“一针见炫”是我针对艺术家何玲的新作杜撰出来的一个词，取了一针见血之意，同时又把他作品呈现出来的结果，即炫目的感觉给提示了出来。事实上，何玲的这批架上绘画作品，本身就不是以通常的画笔涂抹而成，而是取了医院给病人打针的注射器，将丙烯颜色稀湿以后装入其中，再一点一点注射到画面。何玲的这种点缀方式，打破了架上绘画固有的表现习惯，而与传统的许多民间工艺，诸如刺绣、篆刻等手段联系起来，不仅拓展了架上绘画的语汇，同时也给我们带来了耳目一新的视觉感受。正是从这个意义上，我用了“炫”字来归纳他的作品。因为炫在汉语中的意思与跳比较接近，何玲用针管注射的方式来作画，无疑是别出新裁，跳出了原来架上绘画的思维定势。故而，针针见炫，格外醒目。

何玲，1981年生于湖南安化，那是梅山的腹地，梅山文化在此生根繁衍，至今仍还有不少地方保留着原始巫术的因子。我小时候就曾亲身感受过梅山文化的神秘力量，用现代科学不可能解释，但它确确实实浸透于梅山一带，指导着不少山民的日常生活。作为“80后”的何玲，尽管赶上了中国社会的开放，被现代教育所裹挟，早就脱去了原来的山民色彩。但儿时生活环境对他造成的影响，仍然挥之不去，构成了他落拓不羁，甚至叛逆的性格。何玲初登艺坛，便选择了行为艺术作为自己的表达方式，我始终觉得是他反叛性格的一种真情流露。近十年来，何玲挣脱文明的枷锁，用自己的身体不断挑战极限，所演绎出来的一种对现代文化的突围，其中就若隐若现地蕴涵了某种梅山文化的原始激情。在何玲众多的行为艺术作品中，有一件作品给我留下了深刻印象。那是他摹拟秃鹫和雄鹰的行为去挖掘自己身体的潜能，人与兽相结合的形象不仅让我重温了远古时期人们的幻象，联想到了《山海经》等诸多古籍，更让我看到了何玲的精神诉求，有一种借着艺术想象力的翅膀腾飞，渴求跳出这个喧哗闹市的文化冲动。我认为何玲后来的架上绘画，其观念的铺垫正是在这里。

在何玲一系列的架上绘画中，飞禽走兽成为了画面的主体。但无论是天上飞的，还是地上走的，动物世界的万千形态都已经打乱，被何玲重新置换成了一些怪异的新形象，或鸡头狗身，或牛头马面，或虎头蛇尾，或鸟身蛙头……总之，都已破了五形，乱了常规。完全有理由相信，这是何玲对现实的一种刻意颠覆，也是他反叛性格在艺术上的再次呈现。当然，这些荒诞不经的图腾也并非空穴来风，而是紧紧关联着何玲的童年想象，与梅山文化的原始趣味相结合。事实上，梅山文化中那些巫术的因素，正是初民时期人们通过对自然的幻想和实践积累起来的一种特殊能力。随着时间的推移，人们在进化过程中获取了更多的认识，从而用知识理性替代生命直觉，逐渐丧失了许多原始的本能。但是，在一些偏远地区，比如何玲出生的湘中山区，不少远古的幻象还幸存于民间，它们通过一些民间艺术的方式，比如木刻、石雕、刺绣等塑造出千奇百怪的图腾，渗透在日常生活的方方面面，也给了一代又一代的山民以某种异想天开的生命启示。何玲寻访自己的记忆，从远古的召唤中获取精神能量与视觉资源，亦可以说是一种文化反思。因为当他将这些变异的动物图腾复现于当下时，对当今社会构成的解构关系，就已经由表现虚幻变成了现实的反讽。一边是荒诞无稽的动物世界，一边是丑态百出的人间万象，哪个更魔幻？更荒谬？对照一下便一目了然了。

回到何玲的作品，能够引起我兴趣的还有他的语言方式，而这也同样由来于他的记忆。据说，何玲出生于行医世家，童年在中药房度过，医院成为他的存在之家，给予他的是一段病苦、疼痛，以及死亡等灰色记忆。这作为何玲后来用注射器作画的心理依据，就如同鲁迅少年时为父亲治病屡屡步入药铺的经历一样，转换而来的不仅只是一种语言表达的方式，更有一种对人间疾苦的悲悯，以及医治这个现实社会的冲动。我始终觉得何玲用身体做行为也好，以注射器作画也罢，其中包含的独立个体对群体社会的反抗意识，都是他的一声呐喊，为的还是唤醒那些沉睡的大多数，只不过他没有取鲁迅的文学表现，而是采用的视觉艺术，企图通过新颖的视觉创新来刺痛人们行将麻木的神经。而这，正是我关注何玲的地方。因为在一个语言文字逐渐退到边缘的读图时代，用视觉创新来反思社会，揭示问题，已经成了一条文化捷径。何玲通过这样的捷径不断回眸，从记忆深处挖掘艺术的可能性，不仅只是恢复了一种古老的直觉能力，更重要的是对现实的解构与批判之后，还能使人们在五彩缤纷的遐想中获得审美的超越。

2012．10．22于宋庄

 

 

About the Art of He Ling and the Interpretation of “Revealing the Heart of the Matter in a Few Images and Giving One the Feeling of Dazzling”

 

By Yang Wei

 

I create the words - “revealing the heart of the matter in a few images and giving one the feeling of dazzling” to praise He Ling for his new works. In fact, He Ling completes his paintings with the syringe for the injection instead of common brushes. He puts the diluted propylene pigments into the syringe and squeezes them onto the canvas. Thus, he extends the meaning of the easel painting and brings us a new kind of visual enjoyment by breaking the conventional expression method of such a painting and relating his method with many traditional folk arts such as embroidery and engraving. In this respect, I use “dazzling” to summarize his works. Adopting the syringe as the painting tool, He Ling departs from the original pattern of the easel painting and creates these dazzling and attractive paintings.

 

He Ling was born in Anhua, Hunan province in 1981. As the back-land of Meishan, Anhua is the birthplace of Meishan culture. Some places still keep the original witchcraft at present. When I was a child, I experienced the mystical power of Meishan culture which can’t be explained by modern science but exists in Meishan and other areas and guides the daily life of many people in the mountain. As a post-80s man, He Ling underwent the opening up of the Chinese society and received modern education so that he didn’t act like a person in the mountain any more. But the living environment in the childhood still has an influence on him and makes him become a rebellious person who is not fettered by formalities and manners. He Ling chose the action art when he made his first artistic debut, which, I think, reveals his character of rebelliousness. In the past decade, he has removed fetters of the civilization and challenged the limitation with his body. The breakthrough he made in the modern culture indistinctly implies the original passion of certain Meishan culture. Among his numerous works of action art, what made a deep impression on me is he simulates the acts of the vulture and the tercel to explore the potential of his body. The combination of man and beast makes me review the idolum of the people in the Age of Teras, think of many ancient books such as Shan Hai Jing, find the painter’s spiritual pursuit and have an impulse to step out of the noisy and busy city by virtue of the artistic imagination, and it lays a foundation for his later easel paintings.

 

The main characters of the easel paintings of He Ling are birds and beasts which are changed into some weird images such as chicken-head and dog-body, ox-head and horse-face, tiger-head and snake-tail or bird-body and frog-head. In a word, he breaks the conventional practice, which is another reflection of his character of rebelliousness in the art. We have good reasons to believe that He Ling overturns the reality deliberately. Certainly, those absurd totems aren’t groundless, and they are closely related to his childhood imagination and combined with the original interest of Meishan culture. In fact, the witchcraft in Meishan culture is a special ability developed by people through their imaginations of the nature and practices in the primitive period. As time goes by, people acquire more knowledge during the evolution so that they can be armed with rationality and discard the original instinct. But a lot of idola in the ancient times still exist among the people in some remote areas such as the mountainous area in the middle of Hunan where He Ling was born. The idola have influenced all the aspects of the daily life of the people in the mountain from generation to generation and given them a fantastic life inspiration by creating a great variety of bizarre totems by means of some folk arts including engraving, stone caving and embroidery. He Ling looks for his memory and gets the spiritual energy and visual resource from the call of the ancient times, which can be considered as a kind of cultural introspection. His creation of those animal variants not only expresses the illusion but also reflects his irony of the current society. Are the absurd animals or the ugly humans more magic or fantastic? We can get a clear answer easily by comparing them.

 

As to the paintings of He Ling, what can attract me is his expression method that also originates from his memory. It is said that He Ling was born in a physician family and spent his childhood in the dispensary of traditional Chinese medicine which gave him gray memories of illness, pain, death, etc. That experience became the psychological basis for the use of the syringe for painting. He Ling had the same experience as Lu Xun who always went to the dispensary for his father when he was young. In this way, He Ling has developed his expression method, showed sympathy for human’s sufferings and had an impulse to cure the society. In my opinion, his paintings imply his individual rebellious consciousness and his call for awaking the apathetic people no matter when he creates the action art with the body or paints with the syringe. He intends to remove the nervous numbness of those people through visual innovation by adopting visual art, a different expression method from that of Lu Xun who chose literature, which attracts my attention. To rethink the society and reveal the problem by means of visual innovation has become a cultural shortcut since the language has degenerated in the image reading era. Through such a shortcut, He Ling looks back on the past and finds the artistic possibility from his memory. He recovers the ancient instinct and provides a kind of aesthetic transcendence in the colorful reverie after deconstructing and criticizing the society.

Written in Songzhuang on Oct. 22, 2012

作者：杨卫