中国当代女性艺术的崛起，之所以具有精神文化意义，就在于它是新时期人性觉醒的一个重要环节。应该指出的是，这个人性觉醒与政治公利化的“妇女解放”是性质不一样的两个层次，政治化的“妇女解放”目的在于“解放”了的妇女纳入被“宏大叙事”的社会运动中去，是将妇女从家庭、宗族，或者“夫权”等铚锢中解放出来，交给诸如：民族、国家、集体、组织等等概念性的主体，而人性觉醒的妇女解放则是将女性交给自己——即哈克布克的“将人和人的关系还给人自己”。
正因为中国二十世纪八十年代出现的“新时期”，具有这种“新启蒙”的诉求，它就具有了精神和文化的人性觉醒和人权解放的意义和价值，从这个角度看，我们就能发现中国“新时期”的女性艺术和政治功利性的“妇女解放”式的女性画家们的作者多么不一样！
读金善的画，由画而及她画中显现出的情感和精神，就会有一种触及到她生命本真的感动，你进而会感到女画家的全部生命的真实都在她的作品中了。
金善是一位出身于延边朝鲜自治州的少数民族女性画家，大凡少数民族的男女们多有一种能歌善舞的特质，比较而言，文明先行的汉民族则为一色的循规蹈矩的“内敛”起来，这就是所谓哲人所说的“文明悖论”的问题，卢梭更进一步指出“被文明教养坏了的人”，于是又回到席勒的“理性暴政”那里去——文明失当地压制了感性之根，——这就是席勒的美学思想。用这个理论和思想来认识诸如：新疆、蒙古、朝鲜等少数民族为什么都能歌善舞，都比汉族更接近艺术和感性什么，就能为理解少数民族艺术、女性艺术和乃至金善的艺术提供一个思想史和文化史意义的背景。
金善的作品最为突出的是色彩的语言的表达，在儒家文化的观念中，色彩是一个危险的东西：“色能乱性”，从感觉的角度说，色彩，尤其是强烈的色彩，是较线形更能刺激人的视觉官能和视觉感知的，所以绘画艺术在进入现代之后，首先的变革就是对色彩的强调，以及在表达上的扩充，而金善的色彩语言的特征就使她首先具有了鲜明的现当代性，从风格上说，她的色彩鲜明而又强烈，善用红黄暖色，这是她的色彩语言的主体，她的早期写实风格的作品，如人物和静物，虽然是表现主义的倾向，但色彩语言的红黄暖色主调也是明显的倾向，红黄主调在色彩学的象征性上说是对应激情、热烈、鲜血、壮美、活力等等概念，它最富于感性和生命活力的能量，在金善作品的色彩语言红黄的暖色主调，常常被处理成和蓝绿冷色调的对峙、回旋、纠结的运动关系中，鲜明的色彩和强烈的动感构成了一个感性活力的生命图谱。值得指出的是金善的这种色彩和图像，却总是指向生命的象征，而从不指涉社会学的范畴，所以在这里我们就意识到了金善的作品，虽然在形态上是强烈的，有重量感的，但艺术的本质上，仍然是女性的特征，她信奉的是生命的哲学和存在的体验。
和一般的女性艺术所不同的是金善作品的气度和格局，她的这种气度和格局体现于她的作品的结构性特征，她是很重结构性的画家，也许在这方面她是受到了维也纳分离派大师作品的影响，但是我更倾向是她的本性中对“力”的感觉和意识，从而导致了她的作品中的结构性的表达，在这个时候我们甚至看到了金善作品“壮美”的一面，“壮美”作为古典美学悲剧性崇高的范畴，女性艺术家一般不涉及，金善的“壮美”在美学精神上与古典美学的“壮美”同形不同质，她并没有“悲剧”的自觉意识和悲剧的内涵，说到底是形式的所指，而非精神的能指。
说到这里，金善作品中的结构性张力就自然成为了她的艺术精神中一个非常鲜明又凸显的特征，这一点使她在女性艺术家之中非常耀眼，与时下女性艺术家比较多见的“小女人”式表达形成强烈的反差，作为艺术批评，我不能一般意义地贬低女性艺术家的“柔美”可能，但这决非女性艺术家的整体性特征，我坚持认为作为人的一半，女性首先是人性，然后是女性，并且人性涵盖着女性。
这一点在金善的身上和她的作品中看得十分清楚。
金善是一个很有探索精神和探索成果的画家，她从表现写实绘画，到抽象的表现，再又穿行意象到抽象之间，她总是很有激情地探索和推进。分析她的艺术轨迹，我们能够清晰地看到一种语言的自律性，她是具有一些语言形式上的个人法则的，她的自律性就体现对个人法则的不断开展，丰富、演绎和完善的运动之中。
她近期的系列作品，是以对石头为表达对象而展开的，从形态学上说，这实质上一批介于意象和抽象之间的作品，对于这些作品的表达，女画家在精神上有一种对“石头”的历史有“形上”和“形下”的双重诠释，在她的作品中，石头既是“神性”的又是“自然性”的，正因为画家对“石头”的精神性和形质性表达二元同构性表达，在她的作品中赋予了石头以丰富而深度的形式美感和精神内容，而尤其难能可贵的是通过这一个系列作品的创造过程，使她的艺术得到了阶段性升华。
金善同时是一个很有创作活力的画家，她不断地有新的拓进和新的意识，作为一个关注她的艺术的评论者，我想有二个问题应该提出，供她参考：一是装饰性和平面性和精神性的关系问题：由于她所从事的职业关系，当她转入纯艺术的绘画之后，装饰性是可以作为表达资源的，但装饰性需要转换成现当代性的平面表达，否则装饰性将消解和伤害精神性和自由性的表达；其二、金善的作品在精神的生成上有强烈的“自然性”特征，如何在“自然性”上植入主动的人文思想，而避免大哲人康德所批评的“由自然性成熟”而可能出现的后果，这是金善要警觉的。
邓平祥著名批评家、油画家、策展人
Perceptual impulse and the true expression of life
Interpretation of Kim Sun’s art
The rise of Chinese contemporary female art is of great spiritual and cultural significance,forming an important part of the awakening of the human nature in the new period.
We are not dealing here with a political movement - the grand narrative of women’s liberation: breaking away from the masculine authority, social clan, the state, even the family. No, we are dealing with something more profound and authentic: through the awakening of their true nature women give themselves to themselves. (Jacob Christoph Burckhardt )"the relations between person and person to person").
The 1980’s opened a new period in China: a true enlightenment and a spiritual and cultural awakening which also ushered in a "new era" of an art created by women painters, art liberated from the dogmas of the past, an art the likes of which had never been seen before.
Getting to know Kim Sun’s paintings, is being profoundly moved by the spirit and emotion which emanate from them. Indeed, we discover in them the essence of what it means to be a woman painter in contemporary China.
Kim Sun comes from the Yanbian minority in the Korean autonomous prefecture. It is believed that the minority people posses genuine qualities in the highest degree and that, in comparison, the Han majority are more restrained, conformist and conventional, due to their long and rich civilization. This is one of the paradoxes of civilization, namely that, according to Rousseau, it disposes of what is genuine in human nature, and, according to Schiller, leads to the “tyranny of reason”. This can help us understand why are the Uighurs, Mongolians, North Koreans and other ethnic minorities, closer to the real spirit of art than the Han majority.
Kim Sun predominantly expresses herself in colors and colors, according to the Confucian tradition, have a potential to stimulate the feelings and excite them sometimes to dangerous levels. Paroxisms of color and emotion are indeed characteristic of modern art and in this respect Kim Sun’s art is modern and contemporary. She shows particular propensity forbright and intense warm colors like the red and yellow which make the main body of her paintings. Her early works are rather realistic in style but with an expressionist tendency. However, warm colors, reds and yellows, already make appearance in them. According to the symbolism of colors, they express passion and energy, particularly red which associates to blood, but also to vitality and grandeur. They are contrasted with greens and other cooler tonalities and these contrasts are particularly suitable to give vigor and dynamism to sport scenes, one of the themes of her paintings. to tangle of sports relationships, bright color and strong action constituted a perceptual map of energy life .Worth pointing out is that bright colors and energetic forms of Kim Sun’s art always relate to real life and never to abstractions.
Possibly under the influence of the Viennese Secession, Kim Sun’s works are solidly structured. One also discovers in them a sense of grandeur, a certain spirit of loftiness and magnificence as it figures in the classical aesthetics. This kind of lofty expression where an elementary force of nature and structural tensions inherent in the work reach to the heights of the tragic, one usually does not associate with female art which we tend to perceive as more gentle and “feminine”.
Kim Sun is an adventurous and explorative painter who moves from the realistic to the abstract and back. However, following her artistic trajectory, one clearly realizes the amount of self discipline in her expressive language which is the subject to certain strict, self imposed laws.
Her recent series, based on the stone as an object of expression, bridges the figurative and the abstract. The stone – an object invested with deep symbolical ramifications of meanings,has a dual significance of a thing divine and natural at the same time. This symbolical dimorphisam of the stone extends to the sexual sphere as well.
Finally, as an art critic, I would like to introduce a caveat. In my opinion, this very creative and adventurous painter should bring certain tendency to ornamental and planarity in conformity with the requirements of the contemporary art. Ornamental can be used as a resource, but the decoration needs to be converted to modern and contemporary graphic expression, otherwise, the ornamental will dissolve and harm the spirituality and the freedom of expression;
Born in Ningxiang, HunanProvince, Deng Pingxiang is a renown art critic and curator. He isa member of China Artists Association, the director of the China Oil Painting Society as well as a member of the academic committee of the Wu guanzhong research center of the Tsinghua University.
Cathrine kang translation