李旭

    上世紀90年代初期以來，許多中國大陸的藝術家們開始用充滿異國情調的地域文化符號和后冷戰時代的意識形態主題挑逗國際藝術界，他們的目標，非常明確地指向大型國際藝術展覽的策劃人以及圍繞在這些展覽周圍的收藏家們，這種現象已逐漸成為海外中國當代藝術的主流。不過，在這個主流之外，仍然存在著一個經常令人忽視的支流，那就是更加傾向于藝術本體的創作，更加注重個人語言和風格建造的實驗。藝術史上的許多事例表明，某個時代的插圖終究會因該時代的消逝而失去原有的社會學意義，只有超越時空的作品才能因其自身的藝術價值而獲得真正的永恒。
    1961年出生于重慶的羅發輝，自1985年畢業于四川美術學院以來就傾心于藝術形式的探索，他的題材從過去的風景、人物到現在的花卉，一直是單純而另類的，多年以來，在     具象的題材里，他幾乎是以抽象的態度在進行著個人表達。羅發輝關注的不是畫面背后的故事，他只在意畫面本身，至于故事，那應該是評論家和觀眾們的事。
    1999年，羅發輝把以往曾經出現在他作品中，本來作點綴之用的花卉形象刻意地放大了，最后他甚至讓一朵花占據了整個畫面。從喬治亞·奧基芙（Georgia O'keeffe）到荒木經惟（Nobuyushi Araki），20世紀的許多藝術家都嘗試著用另類而充滿誘惑力的花卉形象刺激觀眾的感官，羅發輝顯然是這一嘗試的延續者，他以自己的方式，介入到這個最單純卻也是最具挑戰性的創造空間中來。
    曾有一位作家說：“第一個把女人比喻成花的人是天才，第二個把女人比喻成花的人是庸才，第三個把女人比喻成花的人是蠢材”。由此可見，花卉作為一個看似簡單的題目，其實是多么難以介入。不過，也正因如此，以花的形象為語言的載體，最終以獨到的觀念超越形式本身，這反而成了眾多藝術家們的夢想。
    中國人自古就喜歡把充滿誘惑的浮生叫做“花花世界”，從某種意義來說，花既是生命與希望的代名詞，也是愛情和欲望的象征物。植物學的概念就更加明確了——花是植物的  生殖器官。在大自然成千上萬種的花卉形象之中，羅發輝選擇了玫瑰。在文學和流行文化中，玫瑰所代表的意味幾乎是固定不變的，但羅發輝注定要讓玫瑰在他的作品中透露出突變的意味，并散發出異樣的氣息。
    1999年，第一組玫瑰綻放在羅發輝的畫面上。沒有花莖，沒有葉片，所有的花瓣都象是尖銳的觸角般鋒利地張開著，整個花朵安靜而失重地漂浮在空無一物的空間里，花瓣都是灰暗蒼白的，只有花芯的部分浸透出一絲淡淡的粉紅色。羅發輝在畫面中的隱喻也許部分地延續了他不久前作品中少女形象的意味，不過這些花朵的形象被充分地擬人化了：粉紅的花心既象征著肉體的成熟，也預示著失貞與受傷的命運。從一開始，羅發輝筆下的玫瑰就是極度敏感而且令人不安的。
    灰色、綠色、紅色、黑色與白色，2000到2002年間，羅發輝在不斷放大的畫面尺寸上體驗著各種色彩所提供的情緒傾向，在看似極其有限的選擇中探索著表現力的無限可能。與早期的《玫瑰》相比，他的筆觸、用色和畫面肌理也開始顯得張弛有度，駕輕就熟。到2001年，《玫瑰》系列已經日臻成熟，無論是語言的張力和對技巧的駕御，羅發輝都階段性地達到了一個前所未有的高度。在《玫瑰》系列中，幾乎所有的花朵都是以獨立個體而非花束的形式出現，羅發輝一開始的選擇是描繪出孤立而完整的花朵，而后構圖的視野逐漸變得越來越微觀，花瓣的邊緣慢慢地溢出了畫面，由花瓣包裹成的圓環形黑洞標示著張開的花心。在肥厚綿軟、蜷曲盤旋的花瓣上，出現了一些突起的紅點，一如肉體上敏感的神經末梢，提示著感官體驗的真實存在和稍縱即逝。畫面形象顯然是有色情隱喻的，但作品的黑白基調卻又明確地否認了通常以玫瑰為主題的作品所散發出的曖昧、輕佻的態度。值得注意的是，與早期作品相比，有些花心的顏色已經由紅變黑，似乎是花朵盛極而衰，行將枯萎的面目，這又是一種怎樣的隱喻呢？
    花，是植物生命周期里最短暫、最燦爛的臨界點，連接著成長與衰敗，甚至新生與死亡。以花朵來象征女性，又是藝術史上最常見的手法。從表面上看，羅發輝的《玫瑰》雖然明顯地具有性和肉欲方面的傾向，但這個作品系列卻很少表達輕松歡愉的享樂主義情緒，相反，這些灰色的花朵所透露出的信息往往是焦慮、感傷和悲憫的，不可逆轉的生長和不可避免的衰老都是生命本身的無奈。玫瑰，可以看作是眷戀青春、膜拜愛情的象征，羅發輝以難得的敏感超越了性別角色的局限，把女性的驕傲和困惑都呈現得淋漓盡致。
    《玫瑰》系列中那些巨大的花朵，往往給人以難以抗拒的視覺震撼，站在羅發輝的作品面前，觀看者可以感受到強烈的被吞噬感，從生動的造型到內斂的筆觸，都能令人感受到他內心躁動的激情。鮮活而夸張的形象和虛假而灰暗的色彩矛盾地并存著，情感被理智割裂，理智又被情感迷惑，《玫瑰》系列因而令人信服地呈現出超越意識的真空狀態——在欲望的空間中縱情漂浮，在失語的夢幻里放棄判斷。
“生活中沒有什么事是令人有幸福感的，只有快感天天都存在，《玫瑰》系列作品是我對自己生活有依據的表現，我體驗著人生存的怪異和同在的快樂，把這些情緒形象化，創造出自己的觀念形象，讓人們理性地了解人性的生氣與活力。”不擅辭令的羅發輝在談論自己的作品時謹慎地表達出這樣的觀點。可以說，《玫瑰》系列是內省的、激情的、儀式化的，每個觀看者都可以從自己的角度解讀出個性化的含義。從另外一個角度來看，中國古人所說的“花非花”，表達出由表象到本質的思考，正如馬格里特（Rene Magritte）在一幅描繪煙斗的作品中寫下的名句“這不是一枝煙斗”所表述的悖論那樣，羅發輝的玫瑰超越了花卉的形式，畫出了情感的風景，探索著欲望的深度，以近乎迷幻的視角，觸動著我們心靈的背面。
（摘∶AsiaArtNews---Volume12 Number6  November/December 2002. ）
At The Heart Of The Rose—Roses By Luo Fahui

2002年8月1日寫于上海

Depth of Desire
Li Xu
 Since the beginning of the 1990s, in the mainland of China, many of artists have begun to flirt with the international artistic circles by the local cultural symbols filled with exoticisms and the ideological theme in the post-war time. Their aim is very obviously at those curators in the large-scale international exhibitions and those collectors around them. The phenomenon gradually becomes the mainstream of Chinese contemporary arts abroad. In addition to it, however, there is still another branch that is often ignored by people, and that is much more inclination to the artistic creation itself, and more emphasis on the experiment with individual language and formation of artistic manner. So many cases in the history of art indicate that any illustration in some times would lose their original sociological significance along with that the time passes away, and only those works that are beyond time and space could attain a real eternality because of the value of artworks themselves.
  Luo Fahuio burned in Chongqing City in 1961. He graduated from Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts in 1985. Since that time, he has been much enamoured with the quest for artistic form. From the past landscapes, characters to the flowers today, the subject matter in his works has been simple and different from other painters. For many years, he individually has expressed representational themes almost with an abstract attitude. He pays attention not on the stories behind the picture planes, but only on the surfaces themselves. As for the stories in his works, they should be of critics and lookers.
  In 1999, Luo Fahui painstakingly magnified the original images of flowers that used to be sprinkled over on the surfaces of his works. Finally, he even allowed one flower to occupy the whole picture plane of one work. Many artists in the 20th century, such as Georgia O'keeffe and Nobuyushi Araki, try to stimulate the sensory organs of viewers through the different and attractive images of flowers. Lu Fahui obviously belongs to one of their inheritors. He intervenes in the creative space in art that is most simple but most challenging with his own way.
  There was a writer who once said: “ the first man who liken women to flowers is a talent, the second a mediocre person, and the third a blunderbuss”. Thus it can be seen that the theme of flowers seems simple, actually, it is how difficult to represent it well. However, on the basis of this cause, to consider the images of flowers as a medium of language in order to finally transcend artistic form itself through a special idea, this becomes a dream of many artists
.  According to the traditional culture in China, man likes to call the vanity life imbued with its myriad temptations ‘ the gay and material world’. In some senses, flowers not only are a pronoun of life and hope, but also are a symbol of love and lust. The botanical notion about flowers is clear all the more—they are botanic genitalia. From the images of the thousands upon thousands flowers in the nature, Luo Fahui chose roses. In the literatures and popular cultures the implication that rose flowers refer to is basically changeless; but he foreordains to let the mutative meaning of them appear in his works, and throw off a peculiar sense.
  In 1999, the first group of roses began to be expressed on the surfaces of his paintings. There was no any scape, no any leaf, all the petals of them sharp-pointedly opened up like some acuminous feelers, and all the flowers were peacefully flying on the empty space like with zero gravity. The color of the petals seemed to be murky gray and wan, and only the part of the pistils and stamens were saturated with a light pink. The metaphors on the surfaces of his works might partly continue the meaning included in the young girls’ figures in his past works. But the images of these flowers were personated fully: the pink pistils and stamens signify the maturity in the body, and indicate an unchaste and injured fate. In the beginning, the rose flowers in his works were extremely sensitive and disquieting.
  Gray, green, red, black and white colors, during the years from 2000 to 2002, Luo Fahui has experienced the feelings come from the varied hues in the picture planes and sizes that he kept on amplifying. He is searching after the infinite possibilities of the expressive forces of art in the creative choices that seem to be very finite. Compared with his earlier Roses, his brushwork, use of colors and the textures on the picture planes in these years also began to look like appropriate tension and relaxation, and like doing a familiar work with ease. Until the year of 2001, in the series of Roses he attained mature state day by day. With whether the tension of his artistic language or his control over techniques of paintings, Luo Fahui phased to reach to an unprecedented one. Among them, almost every flower was expressed through a single not a bunch of it. At the very start what he chose was to draw the isolated and whole flowers. Then his visual field in the structures of the works gradually goes into their more and more microcosmic areas; the margins of the rose petals slowly are overflowing out of the picture planes; the black holes like circles packed by the roses petals mark the opened pistils and stamens of roses. Some protuberant red points are coming forth on the plump and soft petals with twisted and spiral shapes like some hypersensitive nervous twigs in the body. They clue to the real experiences from the sense organs of human beings and their transience. The images on the works’ planes obviously refer to the metaphor for eroticism. The black and white keynote in his works, however, demonstrably denies the ambiguous and frivolous attitude shown by the works that often are characterized by the theme of roses. It is very remarkable that the colors of some pistils and stamens of roses in them have already been changed from red to black compared with his earlier works, and the flowers seem to be from blooming to withering. They look like to be on the verge of the wizened. What kind of metaphors are also they?
  A flower is a critical point that is most transient and splendid in the life cycle of any plant. It connects its growth with downfall, even its rebirth with death. The symbol for woman through flower is a most common way seen in the history of art.  On the surface, there evidently is an expression of sex and lust in Luo Fahui’s Roses, but it is difficult for us to find an easy and joyous hedonistic emotion in them. On the contrary, sometimes, the information revealed through these gray flowers is anxious, sentimental and pitying. Life cannot help itself but the irreversible growth and inescapable caducity. The rose may be stood for a symbol for loving for youth and worshipping affection. Luo Fahui transcended the limitedness of gender role by his uncommon sensitivity, and thoroughly presented the pride and bewilderment in women. 
 Those huge flowers in the series of Roses usually give an irresistible visual surprise to people. When lookers-on stand before the works of Luo Fahui, you will have a feel to be licked up strongly by them. You could take the impetuous enthusiasm in his heart from the vivid shapes to the internal brushworks in his works. The bright and exaggerated images are contradictorily combined with the false and gloomy colors, sensibility is dissevered by intellect, and the latter is puzzled at the former. Therefore, the series of Roses convincingly show themselves the empty state beyond consciousness -- riotously floating within lustful space, abandoning judgment within aphasic illusion. 
  ‘ There is nothing happy but daily large charge in life. The series of Roses express my own life that is based on something. I taste the unearthliness of existence and the co-being pleasure with others. I hope to visualize these moods, create my own ideal images, and make people rationally understand the vitality and vigor in human nature.’  When Luo Fahui who is not good at speeches talks about his own works, he carefully gives expression to such viewpoints above. We may think that the series of Roses are introspective, ardent and ritualized. Every spectator will unscramble its individualized significance according to his own point of view. In another viewpoint, Chinese in the ancient times said that ‘any flower is not flower itself’. This is concerned with pondering on something from its appearance to its essence. On the work that paints a tobacco pipe, Rene Magritte wrote one famous sentence: ‘this is not a tobacco pipe’. Such words express a paradoxical idea. Just like them, Luo Fahui’s roses are beyond the form of flowers itself, draw the landscape of emotion, and are searching for the depth of desire. They move our internal heart through the nearly illusionary visual angle. (Written in Shanghai, August 1,2002.)