民居——霁

　　二十多年来，水墨画家郑强走了一条不断探索、不断求变的艺术之路。上个世纪90年代初，他基本是以形式出新为宗旨，在《古都系列》等作品中，他努力将林风眠式的重彩技法与传统的线墨体系相结合，结果有效传达了一种崭新的视觉经验，也逐步形成了他个人较为鲜明的艺术风格。到了90年代中期，因受学术界关于“人文精神大讨论”的影响，他转而开始关注现代都市。在艺术表现上，他依然延续了以往的风格。但在内容上，则强调揭示无节制的物欲对人的异化以及工业化对人类天性的侵蚀。其作品表明：一方面，他从现实生活与大众文化中选取了许多青春的图像，另一方面又用超现实的手法加以艺术化处理。于是，在他的作品《都市系列》与《物与人系列》里，常常呈现出人与物，还有云或气相互转换的非常状态。应该说，这是艺术家对新生存经验的视觉化表现，非常有意义。在90年代后期，他的创作再次发生了重大的变化。出于从观念上深化他以往学术主题的想法，在创作《静观之图》系列时，他大胆挪用了传统医学书中的经络图，而且在其内部装进了人被物所埋没的虚拟图像，此外还加有条形码、电脑病毒等等现代符号，其目的是想将一向强调身体有病的传统医学符号转化为强调心理有病的现代社会学符号。据我所知，他的这一系列作品得到了广泛的好评，不仅参加了多个国内重要学术展览，还被不少学术刊物所介绍。

古都印象——之六

　　按常理思维，画家完全可以延着他新设计的艺术方案继续探索下去，人们也完全有理由相信，这位有着非凡实力的艺术家会在以往的基础上取得更佳成绩。令人不可思议的是，进入新世纪以后，他突然改变了既有想法，开始以更新的艺术方式进行创作。如果联系他的创作经历来看问题，我们似乎可以发现，他的新作与第二阶段的作品实际上有着一定的内在联系，那就是：既升华了他一向运用的绘画技法，又提升了他对消费时代少女的表现。但与第二阶段的作品不同，他画面中的少女不再呈现飘浮飞舞的形态，而且多是半身像。另外，与之相互穿插的也只有类似于云彩与气体的符号。于是，漂亮的美少女们，常常被弄成了碎片状，基本处在“散发”的状态，显得无所依归。不知他人感受如何，我认为，这在很大程度上象征了许多当代青年人的实际处境——虽美丽却空虚，因此它有利于相关观众将自身的经验带入读解，并领会物欲横流的现代“疾病”正在对青年一代造成多么大的危害。在这里，特别值得指出的是，在艺术表现上，艺术家已经有了很大的发展。为了使他的近作具有很强的历史性与文化身份，也为了发挥自身的优势，他还是坚持在水墨画内在的语言基础中寻求出路。首先，从“散发”的观念出发，他刻意突破了传统的办法，大胆将人物的脸部、手部混同衣纹、云气作完全相似的艺术处理，这也使画面特别整体，画上的笔势来得特别自然;其次，与上一点相关，画面上的客观对象常常被转化为极其有感染力的笔墨表现，这也在很大程度使作品具有极为抽象的意味;再其次，他画中的线条虽然多用中锋，但为了强调画面的整体效果，他大胆排斥了线条的微妙变化，使之融入了具体的块面中;最后，他将严谨的造型和自由的表现并用，具体地说，就是先用小写意的笔法勾勒，再用大写意的皴染法与工笔画的罩染法营造不同的层次，进而烘染出画面的整体气氛。其好处是，既有传统的继承，又有个人的独创;既是新视觉的表达，又有完美的艺术质量。这一切是他孜孜以求的理想，来得非常不容易，我想，所有的同行应该是可以从他画中感觉得到的。

　　是为序。

　　2010年10月26日于深圳前海家中

　　As an ink painter, Zheng Qiang has kept exploring and innovating in pursuit of art in the past twenty years. In the early 1990s, he basically focused on innovating new forms of painting. In Series of Old Capital, he tried hard to combine Lin Fengmian’s strong color painting with traditional technique of line and ink to create a completely new visual experience and gradually formed his marked personal style. In the middle 1990s, he turned his interest to modern city under the influence of the discussion about humanistic spirit in the academic circle. He continued his style in artistic expression, but emphasized in content the uncontrolled materialism, the harm it did to people and the erosion of human’s nature by industrialization. His works showed that, in one hand, he chose many young images from daily life and folk culture; on the other hand, he processed the images in a super realistic way. Therefore, we can see an abnormal status of mutual conversion between human and material, or even cloud and gas in his Series of Cities and Series of Material and Human. It is significant that he expresses new experience of existence visually. In the late 1990s, his creation changed again obviously. To deepen the concept of academic theme he focused on in the past, he boldly painted in Series of Watching Quietly channels and collaterals which are a part of traditional Chinese medicine, and added into them invented images depicting human figures submerged by material, and modern symbols including barcode and computer virus. His purpose was to transform the traditional medicine symbols emphasizing illness of human body into symbols of modern sociology emphasizing psychological illness. As far as I know, his works of this series, which were appraised highly, not only attended many major exhibitions in China, but introduced by many academic journals.
 

都市系列——寻找

　　Normally speaking, Zheng Qiang could completely keep exploring his new art plan, and people have enough reason to believe that he, an artist with real strength would make greater achievement on basis of his previous success. But what’s unbelievable is that, he suddenly changed his old ideas and began to create in a newer approach in the new century. If we look at the problem from the perspective of his experience of painting, we are likely to find that there exists a certain link between his new works and the works created in phase II: his consistent painting techniques are developed and his expression of young girls in the consumption age are improved. What the girls are different with those he painted in phase II is that, they are not floating and dancing in the sky and mot of the girls are half portraits. Besides, only symbols similar to cloud and gas intersperse in the images. Therefore, the images of beautiful girls are often in fractions and emanation and seem in a limbo. Whatever others feel, I believe that his works to a large extent disclose the factual situation which many young people confront with in the modern age – beautiful but empty. So, related audience having their own experiences could easily appreciate his works, and understand the harm on the young generation done by modern illness of chasing material desire. It is especially important to point out that Zheng Qiang has made great improvement in artistic expression. To make his new works historic and cultural and make full play of his strong points, he insists seeking a way out from the inner language of ink painting. First, starting from the idea of emanation, he breaks through the traditional approach and processes human faces, hands, lines of clothes, cloud and gas in a similar way. This new approach makes the pictures integral and the painting style very natural. Second, what is related to the first, the objects in the pictures are always turned into ink images with extraordinary appeal. Third, he often uses middle strokes in painting, but he overlooks the subtle differences between lines and integrates them into the concrete pictures to stress the overall effect. Last, he combines precise modeling and free expression. Concretely speaking, he draws the outlines in slight freehand style, and builds several levels in the pictures by applying layer of great freehand style and staining of the traditional Chinese realistic painting to let the overall atmosphere stand out. The advantage of Zheng’s approach is that, it both inherits the tradition and highlights his personal style; it has perfect artistic quality as well as expression of new visual experiences. All this does not come easily but is the ideal that Zheng Qiang has been pursuing. In my view, all fellow artists could fell this from his paintings.

　　This preface is to mark Zheng Qiang’s new works.

　　October 26th, 2010

　　At home, Qianhai, Shenzhen