| 無邊的穿行
——顧雄和楊述展覽題記
“你在哪兒？”飛機剛降落在紐約，剛打開手機，跳出翁菱的短信。不久前在北京新開張的畫廊首展上，她也這樣以“我們在哪兒？”自我設(shè)題。
哈得遜河上空陰云低垂，蘇荷的小旅店也是出奇的冷，提前到來的寒流似乎是告訴始料未及的人們，這是真正的嚴(yán)冬。這樣的時刻，遠(yuǎn)在北京的翁菱，將在其位于天安門廣場旁的畫廊，準(zhǔn)備兩位資深的四川當(dāng)代藝術(shù)家顧雄和楊述的雙個展，一個月以來，我碾轉(zhuǎn)和周游世界的途中，不斷收到畫廊的策展人湯靜發(fā)來的提醒：該為顧雄和楊述寫點什么了？在云南麗江、大理、四川和重慶、北京、印尼和紐約的旅程，這樣的念頭不時泛起，奇怪的是，每每想起顧雄和楊述兩位老友，記憶總是與黑暗潮濕的車站、碼頭聯(lián)系在一起，記不清有多少次，我們一同出發(fā)，穿越歲月的黑暗和迷霧，這些從不同角落和不同的時空交疊的場景以及情節(jié)的演變，構(gòu)成了我們共同經(jīng)歷的時間節(jié)點和了解他們精神世界的線索。
人類的思想和感情，如果沒有昨天，今天仍是空白一片，我們內(nèi)心的體驗總是帶著昨天的積淀和過去的日子走過來，仍然在我們今天的軀體里跳動，我們的精神無法突然擺脫過去，象自己的愿望的那樣成長和忘卻。那么，昨天仍然是存在的，它深存于我們的感覺和記憶之中，無數(shù)個昨日的疊加，不僅使我們的外貌，更使藝術(shù)家的精神世界和藝術(shù)方式脫胎換骨。
20年前的秋天的暗夜，長江朝天門碼頭，顧雄、張曉剛和我登上了沿江而下的輪船，在船甲板上我們象幾個早期的革命黨，圍聚在一角，周圍是無盡的黑暗和遠(yuǎn)方寂寥的漁火，曉剛不停地抱怨他仍未收到正式的開會邀請。我們此行，是前往安徽黃山參加召開的現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)研討會。這是85以來的“武林大會”是對于經(jīng)歷了80年代文化思潮洗禮的藝術(shù)界的一次檢閱，那時我和張曉剛瘦骨憐仃，胡子拉茬，長發(fā)披肩是典型的憤青和事主。與當(dāng)年流行的主流藝術(shù)格格不入，是川美的異端和反叛的化身。剛由加拿大返國的顧雄雖長得白凈高大，渾身洋氣，卻與我倆臭味相投，是現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)的同情者和實踐者，被我們引以為知己。那時候我們是四川美院現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)的星星之火，另外能與我們遙相呼應(yīng)的火種就是云南的大毛和老潘以及在貴陽的成肖玉了。我們已約好，這次共赴黃山，剛?cè)氲赖膮闻旌屯趿质切抡J(rèn)識的批評家，他們象小狗撒尿一般把西南三省確認(rèn)為我們的自己的地盤。江輪在千里江陵中穿行，清晨駛過三峽的時候，我又一次整理了行李中的幻燈片，象是清點行走江湖的本錢；楊述、任小林、王毅、許仲敏、朱小禾、忻海洲、沈曉彤、郭偉、何森、陳文波……是代表性的人物。
80年代的繪畫主流，仍然是延續(xù)四川油畫鄉(xiāng)土寫實主義，“小、苦、舊”風(fēng)格的發(fā)揚和庸俗化，虛假的樣式化風(fēng)情和造作的藝術(shù)趣味，仍是大多數(shù)藝術(shù)家津津有味的追求。顧雄和楊述的藝術(shù)明顯地區(qū)別于此。
顧雄是我大學(xué)同屆的同學(xué)，學(xué)習(xí)版畫的研究生畢業(yè)后，赴加拿大研修當(dāng)代藝術(shù)。英俊、高大、爽朗是傳說中的少女殺手和陽光男孩。86年去班福的加拿大藝術(shù)中的經(jīng)歷，使其成為中國最早開始關(guān)注和討論文化沖突和反思文化身份的藝術(shù)家。顧雄對上述問題的思辯，不是枯燥和空洞的文化教條，而是他由自身生活經(jīng)歷和親身遭遇引發(fā)的靈感和體悟，其作品《網(wǎng)》的表達(dá)象他熱愛的黑白木刻般的單純，簡潔和直露，明澄照人。“網(wǎng)是文化的視覺形象，人創(chuàng)造了文化，同時被自己創(chuàng)造的文化所束縛。對我們這一代人來說，只有沖破這種網(wǎng)，才能獲得自由。”顧雄正是從親身的經(jīng)歷中，感受到現(xiàn)實和文化的樊籬，并試圖在作品中將創(chuàng)作的視野從中國本土的現(xiàn)實矛盾轉(zhuǎn)向了對于國際文化身份的差異和認(rèn)同的語境之中。
楊述一直從川美附中升至研究生畢業(yè)留校，是長發(fā)飄逸的少年才俊。同學(xué)們都叫他“貓兒”貓是人見人愛卻無法馴服的動物。乖巧、聰敏、才氣橫溢卻走位飄浮。楊述的藝術(shù)從開始就是顯露了強烈的繪畫天賦，輕松的述事，沖動的筆觸，被破壞的圖象，在自由和節(jié)制間游弋式的繪畫風(fēng)格是對流行的四川繪畫約定俗成的偽現(xiàn)實主義的情節(jié)性觀念的反動。城市、面孔、夢境、數(shù)字和拼音以及資訊紛至襲來，構(gòu)成了楊述具有破壞力的視覺游戲。楊述的繪畫使人想起那些公眾和集體的涂鴉乃至村莊民舍間胡亂粉刷的標(biāo)記。“那是一種無常的語言，思想的符號，閃躍著人們的心靈。”符號不僅僅傳達(dá)嚴(yán)肅的觀念，也傳達(dá)思想、愿望、反對意見。挑釁和嘲諷。
80年代的確是一個沖動的年代，經(jīng)歷過80年代前期文化洗禮的人們，總是難以忘懷那些熱鬧的場面，雖然那些的文化存在諸多的夸張和謬誤。但是，那畢竟是一個在文化上有追求的年代。89年冬，我和顧雄一家，楊述、張曉剛結(jié)伴登上赴京的列車，參加中國美術(shù)館舉辦的現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)大展，象一群那個年頭開始在中國大地上四處流浪的民工，我們背負(fù)著沉重的行李：拆開的畫框、畫布和作品、方便畫、展覽通知書和數(shù)目可憐全部積蓄，象一支隨時準(zhǔn)備開赴前線的敢死隊帶上了全部的家當(dāng)。
在80年代神話的最后舞臺上，現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)大展上演了八仙過海的招式：賣蝦、洗腳、孵蛋、撒避孕套，開槍、直到關(guān)展，顧雄穿上了連夜繪制的“網(wǎng)”服，站在一樓默默的看著這些熱鬧的演出，楊述在二樓擺開了他帶來的近十米的巨幅紅墻。但無論顧雄白黑分明的網(wǎng)和楊述的紅墻，這樣的表現(xiàn)性的濃墨重彩并沒有贏來過多的目光，幾乎所有的燈光和目光都投向了那些事件、新聞和爭吵構(gòu)成的主角和中心。顧雄、楊述以及我們再次成為失語和沉默的一群。不管主動還是被動，80年代是突然死亡的，人們不得不在懷念這個舞臺的同時，又努力等待這個大而無當(dāng)?shù)纳裨挼钠飘a(chǎn)，80年代留給我們的不僅是一些回憶，而且是一堆值得面對的問題。
幸運的是我們最后各自賣掉了自己參加大展的作品，使自己避免了身無分文還要將作品和畫框運回黃桷坪的尷尬境地。今天，出現(xiàn)在市場和拍賣會上競價的這些作品。有時會給人一種錯誤的成就感。而80年代的謝幕，以一場交易結(jié)束，這多少伴隨著一種戲劇性的嘲諷和挫折感。這一切今天的人們恐怕難以理解。
89年的一系列改變，使顧雄再次回到加拿大，帶去了妻子和女兒，開始了他們?nèi)覐氐滓饬x的離開原鄉(xiāng)母土的生涯。移民，脫離母語的顧雄，以更強烈的方式感覺這種失落，肉體感覺的中斷——置身于兩個完全不同的時空，棲身異域使他對這種失落尤其敏感。但也可以使顧雄以更切身的方式去討論這些具有普遍意義的主題。生存的壓力并未阻止他在異國他鄉(xiāng)創(chuàng)作的能量。在多倫多這個佰生的世界，迎著地下室照進(jìn)的陽光，他描繪和講述著自己的處境，遷涉移民的心路歷程從他最質(zhì)樸語言中一一道來。假如藝術(shù)部分的存在是要尋找穿透現(xiàn)實的新的視角，那么，再一次的背井離鄉(xiāng)和由此獲得更遠(yuǎn)大的地理視野，應(yīng)當(dāng)為我們提供這樣新文化角度及視界。在孤獨和壓抑的現(xiàn)實中，接受著全球化社會的同化和影響，在開放和自由中保持其個人的文化空間和獨立性，在與西方中心的沖突中，表達(dá)和展示出“我”的世界，在不同文化背景的掙扎中顧雄重新獲得了重生。
90年代我熱衷于在世界的游走，從未停止旅行，從未停止由亞洲或歐洲以及北美的某處出發(fā)，跨越千水千山，去打量和體會那些從未囑目的“別處”，這樣的經(jīng)歷使我受益匪淺。記得那時每當(dāng)回到黃桷坪。已經(jīng)漸成風(fēng)氣的一群朋友，要通過“每周一鍋”分享這些見聞和體會，不斷有一些新的面孔出現(xiàn)在周圍：陳衛(wèi)閩、劉虹、奉正杰、趙能智、何晉偉、郭晉、鐘飚、張小濤、楊冕、廖一百、王大軍、李川、李勇、趙波、任前、高禹、惠欣……那些激情蕩漾的時刻和這些名字使那段時光變得溫暖動人。
95年我和老栗、廖雯、張奇開、劉虹乘歐洲快車到達(dá)阿姆斯特丹，白天我們在老城的小巷水港和博物館中穿來竄去，晚上在楊述在美術(shù)學(xué)院的閣樓畫室，在七橫八豎的涂鴉中，我在那兒打地輔，喝大酒，把木板踩得吱吱作響，96年去紐約，我扣了個墨鏡和扎馬尾辮的楊述還有戴瓜皮帽的曉剛冒充越南幫在牙買加大街上閑逛，壯著膽子向高大的黑人討煙抽，2000年在印度老德里，楊述和我被那個不斷問你“you happy?”的黑胖導(dǎo)游帶著，迷失在蜘蛛網(wǎng)一樣的舊街和破廟中……楊述的繪畫此時已經(jīng)漸變?yōu)橐环N無邊界的游吟敘事風(fēng)格般的說唱：閱讀、旅行、抒寫、見聞、欲望、私密、沖突、廢物和身體的即興和聲，表達(dá)著緊張、機會、記憶、痛苦和慰藉。2003年的麗江國際工作展示節(jié)期間，楊述與來自各國的藝術(shù)家一起工作，楊述在麗江的木府為自己造了一個木匣子，楊述在里面用動物鮮血和白色石灰作畫，在個人狹小的空間，街頭巷尾的涂抹和暴力性標(biāo)語符號，轉(zhuǎn)化在繪畫行為和廢棄物構(gòu)成的現(xiàn)場中，象一場莫明的浩劫，一場無端的爭斗，楊述和觀者都始終不能解答，這場沖突因何而起？
一周前，我又回到重慶黃桷坪，楊述這樣描述它：“有些景象是永恒的，矗立的煙窗，不停地冒煙，市井生動，便宜的生活，永遠(yuǎn)象一幅世紀(jì)末的圖景……這就是我的放逐地。”這個城鄉(xiāng)小鎮(zhèn)和20年前一樣落后、嘲雜。不同的是當(dāng)代藝術(shù)已經(jīng)在這兒以最瘋狂的方式登堂入室，大街上涂滿漫畫，倉庫和樓房變成了生產(chǎn)藝術(shù)的作坊，教室里滿是準(zhǔn)備用藝術(shù)改變生活的學(xué)藝考生。昔日艱難奮斗的被稱為“黃飄”的職業(yè)藝術(shù)家已經(jīng)大部分移師京城。拜時代所賜，早年因為描繪農(nóng)民的面孔，而倍受榮譽與爭議的學(xué)生羅中立，已經(jīng)成為這個學(xué)府的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者；他的同學(xué)張曉剛更是成為中國和世界的神話，是當(dāng)代藝術(shù)的炙手可熱的人物，被媒體稱為市場的“天王”；我自己則由于藝術(shù)憤青蛻變?yōu)橐粋€當(dāng)代藝術(shù)生活方式的叫賣者，現(xiàn)在又回歸到藝術(shù)的表達(dá)者的本色，居住在北京；顧雄全家定居去加拿大溫哥華，任教于布列顛哥倫比亞大學(xué)的藝術(shù)系，成為華人中少有的在北美當(dāng)代藝術(shù)重要的學(xué)者和活躍的藝術(shù)家，常常擔(dān)任加拿大各種最高藝術(shù)獎項的評委；楊述仍留在他所形容的“放逐地”黃桷坪，他創(chuàng)辦并主持的藝術(shù)空間為新的藝術(shù)后進(jìn)者和國際駐留的藝術(shù)家們提供溫床和實驗田。是黃桷坪這個藝術(shù)根據(jù)地的學(xué)術(shù)核心。
一切成功或失敗只不過是一種時間的策略而已。因挫折而放棄的追求是軟弱的，因為其缺乏力量，被成功所阻擋的穿行是膚淺的，因為沒有遠(yuǎn)見和理想，在日益國際化的今天，我們不可避免地成為國際藝術(shù)家，移民文化和穿行世界的一大好處是可以自由的選擇文化親緣，正如顧雄和楊述二位具有國際視野，出生于重慶的藝術(shù)家的經(jīng)驗和啟示。我們的文化親緣一部分是有意選擇的，另一部分是無意獲得的，今天的我們以這樣一個多語系的經(jīng)歷和家譜衡量自己并以能從屬于它而為榮。
以此文祝顧雄和楊述的展覽成功，并紀(jì)念那些我們一起度過的歲月和時光。活在我們腦海中的記憶，不會使那些時光銷聲匿跡，它會將我們帶回共同的歲月河流之中，如同我們曾經(jīng)孤單憂傷地站在長江交匯處的碼頭上，站在上世紀(jì)80年代中國城鄉(xiāng)結(jié)合部的陰暗潮濕的黃桷坪街頭車站。那時我們是痛苦，窮困，迷惘而幼稚，浪漫、單純可笑的一小群。我們身負(fù)行囊，渴望外面的世界，期待巨大的改變，等待向未知作無邊的穿行。
葉永青
2008年10月29日 于紐約
Boundless Journey
——For Gu Xiong and Yang Shu’s Exhibition
“Where are you?” I turned on my mobile after the aeroplane landed in New York, and out popped Weng Ling’s text message. Recently she had used the same question, “Where are we?” for the opening of her gallery in Beijing.
Heavy clouds gathered over the Hudson River, the little Soho hotel was exceptionally cold, the early cold snap seemed to tell those who were not prepared for it, here is the cold of winter. In this moment, Weng Ling is far away in Beijing, preparing to hold an exhibition in her gallery, to the side of Tiananmen Square, for two gifted contemporary Sichuanese artists, Gu Xiong and Yang Shu. For a month now I have been traveling about the world, receiving intermittent reminders from the gallery’s curator Tang Jing: what was I going to write about Gu Xiong and Yang Shu? Along my journey that has taken me to Lijiang and Dali in Yunnan province, to Sichuan and Chongqing, Beijing, Indonesia and New York, the idea occurs to me recurrently. The strange thing is that each time I think of my old friends Gu Xiong and Yang Shu, my memories are entangled with images of dark and damp stations and piers. I cannot remember how many times we set out together, passing through the dark mists of time; enactments of these scenes and events from different corners and different moments crowd together creating connections in our shared experiences and threads to guide our understanding of their spiritual world.
If mankind’s thoughts and emotions have no yesterdays, their today will remain an empty blank. Our personal experiences always carry with them the accumulation of the yesterdays that come along with past days, leaping ever in our bodies at the present. Our spirits cannot suddenly dislocate themselves from the past, as we might wish, to grow and forget. In that case, yesterday still exists, it lies within our feelings and memories, the overlaying of innumerable yesterdays, changing not only our appearance, but to a greater extent the spiritual world of the artist and his artistic practices.
On a dark autumn night twenty years ago, at the Chaotianmen pier on the Yangtze River, Gu Xiong, Zhang Xiaogang and I boarded the paddle steamer headed downriver. We huddled together in a corner on the deck like a small group of early revolutionaries, all around us was the boundless darkness pierced only by the lamps of lonely fishing boats. Xiaogang kept complaining that he was yet to receive an official invitation to the China/ Avant-garde Forum held in Huangshan Mountain in Anhui province. It was the first “tournament” since ’85, a review aimed at those artists that had been baptized in the 1980’s new wave of thought. Back then Xiaogang and I were both pitifully thin with the unshaven beards and shoulder-length hair typical of angry youths and troublemakers. We did not fit into any of the popular trends of art at the time; we were the embodiment of heretic rebellion against beauty. Although Gu Xiong, just back from Canada, looked taller and better kept than we did, and was full of Western style, we were companions in notoriety; he too was sympathetic to and a practitioner of modern art, and so became one of us. At that time we were the bright stars of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute’s modern arts, the only other sparks that could communicate with us from a distance were Da Mao and Lao Pan from Yunnan and Cheng Xiaoyu from Guiyang. We had arranged to travel to Huangshan Mountain together, new arrivals to the scene were the critics Lü Peng and Wang Lin whom we had just met, who like dogs marking their ground declared all three provinces of the Southwest of China their own territory. The boat journeyed through the thousand mile long stretches of water, as we steered through the morning mists of the gorges, I organized the projector slides in my luggage once more, as if counting our capital with which we embarked on these waters; Yang Shu, Ren Xiaolin, Wang Yi, Xu Zhongmin, Zhu Xiaohe, Xin Haizhou, Shen Xiaotong, Guo Wei, He Sen, Chen Wenbo … these were our key figures.
The mainstream of painting in the 1980s was a continuance of the SFAI’s native realism, the development and vulgarisation of the “small, bitter and old-fashioned” style, empty stylished emotional and fake artistic flavour remained the eagerly pursued target of the majority of artists. Gu Xiong and Yang Shu’s artwork was clearly set apart from theirs.
Gu Xiong was in the same year as me in University, after graduating from postgraduate studies in printmaking, he went to Canada to undertake further studies in contemporary arts. Handsome, tall and bright, he was a lady-killer straight out of a legend and a sunny lad. His ‘86 experience of going to the Banff Center for the Arts, Canada to study art, made him one of the earliest artists to examine and open discussions on the topics of culture shock and the reconsideration of cultural identity. Gu Xiong’s thoughts on those subjects were not dry and empty cultural theorems, but inspirations drawn from his own personal experience. The notion in his artwork “Enclosures”, like the black and white woodblock prints that he loves, is pure, simple and straight to the point, the pieces are illuminating. “The enclosure is a visual form of culture, man created culture, and at the same time he is bound by the culture that he created. Our generation can only seek freedom by first breaking through that net.” Gu Xiong draws his perception of the cage of culture and reality from his personal experience, and attempts to steer his artwork out of the contradiction of Chinese native reality towards a context of the disparity and acknowledgement of international cultural identity.
Yang Shu has remained on at SFAI since attending secondary school there until his graduation as a postgraduate and beyond; a gifted and handsome, long-haired youth. His classmates call him “the Cat”, an animal that is loveable but impossible to tame. Attractive, intelligent and talented as he is, he tends toward the role of a drifter. Yang Shu’s art revealed a powerful god-given talent early on. His casual narrations, impulsive brushstrokes and broken images, in a style that walks the line between freedom and restraint, are a premeditated conceptual rebellion against the phoney realism agreed upon and vulgarized by painters of the SFAI. Cities, faces, dreamscapes, numbers and letters and information burst forth, creating the destructive force of Yang Shu’s visual games. Yang Shu’s paintings make one think of collective graffiti and of slogans painted carelessly in the countryside. “It is an abnormal language, symbols of thought, sparking through people’s souls.” The symbols not only transmit serious concepts, but also thoughts, desires, counter-observations, provocative and taunting.
The 80s were indeed an impulsive decade. Those who were baptised in the culture of the early 80s cannot forget those lively scenes, even if they were full of exaggerations and mistakes. It was, in the end, an era with cultural ambitions. In ’89 I, together with Gu Xiong, Yang Shu and Zhang Xiaogang, took a train to Beijing to take part in the China / Avant–garde Art Exhibition at the National Art Museum. Like the drifting migrant workers that roamed all over China in those days, we traveled with heavy luggage on our backs: broken-down frames, canvasses and artwork, instant noodles, our invitation letters and our pitifully small savings, like a dare-to-die squadron, prepared to make a run for the front line at any moment carrying everything with them.
In the last stage of the legend of the 1980s, at the China / Avant–garde Art Exhibition, a scene of “Eight Immortals Crossing the Ocean” was enacted: there were selling shrimps, washing feet, incubating eggs, flinging condoms, a shooting; all the way up until the closing night when Gu Xiong wore the “Enclosure” suit he had stayed up at night painting, and stood on the ground floor, quietly watching the noisy proceedings, on the first floor Yang Shu had arranged his painting of a red wall nearly ten meters in length that he had brought with him. But neither the black and white of Gu Xiong’s work, nor Yang Shu’s red wall with their representative heavy colours managed to win much attention. All eyes and lights were upon the events, news and arguments that became the centre of attention. Gu Xiong, Yang Shu and us too became a silent and speechless group. Whether actively or passively, the 1980’s died in sudden. At the same time as we were trapped in memories of that stage, we tried our best to wait for the unstoppable bankruptcy of the legend; the 1980s left us not only with memories, but with several questions worth facing up to.
Luckily we were each able to sell the pieces of artwork that took part in the exhibition, which allowed us to avoid the awkward situation of returning home without a penny to our names, and having to arrange to transport our artwork back to Huang Jueping besides. Those same artworks that appear on the market and at auction competing for highest prices today. Sometimes it leaves one with an erroneous feeling of achievement. The curtain fell on the 80s with a business transaction, accompanied to some extent by a dramatic feeling of sarcasm and frustration. I’m afraid it is difficult for people today to understand.
The changes of the year 1989 sent Gu Xiong back to Canada, taking his wife and daughter with him, beginning the thorough uprooting of their family from their native soil. An immigrant, cut off from his native tongue, Gu Xiong was all the more aware of that feeling of despondency, of being physically cut-off -- living in two entirely different spaces, away from home, he was especially sensitive to that despondency. This experience made Gu Xiong all the more personally involved in those broadly meaningful themes. The pressure of existence could not impede his creative power abroad. In the strange world of Toronto, in the sunlight that shone into his underground room, he sketched and described his own situation, the psychological process of the immigrant is represented step by step, using simple language. If art exists, in part, in order to seek out new points of view that allow us to see through reality, then moving away for a second time from one’s homeland and thereby gaining a geographically larger field of vision, ought to provide such new cultural points of view and visions. In reality, living lonely and under pressure, accepting the assimilation and effect of global society, preserving a personal cultural space and individuality amongst openness and freedom, in the shock of the centre of the Western world, expressing and revealing “my” world, struggling within different cultural backgrounds, Gu Xiong attained his second birth.
During the 90s I fell in love with travelling, I have never stopped travelling, never stopped travelling from a point in Asia or Europe or even North America, traversing land and sea, going to measure and experience those unseen “other places”, I have benefited greatly from the experience. Whenever I returned to Huang Jueping and saw my friends gradually making a name for themselves, we would enjoy the latest news over a weekly meal, with new faces appearing all the time: Chen Weimin, Liu Hong, Feng Zhengjie, Zhao Nengzhi, He Jinwei, Guo Jin, Zhong Biao, Zhang Xiaotao, Yang Mian, Liao Yibai, Wang Dajun, Li Chuan, Li Yong, Zhao Bo, Ren Qian, Gao Yu, Hui Xin … those fervent times and those names made that a more moving period of time.
In 1995 Li Xianting, Liao Wen, Zhang Qikai, Liu Hong and I were on a European express, on our way to Amsterdam. In the morning we were amongst the small canals of the old city and moving about between museums, by evening we were in Yang Shu’s loft studio at the Fine Arts Academy. Surrounded by haphazard graffiti works, I slept on his floor, drank with him and walked noisily across his wooden floorboards. Going to New York in 1996, I wore sunglasses, Yang Shu wore a plait, whilst Xiaogang wore a skull-cap, we pretended to be Vietnamese, wandering happily on the streets of Jamaica, plucking up our courage to ask black locals for a cigarette. In 2000 in India followed our fat, dark tour guide who was always asking us, “You happy?” and got lost in the old, spider-web-like streets and derelict temples of Old Delhi … By that time Yang Shu’s paintings had already gradually achieved a style of unlimited wandering narration: reading, traveling, lyricism, news, desire, privacy, shock, the random harmony of discarded objects and bodies, expressing tension, opportunities, memories, suffering and consolation. During the 2003 Lijiang International Workshop, Yang Shu worked together with artists from all different countries; amongst the wooden buildings he built himself a wooden hut. Inside this he painted using animal’s blood and white lime. In that confined space street graffiti, violent slogans and symbols intermingled in the painting with performance and discarded objects, like an inexplicable catastrophe, a battle without a reason, neither Yang Shu nor his spectators could explain why the clash had started in the first place.
One week ago, I returned to Huang Jueping once more. Yang Shu describes it so, “Some scenes are eternal, towering chimneys, pouring out smoke, a busy city, cheap cost of living, a scene like the end of the world … that is my place of banishment.” This suburb is just as underdeveloped and noisy as it was twenty years ago. What has changed is that Contemporary Art has entered into people’s homes in the most wild of ways, cartoons have been painted all over the buildings, warehouses and buildings have become workshops producing artwork, the classrooms are full of art students waiting to change their lives through art. The professional artists known as “Huang Piao” (Huang Jueping Drifters) whose life in days past was a bitter struggle have mostly moved on to Beijing. With the changing of the times, the student Luo Zhongli who received acclaim and provoked controversy by painting the face of a peasant in early days has already become the leader of the academy. His classmate Zhang Xiaogang has to an even greater extent become a national and international legend, the red-hot figure of contemporary art, named by the media as “The God” of the market. Meanwhile I have been transformed from an angry youth into a vendor of contemporary art lifestyles, now returning to the colors of artistic expression, living in Beijing. Gu Xiong and his family live together in Vancouver, where he teaches at the Art Department of the British-Columbia University, and has become an important scholar in North America’s contemporary art scene and an active artist, a rare achievement amongst Chinese people. He often acts as judge in several of Canada’s major art events. Yang Shu remains in the place he describes as his “place of exile”, Huang Jueping. The art space which he established and runs provides a hot bed and space for experimentation for new arrivals on the art scene and international resident artists alike; it is the nucleus of the art base of Huang Jueping.
All success or failure is nothing more than a temporal plan. Those who give up because of frustrations are weak, they lack strength; a journey that is held up by success is shallow, it has no further goals or ideals. In the ever-more global present, we cannot help but become international artists. Immigrant culture and traversing the world has one positive side, that is being at liberty to choose one’s cultural affinities; just like the experiences and revelations of Gu Xiong and Yang Shu, both possessing international fields of vision, both artists born in Chongqing. Some of our cultural affinities are chosen deliberately, and some are gained by chance. Today we are able to place ourselves within our multi-lingual experiences and family tree, and feel proud of belonging to it.
This piece of writing is to wish Gu Xiong and Yang Shu every success in their exhibition, and to commemorate the time we have spent together. The memories that live in our minds will not cause those times to vanish without a trace, but will take us back to the river of time, just as if we stood together, lonely and sorrowful, on the pier at the confluence of the Yangtze, standing on the dark and damp streets at the bus stop in Huang Jueping, at the convergence of city and country in the 80s China of the last century. Then we were an embittered, poor, lost and childish, romantic, simple and ridiculous group. We carried our baggage, thirsting for the outside world, hoping for great changes to occur, waiting to undertake our boundless journey through the unknown.
Ye Yongqing
New York, 29th October 2008
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