何森的新作品让我着迷，让我有写点儿什么的冲动。它们是一种从新的观念中产生的却伴有古老韵味的灵感。我并不知道它产生的特定原因，很可能它来自于主题的抒情性或是技巧的特性，或者，也许技巧是最好的解释。流连于每一个微小的细节是很新奇的，而正是由于这些细节，我们认识到没有什么是偶然发生的，即使在混乱时代仍有一种由未知的规律决定的精确秩序。

　　我钦佩何森敢于做出改变。也许他那些关于吸烟女人的作品已经达到一个如此高度完美的地步，以至于实际上有点让这位艺术家感到厌倦，他现在在寻找新的动力、新的挑战和新的目标。他把那些正在发生的、日复一日快速持久的流逝放在一边;他想要寻回一个过去，一个他将会令人惊讶地予以更新复兴的过去。

　　他遵从于古老的传统，通过复制老一代大师的艺术品来不断精致自己的技巧。他在自己的画布上把马远、李鱓、徐渭水墨画的杰作再现出来，赋予它们油画的表现力的能量和时代性。这些都是中国人视野中熟知的主题，它们是荣耀王朝时代的象征和图像，承载了极其丰富意蕴的图像。然而对于西方观众来说它们是来自异域情调世界的梦幻和神话，处在遥远的时空之中，是那么的神奇和不可思议。

　　何森从两种特定的中国传统绘画主题中汲取灵感：山水画和花鸟画。从李鱓那里，何森借鉴了竹子的象征意义：高贵、儒家讲求的清廉正直、夫妻间的忠诚、谦恭和坚定不移——一个曲而不折的“士”的形象。何森决定用壮丽的书法来与它并置。从李鱓的作品还衍生出一幅兰花的画作。在一幅李鱓“杂画”中，一只蝴蝶飞舞在似乎是萌发于岩石之上的花朵上，而岩石在画布上的出现显示了这种新的技巧的早期形态：用画刀造成较为浓重的色彩，在上半部分，题字似乎是直接抄录了原来的文本;而在下半部分艺术家很可能自己拼贴了题字，因为这种文字排列在内容和形态上都表现得更为现代。

　　那些关于花朵的作品是受到明代才华横溢的画家和作家徐渭的启发，用蓝色和玫瑰色的阴影替换了它们的色彩。这些意象悬浮在空虚中，与现实世界完全脱离开，萦绕着一种扩散的氛围。整个气氛是不确定的，就像悬浮着的一样。看来何森想要传达出徐渭那种破坏性的、好几次导致他想自杀的情绪以及贯穿在他作品中那种焦躁的、无法亲近的情绪，这种情绪常常令人感到震撼，还有徐渭那种脱离传统和引进了新的神韵活力的具象化的反叛，这种新的神韵活力是由徐渭狂放的草书和断裂的笔触构成的。

　　何森把这种创新的力量和精神化为己有，随之这些因素在对马远的作品进行再现的几幅画作中达到了非常高的水准。在这些作品里，他描绘了深深的暴风雨中的大海。何森再现了这位画家那种带有锐气的风格特征：马远实际上通过厚重、棱角分明、短小的笔锋采用了斧凿的技巧和一种简化的画面构成。诗句再次揭示出动态中猛烈的情感和混乱的状态：“黄河逆流”、“云舒浪卷” 、“细浪漂漂” 、“长江万顷”。这是另一种叛逆，再一次的“狂飚突进”，一种属于东方的非典型性的激情。

　　何森用一种独特的技巧来强调这种爆发的迫切：他把画布分为两个或三个交互的部分：一个部分是用毛笔实现的平淡，整洁的色调和一种非常轻淡的连贯性，这种连贯性唤起了一种宁静无常的感觉。另一个部分则是用画刀实现具象构成的强烈;它是鲜活的、猛烈的，似乎是令人惊愕的，使波涛逐渐汹涌而用愤怒激荡起整个大海。在某些地方笔触很无力，就像在一场飓风或暴雨之后。这些特性自我抱合，创造出循环的笔触消散在空白的部分，似乎整幅画作还未结束。

　　这些画作似乎是Jackil博士和Hyde先生的创作，用绘画的形式表现一个具有多重性格的人，先是安静的、温顺的，继而突然转变为令人恐慌的激烈暴躁的，最终精疲力竭了的慵懒人。每一个瞬间被巧妙地分开，以一种精巧的风格、精准的情绪和一种有相互关系的感触来刻画。

　　在另外一些作品中，波涛变得非常雅致和曲折，修饰性的主旨看起来几乎有点琐碎，随着他进行无数次的转换，明显出现了一种更加简单天真的风格变化。他好像在唤起一种充满喜悦的生命风格，由瞬息消散的喜悦感和诗意化的美感构成，正如宋代宫廷美学的价值一样。自然仍然是主角：有时像一个和谐的体系，对立事物生动的辨证统一，在其中每一个细小的事物，花、鸟或者昆虫都体现出一种无法估算的价值。其他一些时候它变得具有威胁性，苍凉而敏感，像一个猛烈的浪头在进行破坏。

　　我想我们根本无法用几个词汇去形容何森这些夺目的作品。还是让我们去直接观看吧。

　　2006年12月15日

　　The perfect moment and the double soul.

　　He Sen’s new works have enchanted me; they infused within me the desire to write about them, an inspiration arisen from new ideas with an antique flavor. I do not know the specific reason why; it probably comes from the lyricism of the subject or from the peculiarity of the technique, or, better, of the techniques. It is curious to linger on every little detail thanks to which we realize that nothing happens by chance, that even in the chaos there is a precise order decided by unknown laws.

　　I admire the change He Sen dares to make. Perhaps his smoking ladies have reached such a high perfection to actually tire the artist, who is now looking for new initiatives, new challenges, and new goals. He put aside what is contemporaneous, the fast persistency of the elapsing of identical days; he wants to retrieve a past that he will amazingly renew.

　　He followed the ancient admonish to refine the technique through the repetition of the old masters’ artworks. He transferred on his canvases the ink masterpieces by Ma Yuan, Li Shan and Xu Wei and bestowed upon them the expressive strength and modernity of the oil. These are well known subjects to Chinese people’s eyes; they are emblems and images from glorious dynasties, icons loaded with thousands of meanings. To Western eyes instead they are the fable and the dream of an exotic world, remote in time and space, almost magical.

　　He Sen takes inspirations from two specific genres of Chinese traditional painting: landscapes and “birds and flowers”. From Li Shan, He Sen borrows the bamboo’, symbol for nobility and Confucian rectitude, conjugal fidelity, submission and perseverance, a “gentleman” that flexes but doesn’t break. He Sen decides to accompany it with the inscription of splendid calligraphy. From a work by Li Shan derives also a painting with an orchid. A little bird lays on the flower that seem sprouting from a rock, which emerges from the canvas and shows the early appearance of this new technique: thicker colors applied with a spatula. In the first part, the inscription seems to be copied from the original; while in the second half the artist probably wrote it by himself because the linguistic code appears more modern both in content and graphic.

　　The flowers inspired by Xu Wei, talented painter and writer from the Ming dynasty, have instead blue and rose shades. The subjects are pending in the emptiness, detached from the world and surrounded by a suffused aura. The atmosphere is uncertain, almost as if it was suspended. It appears as if He Sen wants to hand down Xu Wei’s destructive emotions that for a few times drove him to attempt suicide, his impatient and unapproachable spirit that through his works often shocked people, the rebellion externalized detaching from the tradition and introducing with verve a new style made of wild cursive and broken up brushes.

　　He Sen makes this creative force and this energy as his own. These components reach then the highest levels in the four canvases representing Ma Yuan’s works. In these paintings he portrays the deep and storming sea. He Sen reproduces the sharp-edged style characteristic of this painter: Ma Yuan used in fact the axe-cut technique through thick, angular and abbreviated brushes and with a reduced composition. The poetic verses written out underline once more the impetuous sentiment and the perturbation in action: “The Yellow River goes countercurrent”, “Waves and clouds wrap up”, “Imaginary waves fluctuate”, “The vastness of the Yangtze”. It’s another rebellion, once more “Sturm und Drang”, an typical passion for the East.

　　He Sen stresses this urge of explosion with a unique technique: he divides the canvas in two or three alternating sections: one part is flat, realized using the brush, with a taut color and a very light and thin consistency that inspires a feeling of tranquility and impermanence. The other part is ferocious, made of material, realized with the spatula; it’s alive and violent, it seems to be screaming, feeding the waves while winding up the sea with anger. In some points the brush is tired, just like after a hurricane, or a thunderstorm. The traits wrap around themselves creating circular strokes that dissolve, disappear in white portions, as the painting seem not been ultimate.

　　These paintings seem to be created by Dr. Jackil and Mr. Hyde, from a man with multiple personalities that, while painting, transforms and becomes quiet and docile and suddenly scary and fierce, to end being deadbeat exhausted and drained. Every moment is neatly separated and characterized by a precise style, a precise emotion and by a correlated feeling.

　　On the other canvases, the waves become elegant zigzags, decorative motifs almost seemingly frivolous, as he underwent an umpteenth transformation, a change towards an apparently simpler and more naive style. He seems to be evoking a life style full of pleasures, made of evanescent delights and poetic beauty, just like the importance of aesthetic at the Song court. Nature is still protagonist: sometimes like a harmonious system, a live dialectic of the opposites in which every miniscule object, flower, bird or insect assume a value that cannot be estimated. Other times it becomes threatening and cruel, keen to tread and destroy like an impetuous wave.

　　We need only few words to describe these works that fill the space and magnetize the gazes. It’s enough to look at them.

　　Eleonora Battiston

作者：叶兰