Grand Banquet

　　Animal Aesthetics in Lv Shun’s Art

　　近来，吕顺的绘画和雕塑就像他刚性和坚韧的性格而表现出了一种独特的个人风格——忧郁、伤感、诗意的语言，他的这种绘画语言代表了新世纪中国新绘画观念转变的趋势，并受到广泛的关注和评论。在经过近一年的缜密准备后，吕顺从绘画中延伸出颇具动物美学的大型雕塑作品，终于在今日美术馆向观众呈现了个展《盛宴》，由一件大型雕塑《盛宴》和一些新的绘画两部分组成。

　　Recently, Lv Shun’s paintings and sculptures, just like his personality of rigidity and tenacity, manifest a unique personal style – a poetic language with melancholy and sadness. His painting language represents a trend of change of Chinese new painting idea in the new century and receives extensive attentions and comments. After almost a year of careful preparation, Lv Shun extends a great sculpture with more animal aesthetics from his paintings and finally, he presents his solo exhibition Grand Banquet before audiences in Today Art Museum. This exhibition consists of two parts, a great sculpture Grand Banquet and some new paintings.

　　吕顺个展《盛宴》虽表现出了一种玩世不恭的姿态，但更具一种隐喻性和象征性之意，选择动物“猪”蕴涵了“社会与文化”的双重指向：一方面是“猪”被艺术家引申出对中国吃的文化的进一步解读，因为中国文化传统特别注重和讲究吃的东西，这是一种日常微观学的分析，直接或间接折射出中国文化的问题，也就是说，吃的文化是通过日常生活来揭示一种充满欢喜，充满政治，充满规则，充满欲望，充满关系，充满交换，充满陷阱，充满浪费的微观文化景象,这一切都在现实中表露无遗：人的真实面目在餐桌上会显现出来。而《盛宴》进一步传递出的信息：在当今社会中，外表看上去很正常的东西，其实在所谓的正常中却隐藏很多暗流。另一方面从艺术的表征看艺术家以动物“猪”形象替换和消解了达•芬奇《最后的晚餐》的经典意义，进而把这种宗教经典主题巧妙挪用和转化成了对今日人类精神境遇的思考，这是一种“后现代式”语汇的反思和批判，表现主体的动物“猪”被赋予了更多人性化的内涵，“猪”只具有象征意义而已。如果将《最后的晚餐》与《盛宴》进行比较，不难发现它们之间的联系和区分，值得注意的是，吕顺的雕塑《盛宴》中有两个缺席的人物耶稣和犹大，无疑暗示了人类信仰正在面临的危机。

　　Lv Shun’s solo exhibition Grand Banquet reveals a cynical attitude but even has a metaphor and symbol. A selection of ‘pig’contains a double meaning of ‘society and culture’. On the one hand, the artist derives his further readings to the eating culture of China from “pig” because the Chinese traditional culture especially lays stress on eating. This is a kind of analysis about daily micro phenomenon, directly or indirectly reflecting some problems in Chinese culture. That is to say that the culture of eating will, by daily life, disclose a micro culture picture which is full of gladness, politics, rules, desires, relations, exchanges, traps and wastes. All these will be disclosed in real life: The true face of man will appear on a dining table while Grand Banquet further sends a message: In today’s society, the thing with a very normal surface actually hides many treacherous currents in so-called normality. On the other hand, by art’s representation, we can see that the artist replaces and clears up the classic meaning of The Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci with “pig” image and further tactfully peculates the classic theme of religion and transforms it into a thought about spiritual circumstance of man today. This is a kind of reflection and criticism of ‘postmodern’, representing that the subjective animal ‘pig’ is endowed with more human connotations while ‘pig’ itself only has a symbolic meaning. If we compare The Last Supper with Grand Banquet, the links and differences between both are not difficult to be seen. What deserves our notices is that two persons, Jesus and Judas are absent in Grand Banquet, a sculpture by Lv Shun. This undoubtedly implies a crisis that human belief is faced with.

　　吕顺的作品无论是绘画还是雕塑，都是以动物为表现核心，尤其是艺术家画笔下的猪则暗示了人的兽性的一面，也就是是人的动物性的一面。我们可以从人类自身的行为中可以洞察到的，人看似是对自然的一种保护，或对文明的一种维护，然而，人的进步和发展都是以破坏文明为代价的，这并不是真正的文明。这一结果实质上都是由人的欲望所决定的。吕顺只是以一种独有的艺术形象表达了对这种假象的个人解读。

　　Lv Shun’s works all take animals as a representation core no matter they are paintings or sculptures. Especially, the “pig” under this artist’s brush hints human brutish nature which means human animalism. We can, from human behaviors, penetrate that human seems to protect our nature or our civilizations and however, human progress and development are at the price of destroying civilization. That is not a true civilization and this result is materially determined by human desires. Lv Shun expresses his own reading to this false appearance only in a unique art image.

　　尽管吕顺的绘画色调充满着美好和漂亮的气息，但这种表征背后却反映的是某种忧郁、浪漫、诗意、腐烂等信息，像花枯散发出了莫名其妙的伤感，漂浮的雾气更是烘托出了凄美的境界。在《幸福时光》中，吕顺主观地把猪描绘成了游荡于类似渺茫宇宙中的幽灵形象;在《天籁之音》中，艺术家将青蛙刻画成受困于大自然中的生灵;在《空中的花朵》中，他则表现出玫瑰的腐烂感;在《消失的风景》和《消失的城市》中，艺术家则表现出了苍凉的凄美。

　　Although Lv Shun’s painting hue is filled with wonderful and beautiful flavour, the thing behind this representation mirrors some melancholy, poetic and corrupt message, like that it will give off inexplicable sadness when a flower withers away, and floating mist even sets off a bleak but beautiful realm. In the painting Happy Times, Lv Shun subjectively describes pig as a ghost image which wanders in a similarly distant and indistinct universe, in the painting Sound of Nature, the artist depicts frog as a living creature that is locked into nature, in the painting Flower in the Sky, he shows up the decaying rose while in the painting vanishing scenery and vanishing city, the artist represents a bleak beauty.

　　因此，吕顺的艺术无疑是对当代人的复杂心境的透视。他用生动而独特的视觉语言表现了对当代社会文化的寓言。

　　Therefore, Lv Shun’s art is undoubtedly a perspective to complex mood of people at the present age. He expresses his fable to contemporary societal culture by a particular and vivid vision language.

作者：黄笃