吕山川所作的工作并非一种艺术考古学的研究，而是表达自己对于现实事件的反应。作为一个当代艺术家，他对“当代”的理解是艺术家的表达应该与现实有关，这实际上也是中国当代艺术最重要的特征之一。生活在社会急剧变革中的中国艺术家都切身地感受着现实对于他们的作用与影响，他们处于全球与本土、自我与社会强烈互动的张力之中，由此内在地生发起表达现实的愿望，可以说，以“当代”——当下现实——为资源的艺术创造成为中国当代艺术最为引人入胜的文化特征。但是，就吕山川而言，他对于现实的表达又是与众不同的，他的艺术有魅力之处在于他的创作体现了自我与事件、语言与媒介、绘画过程与行为这三个方面的统一，概而言之，他的艺术是事件、媒介和行为三位一体的结果。

　　首先，进入吕山川的作品的事件都是“社会性”的或可谓之“大”的事件，包括政治、军事、经济、文化等方面，这些事件既有中国的内容，也有国际的内容。在2007年，它们是影响中国的大事，也几乎是在世界范围内产生影响的大事，这反映了中国处在全球化时代与世界密不可分的事实，也反映了一位中国艺术家的全球视野。这些“事件”首先作为“新闻”能动着吕山川的感觉，使他产生一种“再现”的冲动。对于他来说，重要的不仅仅是各种事物的“内容”而更是事件发生的“现场”，在那些“现场”之中，充满着感人的气氛和弥漫开来的力量。这种“现场”令他兴奋。作为画家，他所要捕捉和再现的正是这种可以转换为艺术形象与形式的“现场”，于是他把画布当成了“现场”的容器，在描绘的过程中紧紧控制着气氛与力量这两个因素。也许他所画的事实不完全与每一个观者的生活经验有关，但他作品中膨胀的“现场感”却能在视觉上构成对人的冲击，使人进入到事件之中，在那里感受曾经发生的存在。在这个意义上，吕山川成功地实现了社会学内容向艺术性表达的转换。

　　在今天的日常生活中，报纸已经成了人们与外部世界沟通的重要媒介，在报纸这种媒介上的图像也成为事件的代言人。吕山川紧紧抓住报纸这种媒介——这种与他的日常生活有关，也与他的艺术语言有关——就抓住了艺术表达的出发点，使他能够建立起一种持续的艺术生活。只要新闻中有事件，就有报纸的传播，也就有了他作画的契机。通过报纸这个媒介，他意欲抒发的情感一方面有了通往画布的桥梁，也使媒介本身成为他艺术中的“内容”。指明这一特点是重要的，在现实与媒介难以分离的今天，媒介本身成为一种真实的存在，这对于艺术家来说提供了创造的资源，现代以来无论中外的许多艺术家都以这种方式画出了关于现实的图像，只是吕山川在这种方式上更加彻底。只要看到报纸上传播出重要的事件，无论白天还是黑夜，他马上开始作画，而且一气呵成，直到完成。另一方面，他用了巨大的画布将报纸的图像放大，使图像极为醒目地展现在眼前，就像真正进入事件发生的现场一样，使作品的“新闻性”得到最大限度的肯定。由此可以说，吕山川以报纸这种“媒介”为艺术表现“媒介”的作法，刷新了媒介进入艺术的记录。

　　毫无疑问，吕山川是一位具有极高的绘画感悟力和表现能力的画家，在当代艺术整体形态走向综合媒介运用的时代，他坚信绘画这种最基本的艺术语言仍然具有表达当代主题的价值，但他同时也知道必须为绘画注入新的生机，从而使绘画具有足够的与其他媒介形成视觉上抗衡的魅力，因此，他在运用绘画语言进行艺术表达时融进了绘画的观念性表达。他的绘画首先是“即兴”的，真正做到有感而发，无感而歇;他的绘画过程是充满行为方式的，在图绘中既用画笔塑造，也用手涂颜料，使绘画过程成为一个注入体能的过程，留下难以料测的形式痕迹;他通常将画面的色调作“降调”处理，使画面的色彩更加单纯，突出了颜料物质性的力度;他规定自己在“新闻”还在“新”的时间段里完成作品，当天的事件当天画完，观念性地体现“事件”这个主题的时效性……所有这些，都构成了他的绘画独特的观念与表现有机统一的风格，这是他对当代艺术的一种贡献。

　　范迪安

　　中国美术馆馆长、教授

　　Lu Shanchuan is not doing an archaeological research, but expressing his reflecting on the social events. As a contemporary artist, his thought about contemporary is that artist’s expression should relate to reality which is one of the most important features of Chinese contemporary art. Chinese artists are living in a rapid reform era and have experienced effect and influence from social reality. They are under the strong interactive extension of globalization and localization, self and society, and hereby desiring to represent reality from inside. Art works that developing with this background and originating from contemporary and present reality should have the most fascinating culture identity in Chinese contemporary art. However, Lu Shanchuan’s art expression about reality is different from above-mentioned way because his creation realizes the unification among self and events, language and media, painting and performing. In another words, Lu Shanchuan’s art unites the events, media and performance in one.

　　First, events in Lu Shanchuan’s painting are featuring sociality or so-called great events including politics, economy, culture, military affairs and so on which both affect China and international field. On one hand, his works implies that China is now in a globalization era and has close relationship with the other countries in the world; On the other hand, Lu Shanchuan’s works focusing on these great events also indicate he is a contemporary artist with global view. These press events touched Lu Shanchuan’s feeling and pushed him to have impulsion to represent it. For Lu Shanchuan, the most importance is the presence that events occurred, but events’ content. The presence filled with moved environment and dispersing power makes Lu Shanchuan excited. As an artist, what he want to capture and represent are these presence which can be transferred into art image and style. Then Lu Shanchuan turns canvas into a container of presence and well controlled environment and power in his painting process. It should be possible that some events in his painting have no relationship with certain audiences’ living experience. Nevertheless, the present feeling in his work can at least impacts audiences’ vision and make them to think about events in his painting. Taking this point for thought, Lu Shanchuan achieves a successful transform from sociological content into art expression.

　　Today, newspaper has become one of the important media for people to communicate with the outer world and therefore images in the newspaper have attracted much attention from people for they can be a symbol of the whole events. Lu Shanchuan tries to use newspaper, a media relating to his daily life and art language, as a starting point and then set up a constant art life. As long as there are events in news, there should be newspaper delivery, which makes it possible for Lu Shanchuan to continue his painting. Through painting images in newspaper, he grasps the way of expressing his feelings and thoughts on canvas and newspaper as a media also has the content in Lu Shanchuan’s art. Today, it’s hard to distinguish reality and media because media itself has become a real exist. Actually, some artists in China and abroad have absorbed inspirations from this point to create images about reality; Especially Lu Shanchuan derives a good deal of benefit. Whenever he finds a latest important event in the newspaper, he starts his painting immediately until it’s accomplished. Moreover, he emphasizes each scene in his works by magnifying images from newspaper on his canvas. The images are so glaring that people will feel it like real present. Lu Shanchuan’s using the media newspaper as an art expressing media have set up a new record about how media entering into art.

　　Undoubtedly, Lu Shanchuan has excellent talent on painting and art expression. Nowadays, multi-media has been popular in Chinese contemporary art, but Lu Shanchuan believes that painting, the basic art language, should be one of the most important methods to display contemporary topics. He absolutely tried his best to inject fresh blood on contemporary painting to achieve and show its value while comparing with other media. Lu Shanchuan usually uses brush to paint as well as smearing it by hand. As the painting process is applying with an unpredictable result, his art also technically features happening trace. In addition, Lu Shanchuan makes the color hue much grayer than the real images, and then his works not only have pure color, but are attributing of materiality. He forces himself to finish painting news as it’s still in a latest situation. Making conception and expression into a hypostatic union shows Lu Shanchuan’s art style and his contribution to contemporary art.

　　Fan Di’an

　　Professor, Director of National Art Museum of China(NAMoC)

作者：范迪安