秋麦：在显现与虚无之间｜讲座×在艺直播

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本周六（10月13日）下午4:30，艺术家秋麦将结合他正在三影堂+3画廊举办的个展《心师目》为大家带来讲座《那远去的江水》。讲座将以中英文双语形式进行。

相关链接：【预告】秋麦讲座：那远去的江水

讲座《那远去的江水》将于在艺平台直播。

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秋麦在虎跳峡拍摄

“您很难找到一个比秋麦‘更中国’的西方艺术家。秋麦出生于 1969年，摄影家、书法家、书籍艺术家，他的作品深得中国最学术、最深奥的传统之精妙。作为一个居住在北京的成功艺术家（他的作品已经被大都会艺术博物馆亚洲艺术部收藏），秋麦的作品少了些挑战性，更多的是知性和禅意，经常是单纯的美感。更有挑战意味的是他的身份：秋麦是Michael Cherney的中文名，他出生于纽约，犹太血统。秋麦的作品是艺术全球化的前沿例证：如果亚洲艺术家可以轻易地 “走入西方”，那么什么可以阻止大批未来的 西方艺术家 “走入东方”呢？或者，正如秋麦/Michael Cherney, 同时走向两个方向，既美国，又中国，即现代，又传统。”

-- 谢柏轲, 普林斯顿大学中国艺术史教授

秋麦创作感言

中国传统山水画的魅力，就在于作品的目的仅仅是暗示现实世界可以提供的潜在可能；图像徘徊在显现与虚无之间。笔墨与笔法的语言（与其物质载体）在千百年来不断演变，描摹自然之力愈臻完美。但英文中的“自然（nature）”一词，有多重含义 。它既指自然的外显之貌，人们可观可看的“天地”；也含括了其内在特质，如树木、山石等物、甚至人的本性与特征，这才是中文里的“自然”之义。

通过把握与传达自然物象的本质和气韵，绘画比摄影让人感觉更“逼真”，因为它蕴含了大自然超越一时一刻的、亘古长存的特质。这种作画之法既状写自然，也对自然进行了提炼。

由于摄影必然是在某个时间与地点被定格的，那么摄影师要如何克服自身媒介的局限而去表达中国传统山水画之精粹呢？中国画特有的笔墨形式本就起源于自然，我们便可以再觅之于自然，尽管它往往隐匿于细微当中。

师法自然和临摹古作都是中国传统山水画学习的核心要素，摄影当然也是“临摹”的一种。但是老练的观察力也是需要的。在我开始探索、拍照之前，已经花时间对古典绘画作品进行了学习和吸收。四处旅行时，有时会涌现那么一个瞬间，一个视觉触因会促使我按下快门，而这个触因有时是潜意识的。旅行结束，回到工作室，要做的就是在图像框架中寻找到它的“气”。

我的意愿是让摄影成为与自然——这个可触可感的世界——衔接的渠道。改变图像会破坏这个初衷，因此我对这种方法敬而远之。只有大自然可以夸大自己[i]。而裁切、遮幅、放大和折叠则是可以使用的工具。

我希望让摄影充满万物兴衰的感觉。摄影在带领观众穿越一幅作品的深处时，也同时提供了一种回归，因为观众随时会意识到所见之物确实是在物质世界中存在过片刻的光；由此，摄影提供给观众一种与物质世界及其本质相连接的感觉。

[i] 梭罗，《河上一周》，1849.

秋麦书法：梭罗《河上一周》节录

立轴，书法

232cm×106cm

2012

鸣谢：秋萌画廊 

(Fu Qiumeng Fine Art)

香港大学美术馆

(University Museum and Art Gallery. The University of Hong Kong)

At 4:30pm on October 13, 2018, as part of his solo exhibition The Heart-Mind Learns from the Eyes, artist Michael Cherney will share his presentation, Those Waters Giving Way (presented in both English and Chinese).

"One would be hard-pressed to find a “more Chinese” artist than Qiu Mai. Photographer, calligrapher, and book artist, Qiu Mai’s work is done with the great sophistication that draws on the subtleties of China’s most scholarly and esoteric traditions. Based in Beijing and a successful artist whose works have been collected by The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Asian Art, Qiu Mai’s art is less provocative than it is intellectually engaging, meditative, and often simply beautiful.  What is provocative is his identity:  Qiu Mai is the Chinese name for Michael Cherney, born in New York of Jewish parentage. Cherney’s work is the cutting-edge demonstration of artistic globalization:  if Asian artists can so readily “come West,” then what is to prevent large numbers of future Western artists from “going Asian”? Or, like Qiu Mai/Michael Cherney, going both ways at once, both American and Chinese, modern and traditional. "

Jerome Silbergeld, P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History, Princeton University

Artist Statement

The appeal of traditional Chinese landscape painting is that works are intended only as hints at the potential that the real world has to offer; where the image lingers in a state between the manifest and the void.  For more than a millennium a vocabulary of brushstrokes (along with the materials to support them) has evolved and been perfected for representing nature.  But the English word “nature” has multiple meanings.  There is the outward appearance of nature:  that which one can observe; heaven and earth, or tiandi In Chinese.  Then there are the inherent qualities:  the nature, the characteristics of something, such as a rock, a tree, or even a person; in Chinese, this is ziran.  

By focusing on and conveying the essence and energy of natural phenomena, a painting could feel more “real” than something like a photograph because it contains timeless qualities of nature beyond one unique moment.  This approach to painting could rectify nature as much as depict nature.  

So how can a photographer overcome this seeming impossibility for photography to convey the essence of traditional Chinese landscape painting, when a photograph is captured from a specific location at a specific moment?  Well, given that the vocabulary of brushwork that informs Chinese painting was drawn from nature, one should be able to find it within nature, though it is usually hidden in the details.  

Copying from nature or from masterworks has been an essential element of the Chinese landscape painting learning process, and photography certainly is copying.  But a certain quality of observation is also required.  My explorations come after having first spent time absorbing classical works.  When wandering, a moment will arise and a visual trigger will occur that leads to the click of the shutter; the trigger can sometimes be subconscious.  After traveling, back in the studio it becomes a matter of searching for qi within the frame.

My intention has been for the photographs to serve as a conduit for nature; for a world that can be touched.  Altering the image would defeat the purpose, so I refrain from that.  Only Nature may exaggerate herself.^[i]  This still leaves many tools that can be utilized, such as cropping, masking, enlarging, and folding.   

My hope is to imbue photography with a sense of the rise and fall of the ten thousand things. Yet photography also allows the journey that leads the viewer through the depth of a piece to include a return via the realization that what is being seen is indeed light as it existed for a moment in the physical world, and thus offers a feeling of connectedness between the viewer, the physical world and its essence.

[i] Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849.