Entre terre et ciel
From the Urban Rhythms to the 3000 realms in a single moment of life, Peng Yong began to experiment with simpler brushstrokes to express complex emotions, which for him required a meditative focus. This shift reinforces the artist's experience in approaching the process of creating art rather than the outcome. As the artist puts it, his work over the past few years has begun to move away from looking outwards and back towards himself, a process of refinement that has seen him gradually establish a 'territory' of his own. After this, he began to experiment with the harnessing of his mind through creation, which required him to escape from his original subject, to establish new connections with the world beyond the 'territory ' and to open up the possibilities of life. As a turning point in the ongoing process of creation, the 'territory' is broken and the nature of things is revealed. As Gilles Deleuze says, the territoriality is the evidence of the existence of a plane or space, the basis for repetition and generation.
It is easy to see a glimpse of this in traditional Chinese aesthetics, such as the idea of ‘Archaism’ in Yuan dynasty painting, where the expression of ancient ideas was no longer a method of painting practice, but an ability to express oneself, an imitation that was not an exact copy or replication, but a creative imitation, like in calligraphy, through the ‘rules’ set by the ancients. Peng Yong, on the other hand, has purified this 'rule', and the repetition of seemingly simple and clear blocks of colour is a replication of the creative experience. German sinologist Ledderose has always pointed out that traditional Chinese art is passed on in a repetitive and modular way, with the artist as a generative machine rather than the centre of everything. This seems to contradict the idea that Chinese art can only to be sensed not explained, but a person who can generate is not a singular, but a plural, with countless possibilities to create new forms, and we live in a world that is constantly generating the 'many of one'. Peng Yong's work reconciles these two ideas at the same time.
We live in a world that is going through a cycle of building, breaking, creating and rebuilding. We often falsely assume that there is a real world hidden behind this cycle, when in fact all existence is but a relatively stable moment. ‘Territories’ are these relatively stable moments, and Peng Yong's works help us to access the existential value and meaning of various ‘existences’ in the context of this dynamic view of generation.
从都市韵律到一念三千系列,彭勇开始尝试使用更简单的笔触表达复杂的情感,对于他来说,这样的创作需要如同禅修般的专注。这种转变强化了艺术家在对待艺术创作过程之中的体会,而非结果。如艺术家所说,他这几年的作品开始从向外寻求慢慢回归自身,回归的过程也是完善的过程,他逐渐建立了自我的“界域”。在此之后,他开始尝试用创作对心性的驾驭,这需要他从原有的主体之中逃逸出去,与“界域”之外的世界建立新的联系,开拓生命的可能性。作为生成持续进行的一次转折,“界域”被打破,事物的本质也因此显现。正如德勒兹所说,界域是一个平面或者空间存在的佐证,是重复与生成的基础。
关于复制,我们不难从中国传统美学窥见一斑,如元代绘画中的“尚古、拟古”的思想,表现古意已然不是一种习画的方法,而是一种表现的能力,这种模仿并非完全的复制与照搬,它像书法中一样,创造性的临仿,通过古人制定的“规矩”来表达自己思想。而彭勇则提纯了这种“规矩”,看似简洁明了的色块的重复,是创作体验的复刻。德国汉学家雷德候一直强调中国传统艺术在以一种重复性与模块化的方式在传承,艺术家是生成的机器,而非万物的中心。这似乎与中国艺术“只可意会,不可言传”的想法相左,但一个能够生成的人不是一个单数,而是一个复数,他的身上拥有无数创作新形式的可能,而我们处的世界,也是一个正在不断生成的“多的一”的世界。彭勇的作品,与这两种观念同时达到了和解。
我们所处的世界,正在经历建立,打破,生成与重建的循环。我们常常错误的假想有一个真实的世界隐匿在这循环之后,而实际上所有的存在都只不过是一个相对稳定的瞬间。“界域”便是这些相对稳定的瞬间,而彭勇的作品协助我们在这种动态的生成观的背景之下,获得各种“存在”拥有的生存价值与意义。