从历史意识和个人经验出发
——黄钢个展开幕前言
高 岭
这个展览的主角黄钢，是一个有着深厚家学熏陶和多年收藏经历并且勇于实验的艺术家。灰褐和土红色调笼罩下的画面，透露出一种难以阻挡的仪式力量，它们彼此独立又相互呼应，营造出整个展厅恢弘大气的氛围。佛经印版、喇嘛僧服、鎏金佛手这些宗教法物，老旧皮箱、织布梭子这些古老器物，还有火车头徽和旗杆标枪这些政治象征﹒﹒﹒所有这一切，都被他大胆并且自信地使用为艺术创作的基本材料。它们或作为宗教精神力量的象征，或作为人类生存活动的遗迹，或作为特定历史政治的隐喻，在画面上或者空间里与丙稀和植物透明大漆等材料一起，复合、幻化出穿越历史和政治的厚重与沉郁，迎接艺术自由的一种新的形象。
黄钢作品的形象，克服了近年来抽象艺术创作领域概念化、观念化的空洞和虚玄，将抽象的意念和精神与作为物质性的器、形、色和空间关系结合起来，达到了精神与物质反复回还、涵咏的境地，是一种内在的意象。他的作品的形象，虽多起步于久远的文化或宗教遗存物甚至包括特定时期的政治象征物这样的现成品材料，但却回避了当下流行的社会内容符号化和说明性的视觉图像描画。毫无疑问，黄钢对待材料的方法是回溯性的，但他的视野却绝非泥古不化，也不是隔绝于当下的现实，他的个人成长和艺术实践经验告诉自己，真正的艺术形象应该是一种新的内在于人心灵的大象，它是在保持历史和现实的某些物质性图像元素基础上获得的。形象有形有色，但大象无形无色，无形无色不等于空白无物，而是依托于形色。
于是，这些承载着无数僧人工匠情感技艺的经版，这些记录下游牧民族历史变迁的皮箱，这些充满了几代人革命热情的徽标，重新启动了它们原有的语意，在画面上和空间里既彼此对话，也与现在的作者黄钢相互推手，更与展厅中观众形成互动。黄钢作品的价值在于，他从个人的经验出发，找到了一种视觉化的建立历史与现在、现在与未来之间联系的方式，令人信服地看到了中国气派的当代艺术一种新的可能；黄钢的贡献在于，他唤起了观众尘封的记忆，打开了观众想象之门，历史、政治、宗教和文化传统，不断地与现实进行对位和比较，此消彼长，难以释怀。
2008年10月19日
From Historical Consciousness and Personal Experience
---Prologue to the Opening of Huang Gang’s Solo Exhibition
Huang Gang, the leading role of this exhibition, is an artist born in a literary family. He has many years’ experience of collecting, and is very daring to practice. Enveloped in gray, brown and terracotta, these paintings give out a somewhat irresistible ritualistic power. They are independent while interactive, and together create the grand atmosphere of the exhibition hall. Old artifacts like Buddhist scriptures on printing forme, old cassocks, old leather suitcases and shuttles, and political symbols such as the badge of locomotives, masts and javelins…all of these elements are adopted by him, and become the basic material of his art creation. Either representing some religious power, or acting as the trace of human life or specific historical and political metaphor, they are combined with acryl and zapon lacquer on the paintings or in the space, and magically changed into new images that traverse the melancholy of history and politics and embrace the freedom in art world.
The images of Huang Gang’s works get rid of the barrenness and mystification of conceptualization and ideologism in the abstract art creation in recent years. He combines the abstract idea and spirit with material devices, shapes, colors and space, so that his artworks have reached a highness that spirit and material interacts thoroughly with each other. Although most of the images of his works are existed materials that generate from cultural or religious relics in ancient time or even political symbols in some specific period, they avoid depicting the symbolized social content and illustrative visual content. Undoubtedly, the way Huang Gang treats his objects is retrospective, but his vision is by no means rigid or isolated. His own life experience and art practice tells himself that true art should be the grand images existing in people’s inner world. It’s generated from some historical and realistic material imagery elements. An image has its shape and color while the grand image doesn’t. However, it doesn’t mean void when we talk about shapelessness and colorlessness. The grand image exists on the basis of shape and color.
Therefore, the scripture bearing the affection and skill of countless monks and craftsmen, the leather suitcases that recording the historical changes of nomadic people, and the badges that filled with the revolutionary enthusiasm of several generations, regenerate their original meaning. They talk to each other on the paintings and in the space, counterplay with their creator Huang Gang, and even involve the viewers. The value of Huang Gang's artwork lies in his way of representation. Based on his personal experience, he found a visualized way to link history and present, and present and future, making us see a new possibility of Chinese contemporary art. The contribution Huang Gang made to the art world is that he aroused the sealed memory of the viewers, and opened the door of the viewers' imagination. History, politics, religion and culture tradition ceaselessly encountered and compared with reality, waxed and waned reciprocally, and made the viewers hard to forget.
Gao Ling
October 19, 2008
【编辑：霍春常】
