墙报报道 | 苏新平·万物是凝固的”个展将在苏州博物馆开幕


 
“苏新平·万物是凝固的”
 
策 展 人:李振华 汤宇       
开       幕:2019年12月14日16:00
展览时间:2019年12月15日-2020年2月12日
展览地点:苏州博物馆现代艺术厅
主办单位:苏州博物馆、中央美术学院 
特别支持单位:爱慕集团
 
Su Xinping |Everything is Still and Timeless
Curator: LiZhenhua  Tang Yu
Opening: 4:00pm, December14,2019
Exhibition Dates:2019.12.15-2020.2.12
Venue: ContemporaryGalleries, Suzhou Museum
Host: SuzhouMuseum
          Central Academy of Fine Arts
Support: AIMER 
 
 
万物是凝固的
 
……“一天中我最喜欢黄昏,夕阳下的一切那么单纯、宁静、美好,万物是凝固的、永恒的。”…… ————苏新平,摘自:尹吉男「人马」1989
 
一切永恒的也许就是一个瞬间,一个在与自然接触的独处时刻,一个人出生和死亡是否也会有这样的感慨?而一切坚固的东西终将烟消云散,人的记忆和思想,是在某处活动着的,人通过这些信息和不断更新的画面去发现,从过去来到未来去,这就是关于历史研究的切片,是关于记忆和乡愁的无归途。
 
……白马走了,孤零零地走了,也许会消失于虚无之中。天、地、人,还有拴马桩都沉静得让人难以忍受,非常孤立地存在于一个再造空间中,又把苏新平要说的话说了个够!————摘自:尹吉男「人马」1989
 
尹吉男先生的哀愁和孤寂伴随着白马,是进入过去时刻的钥匙。白马终于还是走了,一个人寂寥廖的大地,人造的空间或自然空间是否能共情?这都在苏新平先生的画面中,寄托着无凭依的感伤。而你会在空间中有所感知吗?人所处时代的空间不断变化,概念融合挪移,私人空间、公共空间,哪一个是在侵扰着现代人的日常。如果有一种日常,还可以将自己的精神安放。人被社群媒体和电脑硬件,逼迫着日夜工作。人如何回到天地间,茫茫草原观白马?80年代的困境和诗意,对应着时代发展的现实,人往何处去?人不正是那不愿回头的白马,宿命和自然也都遥遥无知,而人终将向那边去。
 
苏新平同画坛上其它来自学院的青年画家的创作活动共同构成了一种美术现象,我们姑且称之为中国现代艺术中的“改良主义”现象。这批画家旨在既保留新潮美术的内核,同时又扬弃他太富于浪漫激情,从而使主体意志膨涨最终导致作品的概念化和粗糙化的弊端,充分运用和开发学院主义的语言,从而创造出一种文化性和艺术性相统一的现代艺术作品。————摘自:高名潞「寂然通睿、宁静致远——苏新平的版画艺术」1991
 
80年代新潮美术的兴起,是否还有内外之别?如美术内在的改造和外部之运动,是否在艺术历史的叙述中剥离得开?艺术要自由?艺术需要内观式的探索心性?艺术需要公众或其本来就是对自我的认知?艺术是媒介化的,亦或是精神性的?艺术占领空间,或仅仅是一次灵魂出窍。所有这些都在被讨论和实践着,甚至包括其他学科和方法的纳入。艺术是科学,是考古,是金石篆刻,是新媒体,是巨大的虚空。如高名潞所能讲清楚的关于现实主义的描述,历史总比现在要清楚,过去也总比现在可爱些。
  
80-90年代的艺术
 
在媒介、材质和方法上的外延,如同哲学借着进化论和心理学发展一样,人理解世界的方式也在不断递进和改变,伴随着新的发现。时代和时间,构成了高速当代的主体。而艺术的新与旧,在理念上的共通,在其他领域的不断探索,构成了另一种媒介景观(mediascape)。画廊、拍卖、大型展览,艺术图像场景,正在占据着大部分人的认知系统。艺术媒材的知识,也在消耗着大量的脑力活动。而艺术创作确如苏新平先生所言,可能是身体自然蔓延到介质,并不断的推进扩展。
 
探索艺术的本体,及自己的风格、语言,进而到方法论。在80年代中国的85新潮时期,有着更大范围的发现。当代艺术正在和全球文化形成对话,而当代艺术系统自身的变革,也在世界各地演进着。理解今日的艺术系统,要从60-80年代那些推动系统变革的人和事件谈起,这些构筑了当代艺术语境关系的人和事件,也影响了市场动作,以及大部分人的价值确认。回望80-90年代,是否有一种潮流悄然而来呢?除了对抗的政治姿态,艺术是否有其内在更新递进的逻辑?如果80-90年代的购买主体为图像上的共情,之后市场浪潮直接裹挟着,构成了另一个独立的世界。
 
回望中国八十年代,可能要从查建英女士「八十年代访谈录」中,那些被访问者的思路去理解。从文化的各个方面看其源流和现象,当然这个现象是在二十年之后被重新提及的,也就有了自我参照的意味。其中阿城和陈平原的段落非常精彩,再去看阿城的「孩子王」、「树王」、「棋王」,以及之后的一些随笔,才能理解那个从乡土中滚打着的现代性困境。改革开放之后,简约的生活方式,半乡镇半城市化的社会景观。只有在发展的巨变中,人也才能找到乡愁吧!这就是苏新平先生抽象得来的白马,和白马远去的身影,一个睡着了的牧人,一个只有高光剪影的草原和大地。其中的联系,应该是文学性的,也有其象征的意味,是整个80年代故事的综合,终于在图像上得到了映照。这与「黄土地」、「红高粱」电影中的图景有一致的脉络,但更宁静自省。
 
……“回顾这些年的作品,我发现几乎全都运用了强烈的光,最初并不是有意识地这样做,只觉得画面的效果很好看。后来多次去草原,渐渐发现强烈的阳光,常常给我带来一种莫名其妙的错觉,有晕眩、有虚幻,世界是凝固的,是不真实的,随之而来的也有神秘和恐惧。一种体验一次次重复,慢慢就很自然地出现在画面中了,并且是有意识地去做了,也终于感到这正是我寻找的,是我需要的东西。” ……————苏新平,摘自:尹吉男「人马」1989
 
这些在世界各地早期的现代性转型中,所经历的故事,从具体的事件中抽离出来的图像,或独立于历史事件和时间的艺术中都有表述。中国80年代,西方的二战前后,有着有趣的联系。而达达——激浪派——关系美学有着另外的联系。1916年杜尚和达达对现代艺术的终结,现代艺术在市场和大众认知层面的肯定。艺术是多样的,并不一定最当代的就是最好。讲一个故事,让真情流露,或是和苏新平先生一样,再去一次草原,感受强烈的阳光。你会觉得这些都疏远了,因为你我都处在媒介信息的社会中。
  
灰度空间和象征物
 
展览试图研究80年代苏新平先生绘画中的空间和色彩关系,因为只有黑白灰,空间被简约的图像占据。柱体在画面中一直存在着,如同人类文明的象征。而牧者、白马、鹰飞之空间的张力,如果被还原成空间化的沉浸式体验。观看从观者凝视的姿态,转为画中人。我很想去体会80年代强烈阳光下的草原,牧民生活的浪漫自由,人与自然亲近无隔膜。这些被置于空间中的,对精神和想象力的抽象,应在苏新平先生宁静自省的姿态中,灰度和空间感应,恰好与画面的感受一致。
 
贝聿铭先生设计的苏州博物馆,外在看类似仿古建筑,使用了苏州民居的传统风格,内里却是现代建筑的简约内敛,保留一个传统的草亭。苏州博物馆完成于2006年,考虑到艺术展览的需求,设计了一个可以做展览的空间,空间构置与其他空间一致,光感和遮挡,伴随着展览增减。2006年蔡国强创作的火药亭子,与贝聿铭先生藏在一隅的草亭,呼应着传统和现在。层层叠叠的山,中心的一汪池塘,连接着草亭和现代展厅的空间景,与天地接。
 
空间上的联系,是从苏新平先生80年代的创作到现在的,也是对整个建筑关于灰度、简约的回应。希望从画面的空间里,扩展出的明暗关系,进而去思考时代和人,是苏新平先生80年代的独白,也是同一文化血脉下,与仙去的贝聿铭先生在空间上的对话。
 
如果你能体会80年代文学的美,也就不难理解苏新平先生绘画的纯粹。你看到的和能感知到的共情,也会在。
 
 
李振华
二零一九年十月二十五日
写于苏黎世家中
  
Everything isStill and Timeless
 
 “For me, dusk is the best part of a day,everything under the setting sun is pure, serene and beautiful, everything isstill and timeless.”
 
by Su Xinping,excerpt from Yin Jinan:“Man and Horse”1989
 
Everything eternalmight simply be fleeting, and in a solitary moment of interaction with nature,will a person’s birth and death elicit that same empathy? Everything solideventually vanishes like mist and smoke. Memories and thoughts are activated,and with this information and the continuous renewal of images, viewersdiscover that the future comes from the past, that this is a cross-section ofhistorical research, a path of memory and nostalgia with no way back.
 
“For me, dusk is the best part of a day,everything under the setting sun is pure, serene and beautiful, everything isstill and timeless.”
by Su Xinping,excerpt from Yin Jinan:“Man and Horse”1989
 
Yin Jinan’ssadness and loneliness, which follows this white horse, is the key to this pastmoment. The white horse is still walking, and the person stands lonely on theearth. Can we feel the same way about both manmade and natural spaces? All ofthis is present in Su Xinping’s work, imbued with a baseless sorrow. Will youperceive it in the space? At that time, people’s spaces were constantlychanging, ideas were being fused and borrowed, and both private and publicspaces invaded the everyday lives of modern people. If there was somethingordinary, then their souls could rest. Social media and computer hardware haveforced people to work day and night. How can people return to the world,looking at a white horse on a vast plain? The predicaments and poetry of the1980s corresponded to the development of that time, so where were people going?People were not exactly that white horse, which does not want to look back;fate and nature were also distant unknowns and people always walk in theirdirection.
 
The artisticactivities of Xinping together with other young painters from academicsconstitute a kind of artistic phenomenon, which we may tentatively call ‘theReformism’ in the modern art. The main purpose of this group of artists is topreserve the kernel of ‘the New Trend Art’ but at the same time, discard itsdisadvantages for favoring romantic passions. They also strive to allow thesubjective mind to expand so much so that it results in the conceptualizationas well as crudity of works, and to create modern works by fully utilizing anddeveloping the academic language. 
excerpt fromGao Minglu:“Far- Leading Silence and Tranquility —The prints of Su Xinping”, 1991
 
With the rise ofthe New Wave in the 1980s, was there still a difference between interior andexterior? Were art’s internal transformations and external movements peelingapart in the art historical narrative? Should art be free? Does art need tointrospectively explore the mind? Does art need an audience, or has it alwaysbeen a form of self-knowledge? Is art medium or spirit? Art occupies space, butit may simply be a moment of spiritual transcendence. All of this was discussedand practiced, and other disciplines and methods were incorporated. Art is adiscipline, but it is also archeology, epigraphy, seal cutting, new media, anda massive void. As Gao Minglu once said about realism: history is alwaysclearer than reality, and the past is always lovelier than the present.
 
Art in the1980s and 1990s
 
The extension ofmedium, material, and method is like the development of philosophy, whichborrowed theories from evolution and psychology; people’s ways of understandingthe world are constantly progressing and changing with new discoveries. Su’sera and time were forceful players in the contemporary. The conceptual commonalitiesbetween old and new art and the continued exploration of other fields createdanother mediascape. In galleries, auctions, and large-scale exhibitions, thepictorial presentation of art currently occupies the majority of people’scognitive systems. Knowledge of artistic materials also consumes significantmental capacity. For Su Xinping, artistic creation may be the natural mediumfor the extension of the body, which is constantly advancing and expanding.
 
They explored artitself and their own style and language, then engaged with methodology. The ’85New Wave in China made even broader discoveries. Contemporary art began toengage in dialogue with global culture, and when the contemporary art systemchanged, the evolution took place all over the world. An understanding oftoday’s artistic system must begin with the people and events that drovesystemic change from the 1960s to the 1980s. These people and events, whichconstructed the context and relationships of contemporary art, also influencedmarket movements and the values of the majority of people. Looking back to the1980s and 1990s, was there a trend that arrived quietly? Apart from thepolitical attitudes of resistance, does art have its own inherent logic ofrenewal and progress? In the 1980s and 1990s, people were buying into pictorialempathy that was then directly enveloped by the market, thereby constructinganother independent world.
 
In looking back onthe 1980s in China, we may be able to understand more through the thinking ofthe people Zha Jianying interviewed in her Interviews with 1980s CulturalFigures. In looking at its sources and development from multiple culturalperspectives, this phenomenon naturally has self-referential implications aftertwenty years. The parts with Acheng and Chen Pingyuan are excellent, and I wentback to read Acheng’s The King of Children, The King of Trees, The ChessMaster, and some later writing to understand the modern predicament thattumbled out of village hometowns. After Reform and Opening, there were simplelifestyles and semi-rural, semi-urban social landscapes. People only foundnostalgia amidst the massive changes that came with development. This is thewhite horse that Su abstracted, with the distant silhouette of a white horse, asleeping herder, and the plains and earth that only have highlightedsilhouettes. The connections between them are literary, reflecting a sense ofsymbolism. This is a synthesis of the entire 1980s, finally represented inpictures. This is part of the same lineage as the films Yellow Earth andRed Sorghum, but quieter and more introspective.
 
“Reviewing my works of recent years, I foundalmost all of them were painted with strong light. At first, I did in this wayfor its brilliant effect rather than consciously. Then, after a few visits tothe steppe, I gradually realized that the sunlight often rendered me a sense ofinexplicable delusion, with dizziness and fantasy. The world was static andunreal, followed by mystery and fear. With the experience repeated, after awhile, it naturally became a part of the picture and was out of myconsciousness. Finally, I knew it was what I had sought and what I needed.”
by Su Xinping,excerpt from Yin Jinan:“Man and Horse”1989
 
In early modernisttransformations around the world, the stories they experienced were elaboratedin everything from pictures drawn from specific events to art that wasindependent from historical events and time. China in the 1980s and the Westafter World War II have an interesting connection. Dada, Fluxus, and relationalaesthetics represent another set of connections. In 1916, Duchamp and Dada werethe end of modern art, and modern art was affirmed by the market and thepublic. Art is diverse, and the most contemporary thing is not always best.Artists could tell a story and reveal true emotion, or, like Su Xinping, theycould return to the plains and feel the intense sunshine. This might seemstrange to you, because we all find ourselves within a media-based society.
 
Greyscale,Space, and Symbolism
 
The exhibitionattempts to study the relationships between space and color in Su Xinping’spaintings from the 1980s. Because there is only black, white, and grey, thespaces are occupied by concise imagery. Pillars are always present in theimages, like symbols of human civilization. If the spatial tension betweenherders, white horses, and eagles are returned to a spatial, immersiveexperience, viewers shift from being onlookers to being people in the painting.I really wanted to experience the 1980s plains under the intense sunlight, theromantic freedom of herding life, and the unobstructed intimacy between man andnature. These elements are the abstraction of the spirit and imagination,situated in the space. In Su Xinping’s calm and introspective attitude, theresponse to greyscale and space are consistent with the emotion in the works.
 
From the outside,the Suzhou Museum, designed by I. M. Pei, looks like a cluster of old-stylebuildings, referencing traditional residences in Suzhou. However, the interiorsare simple and restrained, complete with a traditional thatched pavilion. TheSuzhou Museum was completed in 2006, including a space designed with artexhibitions in mind. This space is arranged in a similar fashion to themuseum’s other spaces, and the light and shade fluctuate with the exhibitions.The gunpowder pavilion that Cai Guoqiang created in 2006 and the thatchedpavilion that I. M. Pei placed in a corner reflect the echo between thetraditional and the present. Layered mountains and a pool in the center areconnected to the spatial settings of the thatched pavilion and modernexhibition galleries, linking heaven and earth.
 
Spatialrelationships are Su Xinping’s response to the greyscale and simplicity of theentire building, but they have also permeated his work since the 1980s. Hehoped to, from the relationships between light and dark in the spaces in hispaintings, further consider man and their times. It is a 1980s monologue by SuXinping, but it is also a spatial dialogue with the late I. M. Pei in the samecultural context.
 
If you canappreciate the beauty of 1980s literature, it’s not difficult to understand thepurity of Su Xinping’s painting. What you see and the empathy you feel are bothpresent.
 
 
Li Zhenhua
October 25, 2019
Written in Zurich
 
 
苏新平,1960年生于内蒙古集宁市,1977年入部队服兵役,1983年毕业于天津美术学院绘画系,毕业后在内蒙古师范大学美术系任教。1989年毕业于中央美术学院版画系,获得硕士学位,并留校任教。现为中央美术学院副院长、教授。兼任中国美术家协会版画艺委会主任、北京美术家协会副主席。曾获第七届全国美术作品展铜奖、联合国教科文组织“艺术促进奖”提名奖、鲁迅版画奖等。2011年被评为北京市第七届教学名师,2014年获得“第八届AAC艺术中国年度艺术家·油画类大奖”,2015年获“四个一批人才”称号。
    早年在草原的生活体验以及军队服役的经历使得苏新平对大地、天空与心灵的孤独状态体验深刻。上世纪八、九十年代,苏新平创作了一大批反映这类主题的版画作品,显示了其艺术精神的力度和生命意志的强度。由于敏感地认识到中国社会转型的阵痛,苏新平开始运用油画、素描等直接绘画的手段探讨欲望、精神、思想危机等社会现实问题。随着对自身工作方式理解的逐渐加深,苏新平将自我的反思及传统文化的追问也纳入实践范畴,由此引发对艺术与日常的互文关系、时间与思维的有效同步等理念问题的思考。
    作品曾被大英博物馆、牛津大学阿什莫林博物馆、德国路德维希美术馆、波特兰美术馆、旧金山博物馆、福冈美术馆、澳大利亚国家博物馆、中国美术馆、上海美术馆、中央美术学院美术馆等收藏。