长期以来绘画以忠实地描摹现实世界为己任，因此我们有了关于达·芬奇解剖人体以求准确掌握人的结构特征的记载，有了阿尔伯蒂和丢勒在建筑和绘画方面钻研透视原理的描述，甚至在中国古代也有了谢赫六法之“应物象形”、“随类赋彩和”传移摹写“等绘画创作的技术性要求。只是因为照相机的诞生，能够逼真再现现实事物的摄影影像才改变了绘画长期垄断的地位，从而迫使人们在忧心重重的同时开始思考绘画自身的特点和出路。于是，绘画的自律和自我独立意识开始出现，艺术家们认识到绘画如果想存在和发展，就不能只是扮演着两千多年前柏拉图就论断的现实之影子的角色，而是要让这个”影子“摆脱现实的束缚去独自跳舞，要让这个作为最高本体——”理式“的”摹本的摹本“自己开辟和创造一种现实。毫无疑问，这是一种另外的现实，它以作为物理世界的具体的现实为基础，但更多的却是在建构一种属于它自身的现实，一种更多的属于精神层面的非现实的现实。

　　青年艺术家王尊的创作当然是身处这一百五十年来艺术非现实化的发展路径中的，他也当然是受到中国改革开放三十多年来艺术摆脱政治意识形态的简单说教而向自身的独立变革潮流的影响，他更与新世纪这十年开始进入创作的他的同龄人一样，在自己的画布上自由地将不同时空中的人与物大胆组合、匹配，哪怕这样的创作没有了现实的具体对应物，哪怕这样的行为离主观臆造已经很近！他在记录自己2008年创作长达十米的《九月屏》时思想活动的艺术笔记中这样写道：“自己希望用比较现实的表达方式，来对抗和消解作品屏风所放置的主体世界——也就是我们身处的世界——的现实性。这种现实过于现实了，我不喜欢，我只想提供了一个‘类现实’的屏风作为背景。让它看上去似乎也在我们的世界中出现过，但又不真实。”

　　值得注意的是，他用了一个“类现实”的新概念来描述他自己创造的画面世界，因为他觉得我们身处的世界太现实了，所以他要另外在画面中营造一个他笔记中向往的布满“一万年前的星星”的“桃花源”，一个他在其中可以天马行空，可以利用自己手中的画笔表达心声的世界。在我看来，这个“类现实”何止是一张大屏风般的画。其实，王尊这几年创作的各类风格和主题的绘画，都试图建立起一个个比现实世界更诡异的现实。它们在形象造型上能够找到与现实实存的关联，但是它们发生和存在的环境却超乎日常的经验世界，用时间和空际的无间隙自由穿插来形容丝毫不为过。

　　依理而论，几张画是无法对抗和消解强大无边的自然现实世界的，王尊想要做的是“用绘画消解掉我们所认定的现实性。”“现实”是无法抗拒的，但是人对于现实的观念和认识——“现实性”，却是可以在精神意识的层面加以改变。那么，我们身处的物理世界究竟如何过于现实或者说太现实了呢？王尊在自己的艺术笔记里没有直接提及，更没有给出什么答案。但是，他的画面里出现的各种衣着怪异的人形物态，来路不明的荒疏环境，还有形象模糊的鬼精奇兽，却让我们感受到一种强烈的隔世般的冷漠，一种旁观者式的清冷。或许，我们今天生活的世界被各种人造物覆盖、填充而成为一堵难以逾越的厚重高墙，我们每个人终日的劳作无非是为这座早已压抑难耐的物质化高墙再增添物质化的累赘。这种唯物唯实的欲望依附在物质世界光鲜靓丽的外表上，释放出一种令人目眩又恶心的所谓“现实性”。要在意识层面改变和克服这种沉重的现实性，必须寻找到消解和对抗的途径与力量，必须在画面中创造一个灵异的世界，就像古代的《聊斋志异》那样，用一个鬼神的世界来解构充满矛盾的现实世界。

　　与同龄人相比，王尊似乎是少有者，他不仅怀疑眼前现实的真实性，而且怀疑自己臆造的“非现实”景象的真实性。因为在他的眼里，那“一万年前的星星”其实是一万年前就已经死亡的星星的光芒——眼见未必为实！同样，今天的一切在未来的千万年后，也将只成为标本。这种星际转换的时空观念，带来的是一种带着迹灭的空无和感伤。

　　既然现实过于现实了，类现实也非真实，那么，艺术创作类现实的意义究竟何在呢？王尊似乎像他从小就充满憧憬的“知识分子”那样，知其不可为而为之，凭借着自己手中的画笔，在尘世通往仙境的道路上寻找着转世的工具和象征物。仙鹤，就这样成为了王尊最近沟通人神的信使，只是他在内心并没有像我们的祖先那样把它高度拟人化和品格化，因为与古人不同的是，获得了现代科学文明教育的他深知，并不存在永恒的现实和真实。他用来对抗和消解现实世界的艺术中的“类现实”，尽管是他每天精神居住的彼端，尽管是他一半的生活方式的来源，但是它依然是短暂的。他预设仙鹤作为画面中的他者，其实是要为人类过于现实的生活，找到一个相对客观的旁观者。

　　这就是一个向往成为知识分子的艺术家所能做的——他意识到现实世界的现实性对包括他在内的人类造成了压抑和束缚，他用画笔营造出一种类似现实世界的非现实，尽管他知道从根本意义上说这样的类现实其实也非真实，但至少他在努力寻找，试图用一种现实去替代一种出了问题的现实。

高岭

2011年3月22-24日

Deconstructing Reality in “Quasi-reality”
--On Wang Zun’s Paintings

Gao Lin
                                         March 22-24, 2011

　　For a long time painting has taken faithful depiction of the real world for its own task, therefore we had the record of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomy of human bodies for precise knowledge about the characteristics of human structure, we had the description of Alberti’s and Dürer’s probe into perspective principles in architecture and painting, and even in ancient China we had such technical requirements for painting as "Describing objects as they are", “Coloring objects as they are” and “Replicating the paintings as they are” among Xiehe’s Six Methods Theory. It was not until the birth of camera, which could in a most lifelike way reflect the photographic image of real things in life that the long monopoly of painting as reflection of reality was changed. And this compelled people obsessed by it to begin pondering over painting’s own features and its way out. As a result, the self-discipline and self-consciousness of painting began to take shape, and artists came to realize that if painting was to survive and develop it should no longer only play the role of being the shadow of reality defined by Plato over 2000 years ago, instead we should let the “shadow” get free from the bondage of reality to dance its own way, and let this highest noumenon(thing-in-itself)—the “rational” “copy of the copy” start anew and create its own kind of reality. Undoubtedly this is another reality based on the concrete reality of the physical world while constructing its own reality beyond that, a non-real reality more of the spiritual level.

　　The young artist Wang Zun’s painting naturally develops on the way of making art non-reality that has been there for 150 years. He is surely also influenced by the revolutionary developing trend of art for its independent being which has broken away from the simple didacticism of political ideology since China’s open-door policy 30 years ago. Moreover, just like his contemporaries who started their creations in the first decade of this new century, he unbridledly matches and combines people and things in different times and spaces even though these creations have no counterparts in reality, even though this way of creation has been very much close to subjective assumption! He thus wrote in his artistic notebook recording his personal thoughts while creating the ten-meter-wide painting September Screen: “I want to adopt a relatively realistic way of expression to defy and deconstruct the actuality of the physical  world—the world in which we exist. This actuality is much too real so that I don’t like it. I just want to supply a ‘quasi-reality’ screen to be a setting, to make it look as if once lived in our perceived world while being not so real.” 

　　What is noteworthy is that he used a new concept of “quasi-reality” to describe his painted world. Because the world we are in is too real to him, he will seek other means in his painting to create a paradisical “peach blossom land” as aspired to in his notebook whose sky is dotted with “stars of ten thousand years ago”, a land where he could unconstrainedly soar across the skies like a heavenly steed and use his painting brush to express the voice of his heart. As far as I can see, this “quasi-reality” is much more than a painting of large screen size. In fact, the paintings drawn by Wang Zun in these years of classified styles and themes all attempt to build a more weird and mysterious reality than that in our physical world. Images of the painted things in this “quasi-reality” can be traced back to their associated things in the actual reality, while the environment where they take shape and exist transcends our daily empirical world. And it is no exaggeration at all to use “free non-intermittent alternation of time and space” to describe it.

　　Theoretically, just a few paintings could not possibly defy and deconstruct the powerful and boundless natural world of reality. What Wang Zun wants is to “use painting to dissolve what we perceived to be the reality.” “Reality” is unlikely to be resisted, but man’s conception and realization about it—“actuality” can be changed on the spiritual and conscious plane. Then, why is the physical world we are in much too real or over-real? Wang did not make a direct reference to it, nor did he give us any answer. Whereas, the various oddly-dressed men and weird objects, the forlorn and deserted environment of questionable origin, and the ghosts, spirits, strange creatures of vague images in his paintings all leave us in a state of strong apathy and aloofness from the actual world and the soberness of a spectator.
　　Maybe the world we’re living in today is covered and filled with so many artificial things that it has become an insurmountable high and heavy wall. Every individual’s daily toil is only to add more materialized burdens to the long-pressing and intolerable high materialistic wall. This materialistic and utilitarian desire is clinging to the brilliant and attractive appearance of the physical world, giving out the dazzling yet disgusting light of “reality”. To change and overcome the heavy “reality” on the plane of consciousness, we must find about the way and power through which we can deconstruct and defy it, we must create a sagacious and weird world in the painting as depicted in the ancient Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, which resorted to a ghostly world to deconstruct a real world full of contradictions.
　　Compared to his contemporaries, Wang Zun is among the few who is not only suspicious of the actuality of the perceived physical world, but also suspicious of the actuality of his own supposed “non-real” scenes. In his view, those “stars of ten thousand years ago” are actually the radiance of stars which already dimmed and died ten thousand years ago. Likewise, everything today we see will only become samples or specimen hundreds of thousands of years later. This conception of changed time and space leaves us in a melancholic mood and gives us a sense of emptiness.
　　Since reality of this physical world is over-real, nor is “quasi-reality” real, then what is the significance of this quasi-reality in artistic creations? Like many other aspiring “intellectuals” from childhood on, Wang was sure of the impossibility of this kind of creation yet he attempted it and tried hard at it. Red-crowned cranes thus became the messenger between man and spirit lately used in his painting world. But deep in his heart he does not elevate them to be anthropomorphic and of human morals as did our ancestors, because unlike ancients before him, he who is well equipped by modern science and civilization is keenly aware that there is no eternal reality and actuality. Although the “quasi-reality” in his art through which he defies and deconstructs the physical world is the other end for his spiritual dwelling and the source of half of his living means, it is short and transient. The real purpose for his setting the red-crowned crane as the “Other” in his painting is to seek and secure a relatively objective spectator for the over-real life of humans.
　　This is what an artist who aspires to be an intellectual can do—he realized that the “actuality” in the real world repressed and restrained all men including himself, so he used his brush to create a non-reality much like the real world despite that he knew fundamentally this quasi-reality is actually not real at all, but at least, he is searching and attempting to use one reality to substitute the other reality that has been problematic.

作者：高岭