随着21世纪以来全球都市人口开始超过农村人口，都市化给今日世界带来的重要改变之一，就是人的视觉现实发生了不可逆转的彻底改观。现代性进程和消费社会的发展，塑造了人类家园从自然环境到人工环境的巨大蜕变。都市和乡村的人工景观几乎遮蔽了人的绝大部分视野，使人越来越难以亲近野性的自然。于是，全球化条件下，人文视觉的世俗化现实，也越来越混同于人类存在背景中无所不在的人工现实。无论中国，还是欧美，文以载道理想的薪火相传，贯穿了艺术史线索，也构成了宗教和人文热情对当下视觉文化的浸淫。然而在今天的网络化社会，人文视觉不但没有历久而变得厚重，反而更为稀释、泡沫化。既有的人文视觉现实越来越像一层肤浅、世俗的全球文化表皮。徐小国意识到，日常的人文视觉，不仅构成了对人的现实生活的干预和遮蔽，而且造就了对人的精神生活的介入和控制。对以画画为主要表达媒介的徐小国而言，绘画继续存活的可能路径，在摄影术和抽象绘画相继出现之后，只可能越来越窄。绘画能获得当代性和未来性，其绝地求生之道也许就在于对既有人文视觉批判之中、就在于绘画观念自身的蜕变和演进之中。
西安美院毕业之后，徐小国选择继续画画。起先，他是出于对绘画技法的熟系和亲切，随之而来的问题，却是不得不面对触目惊心的绘画危机。徐小国面对着前所未有的警示，绘画在今天也许只是许多艺术家耗费生命的一种方式；至于个别人能否突围而出，建构艺术个性，就得看他是否能保持极强的观念探索心态。
徐小国在2003年以后的创作实践中，一直醉心于在油画上追究观念和观念的变革。再现方式往往是他方法论探讨之后的取向之一。舞台、人工公园景观作为他2005-2007年作品表述的视觉现实，其实是搭建了一个虚构叙事的框架。这个框架在他的画面中构成一种人工化的语境，从而也造就刻意写实的画面和刻意作假的叙事框架双重文本的格局。徐小国类似画中画的叙事结构，大都采用经典的中心构图。其中，或有人和道具亮相于舞台，似乎在上演一岀戏；或仅仅呈现一个空空如也的的舞台布景。浮华的舞台、主题公园作为一种人工造景，印证了人类在现实世界之中再次虚构一个“现实”的努力。徐小国2005-2007年貌似现实主义表现手法的作品，其实已经蕴含了一种观念表达。他通过对各种人工景观的反复描摹、表述，形成了对虚构叙事框架的再现。如果说舞台现实、人工风景的现实都是二手的、人工雕琢的现实，是现实世界经过加工的一种特殊表现形式。那么，徐小国在画面上实施的客观再现，则恰当地抽离了纷繁的现象、体现了艺术家对二手现实范式的质疑和反思。
博览群书的习惯，使徐小国越来越像一个知识分子型的艺术家。事实上，2008年以来。徐小国作品的观念呈现，开始摆脱对视觉叙事框架的路径依赖，直指各种视觉范式背后的人文积淀。他以洞若观火的一贯态度，反复追究中、西方视觉文化遗产中的那些经典的图像和符号碎片。勒石、伐树、屠龙、搜灵异，这些人与自然和超自然世界冲突、博弈和和解的人文遗迹遍布在典籍和传说之中，同时，它们也沉淀在当代人的历史感和集体无意识之中，影响着当代人的思想和行为规范。徐小国以自己独有的方式触动、重组着这些人文视觉碎片。这些碎片对他而言，是自我和自我的一个个化身，而非他者。于是，他通过画面不断修正的过程，来实施人文视觉系统的自我认知、辨识和批判，并通过《圣迹》系列作品的逻辑线索，来梳理、建构批判和自我批判的经验。
徐小国并不是强调自我图式和整体风格的艺术家。他的系列作品创作，往往从一个视觉文化对象，跳跃到另一个对象。这不但是出于他一种求变、求突破的心理，更出于他对所在乎的艺术问题的摸索、触及和纠结。他从追究一个个现实问题出发，以体验方式来过滤、批判历史和现实中的人文视觉范式及其谱系。虽然徐小国十分擅长运用笔触、线条营造图像力量，制造强烈的画面冲突，但他并不藉此宣泄才情。他反而是尽量控制自己、控制画面。徐小国在乎的是作品观念的表达。为此，他有时会蓄意为难自己。塑造、叛离、再塑造，表述、修正，再表述，往往是他完成整个画面之前跌宕起伏的语言历险。然而，徐小国并不怕犯错。在创作和修正过程中，一些有过高峰体验、但画面表达并不完整的作品，他甚至会毫不犹豫地予以放弃。可以说，徐小国《圣迹》系列表达的内容从不扑朔迷离，意义也不含混，反而是一步一个脚印，沉静地实现了一个从叙事到反叙事的推进过程。
基于对既有人文视觉的一种批判体验，徐小国从制造隐喻起始，到如今，已不再在乎隐喻和象征。他规避了艺术语言塑造和修辞上的一个个形式主义的陷阱。基于对视觉第一法则的批判态度，他从追求观念成立出发，到如今，已不再在乎作品中的思想和观念；他从打破既有的人文视觉秩序发端，到如今不再在乎新旧秩序的交替和自我秩序的建构。从中，徐小国领略了对绘画、对艺术的一种超脱和对自然人性的一种觉悟。
顾振清
2009年11月25日蒋宅口
Critique on Vision of Humanity
Gu Zhenqing
In the beginning of the 21st century, the world’s urban population surpassed its rural population. One of the biggest changes that urbanism has brought to the world today is irreversibly transforming people’s visual perception of reality. The development of modernity and social consumption has fostered the huge transformation of human environment from natural to artificial. Most of our sight is veiled by the artificial landscape in and out of cities, and it is now getting harder and harder for anyone to be close to nature. The secularization of literal visual art is no exception: it is getting artificial. No matter whether it is in China, the U.S., or in Europe, the traditional function of literature to convey spirit has been penetrating the history of art. The reality of today’s visual arts is that it is a thin and secular skin of global culture. Xu Xiaoguo realized that the daily visual perceptions had not only interfered with peoples’ lives, but also begun to intervene and control their spirit. For artist Xu Xiaoguo, who expresses through painting, the possibilities of painting’s survival are getting slim after photography and abstract painting arts. The modernity and futurity of painting actually lies in criticism of the current visual arts and the self-evolution of its concepts.
After graduating from Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, Xu Xiaoguo chose to continue painting. His decision comes was originally based on his familiarity with the technique of painting, but gradually this reasoning was followed by all kinds of problems to confront the painting crisis. Xu Xiaoguo is witnessing this unprecedented crisis in the arts. Painting today seems to just be a way of consuming life for many artists, and only those few who can keep a strong attitude of conceptual exploration can break through and leave their mark.
After his art practices in 2003, Xu Xiaoguo concentrated on searching for concepts and conceptual innovations. Discussion of his methodology always refers to one of the several ways to represent his art. Stage and artificial park landscapes formed the visual presentation of his works during 2005-2007, which actually were a structured framework for fiction and a man-made context for his paintings. The whole shape of his paintings, thus, stands on two parallel concepts of realistic painting and factionary narrative. The structure of Xu Xiaoguo’s painting is similar to “picture-in-picture” mode, as opposed to the centralization of classical composition. In some works, human figures and other objects are put together to tell a story; others use just an empty stage. These man-made landscapes attempt to make up a “reality” out of the real world. Xu Xiaoguo’s seemingly realistic works during 2005-2007 are actually results of his conceptual expression. He realized the representation of the structure of fiction-telling through repetitive description of all kinds of artificial landscapes. If we can say the stages and artificial landscapes are all second-hand and human production is just a special way to express the real world, then Xu Xiaoguo’s representing in his paintings has suitably deprived the complication of the artist’s questioning and thinking about the second-hand reality mode.
Broad reading has made Xu Xiaoguo more and more like a literal artist. Since 2008, Xu Xiaoguo’s conceptual presentation has started to drop its dependence on the narrative frames of visual art and begun to point toward literal background and meanings. He has calmly studied classic images and symbols from the visual heritages of the East and the West. Murra stone, clear land, dragon killing and ghost-searching: these signs point to conflict, negotiation, and reconciliation between humanity and nature. At the same time, the supernatural world has spread into the history of human literature and influenced the way modern people think about history and their collective unconsciousness. Xu Xiaoguo, in his own way, touches and reorganizes those visual fragments, which to him are “self,” or embodiment of the “self” rather than “the others”. He implements his self-recognition, self-identification, and self-criticism during the process of perfecting his paintings; he organizes and structuralizes his experience of criticism and self-criticism though the logic clues of “The Sacred Traces” series.
Xu Xiaoguo does not emphasize individual patterns or artistic styles. His series often jumps from one visual subject to another. This is not only because of his ambition to change, but also relies on his exploration, reference, and conflicts with the artistic issues that concern him. He begins with real problems he has met one by one; then, he filters and criticizes the literal visual system in history and the present in a way of experiencing. Xu Xiaoguo is skilled at using strokes and lines to create strength or conflict, but he never overplays these techniques. Instead, he tends to control himself and control his paintings. He cares more about the expression of his conceptions or views. Sometimes he even consciously makes things more difficult for himself. To build and betray, to rebuild and express, to correct and re-express, his adventure relies on all solutions before a painting is done. Xu Xiaoguo is never afraid of making mistakes, though. In the process of creating or perfecting, he could discard incomplete works without hesitation, even though they sometimes have brought peak experiences. We can conclude that the contents expressed though “The Sacred Traces” series are never complicated or confusing. They are results of a calm progress of narrative and counter-narrative.
Based on his experience criticizing the present literal visual art, Xu Xiaoguo has begun to make metaphors, but now he no longer cares about metaphors or symbols. He has avoided traps of formalism in artistic language and rhetoric. Beginning with searching for the establishment of a point of view, he now does not care about any thoughts or views in his works. Breaking the present literal visual procedures, he does not care about new procedures and the set-up of his own system. What Xu Xiaoguo experiences is a kind of detachment from his paintings and art and an awareness of the human condition.
Written at Jiang Zhai Kou, Beijing on Nov. 25, 2009
【编辑：霍春常】
