文章Article丨周心语：薄雾褶皱Wrinkled at dusk

“薄暮时的颜色是稀释后的熟赭色晕开，渐隐渐远的光线抚摸过荒原上每一道沟壑。”

“日光的尾声，月光的前奏，九月的薄暮时分，闭上眼，细碎的片刻层叠着涌来。”

——周心语

? Zhou Xinyu

“薄暮”作为展览的名称的第一个词语，不单是一个时间的表象，更是情感与记忆重叠在此的情境。薄暮是日暮时分的柔和光线，也是一种不动声色的温暖静谧，同时也是对于时间与记忆之间微妙关系的探索——混沌在空间中微妙的呈现，将艺术家在生活中与生命中所流经的事物重现在此。展题的另一部分“褶皱”，与“薄暮”的氛围感相比以更加抽象的角度展开了周心语所持续的创作思路。褶皱代表着事物表面与内在的分裂，它同样是时间与记忆在物体上留下的痕迹，也是艺术家生活中种种无法靠语言描绘的场景的表达。正如周心语所说：“绘画是用其独特的方式描绘那些用语言文字无法阐明的事物，我不认为绘画需要讲故事，叙事是电影或者小说所更擅长的，绘画最应当的是，用绘画这一画面的片刻来延伸出永恒。”

“Dusk” in the exhibition title is not merely a representation of a particular time of day; it also embodies a condition in which feelings and memories overlap. The soft light that falls at dusk—gentle, tranquil, and quietly warm, serves as an exploration of the subtle relationship between time and memory, the subtle manifestation of chaos within space re-enacts the things the artist has encountered and experienced throughout her life and existence.The second part of the title, “wrinkled”, develops Zhou Xinyu’s ongoing line of thought from a more abstract perspective, contrasting with the atmospheric quality of dusk. A wrinkle represents a rupture or division between surface and interior; it is also the imprint left by time and memory upon matter, an expression of those scenes in the artist’s life that cannot be articulated through words. As Zhou Xinyu herself has said: “Painting depicts, in its own unique way, those things that cannot be explained through language. I do not believe painting needs to tell stories—narrative belongs to film or literature. What painting should do, above all, is to use a single moment on the canvas to extend into eternity.”

在展览中，艺术家以“锈迹”作为切入点，讨论了时间这个抽象概念。铁锈，这关乎物质的化学反应，正是时间无情腐蚀的最好的象征。艺术家认为，锈迹在她眼里似乎是最能直接体现时间的一种痕迹。在展览中，她也通过铁锈染色布料，并将其编织成线，创造出一条连接过去与现在的隐秘线索。于此，“锈迹”成为了展览的情感表达的一个重要部分，它象征着时间的沉默流动，正如在展览前言中写到的——“雨点暂未落下，空气里潜藏着未明的气息，光线在柔软的纱布与纸张的折痕间相渗透。这里既有对时间流动中构成的褶皱的探查，也有对遗忘与记忆之间暧昧状态的呈现。”在这样的呈现中，“锈迹”不再直接与画面中具体的肖像、具体的人物有关，而是重构成为一种暖色调的暧昧的氛围，构建了一个暧昧的，具有时间触感的空间。

Within the exhibition, the artist takes “rust” as a point of entry to discuss the abstract notion of time. Rust—arising from a chemical reaction of matter—serves as the most tangible symbol of time’s relentless corrosion. For Zhou Xinyu, rust seems to be the most direct manifestation of time’s passage. She dyes fabrics with rust and weaves the threads together to create a hidden link between the past and the present. In this sense, “rust” becomes a crucial element in the emotional expression of the exhibition. It symbolises the silent flow of time, just as the preface to the exhibition describes: “Raindrops have yet to fall; the air is filled with an unspoken tension, and light seeps through the soft folds of gauze and paper. Here lies both an exploration of the folds formed by the flow of time, and a presentation of the ambiguous state between forgetting and remembering.” In this context, rust no longer relates directly to specific portraits or figures within the works; instead, it transforms into an ambiguous warmth that constructs a space imbued with the tactile sensation of time.

展览现场

除此之外，周心语还在作品中融入了雪梨纸的易撕碎但又柔韧的特殊感触，她以纸和布褶透过颜料的晕染留在画面上，呈现出微弱却立体的视觉感知，以此展现作品的脆弱感与破碎感。这种方式与她创作的另一核心概念——“代谢”相契合。代谢，意味着遗忘、消散或是渐渐模糊的记忆。周心语试图在作品中刻画出那些“遗留”的痕迹，但并非复原某个具体的时刻或物象——例如在作品中出现的“椅子”和其他一些小物件的形象自于艺术家etsy购物车里的vintage物件，他们在过去的岁月中被使用，被新的痕迹所覆盖，但当它们出现在作品中时，不仅仅是在再现历史，而是倾注了情感和带着艺术家想象的新物件。通过这些经过“代谢”的形象叠加，我们能够感知到物体的记忆，而非它的原本形式。

In addition, Zhou Xinyu incorporates xueli paper (a delicate, fibrous paper known for being both fragile and resilient) into her works. The textures of paper and fabric, tinged with diffused pigment, leave faint yet tangible impressions on the surface, creating a sense of fragility and fragmentation. This approach aligns with another of her central concepts—“metabolism”. Metabolism here refers to the processes of forgetting, fading, and the gradual blurring of memory. Zhou seeks to depict the traces of what remains, not to reconstruct a specific moment or object. For instance, the recurring “chairs” and other small items in her paintings are inspired by vintage objects from her Etsy shopping cart. These items, once used and marked by time, are reimagined in her work not merely as reconstructions of history, but as vessels infused with emotion and imagination. Through the accumulation of these “metabolised” images, we perceive not the original form of objects, but the memory they contain.

遗迹，与其他事物

Ruins, and other things

油画棒，铅笔，丙烯，油漆笔，作于木板

Oil stick, acrylic, pencil, paper, soild marker, on wood

150 x 150cm，2025? Zhou Xinyu

周心语在创作中反思了记忆的混乱与模糊，尤其是当悲伤或痛苦来临时，遗忘成为她的一种应对机制。在这种机制下，记忆被迫进入一种“混沌”状态。每一层画面的叠加、每一条线条的交织，都是模糊的记忆在时间碎片中体现。这种记忆是复杂与多重的，艺术家通过类似于动画创作工具里的工具——“洋葱皮”（你可以使用洋葱皮工具在时间轴上并置前一帧，当前帧，后一帧，就像洋葱皮一样一层层拨开——艺术家注）的工作方式，将图层进行叠加，套色，创作出具有层次感的记忆图像，它们不再是单一、线性的，而是充满了交错与重叠，正如记忆本身那样复杂而模糊。

In her practice, Zhou Xinyu reflects on the confusion and obscurity of memory—especially how forgetting becomes her way of coping when faced with sorrow or pain. In this state, memory is forced into a kind of chaos. Each layer of paint, each interlaced line, embodies fragments of blurred recollection suspended in time. This memory is intricate and multifaceted. Borrowing from animation techniques, Zhou adopts a process reminiscent of the “onion-skin” tool (which allows the previous, current, and next frames to appear simultaneously on the timeline, like translucent layers of an onion). Through overlapping and colour-layering, she constructs richly stratified images of memory that are no longer singular or linear, but entangled and interwoven—just as memory itself is: complex and tenderly unclear.

而在“褶皱”的层次中，艺术家的创作意图进一步展开。“代谢”于此也暗示着新的生成，通过她的作品，我们对那些曾经重要却逐渐被忽视或遗忘的事物产生新的关注。每一处褶皱都承载着某种情感的张力，它们不像物体那样稳定，在持续生成的状态中试图让那些混沌模糊的记忆变得清晰一些。正如在之前的《被遗忘的一页》系列中，艺术家通过对试纸、草稿的再现，放大这种“原本不被注意的东西”的存在感，以及时间在其中留下的痕迹和情感的凝结。而在本次展览中展出的作品《真实与仿制品》中，我们则具象的看到蛋托上承载着一个蛋，底下有着许多与此相似却不同的复活节彩蛋模具，这种表达方式与“褶皱”所承载的内容相同——当你试图展开一个褶皱时，往往能看到更多与此相关却又看不到的东西。

Within the layers of “wrinkle”, the artist’s creative intent unfolds further. Here, “metabolism” also suggests a form of regeneration: through her works, we are drawn to re-examine things that were once significant yet have gradually been overlooked or forgotten. Each fold carries a certain emotional tension; unlike stable material forms, these folds exist in a state of continual becoming, striving to render the chaotic and indistinct aspects of memory a little clearer.As seen in her earlier series A Page Left Behind, the artist amplified the presence of things that were “originally unnoticed” by recreating test papers and drafts, revealing the traces of time and the condensation of emotion within them. In her work The Genuine and the Artificial, presented in this exhibition, this approach becomes more tangible: an egg rests upon an egg tray, surrounded by numerous similar yet subtly different moulds for Easter eggs. This visual arrangement mirrors the idea embodied by the wrinkle—when one attempts to unfold a crease, one inevitably discovers more, including what remains unseen.

被遗忘的一页，之四

A Page Left Behind, 4

油画棒，丙烯作于木板

Oil stick,acrylic,on wood

120 x 150cm, 2022? Zhou Xinyu

霎时间

“褶皱”同样出现在时间之中，它代表着事物的老化、变形和最终的消逝。在这种消逝的过程中，褶皱不仅仅是物理上的痕迹，它更是关乎情感的图像的自我演变。艺术家从2019 年起就开始想要尽可能地以“柔软”的方式呈现时钟、时间，在展览中我们可以多次看见出现在画面中的时钟，并且他们通过扭曲变形的形象暗示着在时间褶皱中那些可被延展出的情感图像与时间自身的概念。

The wrinkle also manifests within time itself, symbolising ageing, transformation, and eventual disappearance. In this process of fading, the fold is not merely a physical trace but an evolving image of emotion. Since 2019, the artist has sought to depict clocks and the passage of time in the softest way possible. Throughout the exhibition, clocks recur within her compositions, their distorted and twisted forms suggesting emotional images that extend from the folds of time itself, revealing the elasticity of temporality.

在薄暮中我们看见艺术家对过去、对遗忘、对时间流逝的内心反应，自然的折叠又在画面中自然的展开，而却不直接的指向一种明确的意义。正如周心语所言：“我总是在绘画的过程中渐渐尝试，我把绘画作为一种提问的手段，但绘画出的作品往往也只能成为问题而不是答案。”

In dusk, we witness the artist’s internal response to the past, to forgetting, and to the flow of time. The natural folding and unfolding within the paintings do not point toward a singular, definitive meaning. As Zhou Xinyu herself explains: “In painting, I am always experimenting gradually. I regard painting as a way of asking questions—but what I paint can only ever become a question, never an answer.”

• 周心语