文/ 殷双喜
在当代中国艺术的发展中，李红军已经不算青年艺术家，也不是美术的后来者，他已经有30多年的艺术经历，其间从陕西到北京，几进几出。他的艺术历程，从民间剪纸出发，画过农民画式的绢本工笔，做过古元式的黑白木刻，也画过类似于艳俗艺术的油画，还做过超现实主义的梦幻般的素描《三面风景》。但他的引人注目却是近几年的事情，这位来自陕西的艺术家，从民间美术一路走来，经历了在中央美院民间美术系和实验艺术系的学习，2009年获得中央美院实验艺术专业的艺术硕士学位，完成了从民间美术到当代艺术的艰难转身。在这两种看似极为不同的艺术之间，李红军走过了漫长的道路，并且找到了这两种艺术之间的内在一致性，那就是对生命和人生的热爱，对想象力和创造性的不懈追求，以独特的符号化形式表达艺术家对于自然与社会的感受与理解。在他的早期作品中，以蜘蛛和人的头像为代表，表现了一种对于生命历程和人生命运的深切感悟，而《走火入魔》系列则是他将民间美术与西方现代绘画结合而创作的最为重要的系列作品，具有戈雅绘画中的梦魇特征和中国传统经典《山海经》式的浪漫想象。
2005年在中央美院举办的“首届艺术硕士入学作品展”上，李红军创作的装置《红、白、黑》，可以视为他从绘画转向当代艺术的起步。他将鲜花喷上漆后，插入同样颜色的花瓶，展陈于台上。在这里，自然界鲜活的生物因为人的行为，被包裹于无生命的化学物质之中，呈现为一种虚假的标本式的人工物形态。李红军在这里第一次注意到生命与死亡、真实与虚幻的转换，即在物体外观形态模式不变的情况下，存在内在的巨大差异，而这种差异又并存于一体，并且处在一个不断变换的过程中。其实，在李红军的装置作品《红蜘蛛系列2—5号》（1992）中，他就注意到冰与水、石与沙、死鱼与活鱼、青藤与枯藤等自然界的物体所具有的异质同构的关系，他尤其关注这些事物之间存在的转换空间，即生与死之间的空白，真实与虚幻之间时空间距。就这一点来说，李红军的作品与那位专门展示塑化人体标本的德国解剖医生贡特尔•冯•哈根斯似是异曲同工。
近几年来，李红军以其纸质媒介的装置艺术而异军突起。究其根源，是其30多年来的穿越不同艺术媒介的合理结果。是他在不同艺术媒介之间融会贯通的收获。李红军的纸质作品形式是将众多的纸张叠放在一起，然后从中挖刻出形象，而挖出形象后的负形也成为作品的组成部份。应该说，这一基本原理并非李红军所独创，是中国传统剪纸留给我们的宝贵遗产，在以往的创作实践中，我记得吕胜中就曾经将民间的剪纸转化成为钢板雕刻的正负形抓吉娃娃在草地上展示。但是李红军的独到之处在于，受过学院艺术训练的他，具有了空间与体积的视觉经验，他将平面化的正负形转换成为立体的正负形，并且使其具有了独立的雕塑形态，并且进一步通过不同的材料与形体组合成为装置性艺术在艺术空间中展陈。其实，在1995年，李红军就运用过这种形式，在他的《道•器》系列中，他从厚厚的大书中掏挖出各种日常生活用具，并将书与掏挖出的器具一同展示。只是那时的规模与形体还比较小，还没有出现人的形象。虽然这种方式我们也已经知晓，在过去的影视剧中，我们见过用这种方式隐藏携带机密文件与走私物品，但这种语言模式的形成对李红军来说具有决定性的意义。
一旦李红军将这种方式转换为人物形象，这一语言模式的创新意义变的得以突显。当从书中掏挖出的人物头像坐在那里，观看已经掏空的大型辞书，甚至他翻阅书籍的双手也是从书人掏挖出来的，我们便进入一种真实与虚幻错位的梦幻空间。是人创造的思想语言凝聚为辞书这样一种精神文明的生产模式，还是书籍语言形成并控制人的头脑？当我们在展厅看到李红军的这些闭目凝想的超越时代的人物头像时，我们需要思考的是人类自身的文明进化，最终导致人与自己的创造物之间，谁更具有真实性，谁更具有历史传承的可能性的问题。李红军创造的这些白色的，没有服装等时代社会特征的人物，最初标示的是自我，并且在形象上也采用了自我的形象，看似要解决的是“我是谁，我从哪里来，我向何处去”的个体困惑。但在我看来，一个不了解李红军形象特征的观众，所看到的并不是某一个具体的人，他的作品，更像是一种大写的人类的符号，它们的产生与存在，似乎像雕塑一样，具有远古的原始性和走向未来的永恒性。
在近期的创作中，这些由片状的纸张紧密叠压雕刻的人物头像似乎发生的镜像的偏移，并且在空间中处于不断的压缩与变形状态。李红军以多个这样渐进变形的头像，似乎暗示了人的头脑与他们所创造的文化之间，存在着相互转换和影响的可能性，表明文化、语言、思想的生产与人类的大脑结构，是一个长久的互动过程。
如果说，李红军的人物作品具有更多的文化人类学的考古性质和当代人生存状态的反思状态。我更为欣喜的是李红军的近期作品《空洞系列》，在这些作品中，李红军不再表现具象的人物头像，而是在厚厚的叠压的方形纸张中，掏挖出不同的类型的具有流线型轮廓的孔与洞，从而具有很强的极少主义雕塑的特征和未来主义的气质。从表面上来看，这些作品似乎与人类社会的生活处境相距渐远，但这个系列的作品，却将我们的眼光拉向了自然本身，让我们看到人类所创造的丰富的视觉形式与自然界的物质存在内在的异质同构。那些如同西部沙漠上强风所吹塑出的流线型条纹状的形体结构，特别是孔洞状的负空间，不正是表明了大自然才是形式的造物主？艺术家不过是造物主的使者，他们的工作不是创造而只是发现，将隐藏着的世界的本质结构呈现给我们，打开我们沉沦于世俗生活而无睱旁顾的视觉之窗，将我们引入一个惊奇不已的视觉世界。在我看来，好莱坞的大片《阿凡达》、《盗梦空间》等，正是以科幻的形式引我们进入一个对未来世界的惊奇之旅。而我们在李红军的作品中，也可以感受到这种浓郁的梦幻气息，在观看他的作品的过程中，暂时忘却世俗社会令人厌倦的琐碎与纠结。
自1989年现代艺术大展以来，我一直强调艺术语言创新的重要性。现实社会中永远存在着各种各样的问题，是文学、电影、戏剧等不同门类的艺术家所共同面对的问题，那么，视觉艺术家要解决的特殊问题是什么？在我看来，这只能是艺术语言的问题。当代艺术中的差异，主要是一种视觉表达方式的差异，这种差异不仅来源于艺术家的观念和题材、图像，更来自于艺术家所采用的材料、媒介与表达方式。
在我看来，李红军的作品，通对纸媒的运用，探讨蕴藏其中的 “物性”，从而表达他对这个世界的观察和感受。在这里，每一个单独的物的摹仿是写实的，但是不同的纸媒材料的组合是主观化的，作品显示出李红军活跃的独立思考，即对于人与自然、生活用品和艺术作品的差异的认识。在他的作品中，人的形象与自己的创造物交织在一起，我们在日常的生活中习以为常，不再去思考其中隐而不露的存在的奥秘。而李红军将“纸”这一人类文明史上最重要的发明，经过解构、错位和重组后，再现于我们的眼前，使我们在惊异之余，对其加以关注和思索。
李红军说：“艺术家并不是以‘物质’为最终追求目的，而是借用‘物质’的形式去实现对人类精神世界的关照。所以我最大的愿望就是能坚持现在的创作思路，在自己的视野、经验、知识中寻求表达，特别是在自己所处的位置上并以自己的眼光和方法，关注与精神层面相关的问题。” 李红军使用纸材所创作的一系列纸媒装置，如《自己》、《里外》、《偏移的纸片》、《空洞》、《膨胀的纸片》等，都是围绕一个纸质头像，探索发现纸媒雕刻与立体剖切语言的极致。我们可以把纸质头像看作李红军对现实中的自我与虚拟自我之间的讨论、对比和交流。李红军在中国民间美术中剪纸的叠刻中发现了一种立体的造型语言，着重于研究对叠压纸的剖切造型所产生的复数性、正负形，以及形象的偏移和叠加。
李红军的艺术，去掉既定的形式，回到感性的原点，尊重自我感觉，开放心灵的空间，达到了超越媒介的重构。他的实践告诉我们，艺术的观念只能寓于实物，通过艺术之手来实现。艺术家的文化直觉，既是对材料的直觉，也是对浩繁手工制作的体验，它们构成了艺术品的重要方面。艺术家可以在与材料持续的对话与制作之中，达到忘我的境界。
20世纪以来，中国艺术一直以思想主题和社会问题作为自己的价值判断标准，以对主题性阐释的深度和批判性的强度介入为价值评判标准。89以来的当代艺术，也是用现代艺术的手段和语言表达艺术家对社会变革的一种敏锐和反应。在当代艺术中判断一个作品的价值标准的时候，我们经常游离于艺术家的社会批判指向和他的语言表达水平之间。我对纯粹的、技术性的、语言性的艺术家始终抱有期待。有人会说没有纯粹语言性的艺术家，艺术就是一种综合的东西，但是我们不能认为有社会性、批判性的艺术家，可以不谈他的艺术媒介和语言技巧。
今天的中国当代艺术，应该重提“实验性”。这种实验性，就是在艺术表达方式方面的实验性，也就是在艺术语言和方法论层面的实验性，这是艺术家的力 量所在，也是他在艺术史上获得认可的根本所在。正如徐冰所说：“艺术家的本事是要对这个时代有种超出一般人的认识，而又懂得转换成过去没有的，一种全新的艺术语汇来表达的能力。”
李红军的作品，向我们展现了某种趋向性的新东西，即新一代艺术家开始走出意识形态化的图谱表达和国家主义的宏大叙事，更加沉潜于艺术语言的探索和新的表达方式的实验。在21世纪的第一个十年过去以后，面对新的十年开始，我们期待着一批真正有自主创造性和艺术想象力的艺术家的成长，期待他们超越名利，做出一些更有意思的作品来。在当代艺术狂热浮躁的今天，我们需要重新回到艺术的自身。
2010年10月19日
殷双喜 中央美术学院教授、艺术评论家与策展人
Between Reality and Reverie—— Li Hongjun’s Paper Art
By Yin Shuangxi
With the development of Chinese Contemporary Art, Li Hongjun can not be regarded as a young artist nor a latecomer of Fine Arts, who has more than 30 years’ art experiences, meanwhile, coming and going from Shaanxi province to Beijing for several times. Started from the folk paper-cutting, he has been painted fine brushwork paintings in peasantry style, made black and white wood block in Gu Yuan style, painted oil paintings similar to Kitsch Art and also done a fantastic surreal sketch “Landscape in Three Sides” in his art experiences. However, he caught people’s eye in recent years. Li Hongjun, an artist from Shaanxi province, has got his master’s degree with the major of Experimentation Art in Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2009 after he finished his study in the department of Folk Art and Experimentation Art in Central Academy of Fine Arts, eventually, accomplished his transition from folk art to contemporary art. Li Hongjun has been found the internal consistency of these two kinds of art which seems totally different in art style after experienced too much, that is, love for life, persistent pursuit for imagination and creation, and using unique symbol to express artist’s sensation and understanding of nature and society. Spider and head portrait were regarded as representations in his earlier works which showed a deep realization of life undergoing and destiny, while “Possessed by the Devil” series was the most important series which he combined folk art with West Modern Paintings together, meanwhile, possessed the nightmare traits of GOYA Art and the romantic imaginations of Chinese Traditional “Classic of Mountains and Seas” style.
In the exhibition of “the First Art Exhibition of Master’s Admission” held by Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2005, Li Hongjun’s installation “Red, White, and Black” was regarded as his first step from painting to contemporary art. First, he sprayed the oil onto flowers, and then put them into vase with the same color, displayed it on the table at last. Here, the live biology from nature was wrapped into a chemical substance after human’s behavior and then presented a mendacious hand-make conformation. Li Hongjun realized life and death, reality and illusion at the first time, that is, there was a huge difference between the intrinsic when the appearance morphology of the object is unchanged, while the difference was coexisted in the same object and in a constantly changing process. As a matter of fact, Li Hongjun has already paid attention to the isomorphic relations of heterogeneity between natural objects such as ice and water, stone and sand, dead fish and live fish in his installation “Red Spider Series No.2-5”, especially the conversion space of the existing objects such as the vacuity of life and dead, space-time distance of reality and illusion. According to this point, Li Hongjun’s works express the same idea with the German Anatomy doctor Guenter Von Hagens’s works who only displays plasticized human specimens.
In recent years, Li Hongjun’s paper installations appeared suddenly and became more and more active. It is a reasonable result which he kicks different artistic media more than 30 years and also his mastery harvest among different artistic Medias. Li Hongjun’s paper works are made of paper layer by layer, and then dig the image out, after digging the negative configuration also becomes a part of the whole work. We can say this principle is not created by Li Hongjun, is a precious heritage left by Chinese Traditional Paper-cut. I remembered that Lv Shengzhong had converted folk paper-cut into the armor-plate engraving and displayed a negative and positive shape Chihuahua in the grass in the process of the old creative practice. However, Li Hongjun’s unique exists in his visual experience of space and volume after received art trainings of academy. He converted complanate positive and negative shape into three-dimensional positive and negative shape and made it have a independent sculpture conformation, furthermore, displayed his installation works through different materials and body combinations in art space. Actually, from his “Dao•Utensils” series in 1995, he used big thick books to dig up all sorts of living appliance and then displayed books and the living appliance together. Because the scale and conformation was too small at that time, so the human image was not appeared. Although we have already known this pattern and we also have seen people used this way to take secret files and smuggle objects in the old cinema, the form of this language pattern has a decisive significance for Li Hongjun.
Once Li Hongjun converted this way into human images, the innovation of this language pattern would become a break point. When the head portrait digged up from the books sited there and watched the vacant big dictionary, even if the two hands which turn over the books, we would come into a displaced reverie space between reality and transience. Is the ideology language created by human beings agglomerating a kind of productive pattern of spiritual civilization, or the language of books forming and controlling human brain? When we see Li Hongjun’s surreal head portraits, we need to think about the civil evolution of human itself eventually result in between human beings and the creature, which is more real, and which has more possibility of historical heritage issues. The white characters created by Li hongjun with social characteristics and without costume marked self at first and adopted self-image in visualization, which seems to solve the individual confusion such as “who am I? Where am I from? Where should I go? But in my view, the audience who doesn’t know well about Li Hongjun’s characteristics can not see a concrete person. His works more like a kind of capitalized symbol of human beings, its creation and existence which seems like a sculpture has originality of ancient and immutability of future.
In his recent works, the head portraits engraved and piled up closely by paper sheets layer by layer offset apparently, and in a constant state of compression and deformation in space. Li Hongjun uses multi deformative head portraits to hint that there exists a convertible and influential possibility between human brains and their cultures, which also shows that it is a long interactive process of culture, language, ideology and the brain structure of human beings.
On condition that Li Hongjun’s works of characters have more archaeological nature of cultural anthropologic and a reflection on the state of contemporary human subsistence, I appreciate more about Li Hongjun’s recent works “Empty Hall series”. In these works, Li Hongjun never shows us a head portrait of figurative, but digs up different kinds of streamline hole and cavity through the thick square papers, accordingly has strong sculpture characteristics of minimalism and futurism temperament. Apparently, these works has a long distance with human society, but this series draw our attention on the nature itself and let us see the rich visualization created by human beings and the internal heterogeneity isomorphy of natural substance existence. The streamlined form structure especially the negative space of hole and cavity just indicates that nature is the real demiurge of form. Artist is just the emissary of demiurge, and their works are not creature but discovery, that is, showing the concealed structure of world essence to us, unfolding the visual window which sinks into the secular life, taking us in a wonderful visual world. In my opinion, the blockbuster of "Avatar," "Pirates of the dream of space" in Hollywood just use science fiction to bring us into a wonderful trip of future world. You can also feel the strong fantastic atmosphere in Li Hongjun’s works, forgetting the trivial and boring secular society temporarily.
Since the Exhibition of Contemporary Art in 1989, I have always stressed the essentiality of the innovation of art language. In the real world, there is always a wide various issues which the artists in different fields such as literature, movie and drama as well as other categories face together, well, what are the special issues needed to be solved by visual artists? In my opinion, it is just the issues of art language. The discrepancy in contemporary art is a discrepancy in the expressing way of vision
From the point of my view, Li Hongjun’s works discussed the contained “substance” through the usage of paper to express his observation and sensation of the whole world. Here, each individual imitation of objects is realistic, but the combination of different paper materials is subjective, works show Li Hongjun’s stirring independent consideration, that is, his cognition of discrepancy for human beings and nature, living supplies and art works. Human image interweaves with the creatures of himself in his works, but we would not consider the concealed Arcanum of existence because we are accustomed to see it in our daily life. However, Li Hongjun shows the most important invention “Paper” of human civilization in front of our eyes again after deconstruction, displacement and recombination, let us pays more attention and ponders to it when we are amazing.
Li Hongjun said: “The ultimate pursuit goal of artist is not ‘material’, but to achieve attention on the human spirit under ‘material’ form. So my greatest wish is to insist on my current creation ideas, seek expression in my vision, experience and knowledge, especially concern issues related to spiritual levels with my own vision and methods.” Li Hongjun’s series of paper installations, such as “Self”, “Inside and outside”, “Moved Paper”, “Empty Hole”, “Dilatant Paper”, etc, are all around a paper head-portrait, to explore the extreme of paper media cutting and three-dimensional sculpture. We can regard paper portrait as self-discussion, comparison and exchanges between self and virtual reality. Li Hongjun discovers a three-dimensional modeling language in engraving stack in paper-cut of Chinese folk art, focuses on the study of complex shapes, positive and negative forms, and the offset and overlapped image generated by cutting layers of papers.
Li Hunjun’s art removes the established form and returns to the origin of emotion, respects self-sense, opens mind space, reaches the reconstruction beyond media. His practice tells us that the concept of art resides only in practical object and it is realized by artistic hands. The artist’s cultural intuition is not only for material, but also for voluminous hand-made experience, they constitute an important aspect of art. Artists can reach the realm of ecstasy in the ongoing dialogue with the materials and production. Since the 20th century, Chinese art has been using thought themes and social issues as its criteria of value judgment, the depth of theme interpretation and intensity of criticism are set as the criteria of value. Contemporary art since 1989 is a sensitive response to social change using modern art means and language. In judging the value of contemporary art works, we often wonder between artist’s social criticism point and language expression level. I have been expecting pure, technical and linguistic artists. Some would say there is no pure linguistic artist, art is something comprehensive. But we can not consider social, critical artists, about whose art media and linguistic skills we can’t talk. Today Chinese contemporary art should bring up “experimentation” again. This experimentation is in terms of artistic expression, and in the level of artistic language and methodology. This is artist’s strength and the essence of his recognition in the art history. As Xu Bing said: “artist's skill is having an understanding of this era overstep that of most people, and knowing how to convert to a novel artistic language”. Li Hongjun’s works show us new things with a trend, that is, the new generation of artists begin to walk out the map expression of ideology and grand narrative of nationalism, more submerging in the exploration of art language and experiments of new expressing techniques. After the first decade of the 21st century was over, facing the new decade, we look forward to the growth of a number of artists with truly independent creativity and artistic imagination, and expect them to go beyond fame and fortune, make some more interesting works. Today, facing the impetuous enthusiasm of contemporary art exhibitions, we need to return to art itself.
Oct. 19, 2010
Yin Shuangxi the Professor of Central Academy of Fine Arts, a Critic and Curator