每个人的心中都会有一些与生存相关的东西永存下来。不管外界发生了多大的变化，留在心中的记忆却挥之不去。久而久之，这些沉睡的记忆转化成一种怀旧的“情结”，执拗的趣味，开始左右人的思路，主宰人的行为。梁群的油画作品《都市系列》，正是这种怀旧情绪的产物。

　　梁群的《都市系列》是以她所在的大连这个城市为素材，但画的不是现在的大连。现在的大连是高楼林立的水泥森林。面对这些高大的建筑群，梁群熟视无睹，没有感觉，更没有表现的欲望。因为从这些冰冷的现代建筑中，她找不回往日的温馨。往日的大连是一个宁静的海滨城市，房屋沿山势铺开，高低错落，街区两旁多是两、三层高的旧式小洋楼。由于历史的原因，它是中国城市中最富有异国情调的一个城市。梁群生在这里，长在这里，从小就熟悉这里的一街一巷，一草一木。二十世纪八十年代以来，市区的高层建筑如雨后春笋，一个以“北方香港”为目标的新大连使那个往日的、梁群心中的大连变成一个“残梦”。她怀念儿时的感觉，她要把那种感觉找回来—这就是梁群的《都市系列》留给我的印象。

　　梁群在她的近20幅《都市系列》油画作品中，几乎没有画新建筑，画的全是《老家》、《老街》、《老区》、《危房》等等。有一幅《会展中心》画的虽然是新的建筑物，但画面色调阴郁，并无“新意”可言。倒是那些《老家》、《老街》、《老区》画的温馨而辉煌。这些被唤醒的记忆是美好的，那里有画家太多的故事，太多的经历，太多触动心灵的东西，使她画得无法不投入，无法不倾注全部的激情于其中。而她的画所具有的魅力也正在于此。正是这种情感的投射，才不期然地把观众带入一种怀旧的氛围之中。

老区 / Old Area 2000

　　我们说梁群的这组取名为《都市》的油画风景，是带着太多记忆的痕迹与回味的色彩，并不是说在大连的现在找不到这样的街区，而是说梁群的都市风景不仅有别于车水马龙、熙来攘往的现代都市景观，也不同于仍保留了原来面貌的街区。因为她不是通过“写生”得来的风景，在这里你找不到“写生”的迹象。因为她画的是“历史”，而不是现实，是“过去时”，而不是“现在时”。画中没有一个人物，也很少有活动着的东西。严格说，她的画意不在都市风景，而在对生存的体验。看着这些画，一页页，好像是在翻阅一本被封存的日记，它们静静地呈现在那里，拉开了与观众之间的距离，与槽杂的尘世生活的距离，显现出2000年6月一种超凡脱俗的永恒的美。

黄昏 / Twilight 2000

　　梁群的这组风景油画，在艺术表现上也很有特点。由于画中的主体是建筑，所以几何化的构成关系在画中占据着主导地位。加以画家并不太强调空间深度，平面分割就显得更为重要。画家在这方面的修养可见于《春天》、《岗楼》、《框架》、《危房》、《黄昏》等作品之中。就连一幅象似在描绘静物的作品《鱼刺》也具有了一种“建筑感”。但画家并没有刻板地、理性地去勾画那些几何形状她常常画得很率意，很轻松，带着很强的表现主义色彩。典型的画面如：《老家》、《老区》、《阳伞》、《夜雨》、《城市》等。在色彩的运用上，倾向于沉稳、饱满与凝重，较好地体现出油画自身的特性。不足的是属于画家个人的语言特色还不是很显明。如果能逐步找到一种更具个性的油画语言，个人风格的确立就为期不远了。

2000年6月

Awakened Memories

Understanding Liang Qun’s Urban Series

　　Everybody always keeps some things related to survival in his heart. However big the changes in the outer world are, the memories in our hearts still remain. As time passes, these sleeping memories become a kind of sentimental “complex”, a stubborn interest, they start to control peoples’ thinking and dominate their behaviour. Liang Qun’s oil painting works Urban Series are the product of this kind of sentimental emotions.

街道 / Street Scene 2003

夜雨 / Night Rain 1999

　　Liang Qun’s Urban Series are using her hometown Dalian as material, but what she is painting is not the contemporary Dalian. Nowadays’ Dalian is a concrete forest made out of skyscrapers. Facing these lofty flocks of buildings, Liang Qun basically oversees them, she is got no feeling for them, and even less the desire of expression, as she cannot find the warmth of past times within those cold buildings. Dalian used to be a quiet coastal city, with houses spread along the mountain ridges, some of them high, some of them low, with old-style foreign two- to three-storey houses on both sides of the roads. For historical reasons, it is one of China’s cities with a foreign touch. Liang Qun was born here, has grown up here, and is familiar with every corner of it. Since the eighties, skyscrapers and tall buildings have been shooting out of the ground like mushrooms, a new Dalian with the objective of becoming a “Northern Hongkong” made the Dalian in Liang Qun’s heart, the one of bygone days, become something like a spoilt dream. She misses childhood’s feelings, and wants to bring them back – that is the impression Liang Qun’s Urban Series have given me.

老街 / The Old Street 2000

　　Among the almost twenty oil paintings of the Urban Series, there are almost no new buildings depicted, there are Old Homes, Old Streets, Old Areas, Dilapidated Buildings etc. There is one picture of a Convention Centre – although this is a new building, but the tone of it is gloomy and dreary, so there is nothing “new” about it, whereas those old homes, streets and areas look warm and brilliant. Those awakened memories are beautiful, they are full of the painter’s stories, experiences and things that are touching the soul, which let her put all of herself and all of her passion into the paintings. And this is where the charm of her paintings is. And it is this emotional input that leads the viewer into a kind of sentimental mood.

　　When we say that Liang Qun’s Urban Series are filled with the traces of memories and flavours of past times, this doesn’t mean that those areas can’t be found in nowadays’ Dalian. It is to say that Liang Qun’s urban landscapes are not only different from the bustling modern cities full of heavy traffic, they are also different from the areas that have retained their original features. This is because she’s not merely depicting, she is painting history, and not reality – it is in past tense, not in present tense. There are no persons in the paintings, and rarely any moving things. Strictly spoken, the meaning of her paintings is not about urban landscapes, but about the experience of existence. Looking at these pictures one by one is like browsing a sealed diary: They silently appear, increase the distance with the viewer and the distance with earthly life, and emerge a kind of extraordinary eternal beauty.

　　This series of landscape oil paintings is also very special in its artistic expression. As the main subjects are buildings, the geometrical relations occupy a leading role. As the painter does not emphasize the depth of space, plane segmentation seems even more important. The painter’s mastery in this respect can be seen in pictures like Spring, Watchtower, Frame, Dilapidated Building, Twilight, etc. Even Fishbone, a picture that seems like a still life, also has this architectural feeling. But the painter does not just inflexibly and rationally sketch geometrical shapes, she often paints very relaxed with a strong expressionist feeling. Representative paintings like Old Home, Old Area, Parasol, Night Rain, City, etc. All tend to be deep, satiated and imposing in their use of colours, showing an inherent quality of oil paintings. The painter’s personal language is still not very pronounced. If she can gradually find a kind of personal oil painting language, then she should soon be able to establish a personal style.

　　June 2000

作者：贾方舟