用圖像顛覆觀念
皮力
王音的藝術(shù)創(chuàng)作是中國(guó)當(dāng)代藝術(shù)中有著獨(dú)特價(jià)值的個(gè)案。一方面，他親身經(jīng)歷了90年代以來的中國(guó)當(dāng)代藝術(shù)的劇烈變化；另一方面，他又一直游離于當(dāng)代藝術(shù)的主流之外。伴隨著新世紀(jì)的開始，中國(guó)當(dāng)代藝術(shù)的社會(huì)格局發(fā)生了重要的變化。格局的變化也必然會(huì)帶來藝術(shù)語言的變化，就是在這樣的背景下對(duì)王音的藝術(shù)創(chuàng)作進(jìn)行個(gè)案式的研究就會(huì)彰現(xiàn)出特別的意義。
王音是一個(gè)堅(jiān)持不懈從自身經(jīng)驗(yàn)出發(fā)對(duì)歷史圖像進(jìn)行改造的藝術(shù)家。從90年代大學(xué)畢業(yè)開始，他就投身到了90年代的當(dāng)代藝術(shù)運(yùn)動(dòng)中。和大多數(shù)藝術(shù)家一樣，在特殊的歷史環(huán)境下，他也選擇了帶有社會(huì)主義色彩的圖像作為主要符號(hào)。但是不同的是，王音對(duì)這些圖象的使用并沒有局限在符號(hào)本身或者圖像中顯而易見的意識(shí)形態(tài)色彩之中。相反，他把對(duì)這些圖像的使用一直限定在一個(gè)自我經(jīng)驗(yàn)的層面上，他所挑選的都是那些自己在青少年時(shí)期學(xué)習(xí)繪畫時(shí)臨摹的“紅色經(jīng)典”，也就是說，這些圖象首先是自身經(jīng)歷和體驗(yàn)的一部分，其次才是某種意識(shí)形態(tài)。而作為一個(gè)當(dāng)代藝術(shù)家，他選擇不是在這些圖像上創(chuàng)造出“個(gè)人圖像”，而是重新將這些圖像當(dāng)成經(jīng)驗(yàn)的“現(xiàn)成品”來使用。他試圖在這些圖像中找到自己認(rèn)為的“中國(guó)人”的形象和語言方式，而不是為國(guó)際當(dāng)代藝術(shù)世界提供某種充滿異國(guó)情調(diào)的畫面。王音對(duì)這些現(xiàn)成圖像采取的是一種“改寫”的策略，這和當(dāng)時(shí)時(shí)髦的政治波普風(fēng)格流行的“挪用”有著很大的區(qū)別。政治波普的“挪用”對(duì)圖像采取的是一種實(shí)用主義和工具主義的態(tài)度，而“改寫”則更加強(qiáng)調(diào)個(gè)人體驗(yàn)和情感介入。在王音這里，這些“紅色經(jīng)典”是他童年的生存體驗(yàn)，他對(duì)這種體驗(yàn)很難作出價(jià)值層面和政治立場(chǎng)層面的判斷。正是因?yàn)槿狈@種判斷，使得其工作的價(jià)值在很長(zhǎng)一段時(shí)間內(nèi)沒有被人們所意識(shí)到。90年代是中國(guó)當(dāng)代藝術(shù)急于呈現(xiàn)人文立場(chǎng)和政治判斷的時(shí)代，在這個(gè)背景下，王音純粹局限于藝術(shù)創(chuàng)作方法論的創(chuàng)作雖然和當(dāng)時(shí)浮躁的心態(tài)有著明顯的區(qū)別，也的確很難引起人們的注意。
對(duì)于現(xiàn)成圖像的改寫使得王音很快走向了更為純粹的語言實(shí)驗(yàn)。在這個(gè)過程中他開始了更加具有達(dá)達(dá)主義色彩的實(shí)驗(yàn)?，F(xiàn)成圖像對(duì)于他而言不再是他成長(zhǎng)的“社會(huì)主義經(jīng)驗(yàn)”的一部分，作為一個(gè)視覺藝術(shù)家，他的工作不是對(duì)這種經(jīng)驗(yàn)進(jìn)行政治價(jià)值的判斷，而是探討這種經(jīng)驗(yàn)如何轉(zhuǎn)換成一個(gè)第三世界國(guó)家或者邊緣國(guó)家的藝術(shù)家的藝術(shù)語言。他希望憑借這種語言能夠發(fā)展出一種不同于“標(biāo)準(zhǔn)”的國(guó)際當(dāng)代藝術(shù)風(fēng)格的語言，并能與之對(duì)話。所以和達(dá)達(dá)藝術(shù)一樣，他首先驅(qū)除的是藝術(shù)圖像中的象征主義因素。沿著這個(gè)思路，他直接使用燈箱片放大童年熟悉的“小人書”的畫面，或者干脆直接用照片噴繪出經(jīng)典的畫面，然后用非?！疤K式現(xiàn)實(shí)主義”的方法將他們畫出來。與此同時(shí)，他用非常游戲的方法“制造”代表自由精神的西方的現(xiàn)代主義經(jīng)典作品，比如用彈弓將顏色打在畫布上，或者將顏色涂在電熱毯上，通過加熱形成“勞申柏”式的畫面。
王音使自己陷入了一種兩面作戰(zhàn)的境界中，一方面用體驗(yàn)、感覺來消解社會(huì)主義現(xiàn)實(shí)主義的象征傳統(tǒng)，但是所有的這些落實(shí)在畫面上卻是一種“蘇式油畫”的風(fēng)格；另一方面，他用游戲方法制造的“現(xiàn)代經(jīng)典”，有試圖表明當(dāng)代藝術(shù)中對(duì)“圖式原創(chuàng)性”的可笑的偏執(zhí)。無論是哪個(gè)方面的作戰(zhàn)，都是呈現(xiàn)出一種悖論：如果說一種觀念在極度完善之后會(huì)誕生相對(duì)應(yīng)的完善風(fēng)格，那么王音則是在拼命制造這種完善的風(fēng)格來反對(duì)風(fēng)格背后完善的觀念。也就是說，圖像還是這些圖像，但是觀念卻走向了產(chǎn)生這些圖像的觀念反面。這也就是在一個(gè)新世紀(jì)的開始，在藝術(shù)的探討和抽象的政治喧囂逐漸拉開距離的關(guān)鍵時(shí)刻，王音的藝術(shù)創(chuàng)作開始顯示出特別的意義和價(jià)值的原因。他在圖像和觀念之間的“暗渡陳倉(cāng)”向我們堅(jiān)定地表明，藝術(shù)史將目光定格在圖像之時(shí)，將是藝術(shù)的終結(jié)之日。從這個(gè)意義上講，王音回到了達(dá)達(dá)的精神實(shí)質(zhì)，但是他的工具和方法卻是充滿社會(huì)色彩的。也許，這是一個(gè)中國(guó)當(dāng)代藝術(shù)家在國(guó)際性的“展覽工業(yè)”和“創(chuàng)新工業(yè)”中做出的最有價(jià)值的選擇之一。
The Subversion of Concepts with Imagery
By Pi Li
Wang Yin”s art practice is a case of unique value in Chinese contemporary art history. On one hand, he has personally experienced the dramatic changes in Chinese contemporary art since the 1990s; on the other hand, he has always been drifting away from the mainstream of contemporary art. At the beginning of the new century, the social structure for Chinese contemporary art has undergone significant transformation. The change of the structure has necessarily spurred the art language to evolve as well. It”s under such circumstances that the case study of Wang Yin”s art practice will reveal particular significance.
Wang Yin is an artist who tirelessly recasts historical images based on his own experience. Since he graduated from university in the 90s of last century, he had been engaged in the contemporary art movement of the 90s. Like the majority of artists, under the unique historical background, he opted for images of a socialistic character as the main icons for his work. Contrarily, Wang Yin”s adoption of these images was not confined to the obvious ideological implication of these symbols or images. Instead he set his use of these images on a self-referential level. He chose those "red classics" which he copied from when he studied painting in his teens. That is to say that these images first of all were part of his personal experience and exposure and secondly, they represented a certain ideology. As a contemporary artist, he hasn”t chosen to create his "personal iconology". Instead he has drawn on these images as "ready-mades" of experience. He tried to dig out what he considered the "Chinese" image and style from these images, rather than to provide a certain style of painting full of exoticism for the international contemporary art world. Wang Yin”s strategy towards these ready-made images has been to "rewrite" them, which is a dramatic departure from the "appropriation" of political pop style popular at that time. The "appropriation" of images of the political pop movement advocated a pragmatic and instrumental attitude in their application of images, while "rewriting" placed more stress on the involvement of personal experience and emotion. For Wang Yin, these "red classics" were the experiences of life in his childhood. It was very hard for him to make judgment of this experience in terms of its value and political standpoint. It was because of the absence of such a measurement that the value of his work hadn”t been realized for a very long time. The 90s was a period when Chinese contemporary art was anxious to show off its humanistic stand and political verdict. Within that climate, Wang Yin”s art practice that was purely focused on the methodology of art practice was clearly different from the blundering mindset and couldn”t attract much attention.
His revision of ready-made images propelled Wang Yin towards purer experimentation of artistic languages. During this process, he launched experiments with a more Dadaist flavor. Ready-made images were no longer part of the "socialist experience" that he grew up with. As a visual artist, his work was not to reevaluate this experience politically, but to explore how this experience could be translated into a language for artists working in a third world country or peripheral nation. He wished to achieve a style that was distinctive from the standard international contemporary art practices and to have a dialogue with them. Therefore, like Dadaist artists, he started by ridding the art images off their symbolic elements. Along the same vein, he directly used light boxes on which he blew up images from the comic strips he was familiar with in his childhood or he directly used photographs to spray paint classic images and painted them in an extremely "Soviet realistic" style. In the meantime, he "manufactured" Western modernist classics representative of free spirits in extremely playful ways. For instance, he flipped colors onto canvases with catapults, or smeared colors on an electric blanket to create a "Rauschenberg" style painting after heating it.
Wang Yin has pushed himself to constantly fight with two sides. On one hand, he revokes the symbolic tradition of socialist realism with experience and sensations, yet all of these efforts have been realized in his paintings of the "Soviet style". On the other hand, he creates "modern classics" in a playful approach, trying to mock the laughable obsession with "the originality of images" in contemporary art. In either side, there is a paradox at work: supposedly a concept can generate a relatively perfect style after it”s fully developed, Wang Yin is trying to generate this perfect style in order to reverse the perfect concept behind such a style. That is to say, images are still the same images, but conceptually, they are supported by the opposite of the concepts that have generated these images. This happened to take place at the beginning of a new century. Wang Yin”s art practice has gradually demonstrated its special meaning and value. His "doing one thing under the cover of another" between images and concepts firmly testifies to us, the moment when art history is fixated on images is the end of art. In this sense, Wang Yin has returned to the essence of the Dadaist spirit, but his tools and methods are full of the socialist nature. Perhaps, this is one of the most valuable choices a Chinese contemporary artist can make in the international "exhibition industry" and "creative industry."
