邱世华 Qiu Shihua
展览地点：麦勒画廊 北京－卢森，北京
艺 术 家：邱世华
开幕时间：2010年1月30日,下午4：00 － 下午7：00
展览时间：2010年1月30日 – 2010年4月4日
展览地址：北京市朝阳区草场地村104号，邮编;100015
开放时间：每周周二－周日，上午11：00－下午6：30
电话: +86 10 64333393
传真：+86 10 64330203
Title: Qiu Shihua
Venue: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing – Lucerne, Beijing Branch
Artists: Qiu Shihua
Opening: from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m., Saturday, 30th January 2010
Exhibition: 30th January 2010 – 4th April 2010
Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing:
Caochangdi No.104, Chaoyang District, 100015 Beijing.
Opening Hours: 11.00 am – 6.30 pm, from Tuesday to Sunday.
Phone: +86 10 64333393
Fax: +86 10 64330203
邱世华：显现的图像
邱世华的作品，游走于形与无形、象与非象之间，悖于理，执于觉。他的画，在无穷无止的感知域内，脱离于抽象的诘查，于直观中显现出来。凝视这些摹于对象的画作，感受其散发的“空”，让西方观众不由自主地联想到“单色绘画”。但这种阐释语境不会太有延伸性，因为邱世华的画尽管也代表了一种当代艺术的重要立场，却毕竟与形式主义自我反思的现代主义艺术观念更为接近。弗兰克•斯特拉（Frank Stella）那句务实、以至于狂傲的名言“看你所看”在邱世华这里以“空”的形式表达出来。
邱世华的画有个特点，不同观众看他的画，感知到的图像的显现方式常常不同，但仍然可以在主题超出正常范围的情况下或多或少、清晰地看到或捕捉到画的主题。这是一个在感知的个体性之外的神奇现象。他的画表达方式极为克制，观众对其图像性的感知是渐进的，时间在这里成为至关重要的因素。这与詹姆斯•图雷尔（James Turrell）的光线空间不无相似之处，后者作品的现场图像性也是需要一定长度的时间作用才能被观众感知到。图雷尔处理的是眼睛如何适应特殊光线的问题，而邱世华的画则把另一层面凸显出来，即澄明（kontemplativ）之际：此刻，所论者已不止于观看的意义。铺于绘画表面的主题并非真实的摹写，而是意在导向本质。这正是罗兰•巴特面对自己母亲的相片、抒发自己对摄影的哀思时，满怀伤痛怀念的东西：在种种繁复的细节面前，他无法再将她认作那个记忆中所爱的母亲。
不过，把摄影的这种化学反应过程与感知邱世华绘画的方式做比较恰恰合适。在邱世华的画中，主题逐渐浓缩为图像和在我们脑海中形成形象的方式与暗房中冲洗照片的过程颇为相似。随着时间的推移，曝光的照片在冲洗液的浸透下慢慢显现出镜头捕捉到的光的影像；图像在白色的相片纸上出现并凸显出来，在某一时刻终止这一进程，即可把得到的虚像定影为现实世界的即时图像。如此比较的话，我们可以说，邱世华的画是在图像显现或者图像“发展”的不同程度里表现出感知的强度和时间性。然而这种图像并不具有照片那种自以为是的客观，其更多体现的是一种短暂性，要求我们对自身的感知、预期和推想进行小心权衡。我们看到的是一个极为短暂的现象，一种“显灵”的现象，它不能在原本的意义上被理解为不真实、或者在当下的意义上被理解为虚幻，而是恰恰相反。
在邱世华的画中，图像的材料性毋庸置疑，画的结构和干画的技法都表明了绘画的真实性。取自中国传统山水画的主题可能会使我们的注意力离开图像的当下性，不过一旦揭开这层异域魅力的外表，我们就会发现一种对于西方观众也颇具意味的绘画探讨。邱世华说，画画时要忘掉一切——主题、技法、情感，忘掉它们，才能在这种“空”中获得纯粹的“觉”：图像不是从这之中被创造出来，而是被发现。这是一种蓄意的、道家式的无心，我们可以用13世纪时一个有关禅师陈容的故事加以解释。陈容作画时，泼墨以成云雾；酩酊大醉时，放声大吼，以帽为笔，草书成画。这让我们想起达芬奇说过的一则轶事，他曾说波提切利作画时会将浸满颜料的海绵扔到墙上，用形成的污渍画风景。墙上的污渍当然不是艺术的来源，但是可以触发艺术想象。
邱世华并非用这种方式创作，但他追求的同样是图像的无意性发展。是的，如果将上文提到的“污渍艺术”扩展到为邱世华敬重的法国印象派那里，看看他们如何用污渍表现对世界的理解，我们会发现另一种层面上的相似。印象派绘画将图像作为可见现实的碎片化进行建构，其核心不在于对主题的摹仿，而是激发其本质：在邱世华的山水画中可以找到相似的消解和本质化特征。不同的是邱世华的实现方式：他闭上了卡斯帕•大卫•弗里德里希意义上的“身体之眼”，以求画由心生。但是并不能把这种激发浪漫精神的方式理解为顺应时代潮流，它是一种反映在当下的基本态度。邱世华的艺术因此在巨大的抽象主义背景下获得了新的涵义：图像在这两者中皆为画中自生，不带指向性的传达，不带意识形态。图像意义在感知和直觉中显现，在澄明中显现。
文：Max Wechsler
翻译：苏伟
Qiu Shihua – The Image as an Epiphany
by Max Wechsler
Inscribed within the ambivalence of shape and non-shape, image and non-image, Qiu Shihua’s (*1940) paintings are literally sensations beyond rational understanding. They reveal themselves solely in the imminent contemplation of a vast perceptual field which persistently eludes conceptual comprehension. At first glance, notwithstanding the figurative elements they contain, these paintings radiate mainly a "void", which Western beholders immediately assimilate with the concept of monochrome paintings; a sterile interpretational context when taking into account that Qiu’s works – though representative of a relevant position in contemporary art – position themselves beyond the self-reflective, formalistic concepts of modernism. Here, Frank Stella’s pragmatic, yet arrogant motto – "what you see is what you see" – runs idle.
It is characteristic of Qiu’s paintings that different beholders generally make out different shapes within the image, while actively perceiving and identifying the motive more or less clearly as such – an astonishing occurrence, even if one considers that perception is an individual phenomenon. Indeed, the extremely cautious articulation of the paintings gradually unravels their pictorial character under the gaze of the beholder, a phenomenon where time plays a key role – not unlike James Turrell’s lighting rooms whose pictorial presence only constitutes with time. While Turrell’s works require the eyes to adapt to the peculiar light they radiate, Qiu’s paintings seem to involve yet another dimension: a contemplative momentum not merely addressing sight. Embedded in the pictorial surface, the motive is not aimed at representation but rather at evoking an essence, something which Roland Barthes, in his melancholic reflections on photography, missed when contemplating the photographs portraying his mother: amidst the numerous petty details he was unable to recognize the beloved being he remembered.
The chemical process of photography provides a cunning metaphor for the perceptual mode induced by Qiu’s paintings. The way in which their motives slowly condense to form a picture and take shape in our spirit can be compared to photochemical processing in the dark room. Immersed in a chemical bath, the photosensitive paper progressively reveals the imprint of light captured by the camera; we witness the image surface from the depths of the blank paper and its features become progressively distinguishable until the process is disrupted, whereby the illusion is recorded as a transient representation of the world. Along the lines of this analogy, Qiu’s paintings appear to coincide with the intensity and time span of perception in different stages of the constituency or "development" of the image they contain. Untouched by the putative objectivity of photography, their volatility demands the viewer’s careful evaluation of his perceptions, presuppositions and speculations. One always faces a highly ephemeral phenomenon; an epiphanic apparition which can hardly be termed unreal nor, for that matter, virtual in contemporary terminology – quite on the contrary.
The paintings’ sheer materiality is beyond doubt: the structure of the canvas as well as Qiu’s concise technique sustain their reality. There is but the landscape, a motive derived from Chinese painting tradition, to divert our attention from the contemporary quality of the images. But once the veil of exoticism is shed, one discovers a painterly argument which holds a quite unique fascination for the Western view as well. According to Qiu, his working process grounds on the premise of forgetting about such painterly matters as motive, technique, emotion, thus achieving pure sensuality in the void space from which the image must emerge rather than construct itself. This involves a deliberate Taoist-inspired notion of unintentional practice, best illustrated by an anecdote about the 13th century Zen priest Ch’en Jung. Ch’en is said to have painted clouds and fog by spraying ink and spitting water on his paintings. Then, once he was replete with wine, he would be shouting while brushing his large strokes with his hat. This story echoes the incident related by Leonardo according to which Sandro Botticelli threw a sponge drenched in color on a canvas and subsequently modeled a landscape from the stains. As a matter of fact, the stain in itself is not art, but it can trigger the artistic imagination.
Qiu may not be working according to this recipe but he is nonetheless concerned with the unintentional aspects involved in painting. Provided that one broadens the idea of "stain-art" to encompass French impressionism, a current in painting which he particularly cherishes – and which literally reduced its perception of the world to the level of stains – yet another interpretational layer discloses. Starting with the "tache", impressionist painting builds on the fragmentation of visible reality, a process which dismisses the mimetic rendering of the motive in favor of the evocation of its substance – Qiu’s landscapes bear a similar degree of dissolving and substantiation. Still, their materialization is ultimately withheld, as if in the spirit of Caspar David Friedrich, the artist were shutting his "bodily eye" in order to paint straight from the heart. His evocation of romantic spirituality should not be evaluated in historical terms, for it expresses a fundamental attitude still present. Elaborated on the backdrop of abstract painting, Qiu’s art acquires a new dimension. In both practices, the image emerges from the practice itself: without reference or ideology. Qiu’s paintings confide their meaning through perception and cognition, through contemplation.
