空间包裹的时间
皮力
钟飙作品的魅力在于他对图像保留着一种独特的洞察力。无论是那些旧照片，还是生活中某些或浪漫或混乱的场景，在他的画面中通常被独特的组装在一起，从而形成独特的氛围。时间性是钟飙过去作品中最重要的组织因素，在他看来“其实无所谓古代、现代，也无所谓西方、东方，我们的今天包含着全部的昨天，甚至那些被遗忘的事物，换句话说，今天实际上是全部昨天的结果，而今天的一切，又会被未来包含进去。反过来，当我们面对未来还没有发生的所有可能性的时候，其实未来也被今天包含着。就像此时此地，元代的古董、一百年前的椅子、去年生产的沙发，今年的新茶，也许还有刚刚烤上来的面包，它们只是生产时间不一样，还有“可能性”，它弥漫在空中，孕育着未来。每一样事物如此自然的相处着、变化着。所以，过去现在未来实际上是不可分割的整体，我们经过时只是进入了这个整体的局部而已。事实上，钟飙的这种体验并非是一个“普释性”的体验，但是却更多切合了中国现代化和城市化进程中的独特生存体验。
这种现代化过程中的精神体验，在上个世纪20年代被赛珍珠描述为：“侧身于顽固而守旧的大众之间，青年知识分子却受了各种极端的教育，精神和物质上一样，中国乃被动地铸下了一个大漏洞，这个漏洞太大了，心智之力不足弥补，他们的灵魂乃迷茫而错失于这矛盾中”，而作为现代化进程结果的城市化，更在今天制造了一种奇特的文化景观和视觉体验，“它是巴黎、纽约、伦敦片刻之间的局部错位，有时耶路撒冷、婆罗浮屠和日本神社一种奇妙的杂交。……把古代燕京的门坊和现代西尔斯的大厦不可能的熔为一体”（钟鸣，1993）。对于我而言，钟飙的作品描述的就是这些错位、杂交和不可能的融合，而其背后的指向则是灵魂在这些矛盾中的“迷茫而错失”。
沿着时间性的方向，图像往往就成为了现成品，钟飚的绘画就象装置一样，是对于现成品的安装和集合。而对于这些图像的互动和判断被交给了观众。这种直观的方式其实更符合当代视觉经验的高效传达原则，与传统意义上的绘画则似乎更加远离。在钟飙的绘画中，绘制的手感和趣味往往是被极其有限而谨慎的保留着。它们可能只是一些草图效果，或者肉色画出的一抹夕阳。 这种做法使得他的创作在过去十几年中一直游离于标准的、表现主义的中国当代绘画方法论之外。和他同时代涌现的众多优秀艺术家不一样，钟飙创造的并不是图式，而是关系，或者说是时间错位的视觉呈现。
对于时间性的悖论性传达贯穿了钟飙以往的创作，然而现在，他试图走得更远。也许对于艺术家来说，现成图像的拼贴在具有直接性的同时似乎还不够彻底，他试图让自己的绘画在能够提供当代的观念性的同时，也能够提供更多的视觉乐趣。于是在这个背景下，在已有的时间性的维度下，钟飙开始有意识的加大空间性的乐趣。
在新的“出神入‘画’”项目中，空间性具有两层含义。首先是画面本身中的空间层次开始变得非逻辑性。在早先的钟飚创作中，当他以时间性为维度展开图像的集合的时候，在空间关系的营造上，他试图把不存在的空间变得客观化。在这种观念的指导下，原先的作品往往是以不同的图像层的叠加为主要手段，通过画面留白来营造空间的纵深感。而现在，钟飙则是采取画中画的形式，将前景画面中某个场景直接局部移植到画面中的某个方位，同时用明确的画框将它们与前景画面隔离开来。相比以前的创作，现在的作品不是在编造某种合理性，而是在有意强化不合理性。它们营造出来的是一个个充满悖论的空间。通过不同空间的重复和重叠，我们感觉仿佛时间上的某个点在未来或过去再次真实客观的发生，并被视觉化地捕捉下来。它们似乎接近心理学上的所谓的“先视感”，但是却因为画面的原因，这种先视感被长时间的保留，而我们不需要太多的时间，我们就开始丧失真实的时间感，而变得漂移、怀疑、确定或不确定。
空间因素的介入，在这个新的项目中还体现为现场的物理空间。在展厅中，我们看到一张12米长的画面左右两边被镜面包裹着，在这个主要画面的对面，一些画面中的局部被黑白复制悬挂在对面的墙上；也就是说原先在画面中被复制的空间既被现实化，也被时间化，同时还位移到另一个空间。由于主画面中故意营造了较低的视点，和真人等大的图像；由于镜面的存在，观众进入展厅的物理移动轨迹被反射到镜子中，从而成为画面的一部分。严格意义上说，钟飙在这个项目中，试图在绘画本身所营造的空间感之外，注入新的表现因素，因此画面呈现出装置的特点。而同时，整体画面，画面中的局部复制和真实画框中的黑白局部本身构成了空间的重复和延伸，而镜面的反射和存在则把观众的身体介入作为一个因素引入画面，从而使原来已经复杂的空间游戏和视觉体验变得更加复杂。
相比钟飙以前的作品，这件作品最大的不同是，不仅图像是现成品，而且绘画也成了现成品，同样，观众不再是观看画面，而是被引入到一个特殊的场域之中去体验。在这些新的视觉关系中，对于钟飚所营造的荒谬的时间感，从根本上说观众不再是一个旁观者，而是被无可奈何深深的卷入到这个视觉的时空游戏之中。对于我们而言，出神入“画”是一个画家雄心勃勃的计划，他试图在一个将时间的维度融化在空间的位移与色彩变化中。在这场浩大的视觉游戏中，钟飙的雄心还在于通过透视与三度空间技巧所构筑的写实性绘画语言，探讨在机械复制的当代视觉文化中，其当下的可能性何在？同时，它能在多大程度上介入到我们复杂的视觉文化和生存体验之中？就象钟飙用空间包裹着时间一样，我们的视觉体验往往和生存体验也是被彼此包含着的。 也因此，在这个过程中我们对于绘画的观看转换为对于场景的体验。我们体验到的不仅是时空的穿越，而是在时空旋涡中失去重量的自身。这正是我们现场的体验，同时，也是我们现实的体验。
Time Packaged in Space
Pi Li
The attraction of Zhong Biao’s works lies in his a unique perception and observation of images. Whether that should be images from old photos or romance and confusion in scenes of modern life, they are arranged together in a unique sequence in his paintings, which in itself creates a unique atmosphere. Temporality has been an integral element of Zhong Biao’s previous works, according to him, “It actually makes no difference whether it is ancient or modern, western or eastern, our present includes all of our yesterdays, even those things that we have forgotten about; to put it another way, today is in fact the sum of all of our yesterdays, and all things of today will be carried forward and enveloped in the future. Conversely, as we face the many possibilities of things to happen in the future, those possibilities too are enveloped in our present day. This moment and this place, Yuan dynasty antiques, a chair from one hundred years ago, a sofa produced just last year, this year’s freshest batch of tea, or bread just out of the oven, these things are only differentiated by the time of their production, they have their own possibilities which fills the air and gives rise to the future. All things co-exist naturally, changing all the time. Therefore, the past, present and future form an indivisible whole and as we pass through, we are making an entrance upon its part and nothing more. In fact, Zhong Biao’s experience may not be a universal one, but it may actually and more closely resembles the unique existential experience in the process of modernization and urbanization of China.
The spiritual experience of the process of modernization was described in the 20’s during the last century by Pearl S. Buck, “the intellectuals have received all manner of extremist education both in spiritual and materialistic terms, squeezed between the masses of stubbornness and conservatism. A big gap is hence created and this gap is so great that it cannot be filled by their intelligence alone, and so their souls are lost and confused amidst this contradiction”. Urbanization, as the fruit of modernization, produces a particular kind of cultural background and visual experience for today, “it is the misplaced pieces of Paris, New York and London, and sometimes it is a skilful blending of Jerusalem, Borobudur and a Japanese shrine . . . He fuses together the ancient doorways of Yanjing alongside the seemingly impossible modernity of the Sears Tower” (Zhong Ming, 1993). To me, what Zhong Biao’s works communicates is precisely this feeling of misplacement, contradictory and impossible fusion, and the direction that lies behind such contradictions lies the “loss and confusion” of the soul.
With the flow of time, images tend to become ready-made, whereas Zhong Biao’s paintings are like a piece of installation art, a placement and arrangement of ready-made objects. His arrangement and judgement of these images are then presented to the audience. This type of objective perception could be more fittingly described as the effective transmitting of principles via a modern visual experience, which seems to remove it yet further from painting in its traditional sense of the word. The technical skill and curiosities in Zhong Biao’s paintings are usually carefully retained. They may at times realize in the effects of a preparatory sketch, or a sunset of flesh tones. This methodology has consistently placed his works outside of the standard modern Chinese painting style of Expressionism for the last ten or so years. Unlike many of his contemporaries who are also excellent artists, Zhong Biao’s creations are not pictorial, but are based on the relationship between images, or the visual presentation of misplaced time.
The expression of the paradoxical nature of time is a theme that has permeated Zhong Biao’s previous works, and now he is attempting to go one step further. Perhaps this is because the arrangement of images, whilst direct is not complete enough, for the artist; he therefore attempts to have his paintings reflect further visual curiosities and realize modern conceptualism at the same time. With this in mind, within the limited dimension of time, Zhong Biao has begun to consciously increase the spatial curiosities in his paintings.
In the new “Beyond Painting” project, space has two layers of meaning. Firstly the layering of space in the paintings has begun to show signs of moving away from logical lines. In Zhong Biao’s early works, he would always try to make the non-existent spaces more objective when opening up the arrangement of images along the temporal dimension. This idea is reflected in the layering of different images as its key technique, leaving empty spaces to create a feeling of spatial depth. At present Zhong Biao uses the form of paintings within paintings, moving a part of the background painting directly to a central position on the canvas, whilst using a clear-cut framing to establish their distance from the background. Compared to earlier creations, his present series of works no longer seek to create a certain logic, but wilfully emphasize the illogical. One space full of paradoxes after another is produced. Through the repetition and layering of different spaces, we feel as if a certain point in time has undergone a real and objective repetition, and has been visualized and captured. The works approach what psychologists refer to as the experience of “déjà vu”, however, appearing on a canvas, this moment of “déjà vu” is captured and preserved, whilst we do not need much time to realise it and begin to feel as if we have lost the feeling of real time, we become detached, doubtful of what is true and false.
The addition of spatial elements in this new project also includes the physical space of the exhibition hall. We see the twelve metre long painting hanging in the exhibition hall, enclosed on both sides by mirrored reflections, on the wall opposite this main painting, details of the original painting hang, repeated in black and white; that is to say that spaces copied from the original painting have been made real and temporal and moved to a new space altogether. Owing to the deliberately low placement of the point of view in the main painting, the life-size images, the use of mirrors causes the audience to also be reflected in the piece as soon as they enter the physical confines of the exhibition space - they too become a part of the painting. Strictly speaking, Zhong Biao attempts to introduce new elements of expression into the spatial dimension of the painting itself, it is for this reason that the painting attains the qualities of installation art. At the same time, the whole painting, along with the repeated details and the black and white details within the real frames create a repetition and extension of space, and the reflections in and presence of the mirrors cause the inclusion of the audience’s bodies into the painting, thus adding a layer of complexity to the already complex game of space and the visual experience created.
The biggest difference between this new work and Zhong Biao’s earlier works is that not only are the images ready made, the painting itself has become a ready made object. In the same fashion, the audience is not there merely to observe the painting, but is led into a new territory of experience. In these new visual relationships, the audience is no longer a passive observer in the peculiar temporal feeling that Zhong Biao creates, but is passively drawn into the visual temporal-spatial game. For us, “Beyond Painting” is an ambitious plan by an artist; he seeks to melt the dimension of time into the displacement of space and exchanges with colour. In this vast visual game, Zhong Biao’s aspiration is to further explore the realist language of painting that is created by the techniques of perspective and three dimensional space as well as the mechanical reproduction of contemporary visual culture, and where its possibilities may lie. At the same time, he asks to what extent painting can enter into our complex visual culture and existential experience. Just as Zhong Biao packages time in space, our visual experience is often enveloped in our experience of life. A further result of this is that our observation of the paintings becomes an experience in their setting. We experience not only the transcendence of space and time, but the weightlessness in the whirlpool of space-time. That is our experience in this exhibition which is common in reality itself.
【编辑：贾娴静】
