我有迷魂招不得， 雄鸡一声天下白。

　　少年心事当拿云， 谁念幽寒坐呜呃。

　　——李贺《致酒行》

　　刘若望1977年出生，**后的一代人，这比我想象的要年轻的多。

　　最早是在一个展览中看到了他的作品，记住了这个名字，但是不知道他的具体情况，好像是突然就冒出了这么一个人。2008年策划宋庄艺术节“众声喧哗”公共雕塑展的时候，特意邀请他参加了这个展览。他的作品很有气势，体量也够大，特别适合那次宋庄的展出方式。

　　直到我写这篇文章的时候，关于他的资料仍然很少，也没有和他交谈过。这似乎违背了“知人论世”的写作要求。从另一方面看，索性在不“知人”的情况下，只凭直接的视觉感受来发表对他作品的看法，未尝不是另外一种角度。过去邀请他参加展览的时候，对他更不熟悉，不也是只凭着对他作品的直接印象进行判断的吗?

　　以前对刘若望的作品没有看全，只看到过《东方红》、《人民》和《天兵》系列，这次通过图片，较为全面地看到他的作品，首先引起联想的，便是作为本文题记的那几句诗，唐代大诗人李贺的名句。

　　李贺诗歌中豪迈、进取的境界与刘若望作品有几分相似之处。刘若望作品给人一种很强烈的印象是，它们体现了一种壮怀激烈的“少年心事”，这是一种青春奋发、纯朴无邪、直抒胸臆的生命表达。这是一种久违了的，似乎被人们遗忘了的情怀。它们不矫揉造作，不颓废玩世，不调侃嬉戏，不盲目跟风……

　　刘若望的作品没有左顾右盼的机敏，没有投机取巧的算计，它们是一种自然本色的流露，这些作品和作者生长的地域，和作者的生活经历，和作者的内心感受，和作者的性格志趣浑然一体，相随相生。面对这些作品，好比听惯了低酌浅唱的流行小调，听惯了插科打诨的“二人转”之后，突然听到了一曲高亢豪放的陕北信天游，听到了苍凉悲壮的陕西秦腔。

　　这些便是刘若望打动我们的重要理由，而且，他居然还这么年轻!

　　最早看到他的“东方红”系列，我还以为他至少是一个中年人，或者是一个有着“红色情结”的人。他的“东方红”系列中的陕北农民：白色的“羊肚肚”手巾，黑色棉袄，红通通的脸膛，怀抱着的赶羊铲，这曾经是一个时代的经典图式;在他的“人民”系列中，红军的八角帽、民兵的白头巾和白腰带、白绑腿和青灰衣服搭配在一起，加上人物的红脸膛、黑胡子，手上的大刀、红缨枪、步枪构成了过去有关“人民**”的视觉符号……

　　然而，在刘若望成长和接受教育的时代，“红色”只是他的一种间接的经验，正因为此，刘若望作品提出了一个很有意思的话题。一个没有红色经验的年轻人，是怎样受到“红色记忆”的影响，又是怎样去间接地通过作品想象“红色年代”的?

　　也就是说，风云激荡的二十世纪，革命、传奇、战火、斗争、武器、农民……具体在刘若望那里，只不过是老人讲述的故事，只是街坊邻居的只言片语，只是电影、电视中的图像，只是文学、历史中的字句，这一切是怎样影响到一个在“后社会主义”时期出生的年轻人的?

　　这势必涉及到个人性的话题。刘若望作品在中国当代雕塑中的价值，就在于他的作品具有鲜明、突出的个人性。

　　我感觉到，刘若望“东方红”、“人民”系列的出发点和那些“红色怀旧”的人，以及带着各种目的利用“红色资源”做文章的人并不一样。这是一种个人化的感怀，是一个在陕北这个地方出生、成长的年轻人，在他充满了想象和幻想的头脑中，对自己所接受到的历史信息所进行的一种新的编码和重组。它未必是意识形态的，也肯定不是出于教化目的的;这些作品只不过是他的个人成长经验的自然反映，是他的生长环境，是他不得不面对的生活现实给了他创作的灵感。这些红色的符号，在他的作品中，代表了一种传说，一种力量，这些红色因素可以从过去具体的历史情境中剥离出来，成为个人想象世界中一种遥远、神奇、让人震撼的东西。

　　仅仅用“红色”来解释刘若望是不够的。例如他的“车马仪仗队”，将身着**军服的解放军与西汉陕西咸阳杨家湾出土的兵马佣的图式嫁接在一起，这显然就并没有一般性的停留在“红色”题材上，这是一个热爱雕塑的年轻人，对尚武精神、对力量气势的向往，也是一个年轻人通过表现有力量的对象，希望在内心获得自我超越，获得生活力量的心理满足。

　　就刘若望作品的整体而言，我们看到的是一个少年的想象世界。除了上述系列，他还有“天兵系列”、“遗风系列”、“战神”等作品。例如天兵，充满了神奇色彩，这是民间传说中的“天兵天将”，具有“力拔山兮气盖世”的力量。刘若望所塑造的这一切都带有一种大男孩的特质：崇拜英雄、向往神奇、金戈铁马、无坚不摧……

　　刘若望雕塑的着色也是非常有个人特点的。看得出，他受过较好的色彩训练。在传统的学院雕塑教育体系中，色彩是相对被忽略的。近些年来，金属着色和玻璃钢着色的雕塑突然流行起来，几乎成了一种风气。但是，这些雕塑的颜色往往过于鲜艳、花哨，似乎只是为了更加吸引眼球。而刘若望雕塑的颜色沉着、凝重、搭配得协调得体。在颜色和形体的浑然一体方面，刘若望是许多人所不及的。

　　刘若望作品的个人性特征是他特别可贵的地方，他的这种纯真、朴实、真挚、自然的个性，使他的作品和其它同龄人拉开了距离。

　　除了个人性，刘若望作品所具有的突出的地域性，也是我们不得不重视他的一个重要的依据。

　　人们爱说，一方水土养一方人。如今，在一个全球化的时代，一方水土的特征趋于消失，一方人的个性也趋于消失。刘若望难得的是，他和他生长的地域，他和黄土高原仍然保持着精神气质上的联系。大气、粗犷、豪迈、凝重、拙朴……这些属于黄土高原的精神气质在他的作品中都得到了很好的体现。

　　有一次，著名建筑师马清运在谈到青年雕塑家戴耘用青砖雕成的汽车时，说了一句，“他的作品有一股子陕西人的那个劲”。这个“劲”不就是一种地域的特点吗?刘若望的雕塑也是如此。

　　刘若望作品的“劲”，来自黄土高原的孕育，来自浓郁的地方文化传统。生存的艰辛，个体在与命运的抗争中，往往需要付出更艰苦的努力，需要更加坚韧顽强的意志力。陕西的传统和民间的艺术所体现出的地域特色，就是与这种生存现实相对应的。

　　刘若望对陕西地区出土的兵马俑艺术的吸收显而易见。他雕塑的造型非常整体，人物几乎就是由几个大的块面组合而成，因此显得特别雄浑有力;他的作品比较强调群组的表现，队列式的人物比较多，这些都和兵马俑有相似之处，在色彩上，过去的兵马俑也都是上颜色的。

　　特别需要指出的是，刘若望并非一味沉迷在传统中，他的作品对当代视觉文化的特点也注意吸收，他的许多人物造型常常具有“镜头感”，例如手特别大，同时，为了表现人物的高大巍峨，常常通过夸张腿部的体量，造成仰视感，这些和通过镜头的观看所形成的镜头透视以及通过机器观看的视觉变形都有一定关联。

　　总之，刘若望的作品是近些年来青年雕塑创作中不可多得的成果。不过，他还很年轻，他的许多作品还是凭着自己的本色来创作的，如何在内容的选取以及个人造型语言的提炼上做到更加稳定和成熟?如何更好地设计自己未来的发展方向?在这些方面，刘若望还有很多工作要做。

　　2009年11月于深圳上梅林　　

　　The Youth should have Strong Resolutions to Reach Clouds

　　-interpretation of Liu Ruowang's Sculptures

　　My souls are lost and hard to call them back; the day gets bright with cock's singing.

　　The youth should have strong resolutions to reach clouds; yet who cares about my sadness for the failed ambitions.

　　Wine Lines by Li He

　　Liu Ruowang, born in 1977, is so much younger than I expected as a generation after the Cultural Revolution.

　　I remembered his name after seeing his works in an exhibition, but knowing little of his profile. He seemed to come out of nowhere. I invited him to participate at The Rising Cacophony, the public sculpture exhibition during Songzhuang Art Festival in 2008, because his grand and large-scale works suited it.

　　I still had limited access to Liu's materials and never talked with him when I started to write this passage, which is seemingly against the rule of "commenting the man and the world". On the other hand, however, that may provide me with another angle under the circumstances of not "knowing him" with only straightforward visual senses. I was also not familiar with Liu when I invited him to exhibitions. I made my judgement upon my impression of his works alone.

　　Before this exhibition, I only saw Liu's works like The East is Red，People and Heaven Soldiers series, given this opportunity, I finally have viewed more of his works, and what reminded me first were those lines from the poem of Li He (a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty) written as preface of this passage.

　　They share a bold and enterprising spirits. Liu's works impress people with a strong sense of "youth's resolutions", an enterprising, pure and direct expression of life which seems to be long forgotten. They are not deceiving, decadent, scoffing nor following blindly…

　　Liu's works are natural without alertness or opportunistic plots. They are integrated with the artist's breeding areas, life experiences, emotions, characters and interests. Facing them, it's like hearing resounding and heroic Xintianyou (a kind of Shaanxi local melody) or solemn and stirring Shaanxi opera amid the usually heard popular tunes or joking "Er'renzhuan" (a song and dance duet popular in the Northeast of China).

　　That's why we're impressed by Liu's works. What's more, he is so young.

　　I thought he was a middle-aged man or a man with the "Complex of the Red" when I first saw his The East is Red series. Farmers in those works demonstrate white "Yangdudu" towel, black cotton-padded jacket, red cheeks, shovels to drive sheep held in arms, which was a classic image of an era. In Liu's People series, Red Army's octagonal hats, militia's white scarves and waistbands, white leggings matched with graphite clothes, along with those figures' red cheeks, black mustache, knives in hand, red-tasselled spears and rifles constituted the visual signs of "people's war" in the past…

　　For Liu, however, "Red" was just an indirect experience in his growing up and education period.  So Liu's works put forward an interesting topic: how is a young man without "red experiences" influenced by those "red memories" and how he imagined the "red era" through his works?

　　That is to say, things like revolutions, legends, war flames, combats, weapons and farmers in the turbulent 20th century are just stories told by the senior, a few words from neighbors, images from movies or TV screen and phrases from literature and history for Liu. How is it affected a youth born in the "post-socialism" ear?

　　This inevitably involves human nature. The value of Liu's works in contemporary Chinese sculptures lies in their outstanding personalities.

　　I feel the starting point of Liu Ruowang's The East is Red and People series differs from those who are "reminiscent of the Red" and taking advantage of the "Red Resources" with various purposes. This is a personalized feeling, a new coding and restructuring of the historical information in his mind full of imaginations and illusions for a youth who was born and bred in northern Shaanxi. It's not necessarily ideological, nor does come out of conversion propose. These works are natural reflections of his growing experience, and it's his living environment and the life he had to face that gave him inspiration for creation. These red symbols in his works represent a kind of legend and force, which can be extracted from specific historical situations in the past and become something distant, amazing and shocking.

　　It's not enough to interpret Liu with "Red". For example, in his Guard of Honor with Cars and Horses, the grafting of liberation army in uniforms of the Cultural Revolution and graphs of terracotta soldiers and horses of the Western Han Dynasty unearthed in Yangjiawan, Xianyang, Shaanxi wasn't stayed on the "Red" subjects. This is the yearning for martial arts and strength for a youth who loves sculpture as well as his attempt to surpass himself and acquire strength for life through portraying powerful subjects.

　　Generally speaking, we see a youth's imaginary world from Liu's works. Besides works mentioned above, he also created Heaven Soldiers, Heritage and God of War series. Heaven Soldiers are "Divine Troops Descending from Heaven" in legends that have supernatural powers, full of magical colors. What Liu cultivated is characteristic of a big boy: worshiping of heroes, yearning for magic, shining spears and armored horses, capable of destroying any stronghold invincible…

　　The coloring of Liu's sculptures is also quite personalized. We can see that he's well trained in that aspect while in traditional academic sculpture education system, it was relatively ignored. In recent years, metal coloring and glass fiber reinforced plastics coloring have suddenly come into vogue and almost become a fashion. However, those overwhelmingly bright and garish colors applied to sculptures only to get attention, while Liu employed composed and imposing colors to create a more harmonious atmosphere. Liu is indeed a master in matching color with figures.

　　Liu's innocent, pure, honest and true personality makes his works particularly valuable and left his peers behind.

　　Besides his unique personality, Liu's works also embody highlighted regional features, which is another reason why we need to take him seriously.

　　People often say each place has its own way of supporting its own inhabitants. Features of places and their inhabitants are disappearing nowadays in a globalized era, so it's quite praiseworthy for Liu to still keep spiritual connections with loess plateau and places where he was brought up. Spirits drawn from the loess plateau like being grand, rough, bold, imposing and plain exhibited well in Liu's works.

　　"His works have the vigor of Shaanxi people." Once Ma Qingyuan, the famous architect said when talking about Dai Geng, a youth sculptor using black bricks to built a car. The "vigor" here means regional characteristics. So do Liu's sculptures.

　　The "vigor" of Liu Ruowang's works come from the breeding of the loess plateau and rich local cultural traditions. More efforts need to be paid and more tenacious will power is required in facing struggling living environment and during the fight between individuals and fate. Local features showcased from the traditional and civic arts in Shaanxi are correspondent to this living reality.

　　We can see apparent absorption of the terracotta warriors and horses unearthed in northern Shaanxi in Liu's sculptures. The designing is quite complete with figures composed of several large blocks and so they seem vigorous and powerful; similarly with those terracotta warriors and horses, Liu's works stress clusters with many figures in a parade; in color, they share the dying.

　　It needs to be pointed out that Liu didn't get lost in tradition, because he also paid attention to absorb contemporary visual cultural characteristics. Many of his figures have "a sense of the cameras", such as super big hands. Meanwhile, Liu often exaggerate legs' seize and weight to highlight figures' loftiness by forcing people to look up. These are related to camera perspective formed through viewing through cameras and visual transformations through mechanical viewing.

　　To sum up, Liu's works are representative ones in recent years' youth sculpture creations. Nevertheless, he is still so young that many of his works were created in accordance with his nature. There is still a long way to go for him to become more stable and mature in selecting contents and simplifying individual modeling language and more capable in designing his future directions.

By Sun Zhenhua

At Shangmeilin, Shenzhen

Nov.2009

作者：孙振华