郭小力（以下简称郭）：对于艺术家来说，现在这个时代是最好的吗？
王音（以下简称王）：艺术家有多种多样，你为什么觉得这个时代对艺术家来说比较好？
郭：因为环境宽松，艺术家似乎比以往都好活；还有时代本身存在的问题较多，促使艺术家在创作方面有针对性。
王：这个时代肯定是剧烈变革的时代，不仅是从艺术家的角度看，任何一个人所遭遇的现实都是无法用语言所描述的。现实太强大了。
作为艺术家每天一定会与现实发生摩擦，就我个人来说，我总是想用一种方式将现实给你的触动呈现出来。它不断地在修正你的工作方法，是形成你工作方式的一部分。
郭：谈谈你的阶段性的工作和方法。
王：我的工作大致分两个阶段，2000年以前是一个阶段，2000年至今又是一个阶段。88年大学毕业开始，我觉得自己是在发展一种自己的语言，这种语言和新时期以来的当代艺术有些差异，比如八十年代的当代艺术特点是借用西方的语言模式，关注中国的现实问题；像批评家评论某个艺术家时会说，“他使用了一种西方语言转换中国现实很到位”，等等。我试图做某种比较个人化的、非中心的边缘性的东西，我的目的是尝试呈现出一种被忽视的地域性特质，我常说它带有某种口音。我就很感兴趣这种在中国的现代性进程中可能生长的东西，而不是找一个成功的西方语言模式，来表达中国的现实，并且很对位。我转换的恰恰是比较土的，本土的东西，像“五四”以来，留学生的土油画和绘画意识以及它们自己一种流变过程。我是用直觉和情感来工作，尽可能不做价值判断。我让我的作品尽可能停留在感性层面，我的整个绘画工作的后期倾向于把已被命名的东西匿名化，使事物再回到匿名的状态里去。比如我处理苏联一批知识分子的肖像时，它对于我只有情感意义。我尽可能清晰、简洁地把握住这种感觉。
郭：你一直是在自觉地使用这样的语言吗？
王：对。在一个阶段中我们一直是受西方现代性思想的控制，这当然有进步、合理的一面，但另一方面，我也有种找不到地面的感觉。在九十年代初那个时候，我很想做些可信的东西，当时这个感觉很强烈，所以，九十年代以后我看起来是非常不激进的，作品看上去缺乏时代感，既不是学院派，也不具有很强的“当代艺术”的特征，仅仅是一种感受。
郭：那为什么，你对什么样的东西有距离？
王：我喜欢个人化的东西，有意思的东西。
郭：你是一个画画不多又很慢的艺术家吧。
王：为什么要画得快，又画得多？我觉得画得多也不能有助我的工作进展，那么多和快就无所谓了。
郭：你在圆明园的时候做了些什么？
王：按部就班的工作，我在圆明园呆了三年时间，做了一批作品，后来这些作品成了我工作方法的支撑点。那时候符号性的东西我是不感兴趣的。我还是比较在意寻找个人化的工作方法，包括为什么采用绘画这种方式。绘画在整体上是一种不那么时髦的媒介，这是我看中它的缘故。它的性质比较符合我。
郭：你觉得哪些事对你来说挺重要的？
王：来北京对我来说挺重要的，我在青岛长大，小时候看到有好多海军军人，我没有看到过有穿黄军装的，北京就有很多。北京到处都是灰蒙蒙的，我挺喜欢。我八三年来北京读本科，八十年代北京是个令人激动的地方，有很多人，有很多想法。当时我想考中央美院，但是只招两个名额，这样就选择了戏剧学院，他们当时有八个名额。考完了也没多想，后来得到了通知还挺奇怪，怎么就考上了。
郭：在戏剧学院读书时你有意识想以后做个画家吗？
王：没那么明确，当时最大的乐趣就是画画，读书，凡是有意思的事情都想做。读书时也不知道有卖画这事，看了很多书，觉得很满足。西方现代派文学，现代派电影，总之一切被西方现代主义控制。后来我渐渐觉得这是隔雾看花。八十年代属于知识的狂欢时期，所有人都很兴奋，都在思辨，不知道为什么而辩。我们读书的时候不断地接受和扬弃一些思潮，从王国维，李泽厚，萨特，尼采等等。那个时候大致的背景就是这样的。
郭：从你简单的描述中感到你的经历和气质是一种纯粹知识分子的状态，而不是绘画艺术家的状态，你现在是怎么样的？
王：有时候我会被现实的问题所抓住，有时也会被自己的工作方法本身所困扰，还有时被所处的艺术环境所困惑。我一直想尝试形成某种风格或者方式，一种包含着矛盾性的风格和方式，即工作方法本身能够回应现实。我的作品里面有某种不确定性，包含有自我否定性。所以，看起来我的绘画像是反绘画。其实我的作品里面始终有一条相对清晰的线索，我骨子里不喜欢简单化的东西，简单的肯定。就像你不能简单地说像贝克特这样类型的作家都是荒诞派，我反对直接贴标签。
郭：你的工作一直以来都是很有计划性吗？你擅长让一切都清晰化还是喜欢随机性？
王：总的来说我喜欢清晰化，但是我也会将随机性的东西纳入其中。我的有些作品往往是突然一下闯入的。我确认一个东西需要花时间，有时候花很长时间，所以，总体上我很有条理性。我喜欢做的少但呈现的多，那样多好？
郭：对生活呢，你怎么对待？理性分析吗？
王：我前段时间在看匈牙利作家凯尔泰斯的随笔，他有句话击中了我，生活就是一种屈从。要学会生活的屈从。我好象觉得他直接在跟我个人说话，有时候仅仅只是一句话，揭示了人内部真实的处境。一个艺术家，如果我是个艺术家，我觉得必须要操心日常生活的很多琐事。艺术给予我的东西要远大于我所做的。
郭：你偶尔会天真一下，想想永恒性的东西吗？跟作品有关系或没关系的……
王：这怎么说呢？可能我更注重趣味吧。比如我推崇莎士比亚，他的作品里面没有自己，但是给每个人都提供了一种认识你自己的可能性。还有，契诃夫，曹禺……他们作品很清晰，完全越过了简单的意识形态层面的东西。所以，我喜欢的是这种趣味的作品。
郭：趣味这个词很好，趣味也是形成工作方式的一部分吧？
王：我们回应我们所处的这个时代，这个现实。现实不是简单的此时此刻，现实是在历史中的，我非常不赞同表述现实就是一套语言，一套系统，一个价值观。这样不能提升个人对生命的感受，也不够尊重自己和现实。
郭：目前这样的艺术很多吧。
王：可能，但这和我无关。我希望我做的东西尽量少一些观念，少一些想法，多些感受性的东西。最近这样的念头很强烈。
郭：是啊，现在似乎观念过剩了……
王：平实的东西很吸引我，总是在不经意的时候拉动我。平实的东西有时会有令人吃惊的蛮力。
郭：你特别喜欢读书吧？读了很多文学和哲学吧？你的绘画中有文学性。你觉得文本经验能改变什么吗？
王：我读书很杂，而且是阶段性的。这段时间没事儿在读唐诗宋词，也读《红楼梦》，偶尔就看看，再看看，没什么目的，只是让生活处于一种放松状态。像“第十四回秦可卿死封龙禁尉”的那段，很悲剧的东西但里面几乎每句话的描写却是用喜剧、闹剧的手法，特别像我们跟现实所经常遭遇的感觉。启发我的是可以用喜剧方式去处理那些重大的、无法表达的、冲击我们的现实经验。我希望我的作品呈现多一些日常经验的感受力，而不是先进的观念，不需要和某种价值达成默契。
郭：有个词用的特别多，就是“当下”，你怎样看当下，你的作品中“记忆”是更多的……
王：当下是什么呢？此时此刻的经验？任何一种“当下”都是有源头的。一个人不可能做跟现实无关的事情，哪怕是用考古的方式来完成。你不能说福柯跟当代没有关系，尽管他做的是历史考古，如果不是回应现实，他也形成不了他如此有力量的工作方式。
郭：你的观念不是来自于西方的逻辑，你用学院派和民间绘画相互间的破坏构成一种新的语言形态，这种独特的语言已经编织了很长时间吧？
王：从圆明园时期开始，很长一段时间我的工作对于别人来说是不存在的，但它对于形成我今天的工作方式是起作用的。在很长一段时间，我的工作的确没有引起人的注意，或者是这种经验别人觉得不合适宜。现在来看，很清静地工作一段时间，也未尝不是一件好事。
郭：你是一个喜欢按照自己的感受力去工作的画家，在你的作品中也有很多达达主义的痕迹，在一副苏式风景画上再加工，加热的电热毯包括采用巴塞利兹的图式在2005年画的那副《新居》，都充满了调侃的味道。
王：对，我借用过这样很明显的图式。《新居》采用了巴塞利兹绘画的手法但画得很俗气，像楼盘的说明书。有种自我嘲讽的意味，也是心理感觉的东西。
郭：那幅《采薇图》很吸引人，也是一种现实映照吧。
王：对，我和亚历山大合作时所做的。对应了我的处境，也表达了我和今天艺术环境的一个关系，挺愣的。我让他挂在办公室里，他说别人都看不见了，还是挂在了展厅，少了点意思。
郭：展览对于艺术家来说，有全面控制的那种重要性吗？
王：展览是必要的，工作室里的工作才是最重要的。展览是工作的延展，它依然是你的工作经验的一部分。
郭：最近的工作怎么样？
王：在画自画像，画风景，还有静物。
郭：你会为什么而焦虑？从你个人经验来说，想摆脱什么？
王：焦虑有多方面的，有时是突然产生的。我希望自己的工作处于一种未知的状态。我比较忌讳作品圆滑到没有漏洞，觉得做东西应该避熟就生而不是避生就熟，可能我还是需要求生涩吧。
Interview
Interviewer: Guo Xiaoli
Guo Xiaoli (Abbreviated as Guo in the following text): For artists working today, is this the best time ever?
Wang Yin (Abbreviated as Wang in the following text): There are different kinds of artists. Why do you think that this time is better for artists?
Guo: Because the general climate is more relaxed. Artists seem to have an easier time than ever before. Meanwhile, there are many issues emerging at this particular point of history, which artists are able to explore in their practice.
Wang: This is definitely a time characterized by dramatic transformations, not only from an artist”s point of view. The reality that every single person encounters is beyond description. The reality is too powerful.
An artist certainly has a lot of contact with the reality on a daily basis. For me personally, I always try to present the touch of the reality in a certain way. It keeps modifying your way of working so that it becomes part of your way of working.
Guo: Please talk about different stages of your work and methods.
Wang: My work can be roughly summed up in two stages, the stage prior to 2000 and the second one from 2000 to the present. Since I graduated from university in 1988, I have been developing a language of my own. This language is different from that of contemporary art since the New Period. For instance, in the 80s, there was a tendency in contemporary art practice to discuss Chinese reality with Western art languages. A critic would describe an artist”s work as "his interpretation of Chinese reality with a Western language is done well," etc. I have tried to do something that”s rather personal, decentralized and marginal. My aim has been to present a regional distinction that had been overlooked. I often say that it has a certain accent. I am particularly interested in the kind of thing that is likely to grow in modernity in China, rather than expressing Chinese reality with a successful Western style and doing it well. What I have wanted to transform is exactly the very home-grown, like the native oil paintings and perception of paintings of those students that had studied abroad and their own process of evolution, since the "May 4th". I work with my instinct and emotion and try not to make any judgment. I let my work settle on the level of sensibility. In the latter stage of my practice in painting, I tend to make what has been named anonymous, and return things to an anonymous state. For example, when I worked with a series of portraits of Soviet intellectuals, they only had an emotional value to me. I tried to grasp this feeling as clearly and succinctly as possible.
Guo: Have you always been using this language consciously?
Wang: Yes, at one stage, we were controlled by Western modernist thinking, which certainly had its advanced and logical aspect. On the other hand, I had a feeling that I couldn”t find the ground. In the beginning of the 90s, I wanted to make some convincing things. The feeling was very strong back then. Therefore, after the 90s, I seemed rather unprogressive. My work seemed to be missing a sense of the present time. It was neither academic nor with strong "contemporary art" features. It was simply a feeling.
Guo: Why? What was it that you had a distance from?
Wang: I like very personal things, interesting things.
Guo: You are an artist who paints few and rather slowly.
Wang: Why should I paint fast or a lot? I realize that even if I painted more, it wouldn”t help advance my work. Therefore it doesn”t matter whether I paint more or fast.
Guo: What did you do when you stayed in Yuan Ming Yuan (Old Summer Palace)?
Wang: I was working routinely. I was in Yuan Ming Yuan for three years, during which I created a group of works. These works later became a basis for my way of working. At that time, I had no interest in symbolic things. I was rather set on searching for a personalized way of working, including my choice of painting as a medium. In general, painting isn”t such a fashionable medium, which is precisely why I had liked it. Its quality suits me better.
Guo: What are the things that have mattered to you?
Wang: It has been very important for me to move to Beijing. I grew up in Qingdao, where I saw a lot of navy soldiers when I was small. I had never seen soldiers in yellow army suits until I came to Beijing. Beijing was all gray everywhere. I quite liked it. I came to Beijing in 1983 to study for my bachelor degree. Beijing was an exciting place in the 80s. There were many people and ideas. I had wanted to go to the Central Academy of Fine Arts but the school only offered two vacancies so I chose the drama academy. They had eight quotas. I didn”t think much about it after I finished the exam. Later on when I received the notice that I was in, I was quite surprised how I could have passed the test.
Guo: Did you realize that you wanted to be a painter when you were studying at the drama academy?
Wang: It was not so obvious to me. What I enjoyed the most at that time were painting and reading. I wanted to try anything interesting. I didn”t know about selling paintings when I was at school. I read a lot of books and was very satisfied with that. There were Western modernist literature and modernist films. Everything was dominated by Western modernism. Slowly I felt that it was all very ambiguous. The 80s was an age of revelry for knowledge. Everyone was very excited and intellectually active, thinking and debating, even though not knowing for what. At school, we kept on receiving while abandoning some trends of thoughts, from Wang Guowei, Li Zehou, to Satre and Nietzsche etc. This is what it was like back then.
Guo: From your simple description, I can feel that your experience and temperament were purely of an intellectual, instead of a painter. What are you like now?
Wang: Sometimes, I would be gripped by issues of the reality, or troubled by my own way of working, or otherwise, by the environment of art that I find myself in. I”ve been trying to establish a certain style or method, one with contradictions, that is, a way of working that can respond to the reality on its own. There is some uncertainty in my work, including self-denial. Therefore, it seems that my painting is anti-painting. In fact, there is always a rather clear clue in my work. Deep down, I don”t like simplified things, simplified approval. It”s like you can simply say that the type of writers like Beckett all belongs to the theatre of the absurd. I oppose to such direct labeling.
Guo: Has your work always been well planned? Are you good at making everything clear or being spontaneous?
Wang: In general, I like to be clear but I also take spontaneous things into account. With some of my works, I usually burst into them all of a sudden. It takes time for me to confirm something. Sometimes it takes very long. Therefore, generally I am very organized. I like to do less but show more. That would be ideal?
Guo: How about life? How do you deal with life? Analytically?
Wang: I was reading Hungary writer Kertesz”s essays a while ago. Something he said has struck me, life is a kind of giving in. One should learn to yield in life. It seems to me that he was talking directly to me personally. Sometimes only one sentence can reveal the real place inside a person. As an artist, I feel that there are many trifle things to worry about in daily life. What art gives me is far larger than what I do.
Guo: Will you occasionally get na?ve and think about the permanent things? Something that relates or doesn”t relate to works...
Wang: How can I explain this? Maybe I pay more attention to taste. For example, I think highly of Shakespeare. He didn”t put himself in his work. His work provides everyone with a possibility to get to know yourself. Besides, as to Chekhov and Cao Yu...their works are very clear, completely transcending the simple ideological level. Thus what I like is work with this kind of taste.
Guo: Taste is a good word. Taste is perhaps a part of one”s way of working?
Wang: We should respond to the times we are in today, this reality. Reality is not simply here and now. Reality is in history. I don”t agree that to express reality is a set of language, a set of system, a value. This way doesn”t elevate one”s individual perception of life, nor does it respect itself or the reality.
Guo: There is a lot of art like that at the moment.
Wang: Maybe, but it has nothing to do with me. I hope what I do has less to do with concepts or ideas, more with emotions. I have such a strong idea lately.
Guo: Yes, at the moment, there seems to be an abundance of concepts...
Wang: Down-to-earth things appeal to me, pull at me when I least notice them. Ordinary things have surprising forces at times.
Guo: You like reading very much, right? You”ve read a lot of literature and philosophy? There is a sense of literature in your painting. Do you think your literary experience can make an impact on your art practice?
Wang: I read a very mixture of things, depending on the period of time. Lately, I”ve been reading Tang poetry and Song prose, as well as the Dream of Red Mansions, which I read occasionally, again and again, without much purpose, keeping my life in a relaxed state. Like in the 13th episode "The Death of Qin Keqing and Giving Her the Title of Longjinwei", it was about very tragic things but almost every sentence was written in a comic and slapstick style. It”s particularly similar to the feeling that we encounter often in reality. It inspires me to handle those heavy, indescribable and striking experiences of reality in a comical way. I hope that my works can portray more perceptions of everyday life, instead of having advanced concepts. There is no need to reach any tacit agreement with a certain value.
Guo: There is a word that”s used extremely often, which is "currently." How do you look at "currently"? In your work, there is more about "memory"...
Wang: What is "currently"? The experience at this moment? Any kind of "current" has its origin. It”s impossible for a person to have nothing to do with the reality, even if it”s completed through the means of archeology. You can”t say that Foucault had nothing to do with the contemporary, even though what he did was archaeology of the history. If he didn”t respond to the reality, it was impossible for him to develop such a powerful way of working.
Guo: You concepts haven”t come from Western logics. You have developed a new language by having the academic and the folk style paintings deconstruct each other. Has it taken you a long time to establish this unique language?
Wang: From my time in Yuan Ming Yuan, for other people, my work didn”t really exist for a very long time, but it has affected the formation of my work of working today. For a very long time, my work did fail to attract any attention or other people didn”t find this experience appropriate. In retrospect, it”s not necessarily a bad thing to be able to work quietly for some time.
Guo: You are a painter who likes to work based on your own perception. In your work, there is a lot of Dadaist influence. To work on a Soviet style landscape painting, an electric blanket, including the adoption of Baselitz”s patterns in "New Residence" painted in 2005, all of them are full of satire.
Wang: Yes, I”ve appropriated such obvious patterns. In "New Residence", I”ve employed Baselitz”s way of painting but I did it in a tacky way, so that it looked like a real estate handbook. There is an implication of self-mockery, also a psychological thing.
Guo: The painting of Picking Osmund is very attractive. It”s also an illustration of the reality.
Wang: Yes, I made it when I collaborated with Alexander. It was parallel to my situation as well as indicated my relationship with today”s art environment. Quite impetuous. I asked him to hang it in his office but he said that other people would miss it, so it was hung in the gallery in the end. It”s less interesting that way.
Guo: For artists, does it matter to have a full control of an exhibition?
Wang: Exhibitions are indispensable, but working in the studio is really the most important thing. Exhibitions are an extension of work. It”s still part of your working experience.
Guo: What are you working on now?
Wang: I am painting self-portraits, landscape and still life.
Guo: Why do you feel anxious? From your personal experience, what do you try to break free from?
Wang: There are many aspects one can be anxious about. These feelings would hit me suddenly at times. I hope that my work is in an unknown state. I would rather dislike my work to be so sleek that it doesn”t have any flaw. I feel that when you do things, you should try to avoid the familiar and undertake the unfamiliar, instead of doing it the other way around. Maybe I still need to be less smooth in my work.
