尚扬始终有一颗年轻的心，他对生活、历史、科学、艺术等，始终充满了好奇心，不断地思考和试验，不像一些中年画家，太在意固守自己被人认可的“风格”。在尚扬的心目中，没有太多的条条框框。他的早期创作具有严谨的、讲究语言的经典性表述的现代主义倾向，现在则转向更为放松的、具有较多即兴性的综合性。如果说，早期创作中，对画面肌理、对材料特质的研究还比较明显，那么，近期他的创作对于人文历史的关怀更加鲜明，特别是当代人的生存状态，是尚扬关注的重点。材料的运用仍然是重要的，但已逐渐隐入到视觉构造的背后，突出的是视觉符号的选择、视觉图式的构造。将当下心绪与持续的思索结合起来，形成自己放松中有谨严、随意却有法度的艺术风貌。
　　尚扬的创作，没有像西方现代主义后期一些作家那样过分玩弄形式语言，在色彩、线条等形式因素中沉溺，缺乏内涵的流弊，根本的原因在于尚扬对于生活始终热情地关注。这种生活是广义的生活，它不仅有物质层面的经济生活的变化，更有精神层面的当代人心灵流向。尚扬早年到陕北体验生活，就没有停留于世俗生活风情的再现，而是深入探寻黄土高原积淀的人文历史和民族文化的缓慢变迁。尚扬近期的“诊断”系列，虽然来自个人的经历，他也没有把它作为一个医院题材来提炼，而是从人类文明进化的角度，以艺术家的眼光去剖析诊断。世纪末人类物质生活发生了巨大的变化，科学技术和机器仪表是人类创造的，但在某些方面它却具有控制人类生活的异化趋势。人们在物质生活不断改善的同时，精神、心理等方面却出现了前所未有的紊乱，价值观念的混乱和失落，使正直而具有正义感的尚扬也沉入长久的思考和困惑。后现代主义的价值多元与意义碎片的堆积，对于具有古典主义人文理想的尚扬来说，本身就是一个严峻的挑战。无怪乎尚扬作品中诊断者也被诊断，诊断者和被诊断者都处于平面化的空白状态中，成为倾向不明的灰色人群。它使我想到马尔库赛的《单向度的人》，这是对工业化时代人类生存状态的文化诊断和自我反思。
　　尚扬近年来的艺术工作，已经将他的思考，逐步建立在坚实的视觉艺术的基础之上，他的作品不是哲学化的图解，而是在视觉图像的构造中蕴含着耐人寻味的人文内涵。在这一意义上，我认为尚扬一方面真正地回到了艺术自身，同时又超越了艺术。在尚扬的新作中，不仅保持了他前期作品的视觉张力，而且在“大风景”典雅有致的色彩基础上，渗入了波普艺术的幽默、涂鸦艺术的天真。他的作品虽然更加平面化，但却保持了油画性用笔的松动和书学性的率真意趣。《94大风景》中，尚扬对于黑、白、灰色彩的运用，在随意中达到了很高难度的严谨控制。而X光胶片的运用，虽然有现成品和装置的意味，但却与平面化的绘画十分协调，没有过分生硬的突兀，这显示出尚扬对于视觉形式的自觉意识和对于综合材料运用的整体把握能力。在20世纪80年代以来中国现代艺术的发展进程中，我一直关注着不同于单纯模仿西方艺术的中国新艺术的发展，可以这样说，尚扬的艺术创作，已经达到了这样一个阶段，它具有世界范围内的文化交流意义，但却是属于中国文化历史的产物。
　　在尚扬那里，生活的真实意味着个人生活只是创作的一个出发点和切入角度，重要的是尚扬在自己的艺术工作中，将历史的维度引入生活的内涵，使之具有更为丰富的人类文明进化的历史厚重感。从而尚扬在艺术中，超越了个人的生活，在与视觉艺术历史的对话中，使我们看到了对人类文化的不断追问。
　　（摘录自《中国油画》1995年第2期殷双喜撰《超越生活——关于尚扬的近作》）

　　Surpass Life--About Shang Yang’s Latest Works
　　Yin Shuangxi
　　Shang Yang always has a young heart. He is always curious about life, history,  science and art, and he keeps on thinking and experimenting, which are different with some a middle-aged drawers who care about adhering to their admissive “styles”. For Shang Yang, there is not too much rules and regulations. His early works lean to religious, language dainty and classically describe modernism, while now turn to more relaxant optional integrative works. If image texture, material particularity is obvious in his early works, then in his latest works, he cares about human history more, especially about the existent state of contemporary. The use of material is still important, but it already hide behind vision structure gradually. He lays stress on the choice of vision sign and construction of vision image. Current mind is combined with continuous thinking, to form it’s own art style and features of relax with preciseness, random but legal.
　　Shang Yang’s works don’t have the abuses of twiddling too much with form language, indulging too much in form factors like colors and lines, lacking connotation, which late west modernism authors are like .The essential reason is that Shang Yang is always concerned with life fervidly. And the life is of broad sense, which not only has economy life change of substantial lays, but also has contemporary’s soul flowing direction of spirit lays. In forepart years, Shang Yang went to Shangbei to experience life. He didn’t stay in the reappear of common customs，but went deep into inquiring the slowly change of human history and nation culture of Huangtu Gaoyuan. Although Shang Yang’s latest works Diagnose Series comes from his own experience, he didn’t refine it as a hospital subject. He anatomised and diagnosed it with artist’s sight from the direction of human culture evolution. At the end of last century, human’s substance life changed greatly. Technology and instruments are created by us, but in another hand, they have the catabolized trend of control our life. Our substance life keeps on improving. At the same time, there turns on inspirit、psychology turbulence that never appear. The confusion and losing of value sense made Shang Yang who has justice sense sink into thinking and puzzle for a long time. The value manifold and accumulation of meaning fragment of later modernism, is a austere challenge for Shang Yang who has the ideal of classicalism culture. That’s why diagnosticians are also diagnosed, diagnosticians and the one who are diagnosed are all in the complanate blank state, becoming gray people whose incline are not certain. It made me think of Malcksy’s Unilateralism People, which are culture diagnoses and self consideration of people living state in industrialization era.
　　Shang Yang’s art works of recent years made his thinking established on solid vision art base. His works were not philosophical diagrams, but it accumulated human intension afford for thought in construction of vision image. In this sense, I think Shang Yang on one hand went back to art itself, on the other hand exceeded art.In Shang Yang’s new works, he not only kept vision strain of his early works, but also filtered humor of bop art and puerility of doodle art on the base of elegant color in the work Great Landscape. Although his works are of more complanation, they kept the flexible of canvas drawing and frank interest of writing . In 94 Great Landscape, Shang Yang’s use of black, white, gray color came to really difficult preciseness control in random. Although the use of X ray film implied finished products and equipments, it assorted with complanate paintings. There were not too stiff popping out, revealing conscious feeling of vision form and the total grasp capability of compositive materials. From 1980’s, in the development course of Chinese modern art, I was always concerned with the development of Chinese new art, which was not the same with copying western art simply. It is to say that Shang Yang’s art works already came up to such a step that it has a meaning of worldwide culture exchange, but belonging to the product of Chinese culture history.
　　For Shang Yang, the real meaning of life is that individual life is just a start place and cut in angle of creation. Which important is he induced historical dimensionality into living intension, which makes it has more historical massiness of human culture evolution. In this way, Shang Yang surpassed individual life in art, and he made us see continual inquire of human culture in the dialogue of vision art history.
　　(Excerpt from Chinese Oil Painting in Yin Shuangxi: Beyond Life---On Shang Yang’s Latest works，1995:2)

作者：殷双喜