历史与心灵的风景
师若的《我的风景·殇》系列完成于90年代初,殇的古典释义指未成人而死。殇者,男女未冠而死,可伤者也,亦指战死者。国殇,谓死于国事。
围绕“三·一八惨案”烈士墓园及纪念碑的拍摄行为本身,是藉史实的遗迹对衰竭的民族精神的追问和凭吊,一种自我心灵化的祭仪。由此,暗房制作对作者而言,充当着一个幽冥的未知世界与殇者灵魂相遇并告解的存在。殇者的“此曾在”,在显影过程中,造成此地和先前的非逻辑接合,空间的目前性和时间的先前性就是墓园荒凉的景物与它的影像所栖寓的不在场的亡灵。因而,只有在这些岑寂的外延信息层面,我们才能感悟到这种诗性的真实,它悠远而清晰、虚静又悲凉。作者慎细地用画笔在照片上点缀、渲染出的雪景进而强化了种真实的非真实性,使之产生出一种圣洁的“光晕”。这种“油画照片”不唯是油画和照片的单质复合,而是对摄影的复制操作的深刻质疑:艺术原本是从祭祀和宗教发展而来,具有与生俱来的祭祀功能,摄影的类像和仿真一方面扩充并丰富了人类的视觉经验和表达手段,延伸并开阔了人们的感觉范围;另一方面它也导致了末世的灾兆,使一切都变成无原型的事物摹本,成为无指涉的类像,是艺术品失掉它特有的“光晕”。在一个现实变为“类像”,“历史变为一连串碎片式的当下”(詹明用语)的浮躁又焦虑的语境中,师若试图在历史的文化资源和视觉资源的复合点上寻绎与生命意志相籍合的精神性。无疑,墓园的训诂式拍摄为他敞开了一个健忘的大众记忆所遮蔽的空间,一个有着悼亡诗境界的象征世界。
师若吸取了德国艺术家基弗尔那种在精神废墟上追溯民族文化灵性的创造风格——以综合、凝重的材料质地,去表现从虚无中创造实际存在的感觉,通过驱邪和寻求净化来秉承历史本真,而又拒绝传统的束缚,从而将集体的希望、内疚和恐惧变成仪式。他同时也受到前苏联电影导演塔尔科夫斯基诗性电影的启示,那种迷人又荒凉的景物,使神圣和悲凉的历史内容如同飘雪般融进自身,使心灵升华变得崇高又矜持。这二者无论对他的人格之稳定塑造抑或心智的建构都秉有内在的意义。
岛子
The Landscape of History and Soul
Shi Ruo’s (师若) work “My Landscape Shang (殇)” series derives from the early 90’s.
The original meaning of Shang is “people die young before growing up to adults.” In the context of “Guo Shang”, the word can also mean those who die young in the battlefield for their motherland.
In this series, the photographing of the graveyard and monument built for those who died in “3.18” massacre, indicates a persistent search and lamentation for the national spirit, which has already been degenerated. The focus on this historical relic is also a personal spiritual cult. Therefore the dark-room serves as an unknown nether world for the artist, in which the artist encounters the souls of the prematurely dead and condoles them. The “Once-being” of those premature dead leads to an impossible fusion of the present and the past in the process of photographic development. The fusion of the present space and the past time, the desolate landscape of the graveyard reveals the absence of the souls of the deceased. Only the pregnant message of the desolation can enable us to gain an insight into the poetic truth conveyed by the work, which is both remote and clear, tragic and tranquil. The artist, with the subtle touch of brush on the photograph, creates a snowy scenery which intensifies the unreality of the reality and produces a holy “Aura” for this work. The “Painted Photograph” is not a simple mixture of oil painting and photograph. It’s a profound questioning upon the reproductions of photograph. Arts are originated from rite and religion, possess of an intrinsic function of rituality. The image and mimesis of photograph can on the one hand enrich the human visual experience and expressional method and broaden the horizon of perception. On the other hand, it is also a gloomy omen of apocalyptic catastrophes, in which everything in this world degenerates into copy and image without archetype or reference. Therefore the artistic works which have lost their “Aura”, prevail over the real. In the flippant and worrying context of “fragmentary present of the history” (Jameson), in the visualized reality, Shi Ruo attempts to restore the spirituality in harmony with the will to life, in the melting-point cultural resources and visual materials. Undoubtedly, the photograph of the graveyard opens up the space, which has been concealed by the forgettable mass and penetrates into a symbolic and poetical world of elegy.
Shi Ruo has absorbed the creative ethos of the German artist Anselm Kiefer, who attempts to salvage the national culture from a spiritual ruin. Both of them create an existential reality out of nothingness with a heavy synthetic material, inherit a historical authenticity through exorcising evil spirits and purification, refuse the bondage of tradition and transform the collective hope, guilt and fear into a ritual. Inspired by the poetic films of the Russian film-director Tarkovsky, Shi Ruo makes the holy, tragic history dissolve into the body and the soul through the description of desolately enchanting landscape.
Dao Zi
“3.18” massacre: Thousands of college students in Beijing hold a demonstration to claim the state sovereignty on March 18 1926. The policemen shot at them in front of the gate of the government.
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