红土高原的云南，一直是产生神话和梦想的地方，一批又一批艺术家从这里出发走向全国、走向国际。借景抒情、以景言志一直是云南几代艺术家延续至今的传统，从上世纪60、70年代的“外光派”、70年代末80年代初的“申社”、80年代中期的“新具象”及“西南艺术研究群体”、2001年以后的“创库艺术主题社区”的艺术家群落、以及现在更为年轻的70、80后艺术家，风景与乡愁是一代代艺术家挥之不去的情结。在年轻一代的艺术实践中，不仅依然延续着云南特有的自然赋予的梦幻、神秘、质朴的气息，也融入了当下流行的卡通、动漫的元素，使他们的作品更加多元和鲜活，表现出迥异于上一代艺术家的生活态度与美学经验。这个
展览所呈现的，就是这一潮流中有代表性的艺术家及其作品。
周钲清的绘画融合了表现主义和原始主义的美学风格，狂乱的线条、粗砺的笔触与浓烈对比的色彩下，万物杂乱无序、恣意生长，呈现出他眼中的那个原始、野蛮的自然。李瑞的绘画充满了自由的构成与想象，在一祯桢梦境般如同伊甸园的画面中，独行的小人一如他自身的写照，徜徉于自我编织的梦境与诗意中。常熊的绘画亦有着强烈的梦境的氛围，不同之处是他取材的场景更多介于城市与乡村之间，迷蒙而恍惚，如同现实世界被抽空了存在的实感，只剩下无所栖居的飘荡的灵魂。荀贵品笔下的自然真实而质朴，他用反复堆积、错落的笔触与色块，一次又一次的贴近和触摸自然，讴歌和表现他所热爱和敬畏的世界，造物的奥秘就隐含在一次次细微的触摸与对话中。石志民的绘画融合了个人想象与大理变化万千的自然景致，《冰河》系列描述了他所断想的几百万年前的自然，晶莹剔透，万物尚在混沌的孕育之中，这是一个远离了文明与喧嚣的世界，遥远而清凉。同样来自大理的艺术家尹雁华的作品亦有着诗性的气息，他笔下的拇指人纤小而轻灵，他喜欢把它构想安排在不同的叙事场景中，轻灵的拇指人在不同的时空穿越与漫游，构建起一幅幅当代版本的“逍遥游”图景。同为80年代生艺术家，苏家寿的作品更多的有着今天都市发展所派生出来的“都市诗学”的美学倾向，无尽的疏离与落寞弥漫在他每一阶段的作品中，而近期的影像绘画的叙事风格更强化了上述特征。
云南的雕塑家们亦有着迥异于其它地区的审美趣味与造型追求，
陈长伟的雕塑放弃了传统雕塑中对体、块、面的塑造，混沌起伏的弧面无始无终，循环往返，放弃的是形，却捕捉了永恒流变的时间与空间。张华的雕塑也采取了反向于传统雕塑的造型理念。在传统的雕塑造型中，无数艺术家穷尽一生反复实践和琢磨形体外部的构造，而张华则反其道而行之，他进入形体的内部，推想抽空内部之后外部的变化，如果内与外是对应的，外部的存在缘于内部的存在，那么抽空了内部，一切物像都只剩一副躯壳。张华的雕塑正是塑造了这一变化的瞬间。《珠穆朗玛峰》、《花》、《雷锋》……，万物被抽走了灵魂，如同泄气发皱的皮球，这些形象幽默而荒诞，却发人深省。
上述艺术家代表了云南当代艺术中的某种倾向，但并非全部。云南，这个中国地理版图上的“后花园”，在过去与今天一直是艺术家们生活与创造的沃土，满园春色、生机盎然，令我们对未来满怀希望与憧憬。
2010.11.4 昆明
Wave &Tide
Contemporary Art Exhibition
He Libin
Yunnan on laterite plateau is always a place creating myths and dreams. Groups and groups of artists started from here, heading towards national and international stages. Using local sceneries and visions here as art creation subjects is always the tradition for generations of Yunnan artists. From “luminarist” in 1960s and 1970s, “Shen Association” in the end of 1970s and beginning of 1980s, “New Figuration” and “Southwest Art Research Group” in the mid 1980s, to “Loft” Art Community after 2001, and young artists who were born after 1970s and 1980s, sceneries and nostalgia are always the complex that generations of artists can hardly go without. In the art practice of young artists, they maintain and continue the mysterious and unadorned flavor endowed by nature in Yunnan, but moreover, they blend the elements of modern cartoon and anime, making their artworks more energetic and diversified. Their artworks also show unique attitude toward life and aesthetics experience, being different from last generation of artists. This exhibition presents those representative artists and their artworks.
The paintings of Zhou Zhengqing show the aesthetic style combining expressionism and primitivism. Among those wild lines, rough brushwork, and strongly contrasting colors, everything is growing in disorder, presenting that primitive and wild nature in his eyes. The paintings of Li Rui are full of free constitutions and imagination. In each frame of his dreamland picture, just as in the Garden of Eden, a person walks alone, just like his own portrait. Li Rui wanders joyfully in the dreamland and poetic atmosphere weaved by himself. Chang Xiong’s paintings are also with strong dreaming atmosphere, and the different point is he uses sceneries in between cities and countries more often, misty and dubious. His paintings are just like the actual world being evacuated of existing feelings, and only homeless souls are wandering there. Xun Guipin’s paintings are real, unadorned and natural. Piling up and ordered brushwork and colors are approaching and touching the nature, eulogizing and expressing the nature he reveres and is passionate about. The secret of creatures may hide in those delicate touch and dialogues. The paintings of Shi Zhimin mix personal colorful imagination and changing natural sceneries in Dali. Glacier Series depict the nature millions of years ago in his imagination, crystal clear, and everything is still in breed. That is a world far away from civilization and noise, distant and pure. Another artist from Dali, Yin Yanhua’s paintings are poetic. The thumbkins in his paintings are tenuous, gentle and smart. He would like to arrange those geniuses in different stories, and those tenuous thumbkins can pass through and roam in different space-times, constituting a contemporary vision of “Wonderland”. Another post-80s artist, Su Jiashou’s artworks are more inclined to the aesthetics of “Cosmopolitan Poetry” developed in today’s cities. Endless loneliness and desolation are disseminating in his artworks in every stage. And his recent image portrait emphasized more on the above mentioned characteristics.
Yunnan sculpture artists also have very different aesthetic interest and pursuit of sculpts. Chen Changwei’s sculptures give up the traditional emphasis on the body, piece and surface of sculptures. There is no beginning nor ending of his sculpture surface, which cycles and repeats. He gives up the shape, but seizes the eternal time and space. Zhang Hua’s sculptures also go against traditional ideas on the shapes of sculptures. In traditional ideas, many artists spent all their lifetime to practice and study the structure of sculptures surface, but Zhang Hua goes the other way round. He goes into the inside of sculptures, thinking what changes will happen if the inside is evacuated. If the inside and outside are corresponding, then the outside relies on the existence of the inside. While the inside is evacuated, everything is only left with the outer form. Zhang Hua’s sculptures are modeling that instant when such changes happen. Qomolangma, Flowers, Lei Feng together with many others are telling such a story. Everything is just like a ball with air leakage when the soul is gone. Such humor is of great absurdity, but sets people thinking.
All the above mentioned artists represent a certain inclination of the contemporary art in Yunnan, but not all. Yunnan, the backyard of China, has always been the fertile soil for the life and creation of artists in the past and present. Vivid, life, fertility and diversification of such a place give us hopes and visions for the future.
November 4, 2010