左正尧是一位老资格的艺术家—你尽可以从他“‘85美术运动”开始至今的一系列的艺术创作中窥见一斑。同时，他的艺术履历也充分显示了他利用多种材料和语言方式，如水墨、陶瓷、装置等等自由穿越各种媒介界限的能力。这是他根据中外传统的文化资源、民间艺术的素材，以及个人生存的记忆、积累的成长经验与中国急剧变化的现实与其艺术想象力的有机结合与表达。

　　我尤其关注他在作品里将中国传统文人绘画中的闲情逸致与当下社会转型期产生的种种问题，以及与日常生活之间矛盾冲突的对比性表现，如《深挖洞》《天九地八》《通往城市的路》《一亩三》等等系列作品。左正尧对生活体验中残缺和伤痛的检视及考察，使得现代城市化生活所带给我们的焦虑，以及由此产生的苦闷和枯寂的不良心境被呈现出来，使之成为一个值得思考的意义范畴和思辨对象。作为艺术家，习惯于讲述“我”的内在经验，虽然也在日常生活经验的范畴之内，却仅仅与其个人的自我意识有关。而左正尧的不同就在于他绘画中所呈现出来的生活经验，既区别于那种极端个人化的日常经验表述，又体现出一定的社会内容。换句话说，他既是生活的介入者，也是生活的旁观者。似乎作品里的他或她不是这个城市生活的主人，他或她离开了自己的家园，寄生于城市这个曾被波德莱尔“迷恋而又憎恶”的肌体上，感受着城市所展现的对新的生活的憧憬和钢筋水泥般的坚硬与冷漠。在这方面，仿佛是他所感悟的他的目光所及和他对生存现状的困惑与憧憬想象，并抹上了一笔笔浓郁的灰色。因为在一个更大的心理视域里，我们每个人在现在的命运都是不确定的，如同在左正尧画面中反复出现的漂浮在空中女性，随机地变换自己的身份，穿行于交错的空间中而无所归栖。

　　每个时代都有其独特的生态形式，并用夸张的方式表达出其内在的性格结构。这正是左正尧努力要揭示的。他的作品像一面镜子，照见了这个时代的真相：一个是不能见容于这个时代而已;另一个是属于自己的家园。这种细微的差别主要表现为他对时代强调的东西有所不同，却也和时代个人的变化有关。在过去，你可以为自己的不幸找到一个承担者，现在则越来越多地要由你自己来承担了。你拥有了更多的自由，你也因此更加感到内心的不安，你陷入一种茫然之中。他的面貌也许模糊了一些而不够鲜明，但却让人感到更加真实，更加自然，更具有生活的实感和厚度，也传达出更多的思想内涵。其实，生活本身就是错综复杂的，经过简化和提纯的生活，一定显得单薄、苍白，而且乏味。

　　Far and Near: Two Aspects of the World on the Art of Zuo Zhengyao

　　Feng Boyi

　　Zuo Zhengyao is a senior well-acclaimed artist and you may have a glimpse of his career from the artistic practices in a series of paintings from his “’85 Art Movement” until today. Meanwhile, his resume has a full demonstration of his superb capability in application of various materials and different art languages such as the traditional Chinese ink and wash, pottery and installations, in which he has broken the boundaries of different media. It is evidently an organic combination and expression of the source materials of the traditional Chinese and foreign cultures and folk arts, his memories of life, his accumulation of growth, the rapid-changing realities in China and his artistic imaginations.

　　What I am especially concerned about is that he has made a comparative expression of the leisurely and carefree mood of the traditional Chinese paintings of man-of-letters, all sorts of issues in the period of social transformation and contradictions and confrontations in our daily life, such as in the paintings of “Digging Deep Caves”, “Sky Nine Earth Eight”, “A Road Leading to the City”, “1.3 Mus of Land” and other series. By observing and probing into the injuries and grievances of his life experiences, Zuo Zhengyao has presented us a vivid description of our worries caused by the modern way of urbanized life and the bad mood of spiritual depression and loneliness, thus, putting forward the meanings category and speculative objects worth pondering. As an artist, he is used to tell about the inner experience of “I”. Although such an experience is in the category of daily-life experience, it is simply related to the self-consciousness. The different aspect of Zuo Zhengyao is that the life experience described in his paintings is different from the extremely individualized expression of daily experience on the one hand and, on the other, embodies the social contents in certain aspects. In other words, he is not only involved in the daily life, but also a bystander of the life. It seems that he or she in his paintings is not the master of the urban life. He or she has left his hometown and live in another world of the city which was called “intoxicating and detested”by Charles Pierre Baudelaire, cherishing a great longing for the new life in the city and experiencing the hardness and indifference like cold concrete and steel. In this regard, it seems to be his comprehension of what he has seen and his perplexities over the state of existence and longings in his imaginations. In a broader space of psychological vision, everyone of us is uncertain about the current state of our existence same as the females floating in the sky which have been repeated in Zuo Zhengyao’s paintings. Their identities have been randomly changed at any time, but they are nowhere to live though floating in the interconnected space.

　　There is a unique ecological form in each of the periods and its inner structures of characters are expressed in an exaggerated way. It is what Zuo Zhengyao has been trying to reveal. Similar to a looking glass, his works is a reflection of the truth of our current age: the one is that he is never be involved in the current age and the other is that he is a part of his hometown. Such a minor difference is what he has emphasized about the current age is different from others, but is related to individual changes of our time. In the past, you might find another one to undertake your misfortune, but you have to bear more and more responsibility today. You have more freedom, but you feel more disturbed in your heart. As a result, you have lost yourself in a reverie. His face is somewhat dim and not quite clear-cut, but it gives the people a more authentic and natural feeling and conveys more implications. As a matter of fact, the life is complicated itself and it will become more feeble and meaningless if it was simplified and purified.

作者：冯博一