读李昌龙油画作品，突然想起卞之琳题为《断章》的诗句：“你站在桥上看风景，/看风景的人在楼上看你。//明月装饰了你的窗子，/你装饰了别人的梦”。——看与被看、自己和别人的关系，是相互生成而又相互流通的，其间不仅存在着协调与补充，也存在着博弈与差距。人通过看风景来看自己，是因为风景的衰败缘自主体的入侵；人通过他人来看自己，乃是因为他人和自己具有问题的共犯性。李昌龙在画题中设置了这样的悖论：“这不是我的风景”，但“这是我们的风景”。前者令人想起马格里特的画题 “这不是一只烟斗”，加上后者，否定与肯定因为单数和复数的改变而改变。于是，观者被置入画境关于我和风景、我和我们、我们和风景的相互矛盾和紧张关系之中。
李昌龙用摄影棚式的镜头语言营造出虚拟的场景，人与环境的关系是舞台化和梦幻性的。画中人物似乎被聚光灯所照射，其仰视与逆光，让人想起在夜间用手电筒从下向上突然照见的面孔，张惶无措，惊惧而怪异。这种特殊的光线处理，加上背景的泛光效果和色彩运用的荧光感，不仅和当代视觉经验中视屏感受相通，而且经过强化和极端化，使画面在光线表现方面显得特别异样而与众不同。与之相适应，其色彩使用十分浓烈，冷暖色对比特别是橙黄、肉红和蓝绿色并置，相互烘托，相互强化，让人深受刺激。画家在协调色彩关系的时候，有意保留某种生硬、别扭的因素，像是金属摩擦的不协和声，尖利得让人心悸，以其敏锐反应给精神以凄厉之感。
李昌龙绘画以混合、暧昧、胶着的创作方式，在实在与虚幻之间构境，在刻画与表现之间造形。有时他虚拟场景，把它当作真的；有时他描绘对象，又把它置于梦中。他经常把线性分割的构成关系、写实人体的具体描绘和表现性的笔触抽象一起杂糅于画面，中断哲学、社会及历史叙事的完整性，让人回到连接精神心理的感觉状态。因为感觉之于世界，难以用清晰纯粹的语言述说，只能在迷恋、迷幻、迷惑甚至迷狂之中，用梦魇的呓语来揭示精神心理的真实。李昌龙作品有一种希区柯克式的悬念，观者视线被画中人的视线所诱惑、所牵引，引入意义搜寻的好奇与窥探之中，因为画中人物总是在张望什么或抓拍什么。但画家个别、局部、片段的叙事到此为止，于是，观者不仅被置于悖谬的荒诞的视觉图景中，而且在被抛进去的同时又失去了既定的叙事依托，因而不得不处在自我寻觅的心理状态。这是一处自我选择与自我阐释的场域，尊重个体价值但没有终极归宿。画家以超现实的内心独白，来触及人与环境、人与文化以及人与人之间存在的问题，揭示出主体精神对现实的焦虑和未知的恐惧。其作品带给我们惊奇、异样和复杂的心理感受，完全不同于那种符号图像的意义传输。中国当代艺术的许多作品，出于国际接轨和市场供应的他者需求，大量制作广告图解的艺术符号与符号艺术。这种投其所好，与权利、资本共谋的样式化生产，往往借助于宏大政治、流行文化、传统图像进行复制、挪用、拼贴和重组。这种表层化的图像转型，不过是社会生活和历史表象的看图说话，没有对微观精神世界的具体表现，难以深入人作为个体的真实而复杂的生存体验和内心情感。同时也使艺术丧失了感觉、感受与思想感情的丰富性。在艺术动人心弦的微妙之处被实用主义取而代之的时候，艺术还有什么创造性可言？艺术不是对浮生世相的再现，而是作用于人的直觉、人的感悟、人的精神体验并具有思维智慧的视觉传达。它不能简化为图像符号，也不能仅止于审美愉悦。艺术创作包含着人类对历史现实和生存困境的智性思考，因而能够成为解放个性并改造社会的力量。正是在这一点上，李昌龙作品以其心灵化、精神化的艺术创造为我们提供了新的可能性。
四川美院桃花山侧
2008年3月31日
Art is not a symbol
--Study on the paintings by Li Changlong
Wang Lin
When I read Li Changlong’s paintings, a line of Partial Chapter (Duanzhang) by Bian Zhilin comes into my mind: “When you enjoy the scenery standing on the bridge, the viewers upstairs are looking at you. The bright moon decks your windows, while you decorate other people’s dream.”------the relationships between viewer and being viewed, and between oneself and others are harmonious and supplementary, but different from each other. People view himself/herself through scenery, due to the fall of scenery resulted from the invasion of main-body; people can review himself/herself through others, because there is a common characteristic between him/her and others. Li Changlong claimed a paradox in his paintings: “This is not my Landscape”, but “This is our Landscape”. Added with the later one, the negation and affirmation are transformed, due to the transformation of singular and plurality. And then, the viewer is put under an impression in the painting of contradictive, tense relationship between me and scenery, me and us and between us and scenery.
Using studio-style scene language, Li Changlong successfully founded a virtual scene, in which the relationship between human and circumstance is staged and illusionary. The characters in the scene seem to be shined by spotlights, and the bottom view and the backlighting make us remind of a fearful, helpless, strange face shined by an electric torch from bottom to top at night. This special light representation mode, together with the background’s floodlight and colorful fluorescence, is not only consistent with today’s visual experience, but also, after being strengthened and extreme, enables the scene to be particularly unique and different in terms of light representation. Correspondingly, the sense of color contrast is very strong, particularly the combination of orange yellow, pale red and blue-green, deeply exciting people. When dealing with the color relationship, the author preserved purposely the stiff, unnatural ingredients, which, like the awfully sharp voice from frictional metals, make you worried and anxious, putting you under the impression of deep sadness.
With the creation mode featured by mix, vagueness and conglutination, Li Changlong creates works with senses of both substance and illusion. Sometimes, his virtual scenes seem to be substantial; sometimes he portrays illusionary objectives. He usually combines the structure of linearity division, the concrete portrayal of body and the abstract representation into one scene, and breaks off the integrality of the philosophical, social and historical narration. To the actual world, the sense is hardly to be clearly illustrated by language, but to be revealed through crazy expression. Li Changlong’s works are featured by Hitchcockian-style suspense. The viewer’s sight is tempted and led by the sight of the character in the painting to search for and pry into something, since the characters in the painting seem to look around or seize something. Since the painter’s individual, partial narration is ended here, the viewer, being absent of the dependence on the former narration, is put under a preposterous visual impression and in a psychological state of self-search. This is a field of self-selection and self-expression, with respect on individual value, without ultimate end-result. With a surrealistic interior monologue, the author replies to the issues between human and circumstance, human and culture and between human and human, revealing the main-body spirit’s anxiety about reality and its fear about future. Differing from other symbol images, the author’s works bring us the senses of surprise, difference and complexity. In order to meet the international standard and the market demand, many of contemporary artistic works in China are made in advertising, graphic, artistic symbol and symbol arts. This is a production mode combined with power and capital, usually resulting in copy, appropriation spelling and reconstruction, with the help of great politics, popular culture and traditional images. This exterior transformation in image is but an illustration about the social life and shallow history, without concrete display of the microcosmic spiritual world. It is hardly to make deep illustration about the individual’s complex survival experience and its inner feeling. At the same time, this makes the art short of thinking and feeling. When the art’s essence of moving people’s heart is replaced by the practicality, can there be any creativity in art? The art is not an illustration about the world, but a visual expression about human’s instinct, feeling, spirit and wisdom. The art should not be simplified as an image symbol, or acts only as aesthetic pleasure. Artistic creation involves human being’s wisdom and thinking about the historical realism and survival difficulty. Thus, art can make contribution to individual liberty and social reconstruction. In the light of these functions, Li Changlong created with his heart and spirit a number of works, which provide a new possibility for us.
Written at Peach-blossom Mountain beside Sichuan Fine Arts Institute
March 31, 2008
