三杰（王桂勇）| 绘画的惊奇
文摘
2024-10-17 20:21
新加坡
三杰的画看得人微醺，好像海浪一直拍打在他心里，一层一层从遥远的海平面涌到眼前，带着英雄主义似的壮美，朝向礁石奋力撞击，碎裂，扬升，回落……他的笔触不过是跟随了浪的节律，而观看的人就要醉倒。尽管三杰的作品题材十足的平易，围绕的全部是日常生活目力所及的人、景、事、物，尤以普通市井平民为主要描绘对象。但他作品的内里，并不庸常琐碎，反而有一种诗意性的直觉在主导着他的创作，充溢着激情与力度的美感，始终在朝向我们微妙的涌动着。如同人类学家嵌在他的田野，具有十六年一线职业刑警生涯的三杰，有着漫长的时间，在陌生的街头，遥远的市镇，边缘的族群聚集地，待在他笔下描绘的普通人身旁，作为其中的一份子，俨然水溶于水。这是他转入职业创作前在田野的奇遇与收获。Heard That the Meat Price Is Going to Drop.我们赞美艺术作品的方式之一，是称它拥有了“视力”，看三杰的人物绘画系列，这种感受更加直接。如同惊奇是诗歌中常常带着一种顿悟味道的情感，好的艺术能使自我和世界以变形的方式被认知，带领我们进入一种被打开、被增强和被改变的存在状态。三杰人物作品带给人们的惊奇感极为突出，一种目光犀利的穿透性，将一个陌生面孔的性情转瞬间浓缩到你的面前。观看者惊异地发现，这张身旁熟视无睹的面孔，从艺术家的手中到观看者的心中，言说的细节中，以及震惊的眼泪中又被重新认领，面目模糊的人群有了清晰可辨的悲伤与雀跃。三杰对人物表情、情绪和性情的塑造能力，令人深感他强大的加深、聚集和净化注意力的能力。在漫长的一线刑警生涯中，“便衣抓现行”的职业素养，帮助他炼就了这样的敏锐。在他的人物肖像的表现性上，没有丝毫模糊地带，但却杂糅交织了诸多妙不可言的暗涌。他前期的作品主要以人物面部特写或半身肖像为主，在有限的表现空间和元素之内，三杰将精准度与多元的创造能力发挥到了极致，这使得每个人物都具备着大口呼吸的强劲生命力。长期深入一个沸腾的生活场域，一个人的感觉、味觉、听觉、思维和视觉都会发生改变。三杰将自己浸润和渗透进底层普通人如劲草般蓬勃、野性的生存空间中，形形色色的喜乐、悲伤、庸常、惊心都曾穿过他，扩展他，最终形成为他笔下宽广、丰富、变化万千的变奏与交响。艺术作品是历久弥新的新闻，独具慧眼的“观看”总是带给观者一种能量既聚焦又爆裂的矛盾感。三杰作品中直觉性的笔触，精准地穿透了日常被忽略的熟悉和自满，是刃器，观者每次面对时都会感到新鲜与锋利。当一个婴儿睁开了看世界的眼睛，当一个人睁开了心灵的眼睛，当一件作品打开了观者的眼睛，就必定会有什么东西在改变，在升腾，在游向这个世界。三杰的市井人物与花卉系列作品，有着极妙的相似性观感：一种熏熏然的饱足感，欢愉感，极易“啪嗒”一下将人内在的松弛状态牵引出来，令人眉眼上扬，是“晚饭后的回忆”，饱暖熨帖，怡然自得。这样的造型与表现力，是三杰绘画中最具特色的一种变形，是一种大震荡与小涌动的节奏感营造出的力度与气场的共振。他以抽象刻画具象，捏合着形式、色彩与符号，使彼此间进行了参与性、敏捷性和响应性的协作。三杰的作品整体呈现出一种平易又散漫不吝的气质，他的笔触在节奏感与涌动性之间进行着交互。从单一的人物面部及半身肖像中向前延伸，后期的作品注重于群像与场景性的整体建构，但他对人物精准的刻画与表现能力依然有力地支撑了画面，将一种身在剧场般的沉浸感营造了出来。那些聚集在街头、集市与乡镇里谋生的底层民众，三杰没有将同情施加给他们，他总是着力表现出人物内在的幽默、诙谐、悠哉与乐陶陶的满足，那是喝过二两小酒后的熏熏然，一种过好眼前、即时满足的随遇而安，是基于平等与尊严的表达视角。三杰的人物系列，总令人想到艺术史上以农民画而著称的老彼得·勃鲁盖尔。他常常在农村和农民待在一起，与他们谈天说地，参加他们的婚礼，看他们嬉笑打闹，同时也观察他们耕作与收割。在勃鲁盖尔的画中，可以找到各种性格、各种姿态的农民：愁容满面的、哈欠连天的、醉态蒙眬的、大腹便便的、勤快劳作的、就地歪躺的……不同于米勒的农民画，老彼得·勃鲁盖尔并没有带着悲天悯人的情绪去看待这些人，他笔下的农民是快活的，常常以群体的方式出现，他们有着多姿多彩的生活，也有着丰富多样的个性和千差万别的面孔，有的善良朴实，有的又不免愚蠢而狡黠。艺术中常常携带着诸多的转译，其中最重要的一个是，我们所看到的一切，都可以用全新的语言、全新的理解角度、全新的眼光来看待。当他人生存的悲欢被带入到艺术中，也同时意味着这是一个重新塑造和重新校准自身与我们生活其中的人、事件、关系的机会。艺术的创作带着一种亲密和秘密参与到与所有人的联结与共情之中，但最终的选择、判断与取舍却来自艺术家对自身的定位，三杰无疑是与他绘画的对象并列站在了一起。在花卉系列的描绘上，三杰也赋予了植物一种人的激情与性情，有的灵动娇俏有一种被召唤的振奋，有的深沉静谧如同醇厚佳酿，瓶身倾倒，在无人察觉的角落，悄然地淌出一条河。那些简约不羁的线条，一种颜色对另一种颜色的呼应中，恰如塞尚对色彩的形而上学的表达：色彩不再是绘画的一种属性，一种技法，一个手段，而是绘画的全部存在，人应该彻底放手，让它们在自身中达成一致。色彩与色彩彼此交流，这就是绘画的全部。正是基于这样的性情赋予，笔触带来的节奏与震荡感，使三杰的花卉系列如同诗的言说，充满共振与芳香，摆脱了狭隘的抽象和具象，在多个方向穿行，如生活本身一样丰盛。尽管三杰在描绘市井人物时，多以诙谐幽默表达他们乐观知足的生存哲学，但绘画某种意义上，也是一种充满秘密和隐喻的行为。纵观三杰的创作历程，他作品中符号性元素的反复应用，表达了他隐藏在画面语言中的一些微妙之语，这是他作品思想性的承载。三杰的人物肖像，常常忽视眼睛而重视嘴巴（口腔）的刻画，这样的刻画令人将他从溶于街头的人群中剔出来，正视他作为艺术家的角色，一个旁观、审视和隐喻的编织者。在人的面部五官中，通常眼睛被赋予一种精神性，而嘴巴则通常意味着欲望性，与吃、喝、说、吻等人与生俱来的生物属性密切相关。三杰的作品中，对嘴部（口腔）的塑造、放大与变形，一种是对人性的探索和挑战，通过暴露嘴部这个最原始的欲望和情感的表达器官，展现人的本能和复杂，以及人与动物之间的界限和联系。这种表达方式类似于德国新表现主义的风格，强调个人的主观感受和创造力，以及对社会和现实的反思。另一面则是对笑容的解构和重构，通过放大和夸张嘴部的细节，使笑容失去了原有的美感与和谐，变成了一种夸张、痛苦和扭曲的表情，从而对传统的审美观念和价值观进行反思与挑战，这种看似梦幻和想象的手法，创造出一种超越现实的视觉冲击力。从心理和文化的角度来看，眼睛通常对应人的外貌、心理、情感等，也被用来展示人的视角、观察、想象，嘴巴（口腔）则通常用来表现人的言语、声音、味觉，用来展示人的表达与交流等。对于生活于底层或边缘的普通人而言，三杰没有从题材的社会性和公共性上进行直接的表现，但他透过绘画语言的符号性元素深刻表达了他对这一群体生存状态的认知与沉思。三杰心中充溢着一种浪漫的英雄主义情结，在听肖斯塔科维奇《第十五首弦乐四重奏》时，演奏到终章，所有的乐器、情绪、情感都交织着走向华彩，最高的声部中，却轻轻飘荡着半首俄罗斯民歌来终结了这雄壮而激荡人心的乐章。Sanjie (Wang Guiyong): The Wonder of PaintingSanjie' paintings give viewers a subtle intoxication, as if the waves have been incessantly beating in his heart, surging layer by layer from the distant sea level to the forefront, carrying a romantic and heroic beauty, striving to collide with the reef, shattering, rising, and falling... His brushstrokes merely follow the rhythm of the waves, and those who observe are bound to be intoxicated.Although the subjects of Sanjie' works are plain, revolving entirely around people, scenes, events, and objects within the reach of ordinary life, with a predominant focus on ordinary urban citizens, the essence of his works is by no means mundane. Instead, there is a poetic intuition guiding his creations, brimming with a sense of passionate and forceful aesthetics, always surging subtly towards us.Like an anthropologist embedded in his field, Sanjie, with sixteen years of experience as a front-line criminal investigator, spent a long time wandering the unfamiliar streets, distant towns, and gathering places of marginalized communities. He stayed by the side of ordinary people depicted in his works, becoming one of them, seamlessly blending into the surroundings like water. These were his adventures and gains in the fields before turning to professional creation.One way we praise works of art is by saying they possess "insight". This feeling is more direct when looking at Sanjie's figure painting series.Just as wonder is an emotion often associated with poetry, good art can transform the perception of self and the world in a distorted way, leading us into an existence state that is opened, enhanced, and changed. The sense of wonder conveyed by Sanjie' figure paintings is extremely prominent, with a penetrating gaze that condenses the temperament of a stranger's face into your presence in an instant. The viewer is astonished to discover that this seemingly indifferent face, when seen through the artist's hands, in the details of expression, and in the tears of astonishment, is reclaimed with clarity, transforming the indistinct crowd into a vivid display of sorrow and joy.Sanjie' ability to shape the expressions, emotions, and personalities of a figure makes one deeply feel his powerful ability to deepen, concentrate, and purify attention. During his long career as a front-line criminal investigator, his professional quality of "plainclothes police arrest criminals" helped him develop such acumen. There is no ambiguity in the expressiveness of his portraits, but they are intertwined with many wonderful undercurrents. In his early works, which mainly focus on facial close-ups or half-length portraits, Sanjie has maximized precision and diverse creative capabilities within the limited expressive space and elements. This ensures that each figure possesses a robust vitality with a strong breath of life.Long-term immersion in a vibrant living environment, where an individual's feelings, tastes, hearing, thinking, and vision change, can be felt in Sanjie' art. He immersed and penetrated himself into the vibrant and wild survival space of ordinary people at the bottom layer, where various joys, sorrows, ordinariness, and heart-stopping moments passed through him, expanded him, and ultimately shaped the broad, rich, and ever-changing variations and symphonies in his artwork.Artworks are timeless news, and the perceptive "viewing" always brings viewers a contradictory sense of focused yet explosive energy. The intuitive strokes in Sanjie' works, accurately penetrating the familiar and complacent aspects of daily life, act as a tool, and each encounter with the viewer feels fresh and sharp. When a baby opens its eyes to see the world, when a person opens the eyes of the soul, when a work opens the viewer's eyes, something is bound to change, rise, and float towards this world.Sanjie's figure series and flower series exhibit a marvelous similarity in visual perception: a kind of smoky and full feeling, a sense of joy, easily pulling out the inner relaxed state with a "snap", making people's eyebrows rise, like "memories after dinner", warm and comforting, content and at ease.This style and expressiveness represent the most distinctive deformation in Sanjie's paintings, a resonance of force and atmosphere created by a grand shock and a small surge. He abstractly portrays concreteness, blending form, color, and symbols, fostering participatory, agile, and responsive collaboration between them.Sanjie's works overall present an easy-going and unrestrained temperament; his brushstrokes interact between rhythm and dynamic flow. While extending from single facial and half-body portraits, his later works focus on the overall construction of group portraits and scenes. Yet, his precise portrayal and expressive ability in depicting figures still strongly support the composition, creating an immersive sense of being in a theater.The people living in the streets, markets, and towns that Sanjie portrays don't receive his sympathy. Instead, he consistently focuses on expressing the inner humor, wit, leisure, and joyful satisfaction of these individuals. It's the smoky feeling after sipping two ounces of wine, a kind of contentment with the present, immediate satisfaction of going with the flow, expressing a perspective based on equality and dignity.Sanjie's figure series inevitably bring to mind the renowned peasant paintings in art history by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He often stayed in rural areas, chatting with farmers, participating in their weddings, observing their activities of farming and harvesting. In Bruegel's paintings, various characters with different expressions and postures are depicted: those with troubled faces, yawning continuously, appearing drunk, plump figures, hardworking laborers, and those lying casually on the ground. Unlike Millet's peasant paintings, Pieter Bruegel the Elder did not approach these people with a sentiment of pity; the peasants in his paintings are lively, often appearing collectively, displaying a colorful life with diverse personalities and varied faces. Some are kind and simple, while others are both foolish and cunning.Art often carries various translations, and the most crucial one is that everything we see can be viewed with an entirely new language, a new perspective, and new eyes. When the joys and sorrows of human existence are brought into art, it also means an opportunity to reshape and recalibrate oneself with people, events, and relationships in our lives. The creation of art involves an intimate and secret engagement with the connection and empathy of everyone. However, the final choices, judgments, and decisions come from the artist's positioning of himself, and Sanjie undoubtedly stands alongside the subjects of his paintings.In the portrayal of the flower series, Sanjie also imparts a human passion and temperament to plants. Some are lively and charming, exuding a summoned excitement, while others are deep and tranquil, like rich and mellow wine, pouring unnoticedly in a corner and becoming a quietly flowing river.The simple and unrestrained lines, the interplay of one color responding to another, echo Cézanne's metaphysical expression of color: color is no longer merely a property, a technique, or a means of painting; it is the entirety of painting's existence. Humans should completely let go and allow colors to achieve harmony within themselves. Colors communicate with each other; this is the entirety of painting.Based on this endowed temperament, the rhythm and vibrancy brought by the brushstrokes make Sanjie's flower series like the narration of a poem, full of resonance and fragrance, breaking free from narrow abstractions and concrete representations, traversing in multiple directions, as rich as life itself.Although Sanjie often expresses the optimistic and contented philosophy of his urban figures with humor and wit, painting, in a sense, is an art filled with secrets and metaphors. Throughout Sanjie's creative journey, the repeated use of symbolic elements in his works conveys a subtle language hidden in the visual narrative—this is the intellectual essence of his creations.In Sanjie's character portraits, there is a frequent neglect of eyes in favor of emphasizing the portrayal of mouths (oral cavities). Such depictions detach him from the crowds on the streets, urging one to confront his role as an artist—an observer, evaluator, and metaphorical weaver.Among the facial features of humans, eyes are often endowed with a spiritual quality, while mouths typically signify desire, closely related to innate biological attributes like eating, drinking, speaking, and kissing.In Sanjie's works, the shaping, magnification, and deformation of mouths (oral cavities) serve a dual purpose. On one hand, it is an exploration and challenge of human nature, exposing the mouth as the most primitive organ for expressing desires and emotions, revealing human instincts and complexities, as well as the boundaries and connections between humans and animals. This expression shares similarities with the style of German Expressionism, emphasizing individual subjective experiences, creativity, and reflection on society and reality.On the other hand, there is a deconstruction and reconstruction of smiles. By magnifying and exaggerating details of mouths, smiles lose their original beauty and harmony, transforming into an exaggerated, painful, and distorted expression. This seemingly dreamlike and imaginative technique creates a visual impact that transcends reality, challenging traditional aesthetic concepts and values.From a psychological and cultural perspective, eyes often correspond to a person's appearance, psychology, and emotions, showcasing their perspective, observation, and imagination. Meanwhile, mouths (oral cavities) are typically used to represent language, sound, taste, expressing a person's communication and expression. For ordinary people living at the lower levels or on the margins, Sanjie doesn't directly portray the social and public aspects of their subjects, but he profoundly expresses his understanding and contemplation of the survival state of this group through symbolic elements in the language of painting.Within Sanjie's heart, there is an overflowing romantic heroism. While listening to Shostakovich's "String Quartet No. 15," as it reaches its final movement, all instruments, emotions, and feelings intertwine towards a grand finale. In the highest register, there is a gentle drift of half a Russian folk song, concluding this majestic and stirring movement.Sanjie says: "On something very heavy, there must be something light."何以入画
Artwork images: San Jie (Wang Guiyong)
