文/ 蒋岳红
在考察中国当代艺术的时候，如果我们已经习惯了将目光恰如其分地停留在艺术家的作品上，似乎只有在为艺术家的所做找寻到社会现实的根据和艺术历史的理由时，才算是找到了其艺术作品的适得其所。那么，在这种看似不留私情的冷眼旁观和参照分类中，艺术家作为个人的生活经验和其艺术表达的动机也就被我们主动地忽视和屏蔽。于是，我们关于中国当代艺术实践的提问就会局限在做什么和如何做上，而为什么做，即艺术家做艺术的原因以及目的，就因此成为了一个虚设的必然而不再被触及。
“艺术”究竟意味着什么，在某些艺术家那里，会成为一个需要反反复复思辨究诘的概念。但在更愿意自诩为“艺人”而不以“艺术家”自居的李红军那里，前后二十多年的“做”艺术则是一个身体力行的答复。而李红军的“做”艺术，在有意无意，自觉不自觉中契合着中国当代艺术实践风口浪尖上的脉动——从年画作品入选第六届全国美术作品展览，到毕业创作跻身“89后”油画现实主义新思潮中的一份子，再到装置作品成为90年代初从民间到现代，从架上到非架上过渡时期的实验艺术个案。
追求木版画效果的年画作品《春华秋实》入选1984年第六届全国美术作品展览。作品以怀孕的妻子为模特，以所倚靠的门楣上“春华秋实”的对联横批点题，流露出的是对于生活诗意朴素自然地观察和表达。此时中国的当代绘画实践也正悄然从伤痕过渡到了乡土，乡土写实绘画的概念正式被提出 。
油画作品《老婆孩子鸡》系列是他1991年中央美术学院民间美术系大专班的毕业创作，在对于个人现实生活场景片段进行关照的后面是自我的缺席在场。作品中对个人日常生活略带自嘲的焦灼，使得他以乡土生活现实的描绘而与当年的方力钧、刘晓东等人的创作实践一同成为构成中国美术"８９后"独立指向最明确有力的新思潮 中的代表作品。尽管这一绘画创作实践体现的新气象被栗宪庭称其为"幽默现实主义"，被高名潞称为"存在现实主义"，被张晓军称为"文化现实主义"，但是在李红军这里看似只有现实，并无主义。比如画面里出现的“毛主席像”，作为 “政治波普”的符号被引用，但依李红军所言，它就贴在那儿，并不是刻意选择的。作品体现出的是他的生活现实，也是他的艺术现实。他借助自身对于民间美术造型语言的提炼和把握，事实上赋予了画面以超现实主义意味。如果说那只女人想抓却抓不住的用尽浑身解数挣脱的公鸡是男人的象征，那么在鸡飞娃哭妻忙的门外，匆匆而走的双腿，或许可以看作是艺术家逃离现场的自我写照。
1992－3年《红蜘蛛》系列装置作品中对于“网”的视觉化呈现是对现实生活境遇状态的体悟，也是在观念有效表达上有关语言形式的实质性拓展。系列I是针对网作为容器的功能特质进行的视觉化呈现。网里网外的穿透与阻隔，出逃与进驻，掩藏与暴露，如影随形，互为条件，似乎进退就在一念间。系列II是表达和表现上的一次推进。作品不再停留在对于“网”符号的使用上，而是将“网”作为了语言来表达，用网来修补日常遭遇中的缺漏本质上却是对于缺漏本身的强调和凸现，虚实真伪的转换间徒劳的修补空留下形式的意味，劳作的意义何在？当时吕胜中策划的两次“过渡”展中所谓“脚踏两只船”也就是如何从民间本土语言到当代艺术形式的过渡，在李红军个人则是从绘画到装置毫无后顾的前瞻性实验，也为其1995年的《道•器》创作预留下了令人期待的表达空间——以日常生活物件留形于书，形而下的物质与形而上的精神因其视觉化地呈现而成为彼此妥协孕生而非相互对峙两立的矛盾概念。
如果说，李红军对于绘画题材和装置语言的敏感把握和切身表达，让他的所做成为了中国当代艺术实践自身逻辑上有价值的个案。那么从《道•器》开始的对于“纸”这一材料持续至今的关注和钻营则正如他本人所言，“那些在纸层夹缝中绵延回转的空洞，也许就是我的宿命”。纸对于自认“祖上八辈子都是农民”的李红军而言，的确是承担着改变命运的一页又一页。墙上贴着的一纸画被安排来家吃饭的乡书记和教育专干相中，高中毕业在下河李村任会计的李红军离开了滚驴沟成了乡里电影院的合同工；一纸陕西风翔师范美术班的中专文凭，这个村子里的第一个中专生成了千阳县文化馆吃商品粮的干部；一幅入选全国美展的年画让他被写入了县志；一纸文化部培养基层文化馆干部的文件让他有机会考入中央美术学院的大专班，也让他由此介入中国当代艺术实践的发展脉络；与当代艺术若即若离的十年后，是因着一张中央美术学院的艺术硕士文凭，已经担任省艺术馆主任一职的李红军第三次进京，凭借从无字书中抽离出的一页又一页白纸层层建构出的头和手成就着他与画廊合作的自由艺术家身份，也成全着他与中国当代艺术实践的重续前缘。
的确，对于我们任何一个人来说，纸都是一个证据。纸是经济范畴的同时也是意识形态领域的。是纸见证和建构了我们的日常生活，承载和构建出我们关乎物质和精神的一切想象。然而，李红军对于纸的钻营，却让我们遭遇到了纸的陌生化，感受到纸的含糊其辞和意味深长：是形而上的也是形而下的，是可信的也是可疑的，轻而沉，薄而厚，既无还有——《道•器》（1995）中从载道的字书里看到平常器物；《钱塔》（1996）的凿纸为币和《货币兑换》（1996）的冥币换洋/阳钱 ；到现在把自身的三维影像切分为白纸千张之后再重塑“我”的形态各异——如此的陌生化之所以得以呈现和流露出来不是因为艺术家对纸的所指的熟悉而是因为艺术家与纸的能指之间的距离。其实并非是出于纸作为材料在其日常生活中的触手可及，而是源于纸作为文化和经济的象征之物，让李红军切身感受到的距离和强势，以及因教育与金钱而生发出来的压力和无奈。关乎这种蕴含于纸的压力和无奈或许在很多人来说是隐性的，李红军却成功地通过他的作品娓娓道出，完成着一遍又一遍将其显性化的有效表达。
事实上，无论是“老婆孩子鸡”的题材，还是网的象征和纸的钻营，都强烈地传达出李红军对其个人生活经验的诘难和咀嚼。他个人艺术表达的动机始终悬浮和包裹在其具体作品的周围。他的分身——农民、干部、艺术家多重身份的并存，是他的现实也是他的选择。为什么“做”艺术不仅只是他的痴心，还是他的本能——其间流露出的有对艺术劳作把持的尊重，也有试图从有形和无形的束缚中抽身的妄想。或许，正是这种对于艺术的宿命感，才让李红军的“做”艺术成为我们在尝试建立中国当代艺术实践体系时所珍视的一个特例。
For What: “Doing” Arts
By Jiang Yuehong
In reviewing Contemporary Art in China, if we have been used to appropriately eyeing it, we can hardly position an artist’s piece unless we find certain evidences of social reality and causes in art history to interpret his practice. Well, with such an apparently straight and cold look and referential identification, we will forwardly neglect and screen the artist’s own personal experiences of life and his motif of an art delivery. As a result, our questions on those practices of Contemporary Art in China may probably be bounded to what an artist does and how he does it and as for why he does it, saying, why and for what an artist does an art, it becomes a necessity in name only and is referred to no more.
What does “art” really mean then? To certain artists, it will be a concept requiring a serious consideration time after time. However, to Li Hongjun who prefers addressing himself an “artisan” rather than an “artist”, his own “doing” an art over twenty years long has been an answer in action to the question. On the other hand, consciously or unconsciously of self-knowledge or not, his “doing” an art has been corresponding to the key pulse of the peak of the contemporary art tide in China – from his piece of traditional Spring Festival art selected into the Sixth National Art Exhibition, to his graduate pieces risen up as one share of the New Trend of “After ’89” Realism in Oil Painting Art, to his installations recognized as a personal case of experimental art in the early 90s during the interim from a folk world to the modern world as well as from traditional art to specific-site art.
His piece “Prosperous Spring & Fruitful Fall” with an effect of a woodcut on purpose was selected into the Sixth National Art Exhibition, 1984. In it, the woman is after his pregnant wife at that time, sitting against a door where there pasted is a pair of couplet with its horizontal theme “Prosperous Spring & Fruitful Fall” corresponding to the title. All these reveal his observing and expressing about life in a poetic, simple and natural tone. At the time, the practice of Contemporary Art in China was silently transiting from social wounded traces to farming life in subject and the concept of painting the countryside realistically was formally suggested .
The oil painting series “Wife, Baby, Rooster”, his graduate pieces completed in a class of 3-year-long study in the department of Folk Art, Central Academy of Fine Arts, is an extension that the artist himself has tried quite long to achieve after his previous series “Wife, Baby, Rooster”, and since then, he stops his practice in painting. An absence of self can be traced behind his concerns about his personal daily life delivered by these paintings. With certain slight sense of self-mockery, his anxieties about his own daily life released from his pieces put his art practices as magnum opuses of the New Trend of “After ’89” Realism in Oil Painting Art , which features most clear and vigorous arisen in Chinese art circle, along with those of Fang Lijun, Liu Xiaodong and so on. Although such a new atmosphere created by its practices is named “Humorous Realism” by Li Xianting, “Realism of Existence” by Gao Minglu, and “Cultural Realism” by Zhang Xiaojun, there seems only a reality but no “-ism”-related ideology. For example, there appears a “Portrait of Chairman Mao” in the piece, which is quoted by others as a symbol of “Political Bop” , but, said by himself, it is just pasted there with no special intention. His reality in life and in art is reflected via the series. Taking the advantages of his professional refinement and mastery of Chinese folk fine arts, he endues the painting menus with an air of super-realism. Regarding the rooster playing its best skill s to break loose from the woman’s desire as a man’s symbol , the Out of the door where the rooster are flying, baby crying while the wife busy, there are a pair of hurry legs, which may be regarded as a vivid self-reflection that the artist himself is immediately fleeing from the spot.
During 1992 to 1993, the installation series “Red Spider” presents a visualization of “netting” displaying his realization of the life conditions in reality, which is also an actual development of expressional form in terms of an effective delivery of an idea. Series I is a visualized presentation focusing on the nets as containers in function. Either penetrating or obstructing into and out of the nets, escaping or entering, or, covering or exposing, very closely associated with each other, each serves as a condition to another. It seems that forward or backward is just up to a sudden idea. “Red Spider II” is a development in expression and program. The piece goes beyond the application of “netting” just as a symbol in taking “netting” for an expression. That the netting is applied to make up the shortage or imperfection of our daily life is a kind of highlighted display of the shortage or imperfection. In transforming between truth and fakeness, such a fruitless make-up just leaves us certain sense in form only, and then what is exactly the value of labor to us? At that time, regarded as a manner of “having a foot in two camp”, the two “Transiting” Exhibits planned by Prof. Lv Shengzhong demonstrates how Chinese art was transiting from the form of folk art to that of modern art in expression. As to Li himself, he took predicting experiments from painting to installations with no hesitation, which also reserved certain highly expected room for him to express in his coming practice of the series “Dao•Utensils” ,1995 – the ordinary objects adopted to make theirs shapes into books, where physical material and metaphysical spirit are displayed by visualization, being a concept of contradiction in a compromise of each other for a new born rather than absolutely opposite to each other.
If we say that Li’s sensitive mastery and very personal deliveries of painting themes and installation expressions enable what he has done to be a valuable personal case due to the logics of modern art practice in China, his constant attention and addiction to the material “Paper” since the series “Dao• Utensils” to the present are just described by his own statement: “Perhaps my predestinated life is just like those empty caves continuously through or between those paper layers.” As to Li who claims “his family has been farmers for generations all the time” , paper bears all the pages of his life changes. A drawing paper pasted on a wall was favored by a CPC secretariat of the village and an officer of local education who were both arranged having a meal with his family, then, Li, a high school graduate, left from the Valley Gun-liu-gou to the village and changed his job from being an accountant of the Li-family Village downstream to be a contracted employee in the town cinema. Afterwards, a diploma in art issued to him by Shangxi Fengxiang Normal School, a technical secondary school, made him, the first graduate from such a school in his village, becoming a local cadre in the cultural office of the Qian-yang county and earning the state-paid salary. An oil painting of Spring Festival theme selected into a national art exhibition let his name recorded in the county annals. An official document from National Administration of Culture to select and train certain cadres from grass roots let him get a chance via his success in exam of studying in a class of 3-year-long program in Central Academy of Fine Arts, which also let him step into the developing path of contemporary art practice in China. after 10 years of his life at an arm’s length to contemporary art, it is a diploma of master in art issued by Central Academy of Fine Arts that makes him back to Beijing for the third time with his official rank as Dean of Shangxi Provincial Art Hall left behind. Then, the head and hand constructed by him with the thousand white papers respectively taken from a book of no character let him start cooperating with art galleries as a freelance artist in identity. Such a practice also re-started his predestinated relation with Contemporary Art in China.
Certainly, to everyone, paper is a proof. Paper is referred in economy as well as in ideology. It is paper that has witnessed and structured our daily life, carried and built up all what we image about material and spirit. However, Li’s “into papers” leads us encountering the alienation of paper and experiencing the ambiguity and significance of paper: physically and metaphysically as well, trustable and distrustful as well, light and heavy as well, thin and thick as well, none and ens as well – from the series 《Dao•Utensils》（1995）, those daily utensils identified from the literal books bearing Dao; taking cut papers as currency in Money Tower and using Chinese paper money for the death to exchange for the foreign/worldly money; now, he cuts his own 3-dimensional figure into thousands of white paper pieces and then re-set up various appearances of “I” – it is not because he know the designation of paper very well but because he is in certain distance from it that such an alienation is effectively presented and expressed. In fact, it is because paper is a symbol of culture and of economy as well rather than because paper as a material is so handy in daily life but that Li recognize the distance and force as well as the pressure and helplessness caused by education and money. Such pressure and helplessness borne in paper is hidden to most of people, however, Li succeeds in telling it out vividly via his piece, achieving his effective delivery of visualizing it repeatedly.
As a matter of fact, not only the subject of “Wife, Baby, Rooster” but also the symbolization of “Netting” and the devotion of “Into Papers” all deliver Li’s interrogation and chewing of his personal experiences in life. His motif in art is always suspending and wrapped up around his specific arts. His co-existing identities such as farmer, cadre and artist are of his reality as well of his own choice. For what to do an art is not only his infatuation but also his instinct – which releases his respect to the labor in art and his fantasy of trying to get away from the material or bodiless bound. Perhaps, it is this sense of predestination toward art that lets Li’s “doing” arts become a very special example for us to prize in our establishment of a system of contemporay art practice in China.
( translated by Jiang Wenhui)