剪断的，未被吹散的记忆多年以后，面对愈加喧嚣的世界，艺术家将会回想起，那个遥远的下午。那是一个由三十一件油画作品，两件彩铅作品，四件装置作品组成的综合个展的开幕，《不明之物》《红》《纠缠不休》《乐章》《翩翩起舞》《无序的节奏》以及迷系列和幻象系列等等，沿着美术馆的白墙排开，彩色的发丝交错缠绕，在展厅灯光的映照下宛如剪断的，未被吹散的记忆，许多细节还能记得，提到的时候尚能用手比比划划。 之所以套用加西亚·马尔克斯《百年孤独》的开篇句式，来切入对江衡这批作品的讨论，是因为无论是形式逻辑，还是内容表达，这个伟大的哥伦比亚人创造的经典性语法结构，都在三个向度上，契合了我对这批以假发为表现对象的作品的理解。第一，在时间维度上，假发缀连了基于此刻的对过去的回望，以及基于此刻的未来对现在的回望，这种建立在时间轴线上展开的双重凝视，自然地把现在的假发系列与上世纪90年代“卡通一代”风起云涌时期，江衡创作的卡通美少女系列做了一个有效的勾连，以此来管窥，艺术家持续突破的创作状态，和不断蜕变的演进脉络。从而，表明在这一批以假发为意义载体的绘画作品中，江衡重建了一种时间，这既是艺术家的特权，也是艺术家强劲创作力的佐证。 第二，在价值取向上，江衡在“发肤受之父母”的身体性叙事，和对其所身处的周遭世界的批判性叙事之间，构建了一种“头发”、“假发”意义黏连的反思模型，印证了安东尼·吉登斯的理论“身体是现代性的反思性的一部分”。“头发”作为“假发”的原型，“假发”作为“头发”的替身，用“假发”作为绘画对象，虽然象征了一种关于身体性的“记忆的剪断”，但它们仍然汇聚在一起，并没有零落飘散，进而又翻转、演绎为一种“记忆的寄存”。这种融汇身体性和断裂感于一体的方式，展现了一个“虚假迷离的世界”对“真实世界”的吞噬和替代，甚至这些绚烂、靓丽的替身，已经成功地侵占了真身的合法性地位，在这个意义上，这些作品已然不再仅仅作为一幅一幅的绘画而存在，更像是一则一则对真实世界的深刻寓言。 第三，在主客体关系上，作为艺术家的江衡并不是消极地应对客体世界的变化，而是在绘画实践中，积极地回应、反思、批判客体世界。这批绘画作品中呈现出来的是被剪断的真发还是假发已然不再重要，它们仅仅是艺术家把作为主体的自己，放置到客体环境中去感知的一个介质，画面中各种形态，各种色彩的发丝，既是乔治·贝克莱意义上的“存在就是被感知”，也是黑格尔意义上的“绝对观念”。杨小彦曾经说过，江衡“不关心表面的反抗。他甚至一点也不反抗。相反，他只关心图像所传达的物质欲望。正因为这样，我才读解出他作品中的某种真实性，因为内里所透露的，可能连他本人都不能清醒意识到，是一种‘拒绝’成人社会的温软态度。”我窃以为，在某种意义上，态度就是立场，这里的拒绝，显然属于一种批判性的反思立场，是一种，把头发剪断后，纯粹的对“寄存的记忆”的社会性批判。 当然，江衡的这批作品，也毋庸置疑地褒有马尔克斯意义上的“永恒的孤独”这一主题。这既是人在这个世界上真实处境的终极状态，也是物的存在的终极状态。甚至，江衡笔下的那些离开身体，离开假发主体的被剪断的头发丝，继续聚集在一起，这本身就是一种对“剪断”这个动作发生之前的“前记忆”的一种呼唤，一种祭奠，一种借助并未飘散的聚集而丝缕毕现地呈现出每一根头发的终极孤独，就像真正的孤独并不是独处式的孤独，而是深处人群中的孤独一样。甚至，在这个向度上，连孤独本身的意义，都已经是被艺术家抽离的，真空式的，空空如也的孤独，说到底，就是一具具孤独的空壳。 从上世纪90年代，作为“卡通一代”的代表性人物出场，到千禧年前后因为在创作中受到了材料的伤害而罹患抑郁症，在整个治病的过程中，和日常社会有了深度的接触和认知之后，使得江衡的创作开始从观念到形式都发生了转变，作品中自然而然地体现出越来越强烈的，对消费社会的深度观察和烛照。但过去二三十年中，无论创作的方式如何转向，创作的内容如何变化，创作的观念如何蜕变，江衡身上的对于绘画性最本质的拿捏都没有改变，技术不仅如库其奥•塞拉尔多•贡蒂尼在《伤害》一诗中所表达的那样：“像你们用力踩下去，便会漫上你们鞋帮的污泥”，成为一种自然而然的本能，而且呈现出“日拱一卒，功不唐捐”的态势。 即便就事论事地回到绘画本身，我们从作品的绘画性和形式语言来看，江衡的技术无疑是非常成熟的，甚至用“高超”来形容也毫不为过。但是这种成熟的技法，于江衡而言，既不是牢笼，也不是追求，他说：“用成熟的技术来表达，但我希望达到远观的视觉陌生化，它似乎虚化了你近观的判断，它变成一个魔幻而抽象的东西，不再具体化，它可以是一个想象的形状或者想象中某一个空间的特定形状，充满了想象、虚幻跟不确定性。”也就是说，他清醒地认识到，绘画的技术仅仅是服务于他的观念表达，甚至为了实践这种表达理想，他一直声称要“去技术化”。绘画的技术性，就像是囚禁艺术家的“洞穴”，阿兰•布鲁姆在对苏格拉底的“洞穴隐喻”进行解读时强调：“我们为黑暗所包围……但是，尽管有黑暗，洞穴中也有一束光亮；我们拥有的暗淡阴影，就是因那束光亮而得以可能。而且，少数人可以从洞穴中出来。” 

 林书传

2021-3-22 

A Snipped Skill But Haven’t Been Blown AWAY

Many years later as he faced the ever-chaotic world, the artist was to remember that distant afternoon when his solo exhibition opened. At that time the exhibition consisted of 31 oil paintings, 2 colored pencil works and 4 installations; works named “Unidentified Object”, “Red”, “Clinging”, “Melody”, “Dance” and “Rhythm in Disorder”, and the “Mystery” and “Phantom” series hung along the white walls of the museum; colorful hairs intertwined with one another on the canvas, and looked like memory that was cut but not yet scattered in the light of the exhibition hall. Many details were so vivid that the artist could still show people with his hands. I started the discussion of Jiang Heng’s work mimicking the beginning of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude because whether in the aspect of logic or that of content, the classic grammatical structure created by the great Colombian author fits my understanding of this series of work featuring wigs on three dimensions. First of all, on the time dimension, the wig connects the look-back on the past from this moment, with the look-back on now from the future. The double stare on the timeline naturally connects today’s wig series with the pretty girl series Jiang Heng created in the golden days of the “Cartoon Generation” in 1990s; from this we can see the constant breakthroughs in the artist’s creations and transformations in his line of work. In this series of work with wigs as mediums of morals, Jiang Heng recreates time—it is his privilege as well as proof of his vigorous creativity. Secondly, on the value dimension, between Jiang’s bodily narrative of the old Chinese saying “The body, hair and skin, all have been received from the parents”, and the critical narrative of the world around himself, a mode of reflexivity connecting the meanings of “hair” and “wig” is established, proving Anthony Giddens’s theory that the body has become part of the reflexivity of modernity. “Hair” is the prototype of “wig”, and “wig” is the substitute for “hair”; using “wig” as subject of paintings symbolizes a “cut memory” relevant to the body; yet the wig is still held together, not scattered all over, in turn delivering a “memory deposit”. This method of combining physicality and rupture presents the devouring and replacing of the “real world” by a “bogus and illusive world”; these bright radiant substitutes have even succeeded in robbing the legitimacy of the prototype. In this sense, this series of work are not only paintings, but profound fables on the real world as well. Thirdly, on the dimension of subject-object relation, rather than passively coping with changes of the world as the object, Jiang Heng as an artist actively respond to, reflect on and criticize the objective world in his art practice. It is no longer important whether the series presents real hair that has been cut or wigs; they are just mediums of perception of the artist as the subject placed in the objective environment; the hairs in various forms and colors is embodiment of both George Berkeley’s theory “to be is to be perceived” and Hegel’s “absolute idealism”. Critic Yang Xiaoyan once said, Jiang Heng “is not concerned with resisting on the surface. He doesn’t even resist. On the contrary, he is only concerned with the materialistic desire the images convey. In this way, I can read a certain type of authenticity from his work, because it unveils a gentle attitude of ‘rejection’ of the grown-up society—even he himself might not be aware.” I think attitude is stance in some sense; the “rejection” here obviously is a critical and reflective stance, a sociological criticism on the “memory deposit” after the hair is cut. Of course, this series of work boasts of Márquez’s “eternal solitude”. It is the ultimate and truest state of man in this world, as well as the ultimate state of all material. The cut hairs away from the human body and the main wig still held together are a call to and a mourning of the “previous memory” before the act of “cutting”; the ultimate loneness in hairs held together—so clear that you can count them—is like loneness in a group—real loneness is never that of solitude. On this dimension, the meaning of loneness itself has been pulled away by the artist and become loneness in vacuum—a lonely shell, ultimately. Jiang Heng was an iconic figure of the “Cartoon Generation” in 1990s; around the year of 2000, he suffered from depression after being harmed by chemicals in art supplies; in the process of recovery, he had deeper contact with and understanding of the world around him, which changed his art creation in concept and form; therefore, his work showed stronger and stronger insight into the consumer society. However, in the past 20-30 years, no matter how his way, content, concept of work changed, he hasn’t altered his most essential grasp of art; his techniques are not only like “mud stuck to your shoes when you stamp your feet” in Koziol Gerardo Contini’s poem “Harm”, a natural instinct, and showing the posture in the Chinese saying “Move bit by bit like the pawn in chess every day, and the effort will pay off” as well. Even coming back to painting as it is, when it comes to painting quality and form, Jiang Heng’s techniques are very mature—even “masterful”. Yet for him, the mature techniques are neither prison or ideal. He said, “I hope to achieve a visual estrangement that challenges the judgement from close-up observation, a surreal experience beyond the object itself; it could be a shape in your imagination—an imagination filled with illusions and uncertainty.” clearly, he’s well aware that techniques just work for his concept expression; he’s even claimed to “deskill” to achieve this goal. Techniques of painting are like the “cave” imprisoning artists, as Allan Bloom says when he offers an interpretation of Socrates’ allegory of the cave: “We are surrounded by darkness… But, although there is darkness, there is also a light in the cave; the pale shadows we possess are made possible by that light. Moreover, a few human beings can emerge from the cave.” By Lin Shuchuan on March 22, 2021

预告：开幕对谈

江衡：剪断的，未被吹散的记忆

A Snipped Skill But Haven’t Been Blown AWAY
开幕对谈Opening Dialogue时间：2021.4.17 14:00-15:00Time：2021.4.17 14:00-15:00地点：南京艺术学院美术馆报告厅Multifuncational Hall，AMNUA

对谈嘉宾：李邦耀/艺术家冀少峰/湖北美术馆馆长王绍强/广东美术馆馆长江衡/艺术家郑闻/南京艺术学院美术馆副馆长

主持人：林书传