【池社】刘畑:《瞌充梦东》——宋陵个展序言·今日开幕

瞌充梦东

从而有了宋陵1984年的毕业创作《大海铺路人》和随之的《人·管道》系列。那些后来异化的机械和器件，在艺术家早年的《人·管道》系列中，就已经被人握在手里了，而“人”，在那时，也已经成为了管道之中的人，和体内充满管道的人。而作为一种“美学”，在宋陵这里，机械从一开始就成为了传统国画的“太湖石”（瘦漏透皱）式的美学的对立面：一个致密坚硬的、光滑的、冰冷的、非自然的人工造物。

然而，如果我们进一步追索，冷漠与热烈、现实与超现实之间的关联，会发现还有更为复杂的纠缠线索。当年的超现实主义者中，恰恰不乏对于最终造就了“现实主义”的那场革命的积极信奉者和热情参与者。可同样也是他们，在自己创办的名为《超现实主义革命》（La Révolution Surréaliste）的杂志上，放上了16张紧闭眼睛、面无表情、如入梦中的证件肖像照。它们拍摄于当时巴黎新近安装的自动拍照机（Photomaton）中。这是一个在公共场所拉上帘子后，顿然出现的封闭的小空间，现实随之折叠、关闭，成为了“超现实”。只是这一次，“自动”的不是人手中的笔，而是人与之互动、操作的一台照相机器，以记录现实为名的相机之眼，拍下的是屏蔽了现实，却似乎可以抵达“更深的现实”而闭上的双眼。

这个由马格利特提议的行动，刊登于1929年12月的《超现实主义革命》，包括他和布勒东、阿拉贡、艾吕雅、布努埃尔、恩斯特、达利在内的16位超现实主义者的闭眼“自拍”照片，围绕着马格利特的画 I do not see the [woman] hidden in the forest

这或许可以解释这位毕业于浙江美术学院（现中国美术学院）国画系人物专业的艺术家——当年在浙美上的第一堂课是花鸟——为什么除了“器械”，更多所画的是“动物”。除了广义的“托物”的传统，动物之为形象，实为一种“化身”，“拟人”却无解，比超现实主义者们的自拍更加不可阅读的“面无表情”，构成了语言无法穿透的冷漠。

宋陵曾经如此说到自己对超现实主义的理解：

一个人或者物都有个投影（阴影），“超现实主义”强化了投影。投影其实并不是因为光，而是投影本身是内容。以前我们画投影是因为有光。你要表现这个光，所以画了个投影。但马格利特、达利、超现实主义，那些投影其实跟光没关系。它就是个影子。

当形影不离的“影”脱离于形而独立，就异化、衍生出了第二层的生命。1924年，新文化运动的旗手鲁迅，写下了《影的告别》：

人睡到不知道时候的时候，就会有影来告别，说出那些话——

有我所不乐意的在天堂里，我不愿去；有我所不乐意的在地狱里，我不愿去；有我所不乐意的在你们将来的黄金世界里，我不愿去。

然而你就是我所不乐意的……

……

只有我被黑暗沉没，那世界全属于我自己。

这正是布勒东发表《超现实主义宣言》的同一年。在宣言中，布勒东自信地宣称：在未来，看似冲突的梦与现实，将溶合成为一种新的“绝对的现实”——超现实。但在鲁迅的笔下，这对立的两方，“梦”中的“影”，对徒有其形的“你”发出告别，对无论天堂、地狱或黄金世界，则充满着“不乐意”和“不愿去”，最后“只有我被黑暗沉没，那世界全属于我自己”。这些充满梦境感乃至超现实意味的短章，后来收录集结为了《野草》。可是，同一个鲁迅，在随后的岁月中，却被逐渐确认为是“现实主义”的大师。这无疑是多重戏剧性反转的叠加，充满了复杂的颠倒和扭结。

“瞌充梦东”所压印、刻画的，就是“人睡（或醒）到不知道时候的时候”，如果“梦”是一个任意展开可能性，并将其合理化的空间，那么它就是牵连着梦与醒的时间，这也是《瞌充梦东》作为展览所营造的时空——

事实上，“瞌充梦东”真正希望指涉的，既是“超现实”的状态，也是“创作”得以发生的一个特定时空，乃至是关于“创作”此事的一种“原型”：在混沌、恍惚、暧昧、懵懂之中，在不知不觉、莫名其妙中，某些东西，无中生有地出现了。它可以来自“方言”，充满“异化”的渊源，既（不）传统，也（不）当代。

居于“创作”核心的问题，正是在于理解和把握这一“发生”，理解和把握：何为“神来之笔”——“神”来了，但是笔还在“我”——一个普通“人”的手里。可是，“我”凭什么就能画出“神来之笔”，那个不属于“我”能力范围内的东西呢？这里被调动出的，不仅仅是“能力”，而且是“潜力”。它发生在有意识和无意识之间、控制与失控之间，超出了“自由意志”和“决定论”的截然二分。“画出原本画不出的东西”的真正含义，是“成为我所本不是的人”，这是所有创作都在追求的，于边缘、刀锋之上的突破。

超现实的真义其实是“在无意间”——如果“无意”构成了一个自足的“空间”，也就给出了“自我”溢出辖域、暗度陈仓的可乘之机。但或许，比“自动书写”更为有趣的，是某种投入或者沉醉带来的更加超越状态的“自我书写”，即所谓“兴之所至”。

在中国古典艺术史与水墨传统中，最高的杰作都伴随着“失控”（控制之外），无论是王羲之的微醺，或者颜真卿的激愤。那一刻，确实有“更高的东西”降临了，“自我”处于激发态，而“艺术创作”不过是等而下之的副业。这也正是《二十四诗品》第一品“雄浑”最后所谈到的“持之匪强，来之无穷”：凡是可以被掌控的，就绝对不是最强大的，从自身之外接引而来的力量，才是无穷尽的。

而这个“持”，甚至就可以直接以“持笔”来加以想象：画-笔-手-脑-眼-画，构成了一个完整的反馈“回路”，一张绘画如同一块“电池”——从图像、物态、形状、笔法，运动留下了痕迹，也倾注了能量，而作品与“形式”，“封印”并保存了这个机会与遭遇，并留待来者将它再次逆向解码，转为一己身心的鲜活运动，从而把能量再次传导继续。不少画家谈起创作的经验：没有任何想法，但笔一接触到纸——回路建立了起来——就知道该怎么画了，这种不由自主地被某种东西牵引的“控制之外”，不但不是偶然，甚至是一种必然。

于是，问题就转化为了：在这个世界中，接通了什么，并被什么力量决定？“自治”（autonomy）是一个危险的“短路”。“接通”和“被决定”则是更加修远的回路，上下求索中的接通，既是神秘的，又是历史的，同时是人间与人性的。在这更漫长的超时空回路中，艺术家如同一个“导体”——好的艺术家正是一个“良导体”——如同富兰克林接引天电的风筝与钥匙，可以视为对“绝地天通”的一己之回返。而所有“媒介”的最高形态，无疑是“灵媒”。

艺术的进程，很多时候都无非在回答这一个问题：如何做到一件本来做不到的事情？自我的改变和超越之机如何出现？

“瞌充梦东”，是真实与超越真实的时刻，在混沌与恍惚中时隐时现的，是传说中的“天人之际”，召唤出了绝对的“此刻”的到来。是故，取之为展览标题，并将其再次音译为“Catch the Muddle”（捕获糊涂）。大梦谁先觉？妙手偶得之。所谓“作品”，不过是“瞌充梦东”之际、“妙手偶得”之后，所留下的遗迹或证据而已。

CATCH THE MUDDLE

‘Ke Chong Meng Dong’ (瞌充梦东, Catch the Muddle) is a seal carved in relief. I came across it at the corner of a painting during my first visit to Song Ling’s studio. Later, I learned the phrase was a transliteration of a phrase in Hangzhou dialect, which describes a muddled state of half-dream, half-awake. I surmise that the proper characters for the last two sounds should be 懵懂’ (meng dong, muddled), and the first two might be ‘瞌虫’ (ke chong, drowsiness), related to ‘瞌睡虫’ (ke shui chong, literally means a ‘bug’ in Chinese mythology that causes drowsiness) — I also found another possible written version, '瞌憧懵懂' (also pronounced as 'ke chong meng dong’).

People often talk about a ‘surreal’ implication in Song Ling’s paintings, investigating dreams and subconsciousness, which were precisely the approach of the back-then surrealists. One source of the surrealists thinking was Freud’s psychoanalysis and research of dreams. The core Freudian concept is ‘repression’ and its return and resurrection. The character ‘印’ (yin, to press) in oracle bones and epigraphy is the protoform of ‘抑’ (yi, to repress). This allows us to think more deeply about the generation of ‘imprinting’.

Tracing back to exactly a century ago: in the spring of 1919, André Breton, a young clerk who delivered magazines for a publishing house and at the same time proofread In Search of Lost Time, together with Philippe Soupault, completed the first attempt of ‘automatic writing’, The Magnetic Fields, at H?tel des Grands Hommes in Paris. This marked the birth of ‘surrealism’ as method. Breton told Louis Aragon, The Magnetic Fields is a ‘poem that springs up after waking up’, an unconscious and accidental piece of creation.

Song Ling did not take up this ‘mechanic’ operation, though machines and instruments often appear in his paintings. He admires several surrealist painters. Without him enumerating, we can pick up these names from his works: Magritte, Dali, Chirico, Ernst and even a bit Picabia and Duchamp, and also Henry Rousseau, who I believe sits at the deepest, and is also one of the original sources for surrealism… (The first Rousseauian leaf appears in Meaningless Choice? No.9 (1986), which explains the cloud in Man-Pipe No. 1 (1985), and the origin of the seemingly Warholian juxtaposed images in earlier paintings of the series Meaningless Choice? )

This self-evident “master-disciple” relationship as well as the recreative seal remind us that Song Ling paints ‘ink’. The significance of this seemingly plain, but often forgotten fact within the shell of contemporary art is: the ink here is not simply a medium, but more importantly, a method and mentality linking up the past and the present. Those above-mentioned names, in the tradition of ink painting, are ‘predecessors admired by a painter’. The similarities and correlations in painting, and the relationship between ‘imitation’ and ‘archaism’ are natural-born. Yet all of this is suppressed by the concept of ‘originality’ in the contemporary art world—every artist wishes to become an independent unit, self-governing and self-sufficient. However, by the fact itself or by logic, one cannot acquire absolute solitary autonomy or ultimate ‘originality’, while the ‘anxiety of being influenced’ and the effort to cancel it become another form of paradox and irreconciliation. This only causes a termination to ‘study’ from the past, or a demand to hide and get rid of one’s own learning history and traces. As ‘repetitive labour’ is not recognized in this value spectrum, one has to create an individual and unique, yet self-enclosed path. However, in truth, the evolution and progress of mankind come indeed from innovations and breakthroughs obtained from repetitions of the past, and that is the so-called ‘différance’.

Luckily in the world of ink art, ‘copying’ and ‘originality’ share a positive connection. As memories cannot be sent back and forth directly between two corporeal bodies, copying becomes a channel for acquiring predecessors' abilities and even resurrects 'originality' in different aspects. The first is 'resurrection of images', attaining the ability of producing them. The second is 'resurrection of men', resurrecting through a living person the ability of 'creation'--that is, making something out of nothing. The third is 'resurrection of spirituality', also commonly described as 'spiritual encounter through seeing' or 'understanding with heart and spirit', in which predecessors' actions, thinkings, moods, scopes and dispositions are furbished and appreciated. However, this 'resurrection of spirituality' could already possibly take place during the first 'resurrection of images', which is the process of copying.

But for Song Ling, ‘copying' also means ‘alienation’. In Study series, Song's birds and insects are transformed into geometrical planes, while plants and rocks become strange forms with mottled edges. This echoes with both Fabricated and Simulation series, in which the metal instruments grow parts with undefined function, or begin to liquefy and flow. The two processes seem to be contradictory in physical forms: the melting of hard objects, and the solidification of soft objects. Yet they share a consistent inherent logic, both are ‘aliens’ brought about by ‘alienation’. We have indeed seen Dali’s limp metal, Magritte’s nibbled leaves and smooth transitions, and Rousseau’s plump leaves and fruits altogether… All these analogous elements are carefully read and studied by an ink painter in the manner of ‘copying’ and ‘archaism’, then adopted, organized and integrated into a brand-new structure.

In fact, this issue has never been thoroughly analyzed: what happened when a Chinese ink painter admired, studied and later experimented for a long time ‘surrealism as a genre’ in his own art practice? What has it now become, when the long-idled movement is revived in a distant foreign land, in a young man’s artworks?

This is an ‘alienated’ history in itself. The key point regarding these questions is how the emergence of ‘surrealism’ in the life history of the artist in the 1980s was actually a resistance and rebound to ‘realism’. For the ‘realism’ was not exactly realistic and true. Those exuberant workers portrayed in paintings were actually nonchalant and silent in real life.

Thus came The Sea Paver, Song Ling’s graduation work in 1984, and the succeeding Man-Pipe series. Those machines and instruments alienated later on were already held in man’s hand in the early Man-Pipe series, and the ‘man’ by then had become a man in the pipe as well as a man with a body full of pipes. For Song Ling, machine, as a kind of ‘aesthetics’, stood at the opposite of the ‘taihu stone’ aesthetics (lean, porous, connected and crumpled) in traditional Chinese painting: it is a dense, hard, smooth, cold and unnatural artefact.

However, if we further pursue the relationship between indifference and enthusiasm, realism and surrealism, we will notice more complicated and entangled evidence. The original surrealists did not actually lack the enthusiasm for the revolution that ultimately led to ‘realism’. It was also them who published in their own magazine La Révolution Surréaliste 16 headshots of faces with closed eyes, expressionless, as if in dreams. They were photographed in the then newly installed photomatons in Paris. Behind the curtain, a temporary enclosed space emerged, and the reality subsequently folded and closed, becoming a ‘surreality’.  What is different this time is that the ‘automatic’ is not a pen in the hand, but rather a camera interacted and operated by a person. The eye of a camera, celebrated for its ability to record reality, now captured pairs of closed eyes that shut the reality outside but seemed to reach a ‘deeper reality’.

This may explain why the artist, graduated from the Chinese Painting Department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art), paints more ‘animals’ besides ‘instruments’—his first lesson at the art academy was bird-and-flower painting. In addition to the tradition of ‘symbolism’ in a broad sense, the animals as images are actually a kind of ‘incarnation’, they ‘personify’ yet lead to no solution. Their 'poker faces’ are more unreadable than the surrealists’ self-portraits, constituting an indifference impenetrable by language.

Talking about his understanding of surrealism, Song Ling once said:

‘Everyone or every object has a projection (shadow), and surrealism strengthens this projection. Projection is not the result of light, but itself is the content. We used to paint projection to show the light. But for Magritte, Dali and surrealism, the projection has no relationship to light; it is simply a shadow.’

When shadows stand alone, apart from the forms that were inseparable, a second layer of life is alienated and derived out of it. In 1924, the standard-bearer of New Culture Movement, Lu Xun wrote ‘The Shadow’s Leave-Taking’:

‘If you sleep to a time when you lose track of time, your shadow may come to take his leave with these words:

“There is something I dislike in heaven; I do not want to go there. There is something I dislike in hell; I do not want to go there. There is something I dislike in your future golden world; I do not want to go there.

“It is you, though, that I dislike.”

“There will be myself alone sunk in the darkness. That world will be wholly mine.”’

This was written in the same year Breton’s Surealist Minifesto was published, in which he claimed confidently, ‘I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.’ However, under Lu Xun’s pen, the opposing two sides, the ‘shadow’ in a ‘dream’ bids farewell to a ‘you’ that has a form for nothing. And whether it’s heaven, hell or the golden world, the ‘shadow’ is reluctant and unwilling to go to. In the end, ‘There will be myself alone sunk in the darkness. That world will be wholly mine’. These short essays filled with dream states and surreal implications were later compiled into Wild Grass. Though, the very same Lu Xun would later be increasingly recognised as a ‘surealist’ master, multiple reversals layering up, full of complex upside-downs and twists.

‘Catch the Muddle’ (Ke Chong Meng Dong) imprints and impresses exactly the moment 'you sleep (or awake) to a time when you lose track of time’. If a ‘dream' is a space which unfolds possibilities arbitrarily and then rationalizes them, then it is the time involving together the dreaming and the awaking—this is also the space-time that ‘Catch the Muddle’, as an exhibition, creates—

THE EXHIBITION’S SPACE-TIME

Most of the works presented at Pond Society this time were never exhibited or selected. As an artist lived abroad for a long time, faded out from the domestic art world, yet of vigorous creativity, Song Ling has participated in several exhibitions in the name of ‘retrospective’ after his return to China. The stereotype generated and conveyed in those exhibitions is also the object this experimental exhibition hopes to overcome.

Instead of an exhibition hall, the audience will first enter an irregular polygon corridor, as if resembling the body part of the geometric bird in Study. With inner walls painted white, the corridor grows narrower from the entrance to the end, and gradually disappears into the darkness in the distance. When the audience walk into the darkness, they then turn left into another black corridor, which also turns narrower as it extends forward. Now, the audience will encounter the first piece of work, floating on the wall of the dark space—Dreamtime. Dreamtime represents the era of heroic generations of the respected ancestors of Australian aboriginal people. It then summons Untitled, hanging on the opposite: there are some inexplicable sights and mottled residual marks. ‘Untitled’ does not imply ‘no title’ or ‘no subject’, but is a resistance to them.

After these two corridors, the modest-size exhibition hall could be seen in a single glance: ‘alienated’ objects of various sizes as well as flower-bird-fish-insect are hung on the wall, surrounding a long table at the centre of the hall with many black objects of undefined shapes on it, which are latest creations by the artist. They lead us to the painting (Beautiful Agony) that covers the whole wall in the deepest end of the hall. It depicts the moment when one is separated from one's self, or the moment closest to ‘Ke Chong Meng Dong’, and even to animals while awake (the moment right before ‘Kenja Time’). The irregular assembled frame, together with the freehand brushwork, constitute an unstable yet complete state.

The ‘half-dream, half-awake’ moment opens a ‘gratuitous’ space. In the exhibition, the backgrounds of all paintings are either white or black. These are not simple ‘colours’, but the ‘limits of colour’. As backgrounds, they suggest the ‘gratuitous appearance’ of subjects in the paintings and the lack of context, reason or result of an item in the foreground. The happening and ending follow a sudden befalling, activation and disruption, as if an encounter in a dream, with complete openness.

As such, the overall environment has converted Instrument and Still life, the two most realistic groups of paintings that depicted everyday objects at the either end of the space, into the most unusual existence.

In fact, what ‘Ke Chong Meng Dong’ truly wants to signify is at the same time a ‘surreal’ state and a certain space-time in which ‘practice’ can happen, and even an archetype of ‘practice’ itself. In chaotic, absent-minded, ambiguous and muddled states, without knowing or realising, certain things emerge out of nothing. It could come from a ‘dialect’ that is full of the origin of 'alienation'. It is (neither) traditional and (nor) contemporary.

At the core of 'practices' lie the understanding and grasp of this ‘happening’. It is to undersatnd and grasp what is 'a stroke as if done by the gods'? The ‘god' had visited, but the brush has been in 'my' hand—the hand of a man. So by what virtue had I accomplished 'a stroke as if done by the gods', something exceeded my 'capacity'? How to bring into play not only 'ability' but ‘potentiality’? It occurs in between consciousness and unconsciousness, in-control and out-of-control and goes beyond the dualistic cut between 'free will' and ‘determinism'. The real meaning of ‘painting the unpaintable’ is ‘becoming who I wasn’t’. This is the breakthrough pursued by all artists, breakthroughs achieved on the edge and over the rim of a blade.

The essence of surrealism is actually the ‘unintended’—if the 'unintended' forms a self-sufficient 'space', it also gives the 'self' a chance to smuggle out of its reign. But perhaps, what is more interesting than 'automatic writing' is ‘self-writing', a more ethereal state brought about by input or intoxication, when 'moods have led the way’.

The highest attainments in the history of Chinese art and the tradition of ink paintings are always accompanied by ‘out-of-control’ (beyond control). Whether it’s the slightly intoxicated Wang Xizhi or the indignant Yan Zhanqing, there indeed was ‘something higher’ that descended at the moment, when the 'self' was activated and 'art practice' was no more than an auxiliary. This is also what The Twenty-four Realms of Poetry speaks of by the first realm ‘Sturdiness’, ‘holding it humble, it comes inexhaustible’, meaning whatever that can be controlled, certainly isn't the strongest. Only power coming from the outside is endless.

And this ‘hold’ can even be directly imagined through ‘holding a brush’: painting-brush-hand-mind-eyes-painting, a complete feedback 'circuit'. A painting is like a ‘battery’— in terms of images, physical forms, shapes and strokes, traces of brushwork are made, imbuing it with energy. The work and ‘form’ then ‘seal’ this encounter and save it for a reverse decoding in the future—to decode it back into lively movements and transmit the energy again and onwards. Many artists discuss their creative experience without any concrete concepts, but their circuits build themselves once the brushes make contact with the paper, and the artists just know how to proceed. They are involuntarily guided by a certain thing. Out-of-control is not accidental but inevitable.

Therefore, the question becomes: in this world, what has been connected, and by which determining force? 'Autonomy' is a dangerous 'short circuit’. To be 'connected' and 'determined' is a more lasting circuit. A connection in the midst of exploration is both mysterious and historical. It belongs to the worldly and human. En route of this much longer hyper-space-time circuit, artists are conductors—and good artists are good conductors—like Franklin's kite and key conducting electricity from the sky. This conduction can be seen as the return of the self of the "severance of heaven-earth communication". The highest form of all ‘medium’ is undoubtedly the psychic medium.

The course of art, for most of the time, is trying to answer the following question: how to achieve something that was supposed to be impossible? How does the chance to change and transcend oneself appear?

‘Ke Chong Meng Dong’ is the moment of truth and the transcendence of truth. What flickers in muddle and trance is the legendary ‘boundary of universe and humanity’ summoning the absolute ‘now’. That being so, the English exhibition title 'Catch the Muddle' is a re-transliterating of the transcribed dialect. A mighty dream, who is to awake first? (from a poem of Luo Guanzhong) A skilled hand, catch the artwork by chance (from a poem of Du Fu). The so-called ART is nothing but the remains or evidence after the moment of ‘catch the muddle’, by chance.

翻译：冯优

校对：周凯铌

Exhibition Team

Graphic: Design: Deviant Fly Design Studio

Exhibition Design: Open Matter Institute

Design Assistant: Chen Ziyuan / Wu Fanrui

Exhibition Production: RDMD

Lighting System: HONGRILIGHTING

Special Thanks: Shao Xiaoming / Yu Zhenhong / Liu Hongjian