作者： artist

追忆流逝的时间

管郁达

郭鹏在云南艺术学院学了五年的雕塑，不知何故，迄今为止我尚未见到他做的任何一件雕塑作品。作为一位八十年代出生的年轻人，与他同龄人的卡通嘻哈相比，郭鹏的生活趣味多少显得有些“怀旧”，比如他家居装修的风格走的就是中国古代文人的路子，仿明式的家具上整齐有序地摆放着茶具，墙上挂的是古琴琴谱的书法条幅。给人的感觉更像是一位雅好琴棋书画的文士之家。

郭鹏的“制像”活动大概开始于2003年。在那组名为《top one》的作品中，他用黑白胶片翻拍了一些商业时尚杂志上的“美女”图片，将其冲印为一寸大小的银盐黑白照片，然后手工上色。这些一寸大小的照片被刻意剪裁为锯齿纹样的花边，装裱在上个世纪七十年代末、八十年代初流行于中国城市家庭的那种简陋朴素的纸质或塑胶相册上。与此同时，他在四川达州、昆明、重庆、 成都、广州、武汉、南京、杭州等城市实施的行为摄影《祝你们幸福》，也是自持相机免费为年轻情侣拍照，然后自己在暗房里手工制作成发黄的一寸老照片，按被拍摄者所提供地址寄出去。郭鹏的这种“伪经典”式的合同文本艺术样式无疑具有一种现代寓言的气质。老照片所传达出的历史感和近百年来中国人的精神情结，使它成为一种“追忆”时间的最好媒介，从中我们可以体察出些许现代性与历史沧桑感的缠绕。一寸照在1949之后中国社会组织形态整齐划一的“单位”结构中无疑是人们身份的标识和代码。它所呈现出的某种“经典”意味的形式，使艺术家找到了一个“追忆”时间，反省当下的缺口。顺着这个缺口，郭鹏对当代文化徒有的虚名的物质主义和空虚插入了一把尖锐的匕首。这种自省式的批判立场，构成了早期郭鹏看待图像的态度。

与自以为“进步”代言人的某些新媒介艺术家不同，郭鹏对技术进步及其工具理性的所代表的“进步”观念深怀疑意。也可以说，郭鹏的时间观是向后看的。2004年创作的《翠湖》、《风景线》、《失乐园》就是三组带有伤感气质、夕阳挽歌式的作品，它使我们想起隐逸诗人陶潜“云无心以出岫，鸟倦飞而知还”的伤逝与悲怀。这几组作品仍然沿用了银盐黑白照片、锯齿边纹一寸照的形式，但是注入了艺术家更多的关于时间的思考，也更加具有抒情性，代表着艺术家从现实批判到诗意关怀的转变。《风景线》中幽灵一样的人群、还有刻意做旧的翠湖风景，都表达了作者当时的无可名状的忧伤与悲情。

2005年——2006年是郭鹏“制像”活动的高产期，他创作的《残雪》、《梦游》、《玩偶》、《消逝的风景》（2005年）、《惊梦》、《地震》、《在天空之外》、《翠湖》（2006年）这几组作品，都交织着现实与梦想的转世与轮回。艺术家徘徊在理想与现实的边缘，显得自如、平静而超脱。时空的交错与平行构成了图像叙事的两个维度，仿佛一个二声部的合唱，复杂中仍然保持了一种单纯的主调性。在《消逝的风景》这组作品中，郭鹏显示了他独特的图像语言叙事才能，他煞有介事地虚构了一个类似“刑事侦查学”中“现场”，使平凡的事物获得了一种奇观的视觉效果，从而使讲述本身成为作品唯一的存在方式，这是一种具有反讽意味的后现代图像文本，使得郭鹏的“制像”活动颇为独特。而在《翠湖》这组作品中，被反复观看过的那些景物失而复得，被艺术家赋以了一种现实的诗意和安详的美感，“翠湖”在这里成为一个时光倒流的“通道”，经过这个“通道”，郭鹏再现了昆明这个标志性的城市景点往昔的美景与旧事，使熟知事物的重新变得陌生起来。同样《在天空之外》也是一组改变观看方式的作品，艺术家在平凡的事物中发现了一种内在的诗意。

这种内在的诗意是理解郭鹏作品，特别是2007年至今创作的这些以树丛、草地、河流、庄稼地为题材，以表现阳光与空气的质感为主的这些作品的关键。和以往，特别是2003、04年前后的那些作品不同，这时的郭鹏已没有那种“愤青”式的现实批判厌恨，他从一个现实的厌恨者转变为一个自然的发现者，他将自然视为更加永恒的一种存在，试图从中发现新的能量和灵感。所以，我觉得现在的郭鹏有点像一个隐居于各种自然现象中修拉式“印象主义者”，只不过与印象主义者不同的是：郭鹏观察与描绘自然的方法是文人的、散点的、中国的，有点漫不经心和身体享乐主义的趣味。而修拉他们是科学的、结构的、严肃的，思考的路向也倾向于形式的抽象。

时间是一切“制像”活动关注的核心。郭鹏的“制像”活动也一直将流逝的时间作为他艺术实验的一个方向。他迷恋于手工的制作过程，用相机去捕捉现实的景物，用抒情的笔法去捕捉阳光下最微妙的光影变化，用自己的感受力捕捉眼前的一切，他将对自然的描绘视为一个对话的过程，从而使其创作超越了简单的工具进步论阶段，上升到一个诗意的大美的境界。郭鹏的作品其实是所谓“新媒介”的对立面，他关注的是艺术与心灵最为密切的那些基本问题，这也许能解释为什么他学了五年的雕塑而“放弃”雕塑的原因吧？艺术与媒介的进步无关。对自然而言，郭鹏只是一个虔诚而狡谲的“制像者”。

2008年4月25日夜于昆明翠湖边上

Read English edition of this article

In Search of Lost Time

Guan Yuda

Guo Peng studied sculpture at the Yunnan Academy of Art for five years, but for reasons unknown to me, I’ve never seen any works of sculpture made by him. As a post 80’s young artist, Guo Peng’s life interests are nostalgic compared to the cartoon and hip-hop styles favored by his contemporaries. For example, his affinity for ancient Chinese literati style is evident at his apartment: a neat tea set on the reproduction Ming Dynasty furniture under calligraphy of Gu Qin musical notation gives it the feel of the house of a typical Chinese scholar spending his time with music, chess, calligraphy and painting.

Guo Peng started working on images in 2003. He re-took pictures of cover girls, developed one-inch silver salt black and white photos and hand-colored them. He put these photos with their saw-tooth borders in a plain paper photo album of a sort popular among Chinese urban families in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and named this work “Top One”. At the same time, he did his photo-based performance “Wish You Happiness” which involved taking pictures of young couples in Dazhou, Kunming, Chongqing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing and Hangzhou, developing these pictures in his own darkroom, coloring them with tea and sending them back to the couples. As the one-inch photo was a standard form in the identity production of Chinese society after 1949, the classic feel of these image types offered younger artists a way to recall and revive that lost time. Those old photos evince that period’s intertwining of modernity and history. Guo Peng’s way of making “fake classics” showed Chinese people’s spiritual complex and sense of history, and becomes a sharp knife inserted into the materialism of our time. Guo Peng’s early attitude toward the image was based on self-reflection and criticism.

Different from some new media artists who consider themselves as spokesmen of “progress”, Guo Peng queries the view of progress represented by technical progress and instrumental rationality. We can also say that Guo Peng considers the past carefully. His works “Green Lake”, “Scenery Line” and “Paradise Lost” made in 2004 are sentimental elegies for lost time, and they remind us of the poet-recluse Tao Yuanming’s sensibility expressed in his verse “the distant cloud had no intention to float out of the mountain side；even birds knew to return to the woods when they were tired”. Guo Peng continued using silver salt black and white photos with saw-tooth borders in these three groups of works, but added more reflection on time. These works are more emotional and show the artist’s transition from realistic criticism to poetic evocation. The ghost-like people and the intentionally antiquated colors of “Green Lake” express the artist’s grief and sadness.

2005 to 2006 was Guo Peng’s most productive period of making images. In his works “Residual Snow”, “Sleepwalking”, “Doll”, “The Vanishing Scenery” (2005), “Starting Dream”, “Earthquake”, “Beyond the Sky” and “Green Lake” (2006), reality and dreamland are interwoven. Here he is detached and peaceful, stepping between dream and reality. These pictures are able to narrate in interlineated and parallel space-time, creating complexity within homophony, like a vocal duet. In the series“Vanishing Scenery”, Guo Peng created a fantastic site where the narration itself becomes the soul of the art pieces. And in the series“Green Lake”, the scenery has a flavor of poetic realism and aesthetic serenity. “Green Lake“ becomes a channel for time to pass through, and through this channel Guo Peng reproduces the beautiful scenery and old tales of the actual Green Lake, the well-known landmark in Kunming, defamiliarizing the familiar. “Beyond the Sky” also changes our experience of watching, and surfaces the inner poetic flavor of ordinary things.
Such inner poetic flavor is the key to understanding Guo Peng’s works, especially these recent ones of trees, grasslands, rivers and fields. Departing from his concerns of 2003 and 2004, these new works focus on the texture of sunshine and air. Guo Peng has abandoned his critical attitude; the former abominator has changed into a discoverer who considers the nature as eternal existence, trying to find new energy and inspiration through it. So I feel today’s Guo Peng shares some similarities with impressionists such as Seurat. The difference is that Guo Peng’s way of describing nature is literary, cavalier， and indulgent, while Seurat’s method was scientific, serious and abstract.

Time is forever a theme of photo-based art, and Guo Peng always focuses on lost time in his art experiments. He is fascinated with making things by hand, catching subtle changes in light and considering the description of nature as dialogue. In this way, his works have surpassed the simple stage of instrumental progress and reached a higher poetic level. Guo Peng’s works actually stand on the opposite side of so-called new media. Ｗhat he cares about most is those basic things that have the closest relationship with art. Maybe this can explain why he gave up sculpture after five years of studying it. Art has nothing to do with the progress of media; Guo Peng is simply a devout and sharp “image-maker” in facing nature.

Lakeside of the Green Lake, April 25th, 2008
Translator :Zhou Qiao

本文中文阅读

万花筒里的奇异世界

罗菲

郭鹏在云艺就读期间(2001-2006)属于和我一样不务正业但又勤奋读书的一类，他的本分是学雕塑，但却伙着一帮实验艺术狂热青年上了当代艺术的贼船，蜻蜓点水地经历了从现场艺术到装置艺术到行为艺术逐渐到以摄影为主要创作方式的过程，在校期间积累了不少参与当代艺术实践的经验，这在当年的云南艺术院校的学生里十分鲜见。

他最早涉足摄影其实主要是他行为方案的一部分，以一寸老照片的样式记录街头情侣的幸福瞬间，然后回到家里在简陋的厨房改造成的暗房里洗出来，用隔夜茶染色、剪裁花边，摊在沙发上，完了就一张一张寄给当事人——很温情也很朴实。或许是在使用茶叶水染色的过程中回忆起一些儿时的素材吧——就是我们父辈年轻时曾经给自己的黑白照片染上各种花里胡哨的颜色，红得吐血的嘴唇和桃子一样的腮红至今给我留下很深的印象，那是中国上个世纪六七十年代的浪漫主义情怀在每个家庭里的样本，这样的方法也是在物质贫乏时代对色彩斑斓世界的刻意模仿与加工。彩色照片普及后人们便不再使用这种画蛇添足的方法了，数码摄影普及后人们完全可以在photoshop里对色彩和图像进行任意想像和撰改。手工染色的照片制作从此绝迹，却落在了80版艺术家郭鹏的怀里。

在2003年到2005年期间他用这种老掉牙的方法尝试过好些不同的当代题材，翻拍杂志封面美女、园林景观、城市广场、废墟、玩偶、电视屏幕里的京剧等等各式各样的信手拈来的图像，并给它们染上花里胡哨的怀旧与臆想交融的情调，这些巴掌小的袖珍照片被镶嵌在一本本老相册里，俨如家族的回忆，这类作品也被人们理解为艺术家沉溺于某种私密图象的快感之中。为了脱离这种越来越内向越来越小气的袖珍怀旧风格，2005年之后郭鹏开始尝试冲洗稍大的接近A4尺寸的银盐黑白照，这也是黑白照片在家庭环境里能冲洗的最大尺寸。并且在主题上也越来越多地关注中国园林景观中的水、倒影、莲、荷叶、假山石、树木，以及近期对光影的着迷，这样他也才渐渐明确了一种以手工染色黑白照片的工作方式来关注文人理想中的自然景观的个人方法与风格。

2005年至今的这些作品整体色彩风格和感觉都呈现出一种略带霉味的、绚丽斑驳的、亦真亦假的梦幻场景。在这个过程中郭鹏也在有限的画幅中尝试不同的形式探索，比如直接挪用老照片染色的初始理念，给黑白世界赋予相应的色彩。或者根据照片中的线与面分割出的区域填色，获得一种现代图案的意味。另一种是给整个照片划分出诗意般的波浪型色域。由于照片对多种纯色的依赖以及光影的效果，使得很多照片带有强烈的梦境般的眩晕感，如同万花筒里的奇异世界，如同一台巨大的投影仪从苍穹投射下绚丽的色彩。

从气质上说郭鹏是个安静善思考的人，他安静地满足于自己的居家生活，注重独处，有很好的生活习惯，近年写作与读书的兴致很浓，读书不是为人忙，如此佳境令我等忙碌之人羡煞不已。尽管如此，他却在思考为何中国文人可以堕落到玩弄蛐蛐那样的玩物丧志的境况当中。

我突然意识到昆明有好几个年轻艺术家都过着自给自足的文人生活，以极其俭朴的物质生活和平静的心境养着他们手里的艺术。他们没有放弃理想，也没有被市场的狂热所卷入，他们一点一滴地耕耘着自己的那点自留地。郭鹏也算其中一份子。

2008.4.10

Read English edition of this article

The Fantastic World of the Kaleidoscope

During his time at Yunnan Academy of Art (2001-2006), Guo Peng worked hard but ignored his proper duties at school, just like me. He majored in sculpture, but engaged in contemporary art with a group of feverish young experimental artists without looking back. From live art to installation art to performance art, Guo Peng explored different art forms, and gradually found his own way of creating photography-based work. He independently accumulated a lot of experience making art when he was still in school, a rare thing among those Yunnan art students.

His first foray into photography involved a kind of performance – recording couples’ happy moments with one-inch photos, developing those photos in his humble darkroom which was once his kitchen, coloring them with tea, trimming fancy borders, then drying them. When the photos were done, he sent them back to those couples. It was warm and sincere. Maybe in the process of coloring photos with tea, he recalled a childhood memory: our parent’s generation used to color their black and white photos, the impressive scarlet lips and expressed the romantic family sensibility of the 1960’s and 1970s, yearning for a colorful world in times of scantiness. After the popularization of the color photo, hand coloration was of course abandoned. And now people modify their digital images with Photoshop. Hand-colored photography is vanishing, but is re-used by Guo Peng, a post 80’s artist.

From 2003 to 2005, Guo Peng used this out of date method to work on different contemporary subject matters. He re-took pictures of cover girls, garden landscapes, city squares, ruins, puppets, Pecking Opera on the TV screen, and other images he happened upon, hand-coloring them, creating a nostalgic and wistful feeling. These pocket-size photos were kept in an old photo album, becoming the memory of the family. Such work seemed the result of indulging oneself in private images. Since 2005,in order to get rid of this nostalgic style, he started developing A4 size silver salt black and white photos, the biggest size one could develop at home. Here he focused on water, reflected images, lotuses, rockeries and trees, totally fascinated with certain delicate qualities of light. He gradually formed his own method and style evoking the literati’s ideal landscape through hand-colored black and white photos.

The diffuse and mottled colors in the dreamlike scenes of this series of works attract and confuse us at the same time: we can hardly tell it is true or fake. Guo Peng explored different possibilities within a limited space. For example, he borrowed the idea of coloring old pictures to awaken and decorate the black and white world; coloring a photo according to its original lines to create the feeling of modern design; or dividing the picture into wave-like color domains. These photographs give a sensation of a dizzying dreamland, just like the fantastic world of the kaleidoscope, like a huge projector casting gorgeous colors from the overarching sky.

Guo Peng is a quiet and thoughtful person. He enjoys his domestic life, has very healthy habits, and spends a lot of time meditating, reading and writing. He’s not slaving for anyone – I really envy such life condition. Recently, he’s been thinking about why Chinese literati sapped their spirit by playing crickets.

Suddenly I realized there are quite a few young Kunming artists who are living independent lives. They haven’t given up their dreams, they haven’t gotten caught up in the market, and they just cultivate their art with plain living and a peaceful mood. Guo Peng is a special one among them.

Luo Fei 2008.4.10
Translator :Zhou qiao

本文中文阅读

I Don’t Think I’m Making So-Called New Media Art
–Guo Peng Interview

Time: April 5, 2008
Location: Guo Peng’s apartment
Translator :Zhou qiao

In our conversation, Guo Peng says it was a natural process for his generation to accept and to use “new media” to express themselves, because the environment was already like this when they were born. But instead of researching new media, he cares more about expressing himself well. And he thinks our cognitive system is going backwards because of the overflow of images in industrial civilization.
He thinks that method is important for an artist， providing new access and a different point of view are even more important than just using a new medium. Ｈe also thinks this new access is based on raising our eyes to think about lofty things. It depends on artists’ individual characteristics as well – this is the difference between art and philosophy.

Guan Yuda (Guan for short): The day before yesterday you came to my studio, showed me a lot of your works. I was familiar with some of them, but it was my first time to see those ones with mosaics. They looked like the glass windows in the church, and the light felt like penetrating sunshine. I remembered that Li Ji introduced you to me in 2004, and then we did your first exhibition “Picture Description”, eight artists were concerned in, right?

Guo Peng (Guo for short): Right.

Guan: Including two German artists. We had a lot to discuss and recorded what we said. At that time, all I could think of were Qiu Zhijie and Zheng Guogu when it came to new media images. They were the first Chinese artists who were into it. Once five years ago, I talked to Zheng Guogu on the phone about images; he said “images are overabundant in today’s art world”. Yes, since human civilization came into “Postmodern Times” or so called “Post-Industrial Civilization Times”, the media of expression have changed a lot. For example, the easel painting mode is in crisis of being replaced by new media mode. All the people who were in “Picture Description” were post 80’s artists, and what you were familiar with was new media without its historical context such as computers and TV. These media were not hard for you to use, and you could use them to express and to create immediately. But for me, for post 60’s people, words were the main method of expression, not because I majored in Chinese, but writing was the simplest way to express ourselves. Of course there were some superficial hand drawings; just like the basic descriptive pictures we made in primary school. So when I set about organizing the exhibition “Picture Description”, I felt maybe post 80’s artists were going to change the art world of image. Let’s look back on this.

Guo: I think the overflow and the popularization of picture are results of the industrial revolution. We can’t avoid it. The environment was already like this when we were born, whether we wanted it or not, we had to take advantage of it. Like Fan Kuan, Chinese painting was the only route he could take, what else could he do, make films? So, it was simply a natural process. When I was young, I often played with my cousins whose parents owned a huge photo studio with three floors. We used to play hide-and-seek in the dressing room, storage room and dark room, quite fun. Then they closed the photo studio and opened a restaurant, so they gave me most of that equipment. I was born in that environment, so I naturally got into photos. First, you were interested in taking photos; gradually you were interested in the “photography language” or “image language”. For me, I focused more on how to express myself well than on researching a new medium. I mean, I got to know this medium, and I could use it smoothly to express myself, that’s the point. I don’t know what other media I will use in the future, nor what forms my work may take, but for an artist, providing a new access and a different point of view is more important than just using a new medium.

Guan: Yes, as a post 80’s artist, what you learned in school actually had little connection with the medium you are using. I mean, still a certain connection but not much. You majored in sculpture, which was related to space too, so why did you give up what you learned for five years?

Guo: Once in Chen Changwei’s class, I was supposed to make reliefs but I didn’t do it. He asked me why, I said “mud is too dirty, I don’t want to touch it”, and then he said “alright, go out, and you don’t have to attend in my class anymore.” I did get out, but I was among top 5 every semester according to school’s scoring system. I can make sculpture but I can’t say I’m familiar with its language, and I’m not quite interested in it yet. Maybe I will go back to make sculptures in the future, who knows?

Guan: Alright. For your generation, new media were as natural as the strip pictures or writings based on picture descriptions in our time. Pictures were not the main thing; they were used to assist us in talking and writing. But for your generation which was born in the time of new media, pictures have become the main stream thing. Taking my daughter Shuangshuang as an example, her first foray into “Three Kingdoms” was through computer game, and later through a Japanese animation. Reading the book “Three Kingdoms” was the last step. It was a reversed process. “The Transformation of Media” as a basic methodology of post-modernism was brought up by Marshall Mcluhan. He considered words as “Cold Media” while pictures as “Hot Media”. The key feature of “Hot Media” is the speed of its dissemination. For example, a picture of a smoking man means male toilet, and a picture of a woman with high-heel shoes means female toilet. You don’t need to see the words. For our post 60’s people, we do need some time to adapt to the transformation. What about you? Did you use it comfortably and proficiently at the beginning? Because as I remembered, you didn’t start your career with new media, did you?

Guo: So-called “Transformation of Media” was not what Chinese people were good at, and it was not what traditional literati cared about. I’m not saying I’m among those literati, I mean, take Chinese painting as an example, we’ve been playing with it for so long, but we’re still not finished. Chinese people are not good at playing games of transformation; in fact, we just take things as they come. I have this tool so I make the best of it. Also, I think we can’t judge new media according to media progressivism.

Guan: That’s right. I discussed this topic with Wang Jiwei when I was organizing the China-Germany new media art activity in Beijing.

Guo: I mean, it’s not saying images are superior to paintings.

Guan: It’s just a way you chose to express yourself, and it doesn’t have anything to do with being avant-garde or not.

Guo: I think it offered us more access to expression, that’s all.

Guan: Just an easy way to show our feelings and imaginations.

Guo: Since photography, video, DV, digital TV，on-line broadcasting, uploading and downloading are getting more and more popular, to a certain extent, our cognitive system is going backwards. Everything becomes clear at a glance, so we’re losing our imagination.

Guan: I understand.

Guo: After reading a poem, I can look up at the sky, imagining what’s going on; the same Gu Qin melody can be performed in different ways because each player has his own understanding of the notation. But in our time of picture, there’s no poetic language, and we’re losing our own languages, our imagination and creativity.

Guan: Ok, I see. We’ve discussed a lot about this topic this noon in my studio. Whether computer or new media, it’s all about speed and storage amount. To be honest, all your photo-based art pieces actually have nothing to do with so-called new media.

Guo: I’ve never considered myself as a photographer, let alone new media artist.

Guan: Alright.

Guo: I don’t think this is important. It’s neither a matter of east and west, nor a matter of traditional media and new media. This is not the problem artists are supposed to deal with.

Guan: Yes. Like computer images, any student can do very well as long as he’s familiar with drawing software. He just needs to manipulate computer and software without mobilizing much of his imagination.

Guo: Yes, it’s not what artists care about.

Guan: So, what do you care about?

Guo: According to my knowledge and experience, I care about some kind of culminating thing. Artists should raise their eyes and try to think about that culminating question.

Guan: Alright.

Guo: I mean, starting from human being itself to higher levels, like faith.

Guan: But before you can clear up the relation between faith and human being, you have to face the physical body.

Guo: I mean to start from our bodies. First of all, you have to make sure you can keep alive, like the old saying “Well fed, well bred”. I need to solve this first. Yes, living for the sake of living is not enough, I believe there’s certain mysterious power above us, but I don’t know what it is.

Guan: I don’t know either, let’s search for it together.

Guo: Also, what makes life so meaningful and interesting is the process of exploration and pursuing learning.

Guan: Alright, you have answered the question I brought up just now.