几乎从二十年前开始，冯梦波就一直快人一步。当许多艺术家还在创作政治波普或在北京郊区享受波希米亚生活时，冯梦波就认识到命运正在别处等着他—一个只能用电脑创造出的幻想世界。当然，九十年代初的电脑游戏与今天相比还完全处于原始时代，当时中国的条件与世界也还有一段距离。但他却从未放弃对这个附属世界的迷恋与追求，从绘画到 CD-ROM 一步步发展，最终创作了互动性的电脑游戏。
　　冯梦波的成就很早就被国际艺术界所认同，1997年与王建伟一起代表中国参加了Documenta，2002年又同杨福东一起再次在 Documenta亮相。但直到几年前，我才有机会在巴黎的展览《Alors la Chine》上与他相识。从那之后，我们也在各种场合见过面。后来有一次我们在“爆肚冯”吃饭，他告诉我说这家餐馆是他祖父创建的，到今天已经是第三代了。他当时住在曾经流行一时的北京郊区，刘小东等艺术家都在那里住过。但那年他已经是那里的最后一位住户，住处四周也变得杂草丛生，而略显荒凉。后来的几年里，我们见面的机会越来越多，也慢慢开始讨论在前波画廊作展的可能性。
　　终于在2007年我们开始具体讨论展览细节！最初我们计划用冯梦波养的机器狗“爱波”作展，并开始各处寻找类似的智能机器宠物。喻瑜甚至还在爱波的原产地日本打听，但索尼公司在几年前就已经停产爱波，这个念头只好打消。从2005年起，绘画就在冯梦波的创作中占据了相当大的分量，《译码：山水》代表了一种对中国传统艺术的崭新运用，虽然创作出的最后结果也许与原始的参照相去甚远。最近，冯梦波的兴趣从山水转向书法—它既是中国所有传统艺术的灵魂，也是这次展览的主题。
　　Andrew Solomon 的文章对冯梦波艺术的发展有完整的介绍，也指出新作品与《芥子园画传》间的关系。去年12月份我在北京见到冯梦波时，他还在实验不同金属箔材料，试图找出最适合印刷丝网的一种。他最终放弃了金箔和铜箔，而选择了银箔。上个月当我在北京中央美院他的工作室里见到这次将要展出的作品时，我觉得他的艺术生涯似乎到了一个转折点，放弃了早期作品中的残暴图像和艳丽色彩，而转向更加平静沉稳的美学。但仔细再想一想，我知道事实并非如此。在看似缓和的风格下，新作品中所体现出的极端性的概念错位与他在过去二十年内所创作的作品一样严峻而精确。
　　在此，我要感谢冯梦波让我有机会参与到这组新作的实验和制作过程中。Andrew Solomon 撰写有关中国当代艺术的经验与其他许多专业的人士相比，要渊源许多。他在文章中对各种历史的引用也充分体现了这一点。最后谢谢喻瑜的翻译和唐冠科的贤明建议。

2009年3月于纽约

　　For nearly two decades now Feng Mengbo has been ahead of the curve. At a time when many contemporary artists were making pop political or living in bohemian squalor in remote parts of Beijing, Feng Mengbo already knew that his destiny lay elsewhere, in fantasy worlds that could only be created via computer. Needless to say, he had very little to work with as the computer games that existed in the early 1990s were primitive by today’s standards and the situation in China was hardly conducive to international research. Yet he persisted in his obsessive exploration of this alternate world, beginning with paintings before moving on to CD-ROMs and actual games that soon became interactive.
　　Feng Mengbo gained international recognition quite early, representing China at the 1997 Documenta with Wang Jianwei and at the 2002 Documenta with Yang Fudong, but it was not until a few years ago that our paths began to cross with some frequency. We met in Paris at the time of the exhibition Alors la Chine? and our paths would cross from time to time after that. On a later occasion when we were having dinner at Baodu Feng in Beijing, famous for its lamb dishes and classic Peking food, I learned that it had been established by his grandfather and was now in its third generation. He was then living in what at one time had been a desirable suburban retreat for a number of artists including Liu Xiaodong but when I went there Feng Mengbo was one of the last tenants and the atmosphere had become melancholy not to say surreal with numerous vacant houses and weeds growing everywhere. Over the years we began to discuss the possibility of an exhibition at Chambers Fine Art.
　　Finally in 2007 we got down to business! We began by considering an exhibition inspired by a robot dog Feng Mengbo had just purchased and greatly appreciated. We started looking for similar robotic animals and even extended the search to Japan but by the time Christina Yu started trying to locate them in Tokyo, manufacture had stopped. Robot dogs are much more trouble to maintain than real, live pets. From 2005 painting had occupied a considerable amount of Feng Mengbo’s time and the Wrong Code: Shanshui series pointed to a new involvement with classical Chinese art, however bastardized the end-products turned out to be. From landscape Feng Mengbo moved on to calligraphy, the basis of all classical Chinese art, and that is the theme of his ravishing new series of paintings.
　　As Andrew Solomon has explained in his illuminating introduction, Feng Mengbo’s investigation of classical Chinese culture led him from reconsiderations of classical landscape to the celebrated text Jieziyuan Huazhuan (Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden) and a number of other calligraphy and landscape copybooks. As late as December last year he was still experimenting with the color of the panels on which his drastically simplified images were to be silk - screened, ultimately rejecting gold or copper in favor of silver-leaf. When I saw the paintings for the current exhibition in his studio at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing last month, I thought that perhaps he had reached a turning point in his art, abandoning the violent imagery and garish colors that characterized his earlier production in favor of something much more sedate and aesthetically pleasing. Thinking it over, however, I know I was wrong – underneath their subdued demeanor they are as conceptually rigorous and extreme in their dislocations as anything he has produced in the last two decades.
　　I would like to thank Feng Mengbo for permitting me to participate in a very small way in the evolution of this new series of paintings – it has been an illuminating experience. Andrew Solomon has been writing about contemporary Chinese art much longer than most specialists in this field and this shows in the wide range of references in his introduction. Finally, thanks as always to Christina Yu for her expert and idiomatic translation and to John Tancock for his customary sage advice.

New York　March 2009