【动态】谢南星伦敦个展：“你好，肖像！Hello, Portrait !”

肖像画是谢南星（1970年生于重庆）最具趣味性和实验性的探索。他表示，肖像画好比一片土壤，让他能不断萌生出新的想法。他近期的肖像作品展示了他绘画实践中的诸多典型悖论：对艺术史的指涉既具有深刻的学术性又带有恶作剧般的不恭；使用高度个人化的主题来探索有关表征本质的复杂哲学问题；致力于最传统的流派并将绘画引向全新的领域。 

谢南星 / Xie Nanxing，W，2021，布面油画 / oil on canvas，200 x 200 cm

虽然90年代谢南星偶尔也创作了一些肖像画作，尤其是自画像，但直到最近十年，肖像画才成为谢南星绘画实践的主要部分。他对某个主体进行写实描画与再现毫无兴趣，他所着迷的是探索人物的个性、心理状态、私人生活或者他们与艺术家之间的关系的特殊性。他无意去捕捉某个主体的内在本质，而聚焦于他们的多样性和矛盾性。

Though he occasionally made portraits, particularly self-portraits, in the 1990s, it is in the past ten years that portraiture has become a major part of Xie’s practice. He is not interested in a realistic depiction of a subject, but rather in exploring an aspect of their personality, their psychological state, the peculiarities of their personal life or perhaps of their relationship with him. He does not aim to capture a subject’s essence, but rather their multiplicity and their contradictions.

谢南星近期肖像画的主题要么是在他的生活中举足轻重的人，要么是对他来说很重要的想法，这些想法他认为可以通过肖像画的逻辑加以探索。谢南星说他所描绘的那些主体肯定暗示了某种绘画观念，尽管这对他来说到底意味着什么依然是个谜——他说绘画是一种非常精确的操作，某种程度上更类似于数学计算，而非情感的表达。

The subjects of Xie’s most recent portraits are either people that have a significant presence in his life or ideas that are important to him and which he felt could be explored through the logic of portraiture. Something about his subjects, Xie says, must suggest an idea for a painting, though exactly what this means is still mysterious to him – he describes painting as a very precise operation, somehow more akin to a mathematical calculation than to an expression of feelings.

谢南星 / Xie Nanxing，C，2021，布面油画 / oil on canvas，150 x 180 cm，局部 / detail

大尺幅双联画《X》（2021）也许是最不像传统肖像画的作品，但它为观众提供了了解谢南星的创作手法最清晰的通道。与谢南星在Thomas Dane画廊举办的上一次展览中的画作《大X的肖像》(2018) 一样，我们可以合理地推定“X”是一幅自画像。即使没有标题，我们也可以推断出这一点，因为字母“X”清楚地画在画面的左侧。这个“X”似乎与左上角的蜘蛛网呼应，暗示了艺术家和画面上出现的诸多蜘蛛之间关系密切。正如艾米莉·狄金森所写，虽然蜘蛛的角色并非艺术家，但“其出色的表现是被广泛认可的”。

The large diptych X (2021), perhaps the work that least resembles traditional portraiture, offers the viewer the clearest insight into Nanxing’s approach. As with Portrait of Big X (2018) from his last exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery, we can reasonably assume that X is a self-portrait. We might deduce this even without the title, since the letter ‘X’ is clearly painted into the left-hand panel. This ‘X’ seems to rhyme with the cobweb in the upper left corner, suggesting an affinity between the artist and the many spiders that populate the painting. While the spider, as Emily Dickinson wrote, has never been employed as an artist, ‘his surpassing Merit / Is freely certified’.

谢南星 / Xie Nanxing，X，2021，布面油画 / oil on canvas，双联画 / diptych， 每幅 / each：200 x 200 cm，局部 / detial

双联画的右侧画面无声却又明确地指涉了雷内·马格里特1933年的画作《人的命运/人性的状态》（La condition humaine），马格里特将一幅风景画直接放置于它所描画的风景前。显然，绘画与外部世界，以及观者与外部世界的关系是谢南星思考的关键问题。

The diptych’s right-hand panel contains a muted yet explicit reference to René Magritte’s 1933 painting La condition humaine, in which Magritte places a painting of a landscape directly in front of the landscape which it represents. It is clear that the relationship between the painting and the external world, as well as the viewer’s relationship with each, are key questions for Xie Nanxing.

谢南星 / Xie Nanxing，Q，2022，布面油画 / oil on canvas，180 x 150 cm

谢南星最新的几幅肖像画采用的处理方式是他长期以来绘画实践的重要组成部分，一幅稀疏的油画素描被置于强烈的光线下，背光拍摄，于是图像被扭曲，光线似乎从图像中生长出来。这一方式在名为《P》（2021）的画作中尤为明显，该画作署名也用了相同的首字母。

Several of Xie’s new portraits use a process which has long been an essential part of his practice, in which a loosely-painted oil sketch is heavily backlit and then photographed such that the image is distorted and light appears to emerge from it. This process is most strikingly at work in the painting-within-a-painting in P (2021), which is signed with that same initial.

谢南星 / Xie Nanxing，P，2021，布面油画 / oil on canvas，240 x 200 cm

谢南星曾给他的肖像画作命名为“某人肖像”，但这里，肖像只是被简单地命名为“G”、“P”、“X”或“U”。以前的匿名方式被保留，但略有不同，既为了让我们对作品的解读更为开放，又表明在这里，肖像本身就被视为准主体——你好，肖像！

In the past Xie has given his portraits titles such as ‘Someone’s Portrait’ or ‘Portrait of N’, but here the portraits are simply G, P, X or U. The anonymity of the previous approach is conserved but slightly modified, both to open up our readings of the work and perhaps also to indicate that here the portraits are conceived as quasi-subjects in their own right - Hello, Portrait!

谢南星 / Xie Nanxing，U，2022，布面油画 / oil on canvas，120.5 x 80 cm

展览现场

谢南星 ，《你好，肖像！》展览现场，Thomas Dane画廊，英国伦敦
Xie Nanxing, exhibition view of Hello, Portrait !, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, UK

关于艺术家
About the artist

Xie Nanxing (b. 1970, Chongqing) lives and works in Beijing and Chengdu, China. He has exhibited widely internationally with solo exhibitions at Petzel, New York (2022), Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing  (2020, 2015, 2008); Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2019); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2018); Kunstverein Hamburger Bahnhof, Hamburg (2005); Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (2003); and Pulitzer Gallery, Amsterdam (1998). In 2023 he was nominated for the Sigg Prize for which he exhibited at M+ Museum, Hong Kong.

最近群展包括：北京双年展，中国北京（2022）；四川美术学院美术馆，中国重庆（2021）；松美术馆，中国北京（2020）；达拉斯仓库，美国达拉斯（2020）；斯图加特符腾堡艺术协会，德国斯图加特（2019）；MAK Angewandte Kunst 博物馆，奥地利维也纳（2019 年）；卡萨卡瓦齐尼（Casa Cavazzini），意大利乌迪内（2017）；红砖美术馆，中国北京（2016）；成都当代美术馆，中国成都（2016）；今日美术馆，中国北京（2106）；上海二十一世纪民生现代美术馆，中国上海（2015）；OCT当代艺术中心（OCAT），中国深圳（2014）；“格哈德·里希特与当代艺术中图像的消失”，斯特罗慈当代文化中心（CCCS），斯特罗慈宫（Palazzo Strozzi），意大利佛罗伦萨（2010）；“移动中的绘画”，巴塞尔美术馆，瑞士巴塞尔（2002）；第十二届卡塞尔文献展，德国卡塞尔（2007）；和d’APERTutto，第48届威尼斯双年展，意大利威尼斯（1999）。

Recent and notable group exhibitions include: Beijing Bienniale, Beijing, China (2022); Art Museum of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, China (2021); Song Art Museum, Beijing, China (2020); The Warehouse Dallas, Dallas, USA (2020); Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany (2019); MAK Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Austria (2019); Casa Cavazzini, Udine, Italy (2017); Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing, China (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art Chengdu, Chengdu, China (2016); Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2106); Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2015); OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT), Shenzhen, China (2014); Gerhard Richter and the Disappearance of the Image in Contemporary Art, Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina (CCCS), Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy (2010); Painting on the Move, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2002); Documenta XII, Kassel, Germany (2007); and d’APERTutto, La Biennale di Venezia, 48. Esposizione Internationale d’Arte, Venice, Italy (1999).

本文英文文字及图片来自Thomas Dane Gallery。