江芳的绘画看起来象是一种抽象绘画，其实不然。即使是形式上类似抽象风格，其形象来源和精神上也与抽象绘画大相径庭：她实际上是在用布面油彩模拟自然。比如，雪花、锈迹、细小的墙面裂纹、头发、自由蔓延生长的细菌等等。如果非得追溯和归类，她的作品气质更接近于意大利画家封塔纳（Lucio Fontana）。封塔纳将画布刺穿，弄出很多小洞，将孔洞与厚涂结块的颜料结合，打破了绘画和雕塑的界限。江芳的绘画也只是将画布和颜料作为一种媒介，突出材料的质感来直接表达模拟物的质感。她的很多作品也并非是在平面的空间想像里完成。由于借助了雕刻，纹裂等技法，画面简单直接，看似并非手绘形成。
从这一点上讲，江芳尤其类似一个从事架上创作的“贫穷艺术家”。兴起于意大利1960年代的所谓“贫穷艺术”，形态上就是用最朴素现成材料——树枝、金属、玻璃、织布、石头进行拼贴、组合，多以装置为主，其意义在于揭示了人类经验的重要性。在这样的创作中，艺术家不是作品的主宰者，艺术家对材料的体验，观众对作品的体验都成为创作的组成部分。江芳在作品里自己并未有意识地组织绘画语言，而是任由颜料自己“开口说话”。对自然的模拟生涩而富有情趣，有别于罗克斯•佩尼（Roxy Paine）的机械和无机感，也有别于西班牙艺术家巴克罗（Miquel Barceló）的强烈的手工感和超现实格调。江芳所着力表现的一些生活中的细枝末节，代表了女性艺术家对事物观察入微的特质。密密麻麻的铁锈色的小圆点在亮色铺就的背景里滋生蔓延，传递了巴赫平均律的乐感，又略微显得有点神经质。
所有这些作品，都不是平常意义上的绘画。而是画家本人的“小宇宙”的体现。借助寻常的工具，借助简单的技法，这个小宇宙成为一种自然能量在画面上的流淌。这种流淌有时候是控制的，有时候又是失控的。当可控的时候，江芳创造了一个自然。当失控的时候，江芳则发现了一个自然。对于她的画面来讲，发现一个自然恰恰是最值得珍贵的。
Jiang Fang’s Little Cosmos
TIAN Kai
Jiang Fang’s works look like abstract paintings. But they are not. Even the form is similar to the abstract style。The source of image and the spirit are also quite different from the abstract paintings. Actually, she is using oil on canvas to simulate nature, such as snowflakes, rust, tiny cracks of wall, hair, bacteria which grow and spread freely, etc. If they have to be traced or classified, the quality of her works is closer to the works of Italian artist Lucio Fontana who pierced the canvas to make a lot of holes. And he combined the holes with the agglomerations of thick-coating paint, breaking the boundaries of painting and sculpture. As for the Jiang Fang’s, the canvas and paint are just regarded as a medium to highlight the material texture and directly express the texture of what is simulated. Many of her works are not finished in an imagination of plain space. With the help of the techniques, such as sculpture, grain cracks, the pictures are simple and direct. it seems like it’s a non-hand drawing.
In this sense, Jiang Fang is particularly like a “poverty artist”, who is working on easel painting. The so-called “Arte Povera” rose in Italy in 1960’s. It just uses the simplest ready-made material, such as braches, metal, glass, fabric, and stone, to paste together and combine. Many of them are installations. Its meaning is that it reveals the importance of the human experience. In such a creation, the artist is not the dominator of the works. The artist’s experience of the material and the viewer’s experience of the works have become the integral parts of work creation. In Jiang Fang’s works, she organizes the painting language unconsciously, and leave the paint themselves to “speak” entirely. The simulation of nature many is not mature enough but full of fun, which is different from Roxy Paine’s mechanical and inorganic sense, and also different from the Spanish artist Miquel Barceló’s strong man-made feelings and surreal style. The details in life that Jiang Fang mainly focuses on represent the female artists’ nature of observing things in a subtle way. The full-covered rust-colored dots multiply and spread in bright-colored background, transmitting the musicality of Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier”, and a bit of nervousness as well.
All of these works are not the paintings in normal sense. They are the performance of “the little cosmos” of the artist herself. Thanks for some common tools and simple technique, “the little cosmos” becomes a flow of natural energy on pictures. This kind of flow, sometimes, is under control; sometimes, it is out of control. When it is controllable, Jiang Fang creates a nature. And when it is uncontrollable, she discovers a nature instead. To her pictures, discovering a world is the most precious.
【编辑：霍春常】
