Breaking Landscape.Trembling Eyes: Reading Sean Wang’s Painting—Objects
裂解的風景、振顫的眼:讀王璽安的「繪畫—物件」
Text/WANG Sheng-hung 文╱王聖閎
When audience first step into the exhibition, each detail of their viewing experience seems to be involved in a type of returning to the conceptual. This is the contemplative space Sean Wang has prepared in the solo exhibition, Box: the Profound World. Although his paintings possess an extreme sensible and exquisite side, he does not offer any possibility that allows the viewers to be submerged in the unlimited desire of spectacles and narrative. Instead, he appeals to the development and elevation of the consciousness level so that the viewers could better face a series of issues regarding “the cognitive structure of viewership.” Through the most elementary question of linear perspective, the dialogue between artworks, what is in between the surface and support of the canvases, and the switching between viewer’s positions and consciousness modes, he repeatedly asks about the basic understanding of “what the objects are seen as.”
How should we grasp the relation between the “outside” and the “inside” of a painting? How should we contemplate on the fundamental meaning of “delineation” in terms of paintings? How should be define the “completion” of a painting? These questions are subtly and implicitly embedded in the concept of the Box exhibition. What Wang cares about more is the reflective aspect of paintings in this exhibition, meaning the procedures and processes of the action of painting itself, instead of confining himself within the circumscribed spheres of how to delineate a picture or landscape, be it outward or inner, real or imaginary. In other words, painting is not a series of pre-meditated, delicate and meticulous procedures, which one only has to follow the steps to “complete” a painting. On the contrary, he usually takes care of every step of painting with incredible self-restraint and reservation. From laying the foundation, creating the outline, filling in the colors to finally painting the work, his objective is never to present the objects he paints (no matter it is a house, a forest, a flying bird, a petal or light shown through branches and leaves). What he pays attention to is to bring out the depth of “the contemplation of painting” through the relations and interstices formed in between all the steps. It is safe to say that he does not take painting as a simple tool of representation, or a mean to deal with materials found in everyday life experience, or even as his tool to simplistically respond to some practical issues or social relations, but mainly and merely as a possible way to demonstrate the fact of using “painting itself” to contemplate on the ontology of painting.
Simply speaking, Wang appeals to a type of dynamic viewership and the dialectics between different ways of cognition. This approach allows him to create very unstable viewsheds in his work, and transforms painting from pure representation to a type of “oscillation” that is comprised of three levels. These levels are intertwined, and together they construct the thinking behind this exhibition. The first level of oscillation is the change between the viewer’s positions and his perspectives that the artist has given to his work. His paintings always demand the viewers’ attention to the correlation between the artworks and the viewers’ bodies. This method transforms paintings from a question of representation to a question of “viewing—moving.” The second level of oscillation is to address the question of “viewing—cognition” in paintings. Wang’s paintings often demand that the viewers should switch in between different cognitive modes, moving between submerging concentration and distancing objectivism, which proposes a kind of media oscillation in between the illusion of landscape and the surface of canvases. The third oscillation further advances the question to the level of “viewing—journey” in paintings. Wang often provides a kind of ambiguous “expectation” from his utter reservation and the few and scattered objects in his images. As if there is always something that is called upon but has not yet appeared in front of our eyes, he creates an “oscillation” in process.
Covering and presence, disappearing and metamorphosis, crossing and in-and-out, abrupt pause and continuation, these are the dynamic relations that Wang attempts to develop in his paintings. He no longer stays in the execution of “representation—formation” that lacks the process of thinking (i.e. pure demonstration of techniques, delineation of images). Neither does he take paintings as a tool that some artists use to deal with their artistic anxiety (arbitrarily connecting art to any issues). Instead, he repeatedly questions and responds to the characteristic of “painting as a kind of action/execution.” Maybe the artist does not pay attention to the pressing issues of the time; however, it does not mean that he turns his back on reality or that he is senseless and detached to the social scenes. The philosophy of his art is to appeal to the essential aesthetic domain, which has always been important ever since the beginning—the history of the consciousness question of this ancient art that we call painting. This is not the egoism of art. On the contrary, the artistic action of artists can be a kind of caution. What Wang points out is not only the fact that “it is necessary that painting has to conduct self-criticism of its own history.” More importantly, these “paintings—objects” clearly reveal the crucial aesthetic issues in the historical context of art although they might not be pressing or connected to the society. In other words, if one wishes to create a new way of viewing, and to search for a fundamentally different way of expression, contemporary art eventually has to start from a type of reflective investigation. It is obvious that this exhibition has provided for us an austere and profound demonstration.
從觀者踏入展覽空間的第一步開始,其觀看經驗的每個細節都涉及一種觀念性的迴返,這是王璽安此次個展「盒子:深邃的世界」特意準備的思考維度。他的作品儘管仍擁有極為感性而細膩的一面,卻不提供任何甬道,使觀者陷溺在奇觀與敘事的無限欲求裡,而是訴諸意識層次的展開與提升,讓觀者清晰面對一連串關於「看的認知結構」的議題;他透過最基礎的透視問題、作品與作品之間的對話關係、畫布的表面和基底(support),以及觀看位置與知覺模式的切換,反覆扣問吾人「將經驗對象視為(see as)何物」的理解基礎。
我們如何理解「畫外」與「畫內」之關係?如何思考「描繪」之於繪畫實踐的根本意義?如何認定繪畫的「完成性」?類似的問題,被藝術家以隱而不顯的形式巧妙編織在「盒子」展的思考軸線裡。王璽安在這檔展覽中更為關切繪畫的反身性面向,意即繪畫實踐本身的環節與過程,而不是將自己劃限在如何描繪一幅圖像(picture)或風景(landscape)的狹隘範圍裡,無論外在或內在、現實或想像。換言之,對他而言,繪畫並不是預先設定一套緻密嚴謹的作畫程序,接著便只要按部就班地「完稿」即可。相反的,他往往是有限度的、極盡節制地處理作畫的每個步驟。從打底、勾勒、填色到覆蓋,目的皆不是為了成就描繪的對象(無論那是屋舍、樹林、飛鳥、花瓣,或者透過枝葉灑下來的光),而是藉由步驟之間所形成的關係與縫隙,逼現所有可以進行「繪畫之思」的刻度。可以說,他並不將繪畫視為單純的再現工具,或作為處理俗常生活經驗材料的手段,甚至也不以此粗淺地回應現實議題或社會關係,而僅僅執著於展示「以繪畫自身」作為思考繪畫本體論的可能途徑。
簡言之,藝術家訴諸的是一種動態的觀看,以及不同認知方式之間的交叉辯證,這使得他的作品製造出極不安定的視域,而繪畫也由單純的再現,翻轉為三種層次的視覺性「晃動」。三者之間相互纏繞,共構出這檔展覽所埋藏的繪畫之思。首先,觀察者位置與視角的改變,是王璽安賦予作品的第一種「晃動」。其作品總是要求觀眾注意到畫作與身體之間的相互關係,這使得繪畫從再現的問題,過渡為「觀看—行動」的問題。第二種「晃動」,是將繪畫翻轉為「觀看—認知」的問題。王璽安的繪畫時常要求觀者進行不同認知模式的切換,在沈浸專注與疏離跳脫之間,在景物幻覺與畫布表面之間,提示出一種媒介性的「晃動」。第三種晃動,則是將繪畫進一步推導為「觀看—歷程」的問題。王璽安的畫面時常以極為節制、寡言的稀疏物象給予一種隱晦的「期待」,彷彿總有事物即將被召喚,它們只是尚未出現在我們眼前,進而創造一種過程性的「晃動」。
遮蔽與在場、流逝與變形、橫越與進出、懸停與延續,這些是王璽安透過繪畫所試圖拓展的動態關係。他讓繪畫不再只是對於「再現—成像」過程欠缺思考的執行(純粹的技術展演、圖像描繪),也不再只是影像時代裡,創作者用以排解其實踐焦慮的工具(任意的議題嫁接),而是對於「繪畫作為一種行動∕踐履」的特質本身進行反覆質問與回應。藝術家的目光或許沒有停留在那些充滿迫切感的時局議題,但這遠非背對現實,或者對於那些社會現場顯得冷感或疏離。其繪畫之思試圖重申的是一塊原本就至關重要的美學疆域,意即,繪畫這項古老技藝本身的問題意識史。但這並非藝術的本位主義,相反的,藝術家的創作實踐很可能是一種警醒。他指引的不只是「繪畫仍有必要以自身對其脈絡進行批評」這個事實。更重要的是,這些「繪畫—物件」清楚揭示了:什麼是藝術既有歷史脈絡中,依然很重要的美學議題,儘管它們未必具有很強的社會性或及時性。換言之,若要再次催生嶄新的觀看經驗,並追尋徹底異質的表達方式,當代繪畫終究要從這樣的反身性考察開始。可以說,這檔展覽為我們提供了一次嚴肅而深刻的清晰示範。