故意的陌生

——关于孟小为和他的艺术

杨卫

       我一直认为，甘肃一带的当代艺术家，就整体而言，都有一种与中原艺术家不同的气质。也许是因为地处边远的缘故，受六盘山、秦岭、祁连山和青泥岭等群山围绕的阻碍，使他们的性格里大都呈现出了某种执拗、倔强和不善迂回。认识艺术家孟小为之后，我愈加强烈地感受到了这个特征。正如孟小为多年来坚持当代艺术创作，以绘画、影像，以及文字等为媒介，来表达自己对社会、对人生的理解与感受，却长期蛰居于甘肃的陇南地区，以一个边远偏僻的小县城成县为工作基地一样。如此这般观念与生活的冲突与反差，也体现了孟小为身上的固执与卓乎不群。

◦孟小为，1962年出生于甘肃陇南市的礼县。那是一个历史悠久的文化古城，著名的仰韶文化遗址便在于此，她还是秦族、秦文化的发祥地，素有“秦皇故里”之称。也许是这种深厚的历史积淀，赋予了孟小为某种文化情怀，使他自小对美便有一种憧憬，对现实社会也渴望有一种担当和参与。然而，时运不济，孟小为的少年时代，赶上了“文革”最为动荡的岁月。因此，他性格里也隐藏了一些不安的因素与怀疑的精神。1978年，孟小为高中毕业，曾入当地供销社当工人，后凭借自己的艺术才情与天赋，考上了天水师范学院美术系，成了一名大学生。自此，孟小为正式走上文艺创作之路，开始了他的艺术探索之旅。

80年代的孟小为，受到了当时思想解放运动的影响，曾如饥似渴地向西方艺术和哲学取经，做过许多新艺术的尝试，也曾参与过甘肃的现代艺术运动。正是在频繁地接触西方新思想、新思潮的过程中，孟小为开阔了眼界，也逐渐了解了外面的世界。因此，他再也不满足于偏安一隅的状态，离开甘肃，只身到了北京的中央工艺美术学院进修。在北京学习的这段经历，无疑为孟小为后来的艺术之路铺垫了基础。这首先得益于中央工艺美院的多元教学，打开了孟小为的创作思维；同时，也是更重要的一点，就是北京的文化氛围，感染了孟小为，也使他接触到了艺术界的许多重要人物与事件。所以，尽管孟小为后来回了籍贯地，长期生活在陇南地区，但眼界并不狭隘，而是放眼世界，始终与中心文化保持着联系，并经常往返于北京等地，且一度还在上海成立过工作室……

不过，虽然孟小为热衷于当代文化，并积极地投身于新艺术运动，且参加过1989年的《中国现代艺术展》等一系列重要的艺术展事，但对风起云涌的艺术潮流，却始终保持着客观而冷静的距离。他的这种特立独行，一方面与地域的文化性格有关，另一方面也渗透了他对艺术的理解。艺术是时代的晴雨表，但也需要注入个人的温度。孟小为正是抱着这样一种个性化的艺术追求，扎根于陇南的边远小县城，希冀通过挖掘社会最底层的生命形态，来捕捉时代变迁的脉搏，充实自己的艺术视野。为此，他除了从事绘画创作，还用镜头拍摄了不少影像，也用文字表达了许多所思所想。而绘画作为孟小为最青睐的语言方式，则集中了这些表现因素，最为直接地呈现了他的生命感受与现实思考。

应该说，孟小为的绘画，不是单纯的追求形式语言，而是注重内容与形式的一种荒诞结合。其中意在笔先的观念性因素，主导着他的绘画逻辑，成为了他所有作品内部暗含的一条线索。这个线索，就是对现实的抽离与陌生化处理，我称之为“故意的陌生”。长期以来，人们总倾向于艺术应该表现某种审美的完整性，这成为一个思维定势，实际上在某种程度上约束了不少艺术家的创造力。这正是一些当代艺术家，突破所谓艺术的表现规范，寻找另类方式的前提。孟小为便是这样一位艺术家，他深谙艺术上去同求导的道理。所以，他选择了离群索居，也厌恶循规蹈矩的表达。

孟小为的绘画，大都涉及到他的日常经验，与他的现实生活有关。其题材并不大，内容也看似简单。如一幕街景、一间教室、一根绳索、一个箱子、一把桌子或凳子、一片花丛或树林、一些无所事事的人等等，都是再平常不过的场景和事物，司空见惯。但是，孟小为总是能从这些平淡无奇中发现意外和惊奇，或者说，是他有意在自己的画面中制造一些突兀，赋予了这些平平常常的场景和事物，以某种荒诞感和紧张关系。孟小为的这种陌生化处理，实际上是在提醒我们，现实生活并不是阳春白雪，远非我们表面看到的那么祥和，而是危机四伏，充满了这样和那样的问题，也隐含了许多的社会矛盾与冲突，只不过孟小为是把他的这些警示，隐藏在了作品的内部，借以表现性的绘画语言，畅快淋漓地呈现了出来，从而使得他的画面达到了一种既有绘画性、又有观念内涵；既真实、又意外的视觉效果。

如今，在观念艺术大行其道的当代艺坛，绘画已愈来愈式微。如何恢复绘画的表现力，向观念艺术靠拢，去摄取一些观念内涵与表现手法，成了必要的途径。孟小为对此有着清醒的认识，他借以某种后现代式的表现手法，从真实的生活场景中抽离出来，加以解构、破坏和陌生化处理，从而使我们感受到了真实的现实背后，隐含的某种荒诞性；而他坚守在边远的陇南地区进行思考和创作，则是为了保持自己的这种艺术风格，使其能够在相对稳定的创作环境中，更加深入、更加持久。

2017．10．9于通州

Life-consuming free expressions transmitted from my iPhone

                ——The interpretation of imagery in Meng Xiaowei's paintings

  Meng Xiaowei's paintings can be interpreted byimagism , one of the important schools of modern British and American poetry, is my own cognition for a long time. In his works, the self- emotion does not correspond to the world, just a rejection for too many narratives and comments, only left the individual subjective emotions in his works.It's also the public label of the postmodern artist ingenuine sense. Their common characteristics, are the use of intuition to hide the subjective feelings and inner perception behind the images that are presented in the painting, dispelling the social critical consciousness of intellectual elites,reaching the state of conscious opening. It is not limited to the essence of painting and the social practical significance.

 Can we simply explain his painting After zeroonly a few people climb over the wall?

No one is so superficial.

The knowledge system of twentieth century can not touch the occurrence and development of contemporary art, even shallow people do not look at it.

“I have dreamed that I was standing on a fast-moving object like a train, but never a train,someone stood beside me, but their expressions were numb. The radio said: we had the blessing of the gods, and had ample food and clothing, but you could jump down from here at any time. And then I tried to, when I opened the curtain-like thing in front of me I found It's essentially a place you can't escape. And the position I stood as if could see what I was trying to do, I got stuck unexpectedly, scared, and then I found Meng Xiaowei. Finally, I'm not so upset, and then a big screen appeared. There's a very sophisticated scholar talking about a seemingly serious problem ,clear and logical… then Meng Xiaowei expressed his different point of view, I also added more and more, and then the sad urge started here.”

Meng ‘s progress in painting, Just as you look at a person who starts cautiously from lowland,through a long walk, after experiencing all kinds of dazzling landscapes, not only the pace, the speed, the movement, the sound slowed down but also his thought become calm, heavy, introverted to silence, even to a pause. The daily nature, discreteness and fragmentation of his works become a new meditation and new confrontation.

From Gansu to Beijing to Shanghai and then back to Longnan ,a place with green hills and blue waters and huge rocks in Gansu , he accomplished what he needed to follow and then created a number of seemingly casual works, but the image is very complex and even the connotation of semiotics.

Meng regards art creation as a way of self salvation, and his art works became the externalization of his personal religion, or one of his way of life. Now, in an age of pluralism and diversity of rights, if he wants to keep the spirit of independence, not to be homogeneous, he can only live in a remote place and to achieve a relatively pure state.

These works are no longer obvious in expressionism style ----as his masterpiece in 1980’s---- Portrait of Xiao ai, Bride in nightgown and so on. The composition is more subversive to his Grey layer series , which has been called by the colleagues: " don't know how to draw". The size of his works is diverse, more large or more smaller than before….There is no clear subject or theme, the performance is fuzzy and polysemy,more like a metaphor in the subconscious of the moment at any time. He deliberately avoids the familiarity of things. He seems to have a liking for oil paintings, sometimes even play games with painting language. But this is not the ultimate goal of his painting. The game of artistic language is often a trap for an independent artist. If the game can't convey the emotions that are usually hard to express, it can only be an hollow form whether it's smart and beautiful or not. Meng changed the ways of expression because the conventional language restricted him. His saying goes like this:

“If you say that the scenery exists in the tip of your writing brush,

Why it doesn’t work automatically?

If you say that scenery comes from the ink,

Why don’t you use the inkwell as your painting?

Imagining the absurdity of reality. An poisoned elephant will die slowly , can the clouds in his works be closed to the clouds of religious murals? A female body and a dapple animal are sensual and beautiful, but they both are frightened by the shots of time. Therefore, they are timid towards life and act cautiously, as the loss of dignity after capture. Just those ordinary everyday things, such as stone glasses, pipe, bench, a box of bullets, a wooden box, these still life are figurative images,but still don’t possess the secular aesthetic characteristics and figurative realism aesthetic form. These obscure and ambiguous works are difficult to give accurate artistic classification and definition. Based on the theory of contemporary art, Meng

 formed his introspective and introverted style by deconstructing, reorganizing the present reality, established his own artistic charm. So, his choice of the image painting is probably only temporary use.

   These characteristics make Meng's works have a unique personality. His works, supported by the great spiritual idea and his intuition, are hard for the average person to walk with. His works ,composed by simple, complicated, abstract, fine, illusory and realistic only belongs to himself and a few persons rich in the spiritual world.

 “Why don't you draw the paintings that everyone loves?”

 “I did it in my early years, and now I don't.”

 “why?”

 “My cognition on life and human beings are changed.”

 “Can you make it clear and specific?”

 “let me have a try. You can compare my Gray layer series, many lines and strokes in it, but now it reduced less. In the past, I was working hard for a good life, forgot the spiritual level. After I got a house, a car and certain fame, I mean that within those who want me to draw and collect my paintings, I didn't feel happy and satisfied, just doubt and hollow on the contrary. I asked myself why should be so? I want to express this kind of thinking, so my works can't be wrapped up in the acquired knowledge. That is only a superficial practice of the painting skills of the predecessors,It's not a good painting, a masterpiece. To be an artist, first of all, you must be an independent and free man. Of course, you have your own thought.”

 “Compared with the Gray Layer series of your Beijing solo exhibition ten years ago, what do you think you have surpassed now?”

 “I surpassed nothing. My focus has changed currently. I don't think the artwork itself is important, it’s only the media channel for artists to pursue it. So, there's no work of art, only artists.”

 “Do you think this is progress?”

 “yeah. In exaggeration, I think I'm ahead of the others, It's not the top, but I'm going to be a little more. Yes, let’s go and see.”

 “Your work is not entirely conceptual, not symbolic, nor is it narrative, it's a daily emotional expression. I'll understand your art from in a poetic point of view that your works possessed a distinctive features of imagism. What's your opinion?”

 “Critics' comments are more like bells, having the ability to wake me up at any moment. But I want to say, I don't care about any genre, I don't want to belong to any doctrine, any schools, I just paint, that's all. I have my immature view and my understanding of life. nowadays, I've always been skeptical about individuals remain mentally independent and establish an attitude. Just because of this, I think art is the egg laid by profound resignation. Laying eggs need to be quiet, like hibernation. It's more a time consuming than sculpting it. Anyway, life is a process of consuming till the end, so I just want to produce light or illumination.”

 His pilgrimage to Beijing to see the exhibition of Armand Hammer Collection happened in 1982. He had admired and imitated Russian itinerant School of paintings, worshiped Marc Chagall, Edvard Munch, Willem de Kooning , Amedeo Modiglianiand so on…But now he's just himself.

 Express the same feeling as: I'm sad. He's not interested.

 Write the same kind of text as: overnight, young flowers burst open. He hates it. It's too corny.

He wanted to paint this universal, simple emotion into a bomb on his heart; When the tree shoulders shaking, the flowers are splendid.

This is his ambition.

 The Internet has subverted the traditional world,vehicles shorten the distance. Meng Xiaowei  now dwells in southern Gansu. In his Gate Art Space, like those artists in the history of art, dwelling in one place, immersed in his spiritual field, painting, thinking, exploring the possibilities and boundaries of painting expressions. In such context, could his paintings not be free expression of personality,emotional Pouring freely and aesthetic unique? could not be researched as the long-vitality Imagist poetry?

This is Mengxiaowei .

I have confidence in him and his works.

                                   By  Chen hui    

2017-10-18