范姜明道的创作源于对自我生命意志的感性体验，更有赖于一种反思生命价值的理性精神。艺术家似乎有着与生俱来的理论洞察能力，因此其创作带有明确的意义预设。与当代艺术在观念表达上习惯于倾向不确定性的视觉样式不同，范姜明道试图构建一种纪念碑式的宏伟命题。当然，1950年代出生并成长于台湾的优渥家庭，1980年代青年时期赴美留学研读设计艺术专业，范姜明道丰富、多元的知识经验和文化境遇，赋予其游牧式的跨文化视野。或者说，范姜明道鲜有1980年代以来中国当代艺术家群体普遍的政治自觉：身份和感知的差异，使我们无法以中国当代艺术史叙事的逻辑，梳理其创作的当代性理路。甚至可以说，范姜明道更强调艺术语言的纯粹性、精致性，其内在的文艺素养和才情，使其更敏感于捕捉优雅静谧、内敛安详的叙事结构，过于宣泄乃至剧烈形式对抗的视觉表征对其而言，只能说是一种陌生的阅读经验而非生存际遇。因此，范姜明道艺术创作中表现出的审美意旨，往往超越主题的意义阐释并独立生长起来。范姜明道熟知中国传统文化的思想渊源，因此其作品中隐在的东方智慧是不言而喻的；然而最富有活力和好奇心的青年时代，范姜明道却身处美国当代文化艺术的空间之中，所以在思维和工作方式上，其更关注艺术在“真实”的时间空间之中表达的可能性。意即，范姜明道的艺术创作不仅仅是指涉内心的声音，他更愿意将创作视为一种严肃的古典意味，一种带有纪念性、不朽意志的丰碑。与后现代主义哲学消解传统知识谱系的思想相左，范姜明道尝试重建理性秩序的规范，其艺术形式无可避免的触及着宏大叙事的理论印迹。范姜明道似乎不愿意将创作和主题神秘化，他能直白而清晰地描述自己的思考，我们知道，其思考并非中国当代艺术的核心政治伦理，而是以当代艺术的名义，探究其内在体悟式的生命感知：其精神归宿并不是一件雕塑、一件加工制品，而是自传体的延伸。

　　范姜明道自2006年始执着于创作“再生系列”的雕塑，不少研究者包括艺术家本人都指出：再生与自然和生命轮回的信仰有关。确乎如此，范姜明道在1990年代参与当代艺术实验的系列创作中，就展露出对自然和都市生活论题思索的端倪：范姜明道是一个富有诗人气质的艺术家，其视觉语言不免带有一种沉郁的色调——尽管他经常戏谑称种草是“一件非常好玩”的事情。关于城市空间与公共领域关系的讨论，曾作为本世纪初最重要的中国当代艺术命题为学术界所广泛关注，唯一不同的是，范姜明道的行为发生于十年前的台湾。毫无疑问的是，中国当代艺术的社会学、政治学诉求，在本世纪初转向以装置、影像、行为，甚至是项目计划的表达方式为主要，架上绘画作为一种叙事语言的修辞能力遭受前所未有的质疑；尽管在最近几年时间里，批评界开始反思和提倡重新回归架上，但作为一种时间和空间的艺术形态，装置和项目计划的样式一直被作为最具震撼力的视觉结构。必然与其早期接受环境、空间设计的知识经验有关，范姜明道的一系列工作都试图跨越作品与空间的界限，其更关注一种永恒的共生关系而非临时的展示关系，甚至应该说，包括土地、建筑等都是其作品的一部分。范姜明道惯常使用石和木两种材质开展自己的创作：其中坚硬、朴质的石材作为一种不朽的传统象征，其与“永生”的丧葬仪式有着密切的关联，因而在中国古代墓葬艺术中备受推重；而木质脆弱易损的自然属性，使其与人“短暂”的生命旅程形成一种恰如其分的互文关系。以此观之，范姜明道创作的“再生系列”实际上处于一种物质观念的悖论之中，其意欲为“已死之木”筑立“生”的纪念碑，然而这些摹仿树木的枝干尽管被精心地装置起来，然而其“已死”的现实并未被改变，“朽灭”仍是其无可避免的时间困境。艺术家当然明白这一点，从某种意义上而言，范姜明道只是以另外一种被构造的“生命”形态，复现了尘世的华丽和朴质。我们必须承认，范姜明道在某种程度上完全摒弃了情绪语言的表现性因素，以至于我们难以在这些作品中获得温情的生命感，木合板切片被抛磨、打蜡后拥有的光泽和冰冷质感，正是穿越生死后的异度瞬间。

　　范姜明道的艺术观念是一种隐喻：“再生系列”或者会在一种超现实的力量下重生，作品上伸长的“活”的枝叶。这些柔软的曲线中蕴藏着新的视觉生机，艺术家发现了被使用、被遗弃的生活之物的“废墟之美”，在这里物件上留存着生命流逝的“迹”，就如同人的皮肤碰触到时间之维那般。在我看来，范姜明道在精神质底上，更多接受的依然是中国传统文化中绵延千年的生命信仰。尽管今天我们仍在讨论中国当代艺术与当代政治语境之间的密切关联，坦言当代艺术创作必须抱持对政治领域的警惕和批判意识，但是近几年中，我们已经看到中国当代艺术创作的思想倾向，业已由群体转向个体，符号化的视觉形象让位于深度的、转向内在的一种认知。范姜明道没有选择一种“宏伟”的材质和体量风格，而是用一种微观经验切入对生命伦理的幽思。当代艺术的价值观念早已超越主题和形式语言，也超越了视觉媒介的限性，个体经验正在重构一种新的当代性。年轻的当代艺术家有活力展现自我的幻象和梦境，他们有倾泻不尽的精力挥洒激动人心的情绪；然而对于已知天命的范姜明道而言，感悟生命义理，将是其未来人生永恒不易的思考论题。

2012年11月于北京新源里

Memorial Plaque: Consciousness of Life’s Course in Fanjiang Mingdao’s Artistic Conception

　　Fanjiang Mingdao’s creative work originates from his ex originates from his experiential sense of the self’s will to life. Moreover, it depends on a rational spirit of reflection on life’s value. Our artist seems to possess innate theoretical insight; thus, his creative work proceeds with a clear assumption of meaningfulness. Unlike conceptual treatments in some contemporary art which habitually tend toward indeterminate visual formats, Fanjiang Mingdao tries to configure a grand premise which has the nature of a memorial plaque. Of course this relates to the prosperous family into which Fanjiang Mingdao was born in 1950, as well as his youthful period of studies in design art which he commenced in 1980. Fanjiang’s abundant, pluralistic fund of know-how, along with exposure to different cultures, have given a nomadic trans-cultural scope to his cultural vision. Perhaps one should say that Fanjiang Mingdao rarely shows the kind of political awareness that has been universal among Chinese contemporary artists since 1980. Yet differences in identity and perception make us in China unable, using the narrative logic of contemporary Chinese art history, to sort out principles of contemporaneity in our creative work. One could even say that Fanjiang Mingdao puts more emphasis on purity and refinement of language. His inner artistic cultivation and talents make him more adept at capturing graceful, benign, introspective structures of narrative. Overly expulsive and intensely oppositional forms of visual display are unfamiliar objects of perusal for him, but not encounters from within his own being. Thus the aesthetic intent expressed in Fanjiang Mingdao’s creative production often goes beyond thematic elucidation to take an independent direction of growth. Fanjiang Mingdao is deeply aware of the intellectual sources of our traditional culture. Thus the Oriental wisdom implicit in his works makes itself understood without being proclaimed. However, Fanjiang spend the most active, intellectually curious years of his youth in the milieu of American culture and art. Thus in his mode of thinking and work, he is more concerned with possibilities of communicating through his art in a “real” temporal setting. That is to say, Fanjiang Mingdao’s artistic production does not just indicate the presence of an inner voice: he would rather view creative work in a strictly classical sense as something with monumentality, as an enduring monument to the will. Unlike post-modern thinking which dissolves the parameters of traditional knowledge, Fanjiang Mingdao tries to set up norms and rational order. His artistic forms unavoidably touch upon the theoretical imprints of grand narrative. It would seem that Fanjiang Mingdao is unwilling to mystify his creative works and themes. He can describe his own thinking directly and distinctly. We know that his thinking is not at the core of contemporary political ethics in China. Rather, it is in the name of contemporary art that he explores life-perceptions he gains through inner realization. His spiritual refuge is not a sculpture, not a manufactured article—rather, it is the extension of an autobiographical project.

　　Beginning from 2006, Fanjiang Mingdao has dedicated himself to sculpting the “Rebirth” series. Quite a few scholars and the artist himself point out that the idea of “rebirth” has to do with Nature and with belief in reincarnation. Indeed, this is the case. Among successive contemporary art experiments which Fanjiang engaged in during the 1990s, he made the first steps towards his later cogitations on Nature and urban life. Fanjiang Mingdao is an artist with a richly poetic temperament. His visual language cannot help but show an expansive coloring—even though he often jokes that planting grass seeds is “a lot of fun.” The discussion on urban space and the public domain attracted broad concern as a key topic of contemporary art during the early years of this century. The difference is that Fanjiang Mingdao’s relevant performances were done ten years before that in Taiwan. Without a doubt the sociological and political demands on contemporary art are such that installation, video, performance and even project design became the main expressive modes beginning in the early years of this century in China; at the same time, the narrative and rhetorical power of easel-mounted art were cast into doubt more than ever before. Even though critics have begun to consider and propose a return to easel-mounted art in the past few years, still the genres of installation and project design, as forms of art-forms unfolding in time and space, have been seen as the visual structures most likely to have an impact. This is certainly related to whether or not one has absorbed knowledge and experience about environment and spatial design in one’s formative years. Fanjiang Mingdao’s series of works are all attempts to span the barrier between artwork and the space around it. More than that, they are concerned with relations of enduring coexistence rather than temporary relations of display. One should even say that the soil and surrounding buildings are considered parts of his pieces. Fanjiang Mingdao typically uses stone and wood as materials to commence the making of an artwork. Durable, plain stone as a material is traditionally taken as a symbol of enduringness; stones are closely linked to the “timeless” ritual of burial; thus the art of ancient gravesites is given respectful attention. As for wood, its fragile, easily damaged properties make it fitted for cross-referencing with the “transitory” life-journey of human beings. Viewed in this sense, Fanjiang Mingdao’s “Rebirth Series” actually situates itself within a paradox of conceptions about matter. His intent is to erect a “living” memorial for a tree that has died. Yet although these branches that imitate a tree are painstakingly installed, no change is wrought upon the “already dead” condition: “the timeless and the perishing” still pose an inevitable temporal impasse. Of course Fanjiang Mingdao understands this point, and in a certain sense, the artist himself constitutes yet another morphological variant of “being alive.” In this way the dusty world’s contrast of ornateness versus plain simplicity is posed in yet another form. We must acknowledge that Fanjiang Mingdao to some extent eliminates the expressive element of emotive language on this matter, to the point that we cannot extract tenderness about life’s fate from these pieces. The sliced-up pieces of plywood have been sanded and waxed to give them a smooth cold finish, but this is alienated time-scale of a moment that has passed through birth and death.

　　Fanjiang Mingdao’s artistic conception is a metaphor: The “Rebirth Series” may take on new life due to a surreal force whereby the piece’s “living” branches extend upward. These soft curves harbor a new visual liveliness. The artist discovers a “ruined beauty” in things of life that have been used and discarded. In such things the traces of life’s passing still linger, just as a person’s skin can touch upon the dimension of time. In my view, Fanjiang Mingdao in his spiritual “grain” avails himself of the faith in life which has extended itself for thousands of years within Chinese culture. Even though today we are still discussing the close connection of China’s contemporary art with China’s contemporary politics, and though we frankly admit that contemporary art-making must maintain vigilance and a critical awareness of politics, yet in the past few years we have seen that the intellectual tendency of our contemporary art-making has turned from the masses towards the individual. Symbolization in visual form is giving way to deeper, more inward cognition. Stylistically, Fanjiang Mingdao did not choose a grand material or scale. Instead, from an experience of minute inspection he leads the viewer towards reverie about bio-ethics. Contemporary art’s concepts of value have already gone beyond thematic, formalist language, just as they have gone beyond limitations in visual media. Individual experience is even now reconfiguring a new contemporaneity. The vitality of young contemporary artists can manifest our fantasies and dreams. With inexhaustible energy they pour forth emotions that have the power to stir us. Yet for Fanjiang Mingdao, who has reached the age of “knowing Heaven’s mandate,” to gain realization of life’s meaningful coherence is an abiding, unchanging topic of thought for future lifetimes.

November 2012, Xinyuan-li, Beijing

作者：魏祥奇