2012年末，孙尧的作品被特别选入“光与影”展中，这次展览由三部分构成，展出了中国四位杰出当代艺术家的作品。展览以绘画的艺术领域为线索，以独立的具象作品为起点，以冷抽象领域为终点。展览中，孙尧的作品具有核心作用：在阐释纯粹的抽象世界的同时，仍然保留着具象和陈述的重要元素。

　　“光与影”展是上海美术馆在地标性的人民广场举办的最后一次展览。作为曾经上海赛马场的奢华俱乐部，这一地标性建筑近年来已经成为许多名词的纪念碑，包括现代性、希望、堕落，甚至绝望。最近，它举办了中国当代艺术中一些极为重要、有影响力的展览。将孙尧的作品包含在这最后一次展览中是极具意义的，正如我们后面会看到的，恰是因为这里，孙尧的创作才在这独特的上海故事中占有一席之地。

　　光影对比是所有画家的基本素材，这一点在孙尧展示精神世界的漩涡般油画作品中尤为明显。油彩在画布上的体现可以是极具表现力的，甚至是身体上的即兴行为，画家的手和身体(延伸至精神)在表面的层层痕迹中清晰可见。通过画家的这种肢体能量，孙尧不断传达自身和内心世界。在这个世界中，艺术家通过犀利油彩的流动创造出非凡的色彩漩涡。其中一些图像和蒙面的神秘人脸结合起来，它们有时是黑夜的星群，有时是胎儿的轮廓。在其他作品中，它们又是夏天薄床单下狂喜的瞬间(亦或是愤怒的瞬间?)，而有时，这些床单又暗示着死亡的寿衣。

　　所选画作共同形成了体现人类各种体验的链条，这些体验在内在空间中如幽灵一般。从西方艺术的角度来看，这些复杂而宏伟的场景会令人想起18世纪的“崇高”美学，想起卡斯帕·大卫·弗里德利希令人敬畏的风景画，想起JMW·特纳模糊的海洋和天空，甚至令人想起威廉·布莱克奇特的精神寓言。

　　然而孙尧是一个地道的上海画家，他将家乡上海的独特传统融入到作品中。孙尧生于1974年，毕业于中国美术学院油画系，在中国美术学院绘画专业获得博士学位。自19世纪初，上海，或者说是中国东部沿海地区，一直都是中国与西方交流的前沿阵地，有着独特的国际现代性。在视觉艺术里，这一点也体现在油彩和纸墨的碰撞中。

　　作为一名中国艺术家，孙尧在油画这一源自西方的媒介上的造诣毋庸置疑。但是，带着鲜明的上海特色，他的作品更多是致力于中国传统绘画的美学体验，而并非对传统绘画的普遍认识。当西方艺术在发展过程中形成清晰的流派划分时，中国传统绘画似乎不自觉地在同一时间走向自然主义、抽象主义和表现主义。对中国的风景画画家而言，作品最终应是艺术家精神观察的真实体现，而这在对材料的极致运用中得到体现。

　　就这些而言，孙尧在其非凡的布上油画作品中都做到了，他展示了纯粹的西方情感抽象，同时又在讲述令人困扰的精神世界——充分体现其迷人个性的精神世界。

　　2012年12月

　　In late 2012，the work of Sun Yao was specially selected to show in Light and Shadow，a three-part exhibition featuring the work of four established contemporary painters from China. The exhibition charted a journey across the artistic terrain of painting; starting with a disjointed kind of representational work and finalizing in a world of cool abstraction. In this exhibition Sun’s work occupied a key position – that of illustrating the moment of venturing towards a purely abstract world while still retaining important elements of representation and narrative.

　　Light and Shadow was the very last exhibition to be held by the Shanghai Art Museum in its iconic People’s Square location. Once Shanghai racecourse’s luxurious clubhouse，this landmark building has stood as a monument to many things over the years including Modernity，hope，decadence and even despair. During its incarnation as a gallery it launched some of the most important and influential exhibitions of contemporary art to be held in China. The inclusion of Sun Yao’s work in this final exhibition was important，as we shall see later，precisely due to the place that his painting practice holds in this peculiarly Shanghai story.

　　The phenomena of light contrasting with shadow is the most basic sustenance for any artist working with paint，and none more so than Sun Yao in his extraordinary swirling mindscape oil works that are reproduced here. The application of paint onto canvas can be an expressive，even physical，act of spontaneity in which the hand and body(and by extension the mind)of the painter all become visible in the layered marks left across the surface. Sun Yao consistently reveals himself and his internal world through this painterly gestural energy. This is a world in which the artist mobilizes the truculent medium of paint to generate extraordinary whirling vortexes of colour. Some of these images coalesce into mysterious shrouded human faces. Sometimes they appear as night constellations and at other times as fetal scans. In other works they suggest moments of ecstasy(or perhaps agony?)under thin summer sheets. At other times these sheets come to suggest death shrouds.

　　Together the selected paintings form a sequence displaying the range of human experience that are ghostlike in a volume of internal space.

　　From a western perspective these intricate yet grandiose scenes call to mind the dramatic works of the 18th century Sublime，of Caspar David Friedrich’s awe-filled landscapes，of JMW Turner’s indistinct seas and skies，or even William Blake’s strange spiritual allegories.

　　Yet Sun Yao is a particularly Shanghainese artist and he brings the unique perspective of the tradition of his native city to his work. Born in 1974，he studied painting at China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou，and completing his doctorate there. From the early 19th century this city of Shanghai，and indeed the sophisticated east China coastal region，was at the forefront of China’s encounter with the West and with an international Modernity. This including in the visual arts where oil and canvas seemed to challenge ink and paper.

　　As a Chinese artist Sun Yao’s mastery of the medium of the originally western medium of oil painting is indisputable. Yet，in a way entirely characteristic of Shanghai，his oeuvre owes more to aesthetic experience of traditional Chinese painting than generally recognized. While Western art history created distinct and compartmentalized schools，traditional Chinese painting tended simultaneously to encompass the principals of naturalism，abstraction and expressionism all at the same time. For the Chinese landscape painter the work is ultimately a true rendition of what is perceived in the artist’s own mind’s eye. And this mediated by an extreme kind of mastery of the materials used.

　　This is precisely what Sun Yao achieves in his extraordinary oil on canvas works. He straddles a world of pure western emotional abstraction，which is at the same time narrating sometimes troubling，internal mindscapes. Mindscapes that are surely reflections of his own fascinating personal landscape.

　　December 2012