Mark Shen | 画家刘溪子的独特视角

2018-05-15 11:47

Mark Shen | 画家刘溪子的独特视角

刘溪子在她的作品自述中写到：“我的作品是我在当代消费时代语境下的对消费主义以及绘画行为替代语言的研究。近十几年，世界上没有第二个国家像中国一样经历了如此迅速且深远的经济巨变。作为出生于20世纪末、成长于21世纪初的我们这代人，几乎目睹了整个国家科技创新、经济增长并走向繁荣的重要过程。我绘画题材的选用，扎根于自我在这近乎无法控制的经济与超大城市人口爆炸性增长的疯狂转变中的中国成长的经历。但我并不把素材局限于中国，虽然我的作品灵感来源于这种现代化进程,因为消费主义的发展也是一个全球化的问题。为了创作，我去到不同的城市和国家，亲身感受那些城市的节奏，再用摄影来作为我绘画色彩，结构和构成的出发点。作品丰富的细节和色彩变化，传递着微妙的虚空与距离感。从观察和亲身体验的角度出发，我的绘画反映出图像所忽视的细节，因此我的作品同时也是作为社会发展和记忆收集的纪实。”

刘溪子的绘画混淆了空间的概念，她利用广告手法和明亮的色彩来增强画面空间的混乱感。半虚构的世界松散的被格形图案组织起来，暗示了来自消费主义的产品使得绘画空间减少了可信度。艺术评论家Adam Turl在Times报纸艺术专栏上对她的评价是：“刘溪子的作品描绘的是生活中最平淡无奇，普遍存在的“工作”以及“消费”。她的绘画体现了21世纪大生产时代的相互作用，并让我们想起了艺术家Sarah Sze 和Julie Mehretu。对于互联网时代全球化的丰富性以及极强的活力表现，这几位艺术家的作品可以说是同义的。刘溪子将嘈杂的日常工作，最普通的物质生活与绘画的艺术表现方式融合。”

Bookstore - Chicago，布面油画，160 x 200 cm，2016

Trade Show - Las Vegas ，布面油画，160 x 200 cm，2017

刘溪子采用风格化的创作手法去创造了超现实的被幻想和卡通，游戏元素启发的半虚拟空间。平面的色彩同时却描绘了一个个复杂，高度扭曲的深度空间并通过色彩叠加去表现，这种手法营造了眩晕和困惑的观看体验。这平面的叙事空间基于对现代人对商品的渴望。他们是情感缺失的，是这喧嚣的城市化探索之下大众文化的幻象。这些消费文化的创造之物同时也包含了艺术家对于这种资本主义垄断，操控的的批判和评论态度。刘的作品基于在现代的消费文化社会中，个人对这无意义的商品的选择不再根据需求而是欲望。这些僵硬的没有脸，甚至没有头的人物形象在我的绘画中，艺术化的表现了消费文化中的去个人化与对个性的淹没，以及现代社会中人际之间的冷漠与生活自由的缺乏。她转化空间和物体去打乱现代生活中所谓的秩序和节奏，为了发现新的心里上和概念上的空间。通过利用个人的记忆，叙述和个人经验，观众可以在刘溪子的作品中建立自己独特的体验，使之转化为当其走入这些视觉场景时表达这种愉悦的淹没感的表达方式。

MFA Exhibition, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO，US

艺术家刘溪子近期获得了美国艺术家杂志Artist Magazine年度全媒介艺术竞赛中一等奖，其绘画作品将在2018九月刊中刊登。这位国际艺术家出生于山东济南，2015年本科毕业于中央美术学院油画系，于2017年研究生毕业于美国华盛顿圣路易斯。她的获奖作品描绘了当代社会的消费以及生产场所，并作为对现代资本主义大消费时代的记录与评论。她的作品在世界范围内的著名画廊以及美术馆展出，其中包括美国洛杉矶，圣路易斯，中国北京，上海，广州，厦门等地。在职业发展上，刘溪子的工作不仅局限于职业艺术家，她也是一位艺术教育事业的拥护者，她通过艺术作为连接文化的桥梁，其在2017年服务于中美艺术家联合会（CAAA）在斯坦福大学的“字为体，书为舆”中美艺术家联展。目前刘溪子在美国洛杉矶的Art Muse in Los Angeles继续她艺术教育家的艺术品宣传讲解工作，其工作地点包括盖蒂美术馆，汉莫尔美术馆，洛杉矶现代美术馆等。

Non-Places 刘溪子个人展览，Tomas Paul Gallery, 洛杉矶

As the artist said: “My paintings are about marketplaces in the contemporary environment and serve as commentaries on capitalist consumerism and also as an exploration of painting where the brush strokes replace the language. No region in the world has undergone such rapid and profound economic and cultural changes as China in the last decades. As part of the generation born in the late 20th century, I have witnessed the country’s feverish progress of technological innovations and rapid economic growth. The subjects I choose are heavily rooted in my experience growing up amidst frenzied transformations in China, with its subsequent unbearable urban density. Also, urbanism and consumerism are not only the issues in China or East Asia, it is also a global question. To make my works, I went to different cities and felt the rhythm of life in the city, and then I took photographs as inspiration, using them as my point of departure for painterly depictions of color, gesture, and texture. The exuberant paintings centered on themes of travel, tourism, globalization, and urbanization. They are rich in color and painterly detail while still conveying a strange feeling of emptiness and distance. My paintings are born of observation and experience, images that reveal the overlooked while offering a chance for me to reflect. Thus my paintings also work as documentaries of social developments and collective memories.”

Liu’s paintings confuse space, utilizing both advertisement strategies and keyed-up color in order to reinforce a discombobulated illustrated space. The quasi-fictional worlds are loosely organized by the grid pattern, which suggests the real objects of consumerism and makes the space less believable.

Xizi Liu's paintings explore the most prosaic, and ubiquitous, aspect of life – work. Liu depicts the interplay of 21st century production in a manner recalling the art of Sarah Sze or Julie Mehretu; two artists who became synonymous with the dynamism of globalization and computer networks. Liu fuses those chaotic networks with the reality of material life: that most of us must work (often in jobs we do not like)---by Art Critic, Adam Turl, Webster-Kirkwood Times.

Liu use a highly stylized painting method to create a surreal city that’s filled with fantasy and inspired by cartoons and computer games. The flattened surfaces, while depicting a complex, highly torqued deep space, use the accumulation of individual colors to contribute to that space, to create the sense of dizziness and turbulence. These flattened pictorial spaces are based on the desirable products. They are emotionless and explore the vanity and fantasy of the Pop Culture amidst urban chaos. However, they also bear her critical position and commentary on the manipulation of capitalism. The paintings based on capitalist society depict a culture in which choices depend on desires rather than needs, and where production is meaninglessness. The rigid, faceless, even headless people in my paintings artfully show the de-individualization and overwhelming nature of consumer culture, and the cold relationships and lack of freedom of people in the modern society. Liu transform space and objects that disturb the ‘normal’ order and rhythm of urban life, in order to find new physical and conceptual spaces. By making full use of their memories, narratives and personal experiences, viewers can establish the narrative in my works and make efforts to express the pleasurable sensations and dizzy feelings when they enter into these visual scenes. Thus her work is also about seduction — the large-scale idealized painting seductively attracting audiences to walk in.

Renowned artist Xizi Liu was the first-place winner of the Artists Magazine’s Annual All Media Art Competition and will have her work featured in the September 2018 issue of Artists Magazine. An esteemed artist from Jinan, China, Ms. Liu received her Master of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in 2017, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts at China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2015. Her award-winning paintings depict marketplaces in the contemporary environment and serve as commentaries on modern capitalist consumerism and have been featured in prominent art galleries around the world, including Los Angeles and St. Louis in the United States, as well as the cities of Beijing, Guangzhou, and Xiamen in her native country. An ardent advocate of arts education, Ms. Liu bridges cultural gaps via the arts, acting as a liaison between various entities, as she did in 2017 to facilitate an exhibition held at Stanford University by the Chinese Artist in America Academia Association (CAAA) and its visiting international students. Ms. Liu has continued her work of promoting arts education in her current role as Arts Educator/Historian at Art Muse in Los Angeles, California.

Mark Shen, Art Critic

作者：Mark Shen

来源：TAIMAY