走过便成路—中国旅法艺术家郭成东

选择离开时，郭成东似乎想在这两种趋势之间找到平衡。在法国他还能学到东西，但不是对雕塑技巧的掌握。中国美院教育在技术上要求非常严格，法国美院中，在技能上不会有较大提高。学校以注重个人化的美学发展和支撑创作过程的想法和理论著称，而不是在操作技艺上，这与东亚的艺术教育相反。其对这些相对怀古的完美标准的疏远，既对郭成东既构成一种吸引力，又是一个问题。他虽然迷恋技术品质，但希望在法国能摆脱以前学院的规范和束缚，从而更自如地解放自己，更新艺术创作。定居巴黎就是这条路上的第一步，自画像象征了他当时的困境，在木星美术馆的展览是一个阶段性的完成:从学院派，到机构订件，再到更具国际当代艺术价值的个人创作。

自塑像、2024、聚酯、320 x 225 x 225 cm / Self-portrait、2024、polyester

《驽马》的主题和风格表明了艺术家与学院实践的模糊关系。希望远离古典规范并同时不放弃传统雕塑手段，郭成东在法国的作品和思想中有一种痛苦的张力。尽管在中国，他摆脱官方框架的愿望让他更接近独立创作，但在异国他乡，面临着一个贬低雕塑实践的境况。圆雕往往由工坊而不是艺术家本人完成，其作用是提供一个创意，其意义似乎仅在于其创作背后的想法或在装置中的整合。用布迪厄的术语来说，雕塑领域失去了自主权，被吸收到一个更大、更异质的领域中。因此，其原本的价值观几乎只在艺术界的边缘领域得到维护，这些领域与大型机构的关系不大，而是与仍然坚持传统美术定义的世界更为接近。郭成东从学院派艺术向当代艺术转变的过程，在其创作实践和随之而来的落差中受到了阻碍。他的出国动机本是为了打破这种状况，但他在抵达后却被迫面对本应通过出走得以挣脱，他却发现自己处于需要开始新道路的起点上。

这种困境在之前的自画像中有所表达，尽管不认为形式可以在一个边界不变的领域内自足，他仍然忠于一种基于辛勤劳作和不计时间成本的创作伦理，这一模式来自他的父亲。在法国的作品中展现了他试图脱离自己在中国的创作范式，但同时也保留了某些连续性的意愿。马对郭成东而言，既是远离家乡和追求理想的象征，又是对古代中国艺术的参考，成为了他的主题之一。郭成东早期的马术雕塑作品展示了对马匹以及骑手的完美表现，带有一种风景画般的浪漫色彩。然而，从 2006 年起，诸如《冬天》或《蒙古人》等主题逐渐消失，取而代之的是对艺术家生活中各种情感或人生阶段的表达，这些情感或阶段通过单独的马或人物与马的结合，甚至是人与马的结合来呈现。这种象征性维度，以马作为表达人的情感的中介，使郭成东能够更深入地更新其艺术创作。从此，作品的意义不再依赖于写实主义形式，表现开始简化。在对马的处理上，存在着对丰满和光滑形式的喜好与通过条纹、凹槽和动 感浮雕捕捉光线的愿望之间的摇摆。然而，正如在人体作品中一样，对大体块处理的偏好最终战胜了这些表现主义的尝试。于是，马逐渐简化为由管状或圆锥形构成的组合，其姿态抛弃自然主义的要求，而是服务于结构与构成的关系。

这样的选择为郭成东开辟了新的视野。形式探索开始变得越来越自主。对马车的观察和大胆简化表现，仅通过简单的形式关联和语言的精炼，开启了一系列新作品:《椅子》。这些作品直接来源于马，马腿变成椅子腿，脊背成为座椅。与其说这种变化是因为郭成东希望在他的作品中加入新的意义，不如说是因为形式本身具有某种生命力。《椅子》可以是对马的抽象表现，也可以是关于权力的反思。这种符号学的可塑性和象征主义的放弃有助于这一主题的延续，直到今天，我们也能找到马系列的踪迹。这些马的形态变得越来越抽象，与骑手相关的人物逐渐消失。作品中的意义主要取决于构造和风格本身。马的轮廓成为变体的借口，为了平衡实心与空心，圆面与线条的协调对比。然而，这种形式主义，源自亨利·摩尔(1898-1986)、康斯坦丁·布朗库西(1976-1957) 和极简主义的影响，但不是其最终目的。这些造型关系最终旨在表达情感。例如，雄马身体的实体感与横切的突兀裂口所显示的空缺之间的强烈对比，证明了艺术家对人类存在中缺失和裂痕的感受。形式独立于实际参考物而具有意义。郭成东由此深刻更新了其艺术实践。然而，尽管他尽量消除雕塑底座，这些雕塑的尺寸和形式仍使其适合放置在底座上。除去抽象造型语言外，其作品延续了古典雕塑的框架。

边唱边跳的马儿、2024、聚酯350 x 320 x 220 cm / Horse that dances while singing、2024、polyester

泉、 2021、 石膏、70 x 29,5 x 37 cm / Fountain、2021、plaster

对话泉、2021, 青铜、39 x 43 x 75 cm /Dialogue Fountain、2021、bronze

故乡的云、2024、不锈钢和机械装置、150 x 92 x 63 cm 、Base / Socle / 底座 50x50x120cm

Clouds of my hometown 、2024、Stainless steel and mechanical device

郭成东在两个新系列作品中强调了这一特征。在《故乡的云》中，他对2022年的一件圆雕进行了材质上的改造。这件作品最初是用石膏创作的，如今被复制成不锈钢，并内置一个制冷装置，使雕塑表面形成一层冰霜或凝结成水。因此，这件作品从两个方面消失。一方面，艺术家最初赋 予这片云的形态大部分被遮蔽。另一方面，这件作品的动态特性，其外观可随湿度和温度的变化而变化，首次在郭成东的创作中引入了时间维度和与自然元素的合作，否定了艺术家对其创作的 完全控制。因此，他的创作方法接近了贫穷艺术或安·维罗尼卡·詹森斯(1956年生)等创作者的做法，并将其研究的主题领域扩展到了生态问题。

这些生态讨论也是原计划在木星艺术博物馆展出的最新作品的来源，但在最后一刻进行了修改。在这件作品中，郭成东在其中更进一步，凭空创作了一件房间规模的装置。地面在放大和3D打印之前被塑造成一个被裂缝穿过的自然地形的幻象，裂缝两侧通过缝合连接，上方的长条形物体代表缝合这道裂缝的针。这不仅象征着地球的生态创伤，也象征着人类的心理创伤。郭成东由此回归到缺失的主题，这一主题早已贯穿于他的一些马雕塑作品中。这里提到的疗愈过程反映了 他对艺术具有治愈功能的信念，通过塑造和象征 性的形式实现。然而，未愈合的伤口提醒着我们这一过程不可能完成的特性。

这种创作自由、对其内心情感清晰表达，以及毫无保留地肯定其作为艺术家的角色，似乎标志着郭成东从职业生涯初期被强加的自我约束中真正解放出来。通过木星美术馆的展览，他似乎已经完成了近二十年前开始的旅程，逐步摆脱了学院派雕塑的束缚，以自己的节奏和方式接受了一些当代艺术的方法。他逐渐在主题、技术和造型上扩展了自己的创作。这个漫长的过程可能是必要的，以确保这一结果是他先前研究的自然演变，而不是对其艺术原则的背叛。郭成东似乎并没有完全拒绝和抛弃那些束缚他的纽带，而是以另一种方式解开并重新连接，使自己能够探索新的领域，同时继续强调艺术家之手的重要性和形式探索。这一点在他装置的地面设计和针的极简主义风格中得到了体现。木星美术馆的展览正好及时 地加速了这一进程。大空间的提供，使得新的形式和实验得以展示，部分解放了郭成东在雕塑创作中受到的物质限制，并实现了他长久以来构思的项目。他未来的艺术旅程可能取决于未来能提供给他的机会，但目前尚无法确定他未来的道路是通向新的目的地，还是仅仅是对刚刚发现的领域的进一步探索。

协约、2022, 聚酯、500 x 150 x 230 cm / The pact、2022、polyeste

By walking, the road is made

Raging, the young man raises a fist, as if clutching a projectile ready to be hurled. He shouts, his face taut with tension, which is further amplified by the thick ropes binding him and bending him backward against his horse-like lower body. This sculpture, Autoportrait by Guo Chengdong郭成东(b.1975), encapsulates some of the emotions that gripped the artist during his early years in Paris and provides a key to understanding his work and its evolution, in which his move to France plays a pivotal role. Indeed, the year 2002 marked a turning point in his life and career. After completing his studies and enjoying a promising start as an artist in China, he left his homeland for Paris, where he enrolled at the école des Beaux-Arts. By doing so, he joined a collective history of sculptors including Hua Tianyou滑田友(1901-1986), Yan Dehui严德晖(1908-1987),Liao Xinxue 廖新学(1903?-1958), Xiong Bingming熊秉明(1922-2002),Wang Keping王克平(b.1949) and Wang Du王度(b.1956),who chose to come to France or settle there permanently for various reasons. Many came to Paris to continue their education and study the academic style in the capital of the Western art world, particularly in the 1930s when mastering the Western academic system was seen as necessary to modernize China and its culture. Others, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, found in Paris a supportive environment to pursue their artistic vocations and research.

When Guo Chengdong left China for France, he seemed to want to position himself halfway between these two motivations. He sought something to learn from his time in France, but it was not to perfect his skills in sculpture. Fine arts education in China is exceptionally rigorous in technical skills, leaving little room for improvement in French art schools. Moreover, unlike the art curriculum in East Asia, French art education focuses more on developing students' aesthetic individuality and the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of the creative process, rather than on executional virtuosity. This deviation from old-school standards that emphasize perfection in execution is precisely what Guo Chengdong finds both attractive and problematic.

驯服、2009、 青铜、33 x 30 x 19 cm / Packed the horse、2009, bronze

While deeply committed to craftsmanship, he hoped to break free from a prescriptive framework of art production and the constraints of past knowledge to renew his practice. Moving to Paris was thus the first step on a challenging path. This difficulty is captured by the sculpture " Self-portait ". Its presence at Guo's exhibition at the Jupiter Museum of Art marks a temporary culmination of this transition from academicism serving public commissions to a more personal practice aligned with the values of international contemporary art.

The academic beginnings

The beginnings of this journey trace back to Guo's upbringing. As the son of a renowned jade sculptor who received the prestigious Hundred Flowers Award百花奖,Guo Chengdong grew up immersed in an environment dedicated to sculpture and technical excellence. Jade, a hard stone, is particularly challenging to master without proven expertise and great patience. Naturally, Guo turned to art studies, which he pursued at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts 鲁讯美术学院from 1995 to 1999. There, he learned to master realistic representations of bodies and faces. This education, with its classical focus, was particularly suited to the Chinese art scene at the time. Sculpture, often involving expensive materials and a complex production process for casting metal, tends to be less popular among private collectors than painting due to its high production costs and a significant set of challenges associated with its exhibition and storage. Consequently, large- scale sculptures are most often created for public commissions. In China, these commissions aim to place monuments in public spaces that highlight and commemorate the achievements of China's great historical figures. Portraiture, therefore, is a privileged genre, and realism is the officially promoted mode of expression, until recently overshadowed by a more expressive and symbolic style, exemplified by artists such as Wu Weishan吴为山(b.1962).

Guo Chengdong's early sculptures after his studies reflect this training. Created in workshops responding to national public commissions, these sculptures are often monumental, with realist expression taking precedence over a personal touch. Frustrated by the impersonal nature of his work from this period, Guo Chengdong sought to break away from this approach to find his own path. In the early 2000s, many new creative possibilities opened to him, including the form of art installations that had just become part of the independent art scene in China at that time. However, he chose not to immediately recuse or reject the established framework of sculpture, within which he still partly operates today. During and after his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in versailles started from September 2004, he continued to produce academic nudes and portraits. One of the most representative pieces of this period is a statue of Chu Teh-Chun(Zhu Dequn 朱德群(1920-2014), whose studio Guo Chengdong took over in Vitry-sur-Seine. This statue preserves the principle of commemorative full-length statues produced in China. Nevertheless, unlike earlier works of this type, which adopted a synthetic style to emphasize the perception of the mass and its symbolic importance, this statue marks and even slightly accentuates each hollow and relief of the face, reinforcing the painter's expressivity and humanity. Similarly, the pose no longer has the hieratic character of official figures. Chu Teh-Chun stands on his two outstretched legs, appearing to have been captured on the spot as if he was observing one of his paintings in the making with a brush in hand.

Until the 2010s, Guo produced several family portraits, sometimes in an expressive style and sometimes in a more synthetic vocabulary. He also created multiple nudes within the academic repertoire, whose postures emphasizing the model's musculature recalled those often used in academic workshops to allow students to practice rendering reliefs and volume. Guo's work alternates between animated movements in a Rodinian vein and a more appeased style influenced by French sculpture of the interwar years. He seems to prefer the latter tendency, even in his most expressionist works. His treatment of the extremities of the limbs is often more concise or barely sketched compared to the bodies. A typical example of his style, exceptional in format and subject, is a bas- relief depicting a nude man and woman. Created shortly before the birth of Guo Chengdong's son, the sculpture Numa expresses his wish for his soon-to-be- born child's character. The title in Chinese refers to a horse of a lower rank but capable of perseverance. The massive bodies of the two figures lying on a bed symbolize the parents. Its rendering recalls the works of Aristide Maillol (1861-1944) and Antoine Bourdelle(1861-1929), but the baroque complexity of the heavy drapes and the artificial, almost mannerist positions allow these two bodies to form the shape of a horse's head.

歌剧院、2021, 青铜 、61 x 94 x 23 cm / Opera 2021、 bronze

Towards an extension of the field of statuary

By its subject matter and style, the sculpture Numa reveals his ambiguous relationship with academic practice.GUO Chengdong felt the desire to move away from it, but at the same time, he also wanted to stay within the discipline of sculpture as defined in the classical sense. This ambiguous feeling, present since his arrival in France, resulted in tension in his work and spirit. While in China, his desire to escape his official practice environment brought him closer to a more independent approach, but in his host country, he faced an art scene that devalued his practice as a sculptor. The sculptures, nowadays often manufactured by specialized workshops, leave the artist's role to just providing ideas. To stay relevant today, a sculptor is bound to his creative concepts or to his capacity to integrate installation in his art. In Bourdieusian terms, the field of sculpture lost its autonomy and became part of a broader field with different standards. Thus, only marginal sectors of the art scene defended the original values of the practice of sculpture, which align less with major art institutions and more with amateur circles that are still attached to the traditional definitions of fine arts. Guo Chengdong's will to shift to contemporary art practice, as defined by Nathalie Heinich (b.1955), met with this change in norms and the resulting sense of demotion he felt. While moving to France was meant to free him, he found himself back at the starting point of a journey, expressing this particular struggle in his work Self-portrait.

Guo Chengdong doesn't consider that further exploration of forms is sufficient in itself when it comes to sculpture, understood in its most classical terms. But he remains faithful to the ethic of hard work, as embodied by his father who never counted the hours that he put in. Guo's work in France reflects a desire to diverge from the usual repertoire of his Chinese years but also shows continuities. The horse, a symbol of travel, pursuit of an ideal, and a reference to ancient Chinese art, continued to be a central subject in his art. His early equestrian sculptures showcased his mastery in depicting mounts and riders with a picturesque, romantic tone. However, by2006, subjects as represented in Winter or Mongolians disappeared, replaced by varied representations of emotions or stages in the artist's life, often involving a horse alone or hybridized with riders. This symbolic use of the horse to express human emotions allowed him to renew his artistic practice. The meaning of his works no longer depended on realism, and he began to simplify his representations. His horse sculptures balance between a taste for solid, polished forms and a desire to capture light through streaks and reliefs. Over time, as observed in his representation of nudes, the treatment of the mass prevailed over his expressionist tendencies, reducing horses to tubular or conical forms, abandoning the demands of naturalism for architectural qualities of the compositions.

一瞥、2024, 聚酯、34 x 20 x 82 cm / Glance 、2024、polyester

Such a choice opens up new horizons for Guo Chengdong. Indeed, his artistic research became increasingly autonomous. By observing the horse hitch and by depicting it schematically as a horizontal plane behind a horse sculpture, Guo exercised his capacity of associating simple forms and purifying his vocabulary, which gradually led to the creation of a new series of works, The Chairs. These were in effect derived directly from horses, with the legs transformed into the feet of the chair, and the spine into the seat. This transformation was more about the evolution of forms than adding new meanings to the form. Chairs represented both horses in an abstract way and a questioning of power. This semiological plasticity and the abandonment of symbolism contributed to the longevity of both themes, the chairs and the horse series. They became increasingly abstract, and the human figures linked to them disappeared. The meaning of these works now relied mainly on their forms and styles. The horse silhouette became a pretext for balancing surface, volumes, and lines. This formalism, influenced by sculptors like Henry Moore, Constantin Brancusi, and by minimalism, extended beyond its own end and aimed to express emotions. Contrasts between the corporality of standard forms and the abrupt crosscuts reflected the artist's awareness of the lacking and the ruptures that mark human existence. Volumes became meaningful in their own right without referring to reality. Thus, Guo Chengdong profoundly renewed his artistic practice. Neventheless, even as he eliminated sculptural bases, the size and format of his sculptures were meant to be placed on pedestals, reflecting their classical framework as it is defined since modern times.

座骑系列3、2024、 聚酯、250 x 210 x185 cm / Carriage N°3、2024、polyester

Out of the scope of sculpture?

Apart from a few attempts, such as Carriage N°3(2012), which rests on a rocking base that is potentially mobile, it wasn't until the very end of the 2010s that Guo Chengdong seemed ready to break away from the traditional conception of his practice. His interest in Marcel Duchamp's (1887-1968) Fountain was particularly indicative of this desire, but also of the personal reluctance he had to overcome. This pivotal work in art history is both the antithesis of his work and a symbol of the paradigm shift at the heart of contemporary art. In a gesture characteristic of his complex relationship with it, Guo Chengdong took over Duchamp's work but reversed the process. While Duchamp denied the importance of the artist's hand in questioning the norms that constitute an object in an artistic creation, Guo rejected the ready-made and literally transformed it into a sculpture. The work is no longer a manufactured good simply selected by the artist but the product of the artist's labor. Guo Chengdong left no doubt about the nature of his intervention, explicitly emphasizing it by twisting the shape of the urinal. Moreover, he completed this appropriation of the Fountain by diverting it and symbolically integrating it into his own vocabulary.

Since the late 2010s, he had been isolating fragments of horse bodies to create autonomous sculptures, focusing particularly on the head and the hooves, allowing him to indulge his taste for minimalism. When turned upside down, the latter motif is reminiscent of the urinal due to the analogy between the shape of the horseshoe and a toilet seat. This Dialogue Fountain thus synthesizes the perplexing fascination, but also the rejection tinged with derision, that Guo Chengdong maintains with Marcel Duchamp and his founding gesture with ready-made.

Indeed, going beyond the field of sculpture in its narrowest sense implies other paths more faithful to his journey and artistic ethos. It is through the development of his earlier vocabulary rather than a conceptual break that he ventures into new territories. The recent change in the format of many of his productions has led to substantial changes in the nature of his work and therefore its perception. The creation of monumental pieces implies that direct carving or modeling in clay or plaster has become just a step in the creative process, with the artist later supervising the enlargement and reproduction of the models. The large formats exhibited at the Jupiter Museum of Art are for the most part reworkings of earlier pieces produced by specialized workshops. This mode of organization is not foreign to Guo Chengdong, who is used to casting bronze editions of his works without compromising on his high standards, evident in the quality of the patinas, which is made possible by his knowledge of casting processes. However, the production of huge formats on the other side of the world has obliged him to resort to techniques with which he is less familiar.

The works were digitized in France so that they could be enlarged and reproduced via 3D printing in China, using tools and materials he had never used before. Besides this relative detachment of certain stages of the production, the shift to monumental sizes changes the modes of exhibition of his work. The Pact was initially intended to be 98 cm long and displayed on a pedestal. Once its dimensions were more than quintupled and it was suspended alone in the middle of a room, it strongly changed how we perceive the space the work occupies, akin to an installation. The limits of the work are no longer solely confined to its volume but include an immaterial part that extends significantly into the spectator's space.

伤、2024、聚酯 / Blessure、2024, polyester

Guo Chengdong accentuates this characteristic in two works of a type unprecedented in his career. Clouds of my hometown revisits a 2022 ronde-bosse sculpture but alters its materiality. Originally created in plaster, it is reproduced in stainless steel and contains a cooling device intended to create a layer of ice or condensed water on its surface. Thus, the sculpture disappears in two ways. On one hand, the original form is largely covered and obscured by the ice or the droplets of water. On the other hand, the evolving aspect of the work, with its appearance varying according to humidity and temperature changes,

introduces into Guo's work a temporal dimension and a collaborative relationship with natural elements, which, for the first time, denies the artist total control over his creation. This approach brings him closer to the methods of Arte Povera or artists like Ann Veronica Janssens (b.1956) and broadens the matic scope of his research to include ecological discussions. These are also the sources of what was to be the latest work exhibited at the Jupiter Museum of Art, before a last minute change in, which Guo takes a further step by producing ex nihilo an installation on the scale of a room. The ground was modeled, before enlargement and 3D printing, to give the illusion of a natural ground crossed by a fault whose two edges are connected by sutures, the oblong piece above them representing the needle intended to repair this gap. It symbolizes both the ecological wound of the Earth and the human psychological trauma. Guo Chengdong thus returns to the theme of absence, which already underpinned some of his equestrian sculptures. The therapeutic process described here reflects his belief in the curative role of art, through plastic and symbolic form. The open wound, however, reminds us of the impossibility of completing this process.

Untying the knot

This creative freedom, the clarity in expressing his intimate feelings, and the unreserved affirmation of his role as an artist appear to be a genuine liberation from the constraints Guo Chengdong imposed on himself at the beginning of his career. With the exhibition of the Jupiter Museum of Art,he seems to have reached the culmination of a journey that began nearly twenty years ago, in which he has gradually gained independence from an academic approach to sculpture, in order to appropriate certain codes of contemporary art at his own pace and in his own way. He has thus gradually broadened the thematic, technical, and plastic scope of his work. It was necessary for Guo to take the time for this progression so that the result became a natural evolution of his earlier research without going against the artistic principles to which he remains irrevocably attached. He seems to have unraveled and re-tied the knots that once constrained him rather than rejecting and abandoning them, allowing himself to explore new territories while continuing to emphasize the importance of the "artist's hand" and of exploration of forms. This aspect is evident in his planned installation, particularly in the floor design and the minimalist style of the needle. The Jupiter Museum of Art exhibition arrived at the perfect time to accelerate this process. The availability of large spaces, allowing the display of new formats and new experiments, has enabled Guo Chengdong to partially free himself from the sculpture's strong material constraints and to carry out projects he had long contemplated. The next stage in his journey will likely depend on future opportunities, whether it involves traveling to new destinations or simply exploring barely mapped territories.