直面彼此

　　马西莫·斯加林格拉

　　童雁汝南是20多年来肖像画界的伟大创新者之一，他使我们重新审视画中的人物，铭记他们，使我们与人物内心深处的本质和谐一致。他总是描绘眼前鲜活的模特。即使有时惯用距离把他置于存在和精神之间的不定状态，一个特写还是会提升他与模特之间的联系。他描绘的是个体角色的象征性形状，不是人格，也不是面相。横向的笔触和色彩的渲染，时常柔和，间或强烈，更多的是在寻找风景画的感觉，而非仅仅画出一张面孔。

　　视觉来自于颜色和光。人眼最初感知光和颜色，经过大脑区分形状和空间位置：脑海里的信号变成姿势，姿势通过颜色变具体，产生一幅带有情感色彩的画作。这个过程中，许多姿势构成一张网，定格了我们对画作的记忆。当然，相比真实的物质本质，艺术家更感兴趣的是人物个体生活的自然性。

　　正如美国诗人爱德多姆所说："风景赋予生活在这里的人们形式和物质。"这也正是童雁汝南作品的表现方式。他所描绘的人物超越了人物本身，拦截了所有穿越时间和空间的特性。他理想的创作的画作（通常为41 x 33厘米）规格揭示了艺术家的意图，即把一切都集中在个体本质的本体论上，明显而简单，差别与无差别间就像一场博弈。童雁汝南的肖像画可以被描述为"灵魂"：他关注的是一个连贯而复杂的社会心理状况。

　　（马西莫·斯加林格拉）Massimo Scaringella

　　2019年威尼斯双年展科特迪瓦馆策展人

　　One another, facing each other

　　Massimo Scaringella

　　Since more than 20 years, Tong Yanrunan is one of these great innovators of the portrait. He forces us to look at people again, to remember them, to reconcile ourselves to their deep essence. The artist always proceeds live and with the model to portray in front of him. A closeness which exalts the contact even if sometimes the idiomatic distances put him in a sort of existential and spiritual limbo. But the portray gives a symbolic shape to the role of the individual rather than the representation of the personality and the physiognomy. His transversal brushstrokes and the way of spreading the color, often in soft and sometimes strong tones, refer more to the search for a landscape than to a face.

　　Color and light are the main elements of vision: the human eye initially perceives light and colors, after which, through its brain processing capacity, it distinguishes the shapes and the space in which they are placed: the signs become gestures, the gestures become colors and the color becomes material, generating an emotional painting, which concentrates us on a net gesture that determines the spatiality of the look and the memory. Surely the artist in more interested in the naturalness of the individual's life than in his true physical essence.

　　As the American poet Ed Dom says, "the landscape gives form and substance to the people who live in". It's the way in which Tong Yanrunan proceeds in his work that allows to people portrayed by him to go beyond themselves and intercept all the other characters crossing our time and the portion of space in which we move. The desired restricted space condition of the paintings where he works (always 41 x 33 cm) reveals the artist's intention to concentrate everything on the ontology of the essential of the individual through an apparent simplicity, in a sort of game of distinction and non-distinction. Tong Yanrunan makes a portraiture that could be described as "souls": he focuses a coherent and complex psychosocial condition.

　　Massimo Scaringella,

　　Curator of Pavilion of Ivory Coast - La Biennale di Venezia 2019