范勃是一位跨界艺术家。他以各种适合自己的题材、媒介和文本探求人的内心世界和不同社会角色的置换。展览“潋滟”是范勃艺术创作的一次拓展，也是其作品首次在深圳e当代美术馆的完整呈现。

　　知觉是范勃艺术作品的主线。艺术家最初致力于通过描绘日常生活场景中具象的人体来表现人类的命题。作品发展经历了抽象和观念的漫长历程，始终力图表现不可见和不可触及的人类内心世界。在本次展览的作品中，艺术家没有描绘具象的人体，而决意与人体内部世界建立更为密切的关系。他通过介入盲人这个非常敏感的少数群体以及盲文来实现这一过程。对于盲人来说，盲文与口语交流平行地构成这个群体与外部世界沟通的主要方式之一。范勃虽然不懂盲文，却通过他的作品《世界》、《病理切片》和《B2》创造了一个复杂的语义体系，带来对这个少数群体的主观微观世界的一种沉浸体验。盲人不能借助病理学意义上的视觉来观察、感知和对外部世界做出反应，这似乎反而令他们得以重新发现和吸纳强大的黑暗，免遭琐碎生活的冗余视觉信息侵袭，并保持了内在世界令人意外的一些侧面。

　　通过视觉艺术作品去再现、表达和回应看不见的东西似乎是艺术家的宿命。他们甚至要去复制和传播盲人世界独特的内省丰富性体验。范勃承担起这一责任，在早前的一次采访中宣称：“我对内心的探索永远不会改变，但是，怎么表现出我的想法和取得的进展则取决于未知的力量。”为本次展览创作的这些新作品是对看不见的知觉的延伸，仿佛炼金术士凭着感觉试验一样，显现出那种未知的力量。这些探索成果也充分代表了结合新媒体资源的逻辑进程带来的创作风格多元化趋势。

　　在这个前提下，范勃以现象学家的精神建立了两组作品，分别指涉外部体验和内部体验。梅洛·庞蒂的著作《可见的与不可见的》对于艺术家格外重视这种二重性有一定的影响。该书的著名论点认为知觉在理解世界与参与世界过程中发挥着基础性作用。范勃的作品《寓言》、《考古报告》和《B2》系列用外在视觉影像来表现盲人的个人主观感知世界。而通常来说，盲人很少有机会表达自己所认知的现实世界。《寓言》是一个由一组盲人志愿者参与的互动作品。参与者被要求根据自己对形态、形状、结构和细节的感知来形容一棵树。互动的结果是，每个人都用自己独特的感知方式观察和体验外部世界，对树的样子进行了独特的表达。每个人的反应都是个体化的，以独特的创意和现实观念表达出对一棵看不见但感觉得到的树的个人印象与观点。《考古报告》由哑光拉丝不锈钢和玻璃结构的书架构成主体，充满信息的盲文书置于其上。不存在视力问题的普通观众看不懂盲文书籍的内容，但惊奇于书架中玻璃镜面反射叠加出自己形象和空间的视觉效果。而盲人接触到这个作品时只会感到置身于一个普通书架前面，而体验不到复杂的空间感。作品《B2》系列则带有玩味意义地利用盲文的凸点。凸点被放置在画布或其他影像介质上，暗喻着一种秘密的语言。范勃进而用放大的药片制作盲文凸点，似乎在表示药片能够治愈疾病，却无法治愈失明。视觉的内涵必须进一步扩大甚至应被知觉取而代之。

　　《凝视》、《呼吸》、《Blooming》等作品强调了内部体验。《凝视》试图通过高科技医疗仪器捕捉人体信息。范勃利用新媒介向观众传递“看不见的内部世界”的体验。《呼吸》也是一件由10个志愿者(5个盲人和5个正常人)血管造影构成的互动作品。素材被加工成十个视频，并调整了时间轴产生时间失真效果。观众得知视频来自盲人和非盲人两组人群时，自然而然地试图辨别每个样本属于哪一群体，而这种反应只是信息不对称社会加之于普通人观念中的俗套乌托邦想象而已。《Blooming》看似一股喷涌的泉水，实际上是严重动脉粥样硬化患者血管动态造影的截图。这件充满动感的作品并未着意展示个体的疾病甚至其所处的环境和生活方式。观众了解到影像实际的来源后，会尝试寻找其中体现疾病与痛苦的痕迹。

　　范勃通过艺术作品清晰地说明了知觉作为一种感觉即是现实存在又非常抽象的特性。他借助外部或知觉系统赋予内部感知以可视化呈现，运用视觉、听觉、触觉、嗅觉和味觉描述身体之外的世界。这种体验的顶点或许是内部和外部知觉混合作用，揭示身体内部的真实情景和那些感知的源头本质所带来的挑战。幸运的是，当代艺术和艺术家对其聪明才智和专业能力有清醒的认识。正如范勃所说：“这些创作中，我并没有投射过多以往创作的经验，或说符号，而是更接近于建立一个实验的机制，形成一个多重的实验室。”

　　2017年8月于柏林

　　Preface

　　Tereza de Arruda

　　Fan Bo is an interdisciplinary artist leading with topics, medias and contexts appropriated to his main interests as the exploration into mind and the subsequent exchange with different protagonists from the society. The development of his artistic career is celebrated in the exhibition “Emerging from Shadow” - the first retrospective presentation of his Oueuvre conceived for the eMoCA (e Museum of contemporary Art) in ShenZhen.

　　Perception dominates his art work. At the beginning the artist dedicated himself to the representation of Human Being in figurative realistic paintings dominated by full body portraits accompanied by attributes of daily life. It was a long journey passing by abstract and concept works in a temptation of representation of the unseen and untouchable human mind. Instead of painting the physical human representation the artist has decided to develop an intensive relation to the interior of the human being. This process was acquired through Fan Bo`s insertion into the universe of a very sensitive minority, namely blind people and their Braille writing, which is one of their main venues of communication with the external world, parallel to the verbal communication itself. With no knowledge of Braille, Fan Bo nevertheless created a complex semantic body of works as “World”, “Pathological Section” and “B2” as an exercise of immersion in the subjective microcosmos of this minority. The fact that their way of seeing, feeling and reacting has no access to the visual pathological potential seems to provide a chance for assimilation and discovery of a certain powerful darkness preserved in unexpected facets that is exempt from visual excess of trivial life.

　　It seems to be the predestination of an artist to represent and to give visibility and response to the unseen through his art work. To be a multiplicator and communicator of the blindness experience is to journey into the unique introspective richness. Fan Bo has assumed this responsibility and he announced in an interview: “My exploration into mind will never change; however, the way the idea is presented on the progress I make will depend on the unknown power”. This unknown power emerges like an input for the creation of new works conceived for this exhibition. As an extension of the unseen perception, it has been acquired through experimental approaches similar to those adopted in activities in an alchemist sensorial laboratorium. The results highlight the plurality of creative style in conjunction with a progression of logic supported by the resources of the new media.

　　In this scenario Fan Bo develops, as a phenomenologist, two bodies of works related to external or internal experiences respectively. This duality called the attention of the artist specially by the book “The Visible and Invisible” by Merleau-Ponty, which argues for the foundational role that perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Works in “The Fable”, “The Archeological Report” and the “B2” Series give external visibility to the subjective perception of the world by the blind individuum, who are rarely invited to express their own reality. “The Fable” is an interactive work developed by the participation of a group of blind people invited to describe a tree based on their own perception of shape, form, structure and details. Each one of them had a singular way to represent the same tree through their own perceptual lens and way of watching and experiencing the world. Each one delivered a singular response, own signature, own perspective of the unseen but perceived tree in an unique level of creation and notion of reality. “The Archeological Report” places on a designed bookshelf made of glass and mirror, where books written in Braille are placed. The visitors without vision loss cannot identify the content of the books but are surprised by the duplication of their image and of the space through the mirror surface. Here the blind visitor would just have the feeling that he is in front of a conventional bookshelf not experiencing the spatial complexity of the work. The “B2” Series, on the other hand, makes use of the appropriation of the Braille dots in a playful way. The dots are placed on the canvas or other image carriers as an allusion to this secret language. Fan Bo goes a step further by making the dots out of enlarged pills ironically used to cure diseases, but the blindness has no cure. The meaning of vision has to be enlarged and substituted indeed by the perception.

　　The internal experience is highlighted by works as “The Gaze”, “The Breathing” and “Blooming”. “Gaze” attempts to capture humans bodies information that is gained by medical instruments of high technology. Using new media Fan Bo transfers to the viewers the experience of the “invisible internal world”. “The Breathing” is also a interactive work composed by blood vessels of 10 individuals (5 blind and 5 normal). The material is presented in ten videos with manipulated time structure in order to destruct the real time. The audience, after knowing about the selection of the participators, tries to identify automatically singularities of the two groups, a utopia based on cliches imposed by the uninformed society. “Blooming” is an allusion to a gushing fountain, but in fact the image is a screenshot from a motion image of the blood vessels of a patient with severe atherosclerosis. This vibrant image does not reveal the disease or even the environment and style of life from the individuum. After knowing the background the audience would try to pick up traces of the sickness and its pain.

　　Fan Bo manifests through his artwork the sense of perception, which is present and quite abstract at the same time. He gives visibility to the internal perception in conjunction with the external or sensory perception, which tells us about the world outside our bodies. Using our senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. The apex of this experience would be the challenge of mixed internal and external perception telling us about what is going on in our bodies and about the perceived cause of our bodily perceptions. Luckily contemporary art and artists are conscious of their bright potential and expertise. As Fan Bo declares: “I did not invest much of my former creative experiences, or symbols, in these works. I am closer to establishing an experimental mechanism or building a laboratory in multiple senses”.

　　Tereza de Arruda

　　Berlin, August 2017