2/19/2025
艺术家的理性（与感性）| 关于Luc Tuymans 在北京UCCA的展览：过去
从第一次了解到Luc Tuymans到今天看到他的回顾展，已经过去了将近十年的时间。随着我对自己绘画的理解的深入与拓展，我可以说是始终受到他的影响。这种影响不止是从绘画本身出发的，这之后我会详细解释。
巨大展厅里一共有90余幅作品，这其中百分之九十，对于我来说都如数家珍，仿佛昨天才看过一般熟悉。作为一个艺术家，一个画家，一个表达者，我看到他始终将一种清醒与克制贯穿了整个生涯。“为了画想画的东西，我会不画很多东西。”这是他在创作中能够保持敏锐的关键性之一。在关于政治、时事、历史、个人记忆、科技、医学伦理的一张张画作背后，能看到他严谨、始终保持的冷静与一种不受愚弄的清醒。这种克制背后又能感觉到艺术家的对世事的共情、敏感。
Tuymans的这种克制也许是一种反向的癫狂。这克制不是要用细毛笔画出每一个精细的细节，而是不被弱化的警觉，审视。这让我想到我自己的创作，如果不加思索去看，很容易被误读为普通的“日常”，然而我和Tuymans的日常，是在每一个细节里发掘不对劲的东西。每一个理所当然的日常里，没有一个是毫无意义的。这种日常不是所谓的岁月的恬静，而是一种警惕。平淡的色彩，实际是事实与观看者的之间的分裂，在影像、图像泛滥的时代，割裂不仅没消失，反而裂变成无数种模样，或隐藏或张牙舞爪。你看见的不一定是真实的，冷静背后不是平静，不是静谧，而是一种波动的焦虑，无法停止。就像有一张被遗弃的如石雕般的矿地的图像，据说在这张画被画后的几年后，已经重新被开始开采。
Tuymans曾经在采访里提过，每一次开始画画时都感到紧张，（stage fright）。我觉得这是画家的自觉，是对图像，对手和脑的警觉。有太多能够麻木人心智的事物了。对于艺术家而言，面对作品的时候也是在面对自己，和世界的一种关系。你无法始终背对着周围的声音。有关于专业的挑战，有名利的陷阱。能否在其中保持清醒，保持敏锐，这是图伊曼斯提醒我的事。
The Rationality (and Sensibility) of an Artist | On Luc Tuymans : Past at UCCA Beijing
It has been nearly ten years since I first learned about Luc Tuymans to today, seeing his retrospective exhibition. As my understanding of my own painting deepens and expands, I can say that I have always been influenced by him. This influence does not stem solely from painting itself, which I will elaborate on later.
The vast exhibition hall houses more than 90 works, 90% of which feel as familiar to me as if I had seen them just yesterday. As an artist, a painter, an expresser, I see that he has maintained a sense of clarity and restraint throughout his career. "To paint what I want to paint, I refrain from painting many things." This is one of the key reasons he remains sharp in his practice. Behind each painting—touching on politics, current events, history, personal memory, technology, and medical ethics—lies his rigor, his unwavering calmness, and an awareness that refuses to be deceived. Beneath this restraint, one can also sense the artist’s empathy and sensitivity toward the world.
Tuymans’ restraint may, in fact, be a form of inverse madness. It is not about painting every meticulous detail with a fine brush but about maintaining an unweakened vigilance, a gaze of scrutiny. This makes me think about my own practice—if viewed without thought, my work can easily be misread as ordinary "everyday life." However, for both Tuymans and me, the everyday is about uncovering what feels off in the details. No aspect of the so-called mundane is truly without meaning. This "everyday" is not a serene passage of time but a state of alertness. The muted colors actually represent a rupture between reality and the observer. In an era oversaturated with images, fragmentation has not disappeared; instead, it has multiplied into countless variations, some hidden, some baring their fangs. What you see is not necessarily real. Behind calmness lies neither peace nor tranquility but a restless anxiety that never ceases—like an abandoned, stone-carved mining site depicted in one of his works, which, years after the painting was completed, was reportedly reopened for excavation.
Tuymans once mentioned in an interview that every time he starts painting, he feels nervous—stage fright. I believe this is the artist’s self-awareness, a vigilance toward images, toward the hand, toward the mind. There are too many things in the world that can dull one’s perception. For an artist, confronting a work is also about confronting oneself and one’s relationship with the world. One cannot perpetually turn one’s back on the surrounding voices—there are professional challenges, the traps of fame and fortune. Whether one can remain clear-headed and sensitive amidst it all—this is what Tuymans reminds me of.
12/7/2024
Late Fragment
Artist:Gao Xiaoyi
Location:Gene Gallery
Duration:2024.12.7-2025.1.18
In Raymond Carver's poem <Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year >, he writes:
October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face. Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.
In jeans and denim shirt, he leans against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity, Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.
But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can't hold my liquor either, and don't even know the places to fish?
The imagery similar to “a photo of my father when he was young” repeatedly appears in my works. In Window, 2022, I gaze at an old photo of my “young mother,” who at that time was even younger than I am now, and painted that image on a piece of women’s shirt. Similar works also include Yesterday, My Father and My Mother, 2022, Fake Mountain, 2022, and The Son, 2022 and so forth. Looking back at the early stages of this series, it was a time when the pandemic was nearing its end. I hadn’t painted with oils for a long time, spending two days a week teaching, sometimes assisting other artists in their studios, and later working in retail at a clothing store for several months. Every day, when I returned to my apartment in Seattle, there was only an assortment of items accumulated over eight years in the United States, yet without art. I thought, perhaps I could make something from these things. I began stitching together household fabrics and old clothing with watercolor paintings in my apartment’s living room.
The nostalgia triggered by family photo albums became a starting point for these works. Just as I spent much time exploring the potential with these household fabrics, I subconsciously ponder over my recollections of various things. When I look back at my “hometown,” I was often unable to distinguish between what truly existed and what was only I’ve imagined. Svetlana Boym, in The Future of Nostalgia, posits that contemporary society is awash with nostalgia, from outer space to cyberspace. We all long for certain moments, yet returning to the past seems impossible. Sometimes, what we yearn for is not a specific place or moment but a possibility that never occurred —an unconfirmed beauty that might have existed. This side of nostalgia offers us a guilt-free glimpse into the passage of time. It does not require the nostalgic individual to exactly return to their “homeland.” Instead, this “homeland” is a non-place; it might be words of mouth, or an amalgam, like a mix of somewhere in memory and scenes from films made around year 2000. In Surplus Angel, 2024, the image of the “angel,” symbolizing beauty and dreams, overlaps with the imagery of second-hand stores I frequently visited in the U.S. These thrift stores serve as sanctuaries for objects, accidental museums of sorts. Patterned sofas, wine glasses, lamps, and brooches from different eras reflect dreams that were never realized, along with the visions of the future that have since become obsolete. The notion of the “angel,” however, transcends the bounds of time.
In exploring the relationship between materials and imagery, I always observe the texture and color of the materials themselves, at the same time, relying on the memories and imaginations they evoke. Raymond Carver describes sofas, refrigerators, open pillboxes, and odd dental models in his works. Through these scenes and objects, readers can glimpse his characters—salesmen, drunks, addicts —and the weary, mundane, fragmented lives they lead. Compared to my earlier years, when I primarily engaged with painting and film, my recent works are increasingly inspired by literature and poetry. In some ways, text itself is a form of “nostalgia,” extending the imaginative space of the subjects I paint.
The creative process for this series felt like walking through woods, where each fork in the path leads to a different view. The many uncertainties often left me with a belated understanding of my own works. Visitors to my studio would frequently be surprised by the materials used in the canvases: “This is a towel,” “This is a shirt,” “This is a skirt.” It was then I realized how much meaning was wrapped up in an ordinary piece of fabric—a shirt, a towel, a sheet—so easy to read yet so difficult to expound. Time always only moves forward, and what was once clear becomes blurry over time. It seems that no matter where someone comes from, seeing a checkered tablecloth always bring them back to a scene from childhood, though they might not be sure where and when. The everyday textures and colors change over time, but what remains constant is the way that objects can carry meanings beyond their functions. Objects, photos, letters, and souvenirs—they are not merely “discarded things” but personal or collective myths.
Written by Gao Xiaoyi
文 / 高晓依
关于展览
在雷蒙德卡佛的诗——《我父亲二十二岁时的照片》(Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year )中，他写道，
十月。在这阴湿，陌生的厨房里 我端详父亲那张拘谨的年轻人的脸。 他腼腆地咧开嘴笑，一只手拎着一串 多刺的金鲈，另一只手 是一瓶嘉士伯啤酒。 穿着牛仔裤和粗棉布衬衫， 他靠在1934年的福特车的前挡泥板上。 他想给子孙摆出一副粗率而健壮的模样， 耳朵上歪着一顶旧帽子。 整整一生父亲都想要敢作敢为。
与“父亲年轻时的照片”类似的意象反复出现在我的作品中间，在窗, Window,2022中，我凝视来自过去的，年轻的甚至于比自己现在的年龄还要 小的“小妈妈”的照片，再将这图像构建在一件女士单衣上，诸如此类的作品 还有昨天，我的父亲和母亲, Yesterday, My Father and My Mother, 2022; 假山, Fake Mountain, 2022; 儿子, The Son, 2022等等。回顾创作 这系列的初期，那时疫情已经接近尾声，我已经很长一段时间不画油画了，每 周两天教书、有时去艺术家工作室做助手，后来我还在零售服装店工作了几个 月。每天回到公寓，没有艺术，围绕我的就是在美国八年时间积累下来零零碎 碎的物件。我想，也许我能用这些东西做点什么。于是我开始在公寓客厅里将 家用布料和旧衣与水彩画缝合。
家庭相册引发的个人的怀想是作品中的一个起始点，跟形式上我每天需要花很 多时间尝试布料的用法一样，潜意识里我也思考我对各种事物的怀想。光是我 回望“故乡”，我就已经分不清存在过的和我幻想出的“故乡”。博伊姆在 《怀旧的未来》(The Future of Nostalgia)中认为从外层空间到网络空间， 当今的社会已经是一个怀旧泛滥的社会。我们都怀念一些时刻，但似乎没有办 法返回过去。我们有时怀念的并不是一个确切的地点或时间点，而是一种未能 发生的可能性，一种可能存在但早已无法证实的美好。在这种精神性的怀旧 中，我们享受一种没有罪咎感的时间的侧面。这种情绪并不要求怀旧者确切地 返回“故乡”，换言之，这“故乡”的地点是不存在的，或是揉杂的，它也许 是记忆中的某个地点与2000年左右的电影中出现过的某些场景的混合，又或 来自他人之口。在剩余的天使, Surplus Angel, 2024中，“天使”这个代表 美好与梦想的意象，与我在美国时经常光顾的二手商店的图像重合。二手商店 实际就是物品的庇护所、偶然搭建出的博物馆，80年代商店流行的花纹沙 发、酒杯、台灯、胸针——这是过往时期未得实现的梦幻，和已经变得过时的 对于未来的愿景。而“天使”这一意向却是脱离了时间概念的。 在处理材料和画面之间的关系时，我一边观察它本身的肌理和颜色，一边依赖 于被它勾起的想象和回忆。雷蒙德卡佛在他的作品中，描述主人公的沙发、冰 箱、打开的药盒、一个奇怪的牙齿模型，在这些场景、物件的描写中，读者窥 见他笔下的推销员、酒鬼、瘾君子，和那些日复一日、疲乏、琐碎的生活。比 起过往我更多看绘画和电影，在这些作品中，很多都受到文学和诗歌的启发， 文字在某种方面也是一种“怀旧”，它延伸了我对所画对象的想象的空间。
在这系列创作过程中，感觉像在林中走路，每一个岔路都可以带我走向不同的 风景。诸多的不确定让我常常对自己的作品感到后知后觉。每当有人拜访我的 工作室，总是对画布的材料感到惊奇，“这是毛巾”“这是衬衣”“这是裙 子”。这时候我发现，一件单衣、一件衬衣、一张毛巾、一张床单，这其中包 裹的含义是那么多，是那么易读，却又总是没那么容易被阐明。时间始终往 前，清晰之后总在变得模糊。好像不管是哪个地方的人，看见一张格子桌布， 都仿佛记得那是小时候看过的某个场景，虽然究竟在哪里并不清楚。日常的肌 理和颜色，在时代更迭中渐渐更替，不变的是，物件有时候承载了功能性以外 的意义。物件、照片、信件、纪念品——他们的确是私人的或者集体的神话， 而不是“被抛弃之物”。