“概括的 · 抽象的——丁乙作品展”是艺术家丁乙近几年来作品的集中展示。作为中国最具实验性的绘画艺术家之一—丁乙，自1980年代起，以“十”这个符号创立自己的绘画风格并持续着不断的绘画实验和探索。此展是艺术家绘画思考过程的展示;是艺术家对自己以往艺术活动的回顾和反思;更是一次关于自己创作和生活的未来“策展”。

　　就艺术家而言，也许想做、所要做的，就是对现实、对生命自身所处现实的不断探讨。他们工作是在混乱的现实和精神世界的重重迷雾中的不断发现和实验，而非找到结论。艺术家经历许多精神历险，真切体验所发生的事件，与外部宏阔世界进行交流。艺术家独自、无声的“战斗”是对现实的突围——通过工作和写作对周遭世界进行认知和行动。

　　丁乙选择了一条独自前行的创作道路。

　　艺术行动总在某种语境中展开。 丁乙以自己的方式质疑现存的世界，通过图像和绘画空间表明自己的态度。1980年代，丁乙开始学习和进行艺术创作。当时，愤懑与孤独的文化情绪弥漫于绘画语言之中。政治波普、乡土等绘画风格将精神的对抗性带进对记忆、革命、精神等问题的追问和书写。语言上不断递增带来情感泛滥。丁乙等一些艺术家认为这样的情绪会伤害艺术自身，使绘画的表达容器不堪忍受语言的臃肿。丁乙开始思考如何确立一种远离这种情绪的精神自立，意欲选择独自在一个待读的范畴里思考绘画、思考艺术，并确定自己的方向。对此选择，丁乙曾在一次访谈中说道：“我的画从1980年到1987年受到过很多方面的影响: 从最早期的西方写实主义到后来的塞尚，到现代主义早期，现代主义中期，1986年我还做了行为艺术，所以有明显的各种西方现代文化的影响。同时间，我还在经受着中国传统文化的洗礼，因为我当时是上海大学美术学院中国画系的学生。这两条线弄得我觉得压力很大。太复杂了，所以我寻求简单。我当时有个想法就是既要清除所有西方现代主义的影响，又要抛弃中国绘画或所谓传统文化的影响。我提出了‘让画没有意义’这样一个观念。”i 恰在1980年代中期，丁乙找到了印刷中经常使用的确认套色准确的坐标式精确细线——“十”字形，他决定选择了“十”作为自己画面的唯一元素，“使绘画仅仅回到形式的本质。形式即精神”ii。“那时我思考两个问题：一是对流行的表现形式进行突破的问题，另一个是对内心的能量进行转换的问题”iii。“突破的可能性就是把艺术做得不像艺术，过滤掉所有的技巧、叙事性和绘画性。在工作中最熟悉的印刷标识‘十’形坐标线于是成为我的符号。人们常问我它的含义是什么，其实在我的画里它没有含义”iv。1988年，丁乙的第一张作品完成，这是一张用黄、红、蓝为主色调，并交织着黑色的“十”字绘画作品。此后二十多年，丁乙就一直画“十”字，他的每一张作品画面都是众多“十”字组合并成为一个长久的绘画过程。对于艺术家，这其中要思考的要义又在哪里?一个绘画艺术家怎样抵御表现欲的诱惑，将绘画变成一种似乎是可以利用各种工具和绘画技术的“绘图”过程，变成将个人痕迹不断加入，又不断清除和消解的经历，变成对于画面意义的极力抗拒。这里的精神谱系是什么?当然，我们可以看到，这与西方精神中个人意志的张扬和自我力量认知中产生的肯定性有关;也看到，丁乙绘画中的“十”字与“十”字符号在历史命运中承载的意义相关，这个强大的谱系对于艺术家的写作有着稳定的约定与支持。我们也从丁乙的绘画中观察到，在对于绘画的思考中，丁乙想讨论和表现的不是事物的外表，而是外表所投射的内容：这个内容也可以由于不断的描绘而使其背后充满悬疑与隐喻;至于内容的具体性，则在逐渐和缓慢地消失，浓缩为不可言说的一部分。这里，绘画语言主体似乎显示矛盾性。艺术家长期“书写”十字内容的背后，什么样的信息被显露出来?简洁迅速的绘画过程是否也蕴含着思想的迟疑与游走?这不仅是绘画语言带来的，而是一种叙事时间给绘画带来的反思，仿佛书写一个冗长故事，在书写的时间里，核心密码已渐渐缺失。这样的精神游走，使丁乙的艺术不断逃离绘画定义的围剿，保持着鲜活的生命感。

　　在长期的绘画过程中，丁乙重视时间流逝和体验中的身体光晕。他始终坚持依靠自己的一笔一画手绘作品。20多年的时间里，他不断推敲和建构“十”字。这样，在丁乙的绘画中，就有了一个相对完整的线性时间和长期“不变”的姿态。 从最早的垂直线条和水平线条的相交开始到有了不同组合的“十”字，丁乙给予“十”以不同状态下的动姿和形状。他在不同的媒介上进行实验：从最早的硬纸板到后来的画布，从现成的苏格兰格子布料到其他材料的使用。在颜色的选择和使用上：从早期的单色、几种颜色到将一种颜色与不同的色调布面的相配的组合。丁乙也故意将“书写”不停打断和停顿。时间随之断开成碎片，创作的节奏使他的绘画似乎布满不安的思虑，甚至呈现出一些危机饱含(着)的存在。 1990年代后期，丁乙又将创作与对于城市的深刻变化的体验和情绪交织在一起。

　　在丁乙的艺术活动中，何种问题会常萦绕其心并支持着其绘画行动?如果说艺术家对图形的体验是绘画的初衷，丁乙的工作则将其进一步推进到更远的境界。被描绘的“十”，这个被丁乙描绘了成千上万次的图像背后，是否有未道出的真相?这里要提出的问题是：这个绘画的工作怎样成了一个艺术家思考世界和进行行动的精神的锚定处。“十”是最简单的符号。它是通向不同方向的起点，是思维及各种运动交会的一刻，是宗教、哲学、世界的重要交会处，是最简单又最复杂的现实。它对一个艺术家意味着什么?一个艺术家对它进行反复不断地描画。这个弱化语言主体的过程，恰又让这个图像“十”字从图像历史的重重雾障中平静地突围而出。因此，丁乙绘画的当代感就建立在这个图像的削减与隐退的层面上，建立在叙述主体的不在场，中心视点的缺失，甚至故意模糊的主题带来的所谓知识性与历史感“离场”的不安上。这种复杂性与单纯、单一的图形一同构成了一个似乎没有说完也不知如何去说完的图像世界。

　　作为绘画艺术家，丁乙就是在这个绘画过程中创造出了一种绘画的深度和难度： 两个最简单符号相交的深度和抽象性构成的编码始终身处于一个众音纷呈的现实，符号的内在组合与参照整体又与一种同形的精神构图相契，图像自身通过编码和程序产生了一种制作能力。丁乙做出了自己的创造，并将绘画作为对自己的考验。

　　i“我就是要摆脱主题——丁乙访谈”，喻干，2011年5月，上海丁乙工作室。

　　ii“十的魔术师：丁乙访谈”，曹维君，ARTLINKART。

　　iii 同上。

　　iv“图像·历史·存在——泰康15周年艺术品收藏展”，2011，中国美术馆。

　　郭晓彦，民生现代美术馆副馆长，民生当代艺术研究中心首席运营官，《概括的·抽象的》丁乙作品展策展人。

　　The "Specific · Abstracted--Ding Yi Solo Exhibition" will be an important show of the artist Ding Yi . As one of the most representative experimental artists of China，Ding established his own style with the symbol "十"(cross) from 1980s onward and continued his experiment and exploration from then on. This show is his own meditation on painting and a retrospection as well as reflection on his own long-term activity at this moment. Moreover，it is also a "curatorship" for his future art creation and life.

　　For an artist，what he wants to do and would like to do is constant meditation on and exploration of reality where our life exists. They are making discovery and experiment in the chaotic reality and the spiritual world，rather than pursuing any conclusion. An artist should experience spiritual adventure and the reality and communicate with the world. All these independent and silent “battles” are regarded as a kind of breaking through the reality.

　　In 1988 when Ding Yi created his first piece of “十” work，he chose a way of art to go forward alone.

　　Any artistic activity is based on context. As an artist，the earliest creation established by Ding Yi not only represented personally in questioning the world，but also，in processing image and space，Ding required himself a kind of self-centered attitude. In 1980s，Ding Yi began to study and create artworks. With painting language as an exit，most artists expressed their anger and sentiment at that time. They took their spiritual antagonism together with political pop and local painting into the pursuit and writing of questions about memory，revolution，spirit and others; thus emotional fountainhead were always brought onto the stage along with increasing language of this kind. Artists like Ding Yi thought that such a sentiment would do harm to art itself and make the language too overstaffed for the expression capability of painting. Ding Yi began to ponder on how to establish a kind of spiritual independence keeping certain distance from this kind of mood. He would like to think about painting and art in a category to be read by himself. Ding Yi once talked about the choice in an interview: “I was influenced by many schools from 1980 to 1987 in painting: from the earliest western Realism to later the art of Cezanne，then to arts of the early and middle periods of Modernism; in 1986 I also did performance art. Therefore，obvious influence from all kinds of western modern cultures could be seen on my paintings. Meanwhile，I was also baptized by Chinese traditional culture. I was a student in the Chinese traditional painting department of Shanghai University Fine Arts School. This two lines made me feel puzzled and I was under great pressure. So I chose to pursue simplicity. At that time，I hoped to eliminate all influence from both western Modernism and Chinese traditional painting，or in another word the so called traditional culture in my art. I proposed a concept of ‘make painting meaningless’. ” i It was in mid-1980s when Ding Yi got the co-ordinate-type delicate cross which was often used in printing to confirm that colors are precise——the “十” symbol. Then he decided to choose the “十” symbol as his only element in painting in order to “return painting to the essence of form——form is spirit” ii. “Then I was thinking about two questions: One was how to break through popular expressive form，one was how to transform internal energy”.iii “The possibility to break through was to make art be unlike art by abandoning skill，narrativity and painting quality. The most familiar symbol ‘十’ in printing industry therefore became my own symbol. People always ask me about its meaning，yet actually it has no meaning at all in my painting”. iv In 1988，Ding Yi finished his first piece which was a painting with yellow，red and blue as its main tone interwoven with black “十”. From then on，Ding Yi has always been sticking to his painting of “十” for two more decades long and every piece of his artworks is a combination of many “十”symbols created with a very long painting process. For an artist，where lies the critical point he needs to ponder on in them? How could a painter resist the temptation of performance desire and change painting into a kind of “drawing” process using various tools and skills which are the experience with personal traces added into，then eliminated and deconstructed again and again? This is actually a really big fight against the significance of picture，so what’s the spiritual pedigree in it? Of course we could see that this is certainly related with promotion of personal will in western spirit and certainty produced in cognition of ego-strength; moreover we could also see that the “十” in Ding Yi’s painting is associated with the significance in the historical fate of this “十” symbol，which is a strong pedigree that could provide steady support and reference for the writing of the artist. Yet we also observed in Ding Yi’s painting that，in his meditation on painting，what Ding Yi hopes to discuss and represent is not the appearance of thing but the content reflected by appearance: this content could also arouse suspense and metaphor through constant depiction; as to the concreteness of content，it is disappearing gradually and slowly and would finally become a indescribable part. Here，the main-body of painting language seemed to have brought about contradictoriness: what kind of information is revealed by the artist’s long-term “writing” of cross symbol? Does such kind of concise and fast drawing process also contain hesitancy and uncertainty of thought? This is a reflection brought about not only by painting language，but also by narrative time，which is as if writing a long-winded story when core code has gradually been lost; such spiritual wandering has allowed Ding Yi’s art to escape from the “annihilation” of painting definition and keep on living.

　　During the long-term painting process，Ding Yi attached great importance to the lapse of time and the aura of personal experiences，he always insist in working stroke by stroke and finish all his artworks by himself. In more than 20 years，he has been constantly polishing and constructing the “十” symbol. Thus in Ding Yi’s painting，a comparatively complete time line and “never change” posture is established. From the very beginning when horizontal lines and vertical lines are crossed to later when different combinations appeared to construct the “十”，Ding Yi bestowed these crosses with different postures and shapes in different situation. He did experimentations on different media vehicles from hard paper board used in early period to later the canvas，from ready-made Scottish plaid to other materials; while in color，he tried single color in early years and then many colors together，later he also tried the combination of color tones of paint and the cloth. Ding Yi also intentionally interrupt and pause the “writing”，thus time follows to be broken into fragments; such a rhythm fills his painting with some restless thoughts and even represents some existence of crisis. From late 1990’s onward，Ding Yi made further combination of his creation with the experiences and mood brought about by the profound changes in city.

　　What questions would always be in Ding Yi’s heart on his way ahead and support his painting? If we say that artists’ experiences of picture are their original intention in painting，then Ding Yi’s work has pushed it many steps forward. During the process drawing “十”，is there any unvoiced truth behind it which has been depicted by Ding Yi for so many years and hundreds of thousands times，and could fix the movement，facial expression and posture of a certain moment along with the rhythm of brushstrokes? Here the question is: how did painting become the place to anchor for an artist to think about the world and get his spirit to act. The simplest symbol “十” of this world is a point directing at different directions and the point where thoughts and all behaviors get crossed; it is also the simplest as well as the most complicated reality where religion，philosophy and the world get crossed. What does it mean to an artist? This artist draws it repeatedly and unceasingly; such a process which weakened the main body of language could just make this image of “cross” peacefully breakthrough the layer upon layers of fog in history . Therefore，the contemporaneity of Ding Yi’s painting has been established on the level that decrease and cover this image，where the narrative subject is absent and the center viewpoint is lost; it is even intentionally established on the upset mood aroused by the “absence” of knowledge and historical sense when subjects are vague. The complexity and the pure and single icon constituted an image world together which seems not to have been represented completely and no one knows how to finish representing it.

　　As a painting artist，Ding Yi created a kind of depth and hardness in the painting process: the code constructed by the depth and abstractness when two simplest symbols are crossed is always in a chaotic reality while the inner combination and reference of symbol is in accord with a kind of spiritual composition of the same shape. Through coding and processing，image produced a kind of producing capability of its own——painting is finally constructed by Ding Yi to be a creation and test of all his life.

　　i "I'm Supposed to Get Rid of Subject——An Interview with Ding Yi "，by Yu Gan，May 2011，at Ding Yi Studio in Shanghai

　　ii "A Magician of Cross: An Interview with Ding Yi"，by Cao Weijun，ARTLINKART

　　iii Ibid.

　　iv "Image·History·Existence——Taikang Life Art Collection 15th Anniversary Exhibition"，2011，NAMOC (National Art Museum of China)

　　Guo Xiaoyan，Vice-Director of Minsheng Art Museum; CEO of the The Institute; Curator of Specific·Abstracted，Ding Yi Solo Exhibition.