王凯凡
脖子上的红斑是蚊子咬的吗？
GNYP 画廊
2023年8月26日 – 9月24日
Tamara Beheydt / 作者
王凯凡工作室 / 翻译
年轻艺术家王凯凡将在安特卫普 GNYP 画廊的新空间举办他在比利时的首次个展。展览将展示他在画廊楼上工作室驻留期间创作的许多作品，其中包含了一系列比以往更大尺幅的画布作品。除了以往擅长的绘画方式外，他还需要有意识地挑战身体与画布之间的关系。为了创作画布上半部分的内容，他必须跳跃起来才能达到。这种身体的理性控制和感性表达使作品具有了偶然性，也呈现了一种富有生命力的动感。
王凯凡在他起伏的抽象绘画中主要使用海绵和固体油画颜料。在新冠期间，他观察到许多柏林的留学生被迫回到了家乡，或者无法再次回到柏林。他们不得不把一些生活物品留下或在网络上转卖，其中包括床垫。凯凡收集了这些床垫，将它们剪开制作成了绘画工具，于是床垫解构变成了基础材料-海绵。在之前的作品中，床垫（或者海绵）也以另一种方式保持着存在感：在与绘画进行对话的雕塑装置中。
王凯凡继续沿用和解构二手床垫作为装置材料，因为它们带有人的痕迹：可以是人身体留下的可见疤痕印记和破损，也可以是不可见的 DNA 残留物。它们是亲密关系的载体，是家中大小事的见证者。这种感性的暗示也体现在展览的标题中：脖子上的红斑是蚊子咬的吗？如果这个斑点不是蚊子咬的，而是吻痕呢？这个抽象、模糊的免疫学斑点或身体的破损也可能是人体之间亲密关系的标志。
如果标题确实指的是蚊虫的叮咬，那么它也暗示了一种内外关系：来自外部的物质会引起身体的过敏反应，从而对我们的皮肤产生影响。同时，床垫也是这一特殊社群特征的外部信号 – 特别是生活在不同社区和文化之间的人们。王凯凡通过剥离床垫，只展示床的弹簧，将这种内外的二元性明确化。弹簧的内在张力和运动也反映在了绘画的动态中。
不同矿物和质地的颜料在画布上层层叠加的方式，暗示了王的艺术史灵感来源：这不仅让人联想到中世纪壁画的构造方式，也让人联想到它们现在是如何被层层复原的。透过数百年来风雨侵蚀和人为破坏（通过触摸，甚至只是呼吸），原画的残留碎片清晰可见，因此，这面墙将几段过去与现在融为一体。
在他仍年轻的绘画生涯中，王已经从更多自传性作品过渡到了普遍抽象的绘画，对观众的解读具有极大的开放性。他的绘画在人体与自然之间流动、在透明的边界上展开，揭示了两者的局限性和复杂性。《振动的空气》、《我在草地上打了个喷嚏》、《烟尘中的低语》和《躁动的草地》等画作的标题都提到了身体与自然之间的关系，它们还有一个重要的统一因素：风。
风是大自然的力量，也是各种短暂信息的载体：从语言到叹息，从声音到气味，还有我们的呼吸。风也能造成破坏。即使表面上风平浪静，但作为花粉、昆虫、疾病和感染的传播者，它也会给人带来麻烦。西方医学之父 希波克拉底（Hippocrates）曾写道，西风会使人生病，而法国启蒙思想家 伏尔泰（Voltaire）则认为，东风会使人忧郁，甚至自杀。在《丘比特与赛琪》（Cupid and Psyche）的神话中，仄费罗斯（Zephyrus）是西风的预兆，他将赛琪带到爱神的城堡，使这对恋人结合在一起。在另一个神话故事中，阿波罗（Apollo）和仄费罗斯都爱上了年轻的凡人雅辛托斯（Hyacinthus），但雅辛托斯更喜欢阿波罗。仄费罗斯因嫉妒而使铁饼突然改变方向，从而导致了雅辛托斯的死亡。风可以温柔、慈爱，但也可以刺骨、飘忽、致命。
纵观艺术史，风的表现手法千变万化，从文艺复兴时期脸颊鼓起的吹风形象，到波普艺术里空中的单点或卷曲。王凯凡并没有把风作为一种表现形式，但他的画作却充满了类似的开放性和灵感。风通过皮肤和呼吸触及我们的精神和身体状态。或许这些起伏的抽象形式也会让我们起鸡皮疙瘩。它们就像风本身一样，让人身临其境、变幻莫测：它们带着记忆的模糊画面、呼吸的脆弱能量和风暴的坚定力量。
2023年8月，安特卫普
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Tamara Beheydt 是一位艺术史学家和自由艺术撰稿人。她是《H ART》杂志的核心编辑之一，并经常为《Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen》和《De Tijd》等其他书面媒体撰稿。她还为艺术家撰写展览文稿或作品集文稿，并在小组对话、讲座或艺术家座谈会上发表演讲。出于对当代艺术和对人类社会价值的兴趣和信念，她致力于为艺术论述提供支持平台，并对文化领域的发展保持批判性的关注。
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The young artist Kaifan Wang presents his first solo exhibition in Belgium at GNYP Gallery’s new venue in Antwerp. He created many of the works during a residency in the atelier above the gallery space. His canvases are larger than ever. Operating within the medium that he masters, he consciously challenges the relationship between his body and the canvas. He has to jump up to reach the upper parts of the canvas: he flirts with the limits of what is reachable for his body. In this way, a small degree of chance enters the work, but above all an energetic movement.
Kaifan Wang applies the paint for his abstract undulating forms with sponges and oil pastels. During the Corona crisis, he saw many students from the Chinese community in Berlin, where Wang lives and works, move back home. They left some of their belongings behind, among them their mattresses. He took them over, cut them open and turned them into painting tools so the mattress fabric evolved into sponges. The mattresses have remained present also in another way: in sculptural installations that engage in a dialogue with the paintings.
Because the mattresses have been used, they carry the traces of people; visible, as a possible imprint of the body, and invisible in DNA residues. They are carriers of intimacy, of things that happen at home. That suggestion of sensuality also resides in the questioning title of the exhibition: Is the spot on the neck bitten by mosquitoes? What if that spot is not a mosquito bite, but a hickey? That abstract, vague spot could also be a sign of a very intimate relationship between human bodies.
However, the title also implies an inside-outside relationship in case it does refer to a mosquito bite: organisms from outside can cause an allergic reaction and thus have an impact on our skin. Also the mattresses signal an externality in this particular constellation – living between different communities and cultures. Kaifan Wang makes this duality between inside and outside explicit by stripping the mattresses and only showing the bed springs. The inherent tension and movement in the springs is reflected in the dynamics of the paintings.
The way the paint has been applied to his canvases, layered in different materials and textures, hints at Wang’s art historical inspiration sources; it is not only reminiscent of how medieval frescoes were constructed, but also how they are now being recovered in layers. Seeing through the damage of centuries of exposure to weather conditions and deterioration by human action (via touch or even just breathing), remaining fragments of the original paintings are visible and consequently, the wall unites several pasts in the present.
In his still young oeuvre, Wang has made a transition from more autobiographical work to the painting that is universally abstract, with a great openness to the viewer’s interpretation. More than before, his art of painting unfolds on the fluid, transparent boundary between an individual human body and nature, exposing the limitations and complexity of both. Titles such as Vibrating Air, I Sneezed on the Grass, Whispers in Soot, and Restless Meadow refer to the relationship between body and nature, but they also have an important unifying factor: the wind.
Wind is a force of nature and a carrier of variety of ephemera: from words to sighs, from sounds to smells and of our breathing. Wind can also cause devastation. Even in all its apparent softness, it can make things difficult for humans, as a transmitter of pollen, insects, disease and infection. Indeed, Hippocrates writes that the west wind can make people sick, while according to Voltaire, the east wind drives people to somberness and even suicide. In the myth of Eros and Psyche, Zephyrus, the west wind that is a harbinger of spring, is the one who transports Psyche to the enchanted castle of Eros, uniting the lovers. In another myth, both Apollo and Zephyrus fall in love with the young mortal Hyacinthus, but Hyacinthus is more attracted to Apollo. In a furious fit of jealousy, Zephyrus causes a discus to suddenly change direction, and is thus responsible for Hyacinthus’ death. The wind can be gentle and loving, but it can also be harsh, erratic and deadly.
Throughout art history, wind has been rendered in a huge variety of ways, from blowing personifications with bulging cheeks in the Renaissance to single dashes or curls in the air in pop art. Kaifan Wang does not represent wind as such but fills his paintings with a similar openness and inspiration. Wind touches our mental and physical state of being through the skin and breathing. Perhaps these undulating abstract forms also give us goosebumps. They are immersive and fickle like the wind itself: they carry the vagueness of memory, the fragile energy of a breath and the determined force of a storm.
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Tamara Beheydt is an art historian and a freelance art-writer. She is part of the core group of editors of H ART Magazine, and frequently publishes contributions for other written media such as Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen and De Tijd. She also writes exhibition texts or portfolio texts for artists, and occasionally acts as a public speaker during panel conversations, lectures, or artist talks. From an interest for and belief in the value of contemporary art for the human community, she commits to providing a supporting platform to artistic discourses and to maintain a critical overview of developments in the cultural field.
