21世纪的水墨与焦虑——著名画家张江舟的人文主义情怀

在这些作品中，颜色的象征性使用——粉色和绿色的使用，也为水墨作品增添了亮度和清晰度，并将观众带入当代的语境。色彩在人群中捕捉情感，隐约可见一些真理：希望、力量、感情。这些旋转的，充满活力的作品大胆、忧郁，具有探索性。水墨的使用与笔触，晕染，线条动态结合，一切似乎都被拉向特定的方向，超出了被卷入这场风暴的人的控制。这种无助感似乎是他的创作中心主题，因为画面形象被呈现出紧贴、放手、觉醒、激动、生存、存在……这也符合了全球的生存形势。

在这些纸本水墨作品中，张江舟的情感倾泻而出，这是一种极具强迫性、紧迫感的创作输出，这也体现在作品中，体现在此时此刻的连贯性上。他的作品有些是三联画，以一种不连贯的画面方式紧密地叙述——它们作为一个叙述整体组合在一起，但它们也让人觉得故意地不连贯。人类的灾难被日常的平凡所抵消。关于存在的剧本以一种狄更斯式的相互竞争的故事情节展开，然而，它们是超现实的、身临其境的，淹没了我们的思想，抹杀了任何理性的理解方式。虽然他的作品中不乏厌世之情，但观者能从他饱含情感的作品中窥见他的人文主义情怀以及对万事万物寄予的深切同情，而这种悲天悯人的情愫则来自他恣意的艺术表达天赋。（文/何凯特，英国伦敦苏富比艺术学院现当代亚洲艺术项目主管、策展人）

绿影｜纸本水墨｜200cm x 200cm 2021

Zhang Jiangzhou: ink and anxiety in the 21st century

The works of Zhang Jiangzhou recently shown in the exhibition Soul Whispers are intense and overpowering in their emotional impact. Employing ink to paint scenes weaving together line, wash and figuration, Zhang’s artistic language has evolved from elements drawn from Chinese and Western painterly lineages producing an overall humanistic theme of narrative and formalistic elements. Combining thick and wet brushstrokes with figurative line-drawing and form, a flattened perspective is used, crowded with elements featuring bodies, hands, eyes, people and animals all thrown together in a confusing array of imagery that is modernist and has elements of magical realism. The density is demanding and requires unpicking and reading, to see what is going on: who are we looking at? What is happening?

Incorporating figures with languid, expressionistic bodies and drawn-out hands evoking other modern and contemporary painters such as Kathe Kollwitz and Lucien Freud, densely woven compositions are alleviated only by the selective use of blank space prevalent in traditional Chinese painting. Glimpses of space are used within the pictorial plane to break up the density and sometimes to distance the picture’s narrative and allow a pause in the line of vision. Whilst the overall impression is a darkness and intensity showing saturated scenes of desperation, colour also lights up the images, highlighting single figures with touches of green and pink to enhance the sense of the individual within the mass.  A small female figure, for example, is shown lifting up with pointed feet, elevating her in a moment of spiritual levity but she seems like a spirit, recalling Chagall’s fairy tale figures flying above the landscape.

The idea of the soul is strongly conveyed, as these seem to be pictures of existential angst, and images of human survival in an age of spiritual isolation. Zhang’s deep engagement with the psychological situation in the past two years of the pandemic, harnesses his previous experience with human distress and observations of society during tragic events such as the Sichuan earthquake. Tracing some of Zhang’s works over two to three years, there are both strong links and also departures in this series. The world changed from the end of 2019, and more than two years later, we are still reeling from this drastic global situation that has torn the world apart and led to mass isolation, fear and separation.

人类图像学研究-人格｜纸本水墨｜130cm x 130cm 2019