposite, perspective, which was invented in the Renaissance and ended in the hands of the abstractionists, also returned to its original position after a big circle, although this "original position" has changed historically, that is, What dialectics calls the negation of negation, the spiral.

From the standpoint of contemporary art after Conceptualism, we cannot help but agree with the Cubist attitude: taking abstraction as a method rather than an end, thus smoothly extending to the current situation of abstract art in the overall contemporary picture. As a realistic concept, abstractionism no longer stubbornly relies on formal elements as the basis of logos, but insists on the necessary aesthetic qualities of visual art. For some contemporary artists, abstraction also means iconography. There is no need to return to realism, which is therefore a necessary but insufficient approach in this part of contemporary art - as for the problems raised or solved, it depends on the person.

Rhythm Section It sounds like no matter what you do, you should always have some Rhythm characteristics, that is, to adhere to the necessary aesthetic qualities of the work of art (in this omnipotent environment), so Rhythm Section is not A contemporary art group that abandons aesthetic beliefs. Most of the participating artists in "Rhythm & Method" are members of the Rhythm Section in China and Germany. In early 2010, Hubei Art Museum held an abstract art exhibition "Array of Nothing" that received good response. "Rhythm and Method" can be used as a continuation of "Array of Nothing" to showcase the achievements of contemporary abstract art. However, the Chinese title of this exhibition falls on “painting” intentionally or unintentionally, perhaps because some artists have significantly demonstrated non-traditional painting methods. For example, Henrit von Hoog and Tang Xiao broke through the limitations of the plane of painting, Yu Xiaozhen and Yulia Kova broke through the limitations of materials and painting methods, and Koros Nagyan and Li Zhanhao respectively used organic shapes or decorative patterns to expand thinking about the possibilities of abstract art. Ms. Laura Sanchez Serrano, the German curator of this exhibition, mentioned these coincident phenomena in her letter to me. There is no doubt that this exhibition is still an abstract art exhibition.

Since Laura and I were not in a position to see each other's original works before the opening, I will mainly talk about the works of Chinese artists here, but I might as well make some associations based on the pictures of the German team. Some of the works by Henrit von Hoog, Tang Xiao and Kouros Nageyan have broken through the limitations of the plane of painting. Henriette and Tang Xiao focused on their interest in showing their visual effects from different angles and simply made the paintings truly "three-dimensional". This is reminiscent of the emergence of Cubism at that time, which was actually to express the observation of objects from different angles. Impression; Naikoyan made the painted cardboard pieces into objects for display. This unique use of painting has shown that painting itself is also an artistic method, not to mention abstraction? But there is something more poignant in Tang Xiao's work. The essential existence of painting - "face" was rethought by Tang Xiao as a problem: "As long as there is face, color will have a basis for attachment, and boundaries and layers between colors will be produced." Therefore, he will The color is stripped from the frame and falls on a certain surface in the space, which creates a certain inversion of the nature of painting, because the composition of the work must be designed in advance and handed over to the carpenter to realize it, and then "painted" . What’s interesting is that in minimalism, such as Frank Stella’s shaped canvas, the non-emotional flat painting nature of the work has been conceptually specified. However, Tang Xiao is not opposed to “painterliness”; Persistence, his difficulty is, how to achieve it within these folded corners? This resulted in an even more peculiar scene: He separated the "writing" emphasized by "Chinese abstraction" and expressive abstraction from the act of painting, and used acrylic acid solution (sculpting paste) to create "brush strokes" in advance , wait for it to dry, and then use acrylic paint to take over and strengthen it. Since the "border" is already physical, the conceptual tension between "discipline" and "expression" has far exceeded the technical difficulties, especially when the "border" has been internalized into the structure of the work. Of course, Tang Xiao took into account the relationship between abstract art and architecture. He tried to restore painting to a certain original level like a Byzantine artist. However, the meaning was not limited to the art itself, but seemed to have alluded to contemporary politics and culture. . In fact, his earlier circular composition works also have this flavor. Tang Xiao can be described as a calm conceptual painter.

Among the poetic painters in the Chinese team, in addition to Li Lei who can be compared with Stephen Xie Shou, this time unexpectedly Li Peng should be added. Li Lei has long-term and in-depth thinking about Chinese culture and artistic traditions. His inner images are often concrete, while his spiritual core is historical. Just like the poetic titles he likes to use, they already contain many insights into the cultural situation we live in. level of thinking. His use of water-based materials comes from his understanding of the essence of Chinese painting, and he creatively extracts "qiyun" from traditional painting, using the image of "meaning" to create the imageless "rhyme" (this is called "abstraction") . Li Lei can be roughly classified as an expressive abstract painter, similar to Stephen Xie Shou, but it is also in this comparison that his Eastern understanding is revealed, because his expression is different from the direct expression of life feelings. , but incorporates elements of oriental aesthetics that cannot be ignored. Li Peng, like Chen Ruobing and Yu Xiaozhen, pursues a kind of peaceful joy through abstraction and strives for purity in painting (according to Wolflin and Greenberg's understanding, refers to color and surface), but unlike Huang Gongheng, he pursues a kind of peaceful joy through abstraction. Instead of writing with force and gesture, he uses a roller instead of a brush, rolling out space divisions over and over again, rolling out light and rich color layers. As he said in his self-report: Color and space divisions are "...as necessary as a glass of white water. Just as light. But water still has a taste. ... Retaining the less smooth bottom layer is like the difference between water and water taste." Li Zhanhao is a completely anti-poetic and anti-painting painter. He uses cold Good at production. Using a pencil to draw organically-shaped partial or decorative patterns with infinite patience actually creates a gaze. Wallinger once pointed out in "Abstraction and Empathy" that by freeing a single object from its dependence on the external world and reproducing it with "material personality", what the viewer will enjoy is not something similar to his own life. Something, but a "necessity", this is abstraction. This abstraction is a product of anxiety. Comparable to Li Zhanhao is Kouros Najiyan, but painting is sometimes only a part of the latter's works.

I often think about Chen Ruobing's art: Why can these binary ensembles of colors, almost without exception, maintain their ever-new charm without getting boring? My conclusion is that he has preset the presence of a viewer in his paintings, so his works are actually three-dimensional. It's a bit mysterious. You might as well imagine again: a beam of sunlight is cast on the wall through the cracks in the tiles. The light attracts you. You stare blankly at the light, and time stops in your gaze... It is this experience that Chen Ruobing expresses. Barnett Newman expresses the sublime mystery of light from top to bottom, opening up the world, while Chen Ruobing's light is cohesive and revealed in contemplation. From the bright colors emanating from the edges of his swimming "ink balls" in his early days, to the mature light balls or beams surrounded by some kind of gray, to the surprising aura behind the eyes in his recent works, Chen Ruobing shows a man who lives a contemplative life. person’s life course. His only object is light! The light seen in artistic practice! Yu Xiaozhen used needles and threads instead of paintbrushes, which meant that she had to invent a new set of personal grammar, just like switching from decimal to binary. Most people will inevitably be blinded by the creativity of the conversion and not realize what the artist has actually done, that is, there is no A truly meaningful visual effect can be achieved "on the cheap." Frankly speaking, even though she is so close, I am still surprised by her visual imagination: in the early stage, she uses lines to create surfaces, and the quiet color atmosphere makes you unaware of the female will contained in short and straight lines; drawing lines from the canvas, The conceptual nature woven on the canvas relies on simple geometric shapes and the high taste of monochromatic paintings, without being ostentatious; her small works on paper directly use algebraic geometric shapes, but avoid the cold and hard feeling of minimalism. Its own spirituality is revealed under the wrist; and in the recent large-scale "free line" works, the expressive writing can never conceal the rationality of the short stitch. Between the foresight and backwardness of this stitch and the personalization of the overall picture, multiple meanings are sewn together. Into a touching picture that hits the nail on the head.

May 5, 2013, Wuchang Tanhualin