自摄影术在19世纪30年代末被法国艺术家、物理学家达盖尔发明以来，绘画的命运就遭受着空前挑战，“为记录而写实”的目的已经变得越来越虚妄，甚至有人当即作出了“绘画即将死亡”的预言。如今，当年的预言家早已作古，当我们看到绘画市场如火如荼的拍卖行情，未免会发出今昔何昔的感叹。但可以肯定的事实是——如果没有摄影的出现，记录性质的绘画将一直在出版社、博物馆和美术馆里占据重要地位，现代绘画史乃至文化史也将被彻底改写。

　　一个多世纪的历史证明，摄影非但没有变成绘画的敌人，反而成了画家们可资利用的图像辅助工具和进行再创作的基本视觉资源。在当代艺术方兴未艾的发展趋势中，我们可以看到两种颇具代表性的现象：一方面，大量原本从事绘画的艺术家们开始投身于以摄影和录像为表达方式的创作之中，另一方面，许多绘画，尤其是观念性的绘画作品普遍呈现出与摄影相类似的视觉表达倾向。

　　蔡广斌1963年出生于黑龙江，1988年在杭州中国美术学院毕业后回到哈尔滨执教，2001年开始在上海生活和工作。他南来北往的人生之路，折射着不寻常的心灵体验，而他那充满智慧的水墨作品，也反映出这种丰富的体验所带来的思索。多年来，蔡广斌的水墨绘画实验一直在视觉上与传统中国画的语言保持着适当距离，在保持绘画身份独立性的同时，他在色调、光影和构图等方面展开了大量的另类探索，从总体视觉倾向上来看，某种来自影像形态(摄影、电影和电视等)的影响正变得越来越强烈，这样的风格，明确地标示出其作品的都市特征。

　　2001年到上海生活之后，在林立楼群中的生活经验令蔡广斌印象深刻，他开始创作延续至今的《窗》系列，这个全新的作品系列，以一个个隔离开的方块单元展开阵列式的组合，每个单元里都有一张张含混不清却又极其类似的面孔，整个系列都弥漫着个性缺失的危机感，也充斥着当代都市人机械、刻板、压抑和疏离的典型心理特征。以《窗》系列为开端，蔡广斌着手于黑白色调“手工影像”的专题实验，开始了从实验水墨到观念绘画的探索，尽管他并没有把影像作为客观上的主题来源，但都市人每天耳濡目染的影像经验无疑对他的潜意识发生了显著作用。当今都市人的视觉经验已经越来越技术化，越来越依赖媒体了，我们几乎每天看到的都是二手影像——那显然是通过镜头和屏幕所看到的世界，蔡广斌抓住了这个要点，以水墨的手法呈现出这个异样的现实。

　　“手工影像”是笔者杜撰的词汇，用于形容那些与各种技术影像类似的绘画作品，在蔡广斌的观念性水墨图像中，我们可以充分地感受到他沉稳而冷静的创作心态，以及精致而微妙的制作技巧。他把传统水墨中的笔墨因素降至最低极限，用类似黑白摄影的色调铺陈渲染着虚幻迷离的叙事空间，传统的绘画材料宣纸被裱贴在画布之上，纸与布、虚与实、手工与技术相映成趣。相纸般的黑白效果在强化观看者对技术因素联想的同时，绘画性极强的笔触却又漂浮于影调之上，在绘画观念方面营造出令人困惑的心理张力。蔡广斌运用东方式的智慧化解了古典与现代的学理对峙，拆除了水墨媒材与当代艺术之间的藩篱。

　　也许，所有的手工都会被技术吞噬?也许，所有的技术都将被手工同化?在蔡广斌的“手工影像”之中，这样的思考已变得苍白，这样的问题也不再是问题。

　　The fate of painting had been challenging ever since the invention of photography by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, the French painter and physicist, in 1830’s. At the same time, some people even foretold that painting would disappear because the realistic style seemed to lose its significance as photogarphy replaced painting’s function of record. Of course, those predictors had passed away without the chance to see how prosperous painting market is today. But it is undoubted that the realistic style painting with record function should still play a dominant role in publishing houses, museums and art galleries and the history of modern painting and culture would be rewrote if there were no photography.

　　As time passed by, the history has witnessed photography becoming a kind of assisted tool of producing images and a basic visual resource that help painter’s creation a lot instead of performing as painting’s enemy. There are two kinds of representative phenomena in the ascendant trend of contemporary art. On the one hand, a great deal of artists give up painting and indulge in photography and video works. On the other hand, lots of painting works, especially those conceptual paintings, present a common tendency that they depict the visual world in a way quite similar to video and photography.

　　Cai Guangbin was born in Heilongjiang Province of China in 1963. In 1988, after his graduation from China Academy of Art at Hangzhou, he returned to Harbin and began with his professional painting and teaching career in a university there. In 2001, he emigrated to Shanghai. The special life experience that he gained from south and north culture have impact on his unusual inner heart. While his ink and wash works which reflect his deep thoughts are full of wisdom. For many years, Cai Guangbin tried to keep a suitable distance with orthodox visual language of traditional Chinese painting through carrying out some ink and wash experiments. He has been exploring new results on tone, light and shadow and composition etc. in unconventional ways while keeping the independent identity of painting. In his painting, the influence from machine-made visual images such as photography, movie and TV becomes stronger and stronger. The style of his works also represents a kind of urban attribute.

　　In 2001, Cai Guangbin settled down in Shanghai. He was so impressed by new life in crowded buildings that he initiated his brand new Window Series. They are assembled by separate square cells in which there are similar but blurry faces. These faces, however, arouse a sense of crisis that we lack of individuality as well as typical psychology of contemporary urbanites such as monotony, routine, oppression and isolation. With his seminal works Window Series, Cai Guangbin embarked on his experiments of black and white “Handmade Image” which is inspired by machine-made visual images and developed from experimental ink and wash to conceptual painting. Although he does not depict those technical visual images directly, these images that exist everywhere in urban life have impact on him subconsciously. Nowadays, urbanites rely on medias so much that we get our visual experiences almost entirely through technical ways. We meet secondhand images via lens or screen everyday. Cai Guangbin is quite sensitive to such experiences and his ink and wash works show us exactly such a strange reality.

　　I coin the phrase “handmade image” to describe those paintings that creat images that are similar to technical images. The conceptual ink and wash iamges made by Cai Guangbin reflect his calm mental attitude as well as extraordinary and delicate painting methods. In his works, he attempts to decrease the traiditonal elements such as brushstroke and ink as possible as he can and adopts black and white tone that look like photo to form a transient narrative space. Owing to a special means of mounting that he mounts traditional Chinese paper on canvas, the canvas and paper, handwork and modern technical images build a meaningful art world. When photo paper like effect evokes the audiences’ association of modern technique, the painting strokes which are floating on images casue confusing psychological tension. A kind of oriental wisdom in Cai Guangbin’s work not only irons out the contradiction between classics and modern art concept, but also breaks up the hedges between contemporary art and ink and wash which uses typical traditional medium and material.

　　Will all handwork be devoured by modern machine-made techniques oneday? Or will all modern machine-made techniques be assimilated by handworks? These problems seem to be nothing and useless when we meet with “handmade images ” that created by Cai Guangbin.

作者：李旭