《李察》
文/谢玮玲
“李察”是谁?
毫无疑问,这个叫“李察”的人理应是此次展览的主角。虽然艺 术家郑皓中的绘画作品中多次出现分镜头或连环画般的分格形 式,但却并未提供出一段清晰地、符合惯常逻辑的叙述。我们只 能从这些被线条径直分割的构图中断断续续地辨认出一些有关人 物的外型、姿势、性格,及衍生出的情节,以此收集关于“李 察”这一身份的各种属性和线索,从生活中的物理作息,到难以 言说的隐秘意识,开启对于“李察”这一人物究竟是真实还是虚 构的考量。
展览中这些极具破坏力的画面大多却是在写生状态下完成的。创 作者生活在一个滨海小城,创作极大地依赖于其所处的自然环 境,及周边少数几位与之熟悉的家人和朋友。他以自身为绝对中 心构建起令其安心的小世界。这种几近偏安一隅的生活方式,和 必须建立在信任之上的绘画对于创作来说或许是一种桎梏,但他 的确也在其中获得了某种相对的自由。
这种自由体现在对于画面本身的掌控中——什么可以留存什么可 以放弃。画家捕捉现场发生的动态变化,从一瞬间随意起身的模 特,到一年中树叶的新生枯败,在画布上加以选择和调整,一切 都似乎应付自如。学院教育使其深谙线与面、空与满、抽象与写 实、松弛和克制的关系。有些看似一气呵成的结果,却是经历了 时间、温度、视角等等的考量,把不同维度下的外在呈象重构于 同一张画布上,最终演变成一场完美的事故。剥去看似支离破碎 的表皮,其绘画却如同一个精心栽种的过程,保持着最贴近真实 自然的状态。其中计划外的偶然性出现着实叫人欣喜,但同时元 素之间的组成、呼应或叠加亦遵循着一定的法则,最终成长为一 种合理的结果,释放出正待收割的成熟与洒脱。
而在另外一方面,这种自由有时又体现在艺术家于画面上私自实 施的对于目标的裁决,例如藉由某种借口把穿衣的模特画成裸体 的,或者给男人换上女人的粉色衣服。在《邱晨》系列的最后一 幅作品中,郑皓中对于挚友突然地决裂无所适从,选择在画面中 报复性地燃烧邱晨的头发。模特的不告而别将艺术家丢弃在一个 只剩下自己的现实境遇中,反倒给予了他一个在绘画中追究自我 的机会,尽管很大程度上是出于一种不得已。作品似乎是他尽力 为自己所做的辩护:或是温情的独白,或是激烈的诘问,徘徊在 叙说与无意识的喃喃自语之间。
此时,这些片段式的作品集体勾勒出的已经不仅仅是日常中的某一个他者形象,一个强权的“我”难以抑制地侵略和操控,始终若隐若现,贯穿其中,难免使人将注意力转向所有心理意图背 后的本性。这其中也包括艺术家自己。有趣的是,这种向内的 观察或许最初始于纳西索斯式的崇拜和爱恋,镜子取代了水 面,成就了创作者一幅幅略带矫饰的自画像。然而比起镜子中 的幻像,真正令人琢磨至深的自审存在于他与自己亲手圈定的 小世界相处的回路中。无法避及的反身力量所挟持下的自我, 就像是被搁在了手术室苍白刺眼的无影灯下,赤裸裸地透析出 皮囊之下关于灵魂的细枝末节,包括那些已侵入骨髓的病变。 人类的傲慢、懒惰、屈从和懦弱造成了对于自我的认知永远像 是在黑暗中带着脚镣艰难前行。
更为可惜的是,所有路途中伴生的感知和思想,只能是属于郑 皓中自己的瑰宝,绘画即是一种挥霍。出于对暗示和隐喻的迷 信,我们只能依据作品中那些诡异而神秘的形象来猜测其背后 的驱动力。尼采对于无意识和本能的推崇,弗洛伊德关于“无 意识才是精神的真正实际”的学说,荣格所深信的心理现象必 然遵循着一种有别于物理法则的法则,都可以拿来作为郑皓中 绘画语言的注脚。那些令人联想到“芒星崇拜”和占卜术的宗 教符号,使得绘画形象从日常经验和记忆中挣脱出来,滑向更 加深不可测的“集体潜意识”。艺术家破坏了对于物理时间和 空间平庸的依附,从划开的口子里,完成了对表像世界的僭 越。不为人所控的那部分未知永远令人好奇而生畏,就好像当 某一天艺术家发现面对哐当而碎的镜子,及其它许许多多的发 生都无能为力时,只能把其中的大部分归结于命运并将之抛向冥冥之中。
人们对于可辨的事物已经提不起任何好奇心,而当缺席产生, 反而能获得更多的凝视,神性继而栩栩如生。阅读作品所带来 的兴奋,是因为我们似乎有那么一瞬间触碰到了隐藏在那之后 的神秘而真实的本能。“李察”既是绘画中的人,也是绘画的 人。他不断地新生,亦摆脱不了往昔。此次展览只是一个开 始,且让我们先来认识一下,这个叫“李察”的人。
Lee Cha
Text / Jessie Xie
Who is Lee Cha?
Without a doubt, this character “Lee Cha” should be the protagonist of this exhibition. Although storyboard or com- ic strip-like formal separations often appear in artist Zheng Haozhong’s paintings, they offer no clear or logical narra- tive. From these linearly divided compositions, we can only intermittently discern certain figural shapes, postures, personalities, and scenarios derived therein. Through this we gather various characteristics and clues related to the identity of “Lee Cha,” from his life’s physical routine to an ineffable, hidden consciousness, provoking us to consider whether this figure “Lee Cha” is actually real, or fictional.
The majority of the exhibition’s destructive tableaus are drawn from life. The creator lives in a small, coastal town. His work largely relies on this natural environment, as well as the few friends and relatives around him with whom he is close. He has built a small, carefree world with himself as the absolute center. This lifestyle, a certain contentment in mastering one’s small lot, and a painting practice built on a sense of trust are perhaps shackles to his work. And yet the artist does achieve a certain relative freedom in this.
This freedom is manifest in his mastery of the picture plane itself — what can remain, what can be abandoned. The artist seizes upon dynamic changes that happen on site, from a model who momentarily stands up, to the sprouting and withering of a tree’s leaves throughout the year. Through his choices and adjustments on the canvas, everything seems masterfully handled. Academic training has familiarized him with the relationships between line and plane, positive and negative space, abstraction and re- alism, looseness and restraint. Some works seem as if they were made in one stretch. However, each of these pieces takes into account factors of time, temperature, perspec- tive, and other considerations, recombining different di- mensions of external appearance on the same canvas that ultimately evolves into a perfect accident. Stripping away its fractured skin, his painting is like a process of painstak- ing cultivation, maintaining a state that is closest to true nature. Outside of the artist’s plans, he also embraces a delightful sense of chance, yet still the composition, reso- nance, and layering of the different elements also abides by certain principles. The work ultimately grows into a rea- sonable conclusion, giving off a certain palpable sense of ease and maturity.
On the other hand, at times this freedom is also manifest in the artist’s private verdict of certain targeted judgments. For instance, he will find some excuse to paint a clothed model nude or dress a man in a woman’s pink outfit. In the last work of his series “Qiu Chen”, Zheng had a falling out with his close friend and, feeling at a loss, decided to burn Qiu Chen’s hair in the painting as an act of revenge. The model’s sudden departure, leaving the artist to a sit- uation in which all that remained was the artist himself, provided Zheng with an opportunity to investigate the self, even if it was a last resort. In this series of paintings the artist seemingly strives to defend himself: either by way of tender monologue or intense interrogation, they oscillate between narrative and unconscious rambling.
What these fragmentary works collectively foreshadow is not merely the image of some “other” from the artist’s everyday life — a powerful “ego” can’t restrain itself from encroaching and controlling. Always partly hidden and partly visible, spanning throughout its entirety, the ego evi- tably pushes the viewer’s attention toward the nature that underlies all intent. This includes the artist himself. What’s interesting is that this inward observation perhaps origi- nates in a narcissistic love and adoration. The mirror has replaced the water’s surface, realizing a series of slightly affected self-portraits. However, compared to the phantom in the mirror, the most truly engaging self-evaluation exists within the circuit of interactions between the artist and the small world he has delineated for himself. It is an ego hi- jacked by an unavoidable reflexive power, as if laid beneath the pale, glaring, shadowless lamp of an operating room, naked and dialyzing all the minutiae of the spirit beneath the skin, including those lesions that have already infect- ed the marrow. Humanity’s pride, indolence, servility, and cowardice have created a situation in which self-perception is like an arduous march forward in shackles.
Even more unfortunate, the perceptions and thoughts born from all these paths are treasures that belong to Zheng Haozhong alone; painting is thus a form of squandering. Stemming from a superstitious belief in insinuation and
metaphor, we can only rely on the strange and mysterious images within the artworks to guess at the impulses that drive them. Nietzsche’s emphasis on the instinctive ability of the unconscious, Freud’s theory that “the unconscious is the true psychical reality,” Jung’s profound belief that psy- chic phenomenon must necessarily adhere to laws outside of the laws of physics — all could be used as footnotes to Zheng’s painterly rhetoric. Religious symbols evocative of “pentagram worship” and augury allow the painted im- age to break free from everyday experience and memory, slipping into the more profound and unpredictable “collec- tive unconscious.” The artist eliminates dependence upon physical time and banal space, taking the world of images through the gash he has torn open. That uncontrolled igno- rance forever inspires fear and intimidation, as if the artist one day discovered he faced a shattering mirror. As with countless other paralyzing occurrences, and all he can do is ascribe them to fate and cast them into the underworld.
People no longer feel a sense of curiosity when faced with familiar things. When absence arises they are far more able to capture the gaze, and from there the divine appears as reality. The excitement of reading an artwork is because, in that moment, it is as if we have collided with a mysterious and true instinct that lies hidden in that which comes after. “Lee Cha” is both a figure in the painting and the figure who paints. He is constantly reborn, yet he cannot break from the past. This exhibition is only a beginning, letting us first meet this man named “Lee Cha.”