郭桢，1982年毕业于中国美术学院国画系并留校执教于中国画系，是中国改革开放后女性水墨艺术最早的探索者之一，美国亚裔当代女性水墨艺术开拓者，并长期致力于国际当代女性艺术的研究和探索。

Zhen Guo: The Breadth of Ink

郭桢：水墨的广度

by Robert C. Morgan, Ph.D.

罗伯特·C·摩根

I am interested in a group of ink paintings by the artist Zhen Guo inaugurated in 2016 collectively known as “Muted Landscapes.” In each of these paintings, the ink washes are thickly applied either in an undulating open spread or in a variety of compressed segments. The segmented ink paintings, made visible in works such as Earth Eye and Uncertain, appear densely packed into one another. They are all done directly on sheets of Xian paper, more commonly known to westerners as “rice paper.”

我对艺术家郭桢在2016年创作的一组水墨画感兴趣，这些水墨画统称为“哑声的风景”。在每幅画中，水墨冲洗都浓密地涂在起伏的开阔面积上或以各种压缩分割段落。诸如《大地之眼》和《悬念》等作品中，可见的分割的水墨画看上去彼此密密麻麻地纠结在一起。它们都是直接在宣纸上完成的，西方人通常将其称为“米纸”。

“Earth and Mother” Muted Landscape 2019

Ink on Rice paper

200cm x 300cm x 25cm

“大地和母亲” 哑声的风景系列

多种材料

At the outset of this series, the paper uniformly measures 140 cm x 68 cm. By 2018, the works in this series begin to expand in scale, requiring larger sheets of paper. This allows the artist’s work to become slightly less concentrated and more inclusive. In 2018-19, we see mixed media elements entering into Zhen Guo’s ink paintings. For example, in Upended Vision one may find remnants of nature, such as twigs and dry leaves, accompanied by ceramic bricks and broken tiles, along with intensely bright neon tubing. This gives her ink work a pronounced dramatic quality, similar in effect, to her large-scale installations in recent years, involving political metaphors, for which the artist is often associated.

本系列开始时，纸张尺寸统一为140厘米x 68厘米。到2018年，该系列作品的规模开始扩大，需要更大的纸张。这样一来，艺术家的作品就可以变得舒展，而更具包容性。在2018-19年度，我们看到混合媒体元素进入了郭桢的水墨画中。例如，在《高瞻远瞩》或 （颠覆了的视觉） 中，人们可能会发现大自然的残留物，例如树枝和枯叶，并伴有陶瓷砖和碎瓦，以及明亮的霓虹灯管。这使她的水墨作品具有明显的戏剧性效果，其效果与近年来的大型装置相似，涉及政治隐喻，而艺术家的创造经常与之相关。

“Upended Vision” Muted Landscape 2018

Ink on Rice paper 500cm x 300cm x 100cm

“颠覆了的视觉” 哑声的风景系列

装置， 多种材料

In addition to her ink paintings, the artist’s writings about her work add another dimension to her art. I refer to a statement from 2012 in which Zhen Guo declares that “art without a sense of the times can only be called pseudo art.” I am not sure whether or not she is referring to ink painting, but it does raise a curious question as to what exactly constitutes “a sense of the times.” How does an artist know for certain that what she is doing is “of the times.” Having recently read a statement by the Rumanian poet Tristan Tzara, a leading figure in the founding of Dada movement in 1916/17, it would appear that Zhen Guo’s statement is well taken. Tzara also seemed to feel that the raucous antics of the Dada artists at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich were very much “of the times.”

除了她的水墨画之外，艺术家关于她的作品的著作为她的艺术增添了新的维度。我指的是2012年的一份声明，其中郭桢宣布“没有时代感的艺术只能称为伪艺术”。我不确定她是否在指水墨画，但这确实引发了一个好奇的问题。究竟是什么构成了“时代感”。艺术家如何确定自己的所作所为是“时代”。最近阅读罗马尼亚诗人特里斯坦·特萨拉 （Tristan Tzara） 的讲话， 对于1916至17年的达达运动，看来郭桢的说法是正确的。特萨拉似乎还觉得苏黎世歌舞表演的达达 （Dada） 艺术家的滑稽动作非常“时代”。

“Earth Eye” Muted Landscape 2016

Ink on Rice paper

140cm x 68cm

“神眼“ 哑声的风景系列

纸本水墨

But if an artist is not of the times in the present tense, then what does it mean? What other times are being addressed? Given the long history of ink painting in China, it would appear that artists lived removed from the present as we know it today. This would include following the traditions of ink painting in the academic sense. From this perspective, it is conceivable that the concerns of artists living and working in the distant past were more removed from the spectacles of the everyday world.

但是如果一个艺术家不在现在时的那个时代，那意味着什么呢？还有什么其他时间？鉴于中国水墨画的悠久历史，如今看来，艺术家的生活已远离当下。这将包括遵循学术意义上的水墨画传统。从这个角度来看，可以想象的是，在遥远的过去生活和工作的艺术家，更多地关注如何从日常生活的奇观中解脱出来。

“White Night” Muted Landscape 2016

Ink on Rice paper

140cm x 68cm

“白夜”哑声的风景系列

纸本水墨

The connection between time in the present and the historical past constitutes what I would call “the breadth of ink.” In this sense, the artist can be in many times at the same time, that is, not just the present, but also the past or, for that matter, moving irrevocably towards the future. This would suggest that the artist is approaching some remote territory of reality evoked by nature or even by science as a form of artificial intelligence. Perhaps, the paradoxical distance of the future is what Zhen Guo is contemplating in her work; and like many Chinese ink painters working today, she continues on some level the fundamental legacy of ink painting as a source of her activity as a feminist and as an artist politically bound to the past, present and future in equal terms as she reconstructs a forgotten history through her art that has yet to be defined.

现在的时间与历史的过去之间的联系，我称之为“水墨的广度”。从这个意义上说，艺术家可以同时存在很多次，即不仅是现在，而且是过去，或者就此而言，不可逆转地走向未来。这表明艺术家正在接近自然或科学作为人工智能形式，激发的某个遥远的现实领域。也许，未来的矛盾距离是郭桢在她的作品中所考虑的。就像今天许多中国水墨画家一样，她在一定程度上继承了水墨画的基本遗产，作为她女权主义者的活动的源泉，并且在重建被遗忘的人们时，她在政治上同过去，现在和未来息息相关。她的艺术史尚未定义。

“Illusion” Muted Landscape 2016

Ink on Rice paper

140cm x 68cm

“春梦” 哑声的风景系列

纸本水墨

So what is the tradition of ink painting that pulsates through time?

那随着时间而脉动的水墨画传统是什么？

The courtly tradition of this activity in China goes back many dynasties, as far back as the Qin Dynasty in the third century BC. The tradition further developed in the eighth century Tang Dynasty, and then again in the tenth century Sung Dynasty where ink painting focused largely on the landscape. Five centuries later, the span of subject matter came to fruition amid the decorum of the Ming Dynasty. Each of these dynasties perfected its own style or myriad of styles related to ink. This should not imply that the art of calligraphy evolved in a parallel manner. Although the handling of the brush may have been similar, the actual practice of calligraphic writing retained its own distinct qualities apart from that of either courtly or landscape painting.

在中国，这种活动的礼节传统可以追溯到许多王朝，甚至可以追溯到公元前三世纪的秦朝。该传统在八世纪的唐朝进一步发展，然后在十世纪的宋朝又进一步发展，在那儿水墨主要集中在风景上。五个世纪后，在明朝的礼节中，题材的发展成为现实。这些朝代都完善了自己的风格或与水墨有关的各种风格。这并不意味着水墨和书法艺术是并行发展的。尽管笔刷的处理方式可能相似，但书法创作的实际做法保留了其自身的独特品质，与宫廷绘画或山水画不同。

“Valley” Muted Landscape 2016

Ink on Rice paper

140cm x 68cm

“峡谷“ 哑声的风景系列

纸本水墨

The ink paintings of Zhen Guo suggest a practice representing the landscape through different styles and mannerisms of painting. Her reference to the body in her Muted Landscapes is clearly evident, occasionally reaching heights of pure ingenuity. Here I would agree with the scholar Dr. Yibing Huang in his essay, “Why Chinese Landscape Needs to be Rethought” (2019): “Zhen Guo redefines Chinese landscape or shanshui as a naked female body possessing its own voice, desire, identity, and yet also suffering the violence of dismemberment and repression.”

郭桢的水墨画提出了一种通过不同的绘画风格和手法来表现风景的实践。她在《 Muted Landscapes》中对身体的提及很明显，有时甚至达到了纯粹的匠心。在这里我很同意学者黄亦兵 （麦芒） 博士在其论文《为什么需要反思中国景观》 （2019年） 中说：“郭桢将中国景观或山水重新定义为拥有自己的声音，欲望，身份并遭受痛苦的裸体女性身体。肢解和镇压的暴力。”

The unique contribution of Zhen Guo as an ink painter is the overlay and bundling of cascading shapes and forms that compress against one another and push towards a distinct placement. One might comprehend these forms as abstract without losing their dark and definitive organic momentum.

郭桢作为水墨画家的独特贡献是层叠和捆绑的层叠形状和形式相互压紧，并朝着独特的位置发展。人们可能会把这些形式理解为抽象的，而不会失去其黑暗而确定的有机动力。

“Uncertain” Muted Landscape 2016

Ink on Rice paper

140cm x 68cm

“悬念“ 哑声的风景系列

纸本水墨

These conjugal forms open up a logic of their own, a corporeal logic that descends through time, over time, within the interstices of the moment. The manner of their being is inexhaustible. Far from the deluge of a quaint repetition, they linger in time as they ascend to become physical formations. The strata of the Earth has been given a magnitude through ink that absorbs heat and light, that ordains the impossible as a rejuvenated sensibility through mock clouts of dirt that settle into place on their own, launching a gestural weight within the breadth of ink, granting us the opportune space – a space that regains its substance as a bodily process, as a longitudinal focus of enraptured skin clinging to our organs as its covering, skin that is folded, creased, and ironically caught in the act of memory over time, beyond time, sensing what history has become and what we still remember upon our first gaze at the infinite scope of the universe. Zhen Guo’s ink reveals what it conceals, the latter empowering the former. The trick of time is to be caught in the breadth of ink, where all time folds in upon itself and grants a leave to becoming no less than what we are: human beings in touch with one another.

这些共轭形式打开了它们自己的逻辑，即随时间在瞬间的空隙中随时间下降的有形逻辑。它们的存在方式是取之不尽的。远离古朴重复的浪潮，它们随着上升成为物理形态而及时徘徊。通过吸收热量和光的墨水为地球的地层赋予了一定的幅度，通过模拟的尘埃团将其自身安置在适当的位置，在水墨的广度内发出了姿态上的重量，将不可能的事重新焕发了青春的敏感性。我们是一个合适的空间，这个空间是通过身体过程重新获得实质的空间，是被包裹的皮肤纵向附着在我们器官上的纵向焦点，它的覆盖层是皮肤的折叠，折痕，并且随着时间的流逝而具有讽刺意味地陷入了记忆的行为中， 时间了解历史已经变成什么，以及我们第一次凝视宇宙无限范围时仍记得什么。郭桢的水墨揭示了它所隐藏的内容，后者赋予前者权力。时间的妙处就在于它能被浩瀚的笔墨所捕捉，在那里所有的时间都在自己身上折叠起来，并给予了我们不被抵制的权利：人类彼此接触。 （罗伯特·C·摩根 2019/ 10 纽约）

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Robert C. Morgan is an artist, critic, educator, independent curator, and poet. He has written several books and numerous essays focused on recent developments in the history of art and artists. Dr. Morgan currently teaches in the graduate program of fine arts at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and is represented as an artist by Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City.

本文作者罗伯特·C·摩根 （Robert C. Morgan） 是一位艺术家，评论家，教育家，独立策展人和诗人。他有多本著作，并发表了许多文章，重点介绍了艺术和艺术家历史上的最新发展。Morgan博士目前在纽约布鲁克林的普拉特学院 （Pratt Institute） 从事美术研究生课程的教学，并由墨西哥城的Proyectos Monclova代表画家。

《中国女性艺术》一书，由《中国当代艺术文献》出品人邵琦领衔策划和主编，旨在以与众不同的学术角度、当代意识和文化视野，在以往研究和积累的基础上，采用最客观的史学视角和书写方法，力争准确完整地梳理和阐述，从1949年新中国建立开始，延展至2019年这70年间，中国女性艺术的基本状况、形态演变、发展脉络与史学意义，以及重要女性艺术家和她们的代表性创作。