何玲常年从事行为，创作过多件具有力度的作品，在行为艺术界取得过较大的成绩。他的行为作品主要以顽强的生理坚持和肉身体验揭示心灵在今天所遭遇的困境，同时他也创作过对物质进行纯粹干预的行为作品，以观察认知、理念、价值在时间中的阶段性变更。但何玲并不特别强调媒介，“我觉得媒介它只是一种表达方式，……这个非得要用行为来做的时候，或者行为更贴切的时候，那就用行为来做吧。如果没有必要的时候，纯粹的架上作品也能够传达一个你的概念或者思想的时候那也可以”。

近年，何玲积极探索新的架上绘画。因为对生物遗传基因工程技术发展所导致的动物基因突变现象深有感触，何玲力图通过绘画对各类生物的形象进行重组。经过他的想象和生发，并利用普天之下各种生物在局部上的相似性，最终把生物机体有效地组合，制造出种种异形与怪物，展现出世界无限的多样性，让生物的生理现象和心理现象得以互为映射。何玲的绘画与其行为艺术并非毫无关联，反而是延续了他在行为中对当世的忧虑。

何玲的绘画无法不令人想到奇幻的《山海经》。《山海经》记述的是上古至秦汉时期中华大地上的山川、动物、植物等，而何玲绘制的是今天因基因突变在画家心中诞生的变异生物。《山海经》中包含古人的异想，曾被中国传统视为异想天开或荒诞无稽，司马迁在《史记·大宛列传》中曾言：“故言九州山川，《尚书》近之矣。至《禹本纪》、《山海经》所有怪物，余不敢言之也。”强化变异、突变等魔幻色彩（甚至用何玲自己的话来说，他的绘画是以接近病态的方式进行），对中国当代绘画的突破是有益的。

时至今日，在生物学、医学领域——即生命科学领域，与现代主导思维模式相对立的神秘、魔法等观念显然更为强大和持久。而在艺术领域，荒诞、魔幻等观念也明显比客观、写实等主张更激动人心和发人深省。何玲的画并不是想在变异生物中寻找业已存在的旧物，而是在旧物的新生中发现令人惊异的新奇，以便向陈规陋习说再见。或者说，何玲是把最初的生物进行分离，再经过各种混合的行动以达到嬗变的程度。在此，何玲改变了原本被规定的事物的性质。在他创造的形象里，事实与虚构，设计与幻象，几何的严肃和想象的任性，全部都混合起来，构成全新却又似曾相识的世界。

何玲绘画的特别之处也在于他绘画的方法，在注射器中放入颜料，用注射器绘画，虽耗时费力，却能够让画面产生最详细的效果。通过对细微的塑造，才有可能在有利的时机和可能的情况下进入对宏观和全局的建设。何玲在作品自述中曾说：“光怪陆离的形象产生过程是在相对强迫式挤压注射器的过程中产生的，接近病态与修炼的作画方式让我痛并快乐着。也以此来达到内心的沉寂与生命的自我理疗！”道家谓修炼，佛家谓修持，儒家则谓修养，梁漱溟讲道：“或许可以说，修养是对于生命本身的认识。我们自己是活的人，是生命，要认识自己生命，认识人类的生命，而使生命之力量增强。我想这便是叫修养。”何玲作画正是为认识自己的生命，认识人类的生命。

蔡元培亦曾谈及修养：“查修养之目的，在使人平时有一种操练，俾临时不致措置失宜。……至于吾人居今日而言修养，则尤不能如往古道家之蜇影深山，不闻世事。盖今日社会愈进，世务愈繁。”何玲的作画并未蛰影深山，而是积极介入世事，不仅寻求自身生命的清晰，更关注人类对自然的干预，以及社会和知识的变革。

从画面气息以及精细的程度上看，何玲的画——比如《百鸟图》、《围一》、《新珍禽图》等，都颇似五代黄筌的《写生珍禽图》。《写生珍禽图》物象勾勒精确，墨线轻微，设色细巧，质感逼真，没有任何局部交代不清，今天看来依然鲜活，仿佛黄荃当时已将画中珍禽置于永恒的理想世界中，动物远离尘土，根本没有意识到有艺术家在旁注视并描绘它们。

笛卡尔曾经遭到世人的谴责，认为他从哲学上在把更多的明确性注入可思维的世界中去的同时，却遗弃了因明确而衍生出来的非实证性事物。实际上，笛卡尔并不认为它们之间不存在联系，而只是觉得它们的联系不是他的哲学可以到达或触碰的。在何玲的作品中，看似只有生物可见的局部与局部的衔接，甚至如同黄筌的《写生珍禽图》，画中的动物与动物并无关联，但真正更重要的是生物可见的局部与不可见的世界之间的联系。不可见的世界即今天异质的环境，以及存在于今日世界中各种互相对抗着的力量，它们不受限制地相互纠缠，比如，即便在高新科学技术统治的今天，依然有人继续遵照着古老的巫术行医治病。

何玲的绘画方法正是源自自身经验，而非空穴来风。他出生于行医世家，在中药房中度过他的童年，医院对他来说如同迪斯尼乐园，这使得何玲采用的以注射器作画的方法具有可供依傍的传统。医学是技术性很强的学科，技术的革新不仅使现实发生变化，更使人类的认知发生变化。今天的各种学科跟过程、关系和动态发生的关联，远远胜于过去跟空间中的静态所发生的关联。何玲的画具有拓扑学的性质：因游牧、流动、迁移等导致不同的状态，在和传统的交织中产生出积极的合并和混杂力量，从而发展出迅猛的推动力，促使艺术获得再生。

2012年2月

Rebirth

• On the Paintings of He Ling

By Duan Jun (Doctor, Famous Critic, Curator and Deputy Director of White Box Museum of Art)

 

He Ling, who has been engaged in the action art for several years, has created many influential works and has made grate achievements in the circle of the action art. Mainly characterized by physiological persistence and body experience, his action works reflect the dilemma the soul suffers today. At the same time, he has also produced the action works expressing the pure interference in the matter so as to observe the phasic change of the cognition, concept and value from the aspect of time. But He Ling never emphasize the medium in particular. He once said, “I think the medium is only a way of expression… I choose the action when it is necessary or more appropriate. But it is ok if the action is unnecessary and the easel painting can express your concept or idea.”

 

In the recent years, He Ling has actively explored a new kind of easel painting. He tries to recombine the images of various creatures by means of painting since he has a deep feeling for genic mutation of the animals caused by the development of the technology of the genetic engineering, and finally succeeds in combining the living organisms, creating various weird creatures, reflecting the infinite diversity of the world and expressing the physiological and mental phenomena of the creatures by making use of the partial similarities of the creatures through his imagination and development. His paintings are related to the action art and show his worries about the world.

 

He Ling’s paintings depict the variants of the creatures formed in the painter’s mind due to today’s genic mutation and can remind one of the fantastic Shan Hai Jing which describes the mountains, animals, plants, etc. from ancient China to Qin and Han dynasties, contains the strange thoughts of the ancient people and was considered to be fantastic and absurd by the traditional China. Sima Qian once wrote in the Collected Biographies of Dawan of Shiji, “Shang Shu (or called The Book of History) records almost all the national mountains and rivers, so I don’t dare to mention the monsters described in Yu Ben Ji and Shan Hai Jing.” The emphasis on the magic color such as variation and mutation is beneficial to the breakthrough of the contemporary Chinese painting (and He Ling also thinks his paintings are created almost in a way of pathosis).

 

So far, it is obvious that the concepts of myth and magic which are opposite to the main modern thinking pattern are stronger and more persistent in the life science field. And the concepts of absurd and fantasy are more stirring and thought-provoking than the opinions of objectivity and reality in the artistic circle. In the paintings, He Ling doesn’t intend to find the existed creatures among the variants, but instead, he tries to discover the amazement of the rebirth of the existed creatures so as to say goodbye to the outmoded conventions and customs. Or it can be said that He Ling separates the original creatures and transmutes them after the combination. Hence, he changes the originally stipulated properties of the matters. The images created by him forms a new but seemingly known world by means of the combination of the fact and fiction, the design and illusion as well as the serious geometry and willful imagination.

 

The specialty of He Ling’s paintings lies in his painting method, i.e. putting pigments into the syringe. Although such a method is time and effort consuming, it can produce a detailed effect. The depiction of subtlety makes it possible to build the whole in a favorable and possible situation. He Ling once said in his account of the works, “The bizarre and motley images are created during the relatively forceful extrusion of the syringe. The painting method, almost a kind of pathosis and cultivation, gives me pain and joy so as to achieve the inner peace and life cultivation!” The concept of cultivation is deeply rooted in the mind of the Taoists, Buddhists and Confucianists. Liang Shuming once mentioned, “It may be said that cultivation makes one understand life. We human beings are alive, and we shall understand our life and strengthen the power of life. I think that is cultivation.” The purpose of painting of He Ling is to know his and others’ lives.”

 

Cai Yuanpei once said, “I think the purpose of cultivation is to develop personal integrity so that one won’t feel completely at a loss or act improperly when he gets into trouble… As for us living in the current age, we can’t live in seclusion in the mountains or be unconerned about the world like the ancient Taoists when we mention cultivation because our affairs will be more complicated as the society develops.” As an artist, He Ling doesn’t live in seclusion in the mountains, but instead, he is concerned about the world. He seeks for the clearness of his life and cares about the humans’ interference in the nature and the social and intellectual changes.

 

From the aspects of picture and fineness, the paintings of He Ling, such as Hundred Birds, Enclosure I and New Picture of Rare Birds, have some similarities with the Sketch of Rare Birds of Huang Quan, a painter in the Five Dynasties. In the Sketch of Rare Birds, Huang Quan draws the images accurately, vividly and clearly by means of soft lines and delicate colors. The birds in the picture look like alive today. It seems that Huang Quan set the birds in a permanent ideal world in which they are far from the crowd and never realize that an artist is watching and drawing them.

 

Descartes was condemned by common people who thought Descartes discarded the non-empirical matters derived from definiteness when he put more definiteness into the thinkable world from the aspect of philosophy. In fact, Descartes also thought they were related, but he considered that such a relationship was beyond philosophy. In the paintings of He Ling, it seems that there are only some visible partial links between the creatures and the animals in the pictures are unrelated, which is the same in the Sketch of Rare Birds of Huang Quan. But what is more important is the relationship between the visible part of the creature and the invisible world which means the current heterogeneous environment and the competing forces existed in the current world and tangled with each other unrestrictedly. For example, someone still practises medicine and treat illness according to the ancient witchcraft even though high and new sciences technologies have been popularized at present.

 

He Ling developed his own painting method based on his experience. He was born in a physician family and spent his childhood in the dispensary of traditional Chinese medicine that was like the Disneyland for him. That experience laid a foundation for the use of syringe in painting. The medical science is technology-oriented. The technical innovation changes the real world and the cognition of human beings. The relations of the present disciplines with the process, relationship and dynamic are more than those of the past with the static in the space. The paintings of He Ling have the property of   topology: A positive mixing power is generated to form a powerful driving force so as to promote the artistic rebirth when the different states caused by nomadism, movement and migration is interlaced with the tradition.

Written in February 2012

作者：段君