顾振清

雷子人的画总有清新、率性之感，画中的人物就像邻家的女孩、男孩，亲切，感性，好做梦，体现了当下青年人在日常生活中所挥发、耗散的一种诗意。飘忽的梦境与幻觉，作为他童年记忆的延续，早已成为他一尘不染的精神家园。这个家园似乎可居可游，他随时可以遁入，也随时可以逸出。雷子人自由出入于现实与超现实这两个空间，对他而言，其中并无界限、阻隔。他骨子里又是一个浪漫的唯美主义者，从现实生活到内心的往返过渡和穿梭，雷子人可以在画中不动声色地加以实现，由此，那些面目不清、神似而形不似的水墨人物形象渐渐沉潜下来，传神地揭示出青年人尤其是青年女子心理层面上的隐秘。

尽管在雷子人作品中，既可以看到文人的学养，又可以觉出西学的功底。但他对传统文化元素的浸淫、刷新和再生产，使他轻易地超越了一些陈旧的水墨文本问题，开创出自己认知并表达现实世界的个性话语和语境。在雷子人轻松营造的上下文中，现实中的种种欲望与躁动，都诉诸于质朴、纯净的视觉经验。但他在逼近自然、逼近生活原生态的时候，仍然只截取、筛选他自己感兴趣的切片、因素。无论是青春期的感伤和迷惘，还是独对宇宙和人生的孤独感，他都以个人方式加以解决。为挑战画面驾驭能力，他在宁静中暗藏骚动，在和谐中设置冲突，以打破平衡的方式来追求新的画面平衡，从而在对立中获得统一。雷子人一直用这种独特的个性话语与既有的审美习惯、认知方式保持距离，拒绝水墨画的条条框框。他的创作很难用新文人画、都市水墨、新表现等概念来框定，他的风格演变也难以规律来描述。2002年至2003年创作《入境无语》等作品阶段，他画的是现代社会背景下的男女。雷子人将法常、八大等一种特殊的传统文化精神与欧洲现代派大家夏加尔、马蒂斯等的图式影响融会贯通，运用各种介质、方法、形式的实验，淬炼成自己潜意识层面的丰厚积淀和敏锐直觉。这一时期的大批作品已形成无需争论的视觉事实。2003年的《女人味》系列，他兴之所至，画了大量的女子形象，使用了马头等许多隐喻的符号，平添了几分情色成分。雷子人试图打造一种个人话语优先的语境。即便是表达的一种幻想、一种寓意，使用的仍是同样的语汇，使用他最熟悉的女孩、男孩形象。这其实就是一种“入境”的努力，他对表达真实有所期许，并带有一定的文化反省和社会批判的态度。他的人物具有莫名的孤独感。即便画面有两人、多人也互不应对，状态迷茫、疏离。表面情色的画面，却无激情燃烧。观者在画面上真正看见的是裸露的人性，以及人与人之间心理鸿沟。这些画面人物并不真实，但却真切地指向全球化社会条件下的每个个人。2005年《水性》系列、《新古意》系列和2006年《圣水》系列，则代表了雷子人试图回到中国传统人文精神上的一种努力。对他而言是“出境”。他以逃向精神家园的方式，完成对现代社会所有难题的一次逃避式的超越。古人的闲情逸致是这一观念的最好注脚。雷子人进得去、出得来的活跃身段，使他成为一个频频跨界、触犯保守规条的艺术家。这也令他获得自我批判的勇气。

雷子人的“出入境”，进入的是自己，走出的也是自己。而每一次循环，也许都会给艺术上的脱胎换骨带来机会。

Gu Zhenqing

Lei Ziren’s paintings sustain a fresh and candid quality. Figures in his work appear as intimate, sensible and dreamy as neighbor girls and boys, reflecting the poetry today’s teenagers attain in their daily life. As the continuity of his boyhood, the trance or the illusion has made an immaculate spiritual homeland of his. It is an open place where Lei can shuttle in and flee away whenever he feels like. And such a free access stands in between the real and the surreal space, or the artist sees no border at all. Lei, a romantic perfectionist in his own right, achieved effortlessly on the paper the odyssey between the real life and the internal world. And those ink-made characters – produce déjà vu with vague faces– eventually came to the fixture and reveal to the core the private and mysterious inner-side of the youngsters, especially the girls.

In spite of his erudition and the deep insight of western culture, he has broken through the ink-text cliché with his good yet renovative command and reproduction of traditional cultural elements, and reached the distinctive discourse and context that finds its root in artist’s cognition and mirrors the real world. Within this easily-constructed context, desires and agitations of all kinds in the real life have resorted to the austere and pure visual experience. Upon his approach to the nature and primitive lifestyle, Lei captures and selects the segments and factors that interest him. And he tackles in a personal way with the melancholy and confusion during the puberty as well as the loneliness towards the universe and life. He imbeds the turbulence in the peacefulness, the conflict in the harmony to tighten his grip of the composition. A new balance therefore comes out of the collapse of the former one as the unity out of the oppositions.It is the unique distinctive discourse that helps Lei stay away from the existing aesthetic and cognitive practice and cut loose from all the conformities in ink painting. Terms as neo-intellectual-painting, urban ink, neo-expressionism and the like fail to define Lei’s art, while his approach refuses any regular label. Between 2002 and 2003 when he produced works like An Dumb Entry, he eyed on the men and women against the background of modern society. In Lei’s art the culturally vintage mind (i.e., Fa Chang and Ba Da Shan Ren) meets the pictorial influence (i.e., Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse): he experiments with various media, methods and forms so as to heighten the subconscious dosage in his work and forge a keen intuition. And inarguably, arrays of work of this phase speak on their owns. The series The Way Women Are (2000) was then made on the spur of the moment. He produced a bunch of female images, applying horse and a number of other metaphors that breathed into the work an air of eroticism. In an effort of constructing a specific context in which individual discourse enjoys the priority, the artist favors the same vocabulary and images of girls and boys he is familiar with as well, even when he may refer to an illusion or an emblem. Hence such an effort tells about his move towards the inner side. The artist retains some reflection upon culture and social criticism in addition to a little hope for voicing the truth. And his characters are suffering from the ineffable loneliness. No interaction can be found between two or more persons who are stuck in a state as lost and estranged. Voluptuous as his work appears, it never burns emotionally inside. It is the naked human nature and psychological divide between people that viewers can trace on the paper. Fictional are the figures, but the circumstance coincides with everyone living in this globalized society. And other series like Water’s Nature (2005), Neo-vintage (2005) and Holy Water (2006) show Lei’s endeavor of returning to traditional Chinese art pursuit. To him it means the exit. His retreat to the spiritual homeland marked an evasive transcendence over all the social implications ever. And the ancients’ easy-mind gives a perfect footnote to it. Lei’s flexible approach has rendered him an artist who constantly succeeds in the crossover and offbeat practices. It is where his courage for self-criticism lies in.

Lei Ziren’s coming in and moving out both are going round through himself. Each circle will bring his art to a higher level.