在传说里行走
段正渠

对于中国美术界而言，王亚彬完全是个新人。因为他的作品实际上自1999年后才日趋成熟。在此之前，具象表现的作品一直占他创作的主要地位。一场连绵的秋雨，一枚锈蚀的铜币，一种糟糕的心情，都是他常画的内容。奔放与忧郁交织着，色彩绚丽，用笔狂躁，挥洒着一个年青人青春期略显浮躁的欢乐和忧伤。1999年后，画风开始内敛，强硬的轮廓开始弱化，笔触也不再凌厉，色彩趋向和谐和统一，一种真正属于王亚彬式的诗化的绘画风格逐渐形成。

王亚彬是一个诗人，他喜欢让思绪恍恍惚惚地神游。他用独特的思维方式，将想象溶入画中，这便使其作品变得清新和诡异，并明显地与众不同。表面上看这些作品风格统一，单纯平朴，几乎无一例外地笼罩在和谐沉稳的色调里，黑灰色、土黄色、暗红色、墨绿色、湖蓝色，就象一块块深色的画布，再往细看，画面仿佛动了起来，隐约中似乎有烟波流动，一种苍穹险暝、云气开阖之势弥漫在整个画中。画面的形象如儿童涂鸦，骑猪的山人，春风里的桃花，农舍外的木床，桌椅上的茶碗，都被支离成碎片在深暗里飘落。画面的气氛通过奇异的联想，神奇地传达出来，一切都恍如梦中。作品的题目像有意设置的机关，诱导着你寻找和思索：《蒙冤》，怎么冤了，谁冤你了？《远游》，游向哪里，怎么游？《长毛的海》，海怎么长毛了？《尸流河》，发生了什么变故，竟会尸流成河？《捕鹰的过程》是怎样的？鹰在哪里……这些疑虑使人忍不住会俯在画面上凝视，忍不住想用手触摸。想入非非的拼凑，似是而非的形状以及动人心弦的标题，造成了一个又一个悬念，神秘迷离了每一幅作品，使画面变的危机四伏，费解而诡异。当你离开画面，甚至会孩子似地自问：为什么我是我而不是你呢？为什么我在这里而不在别处？难道灰暗迷蒙的色调本身也是一个隐喻？在焦虑，孤寂，期盼乃至无望的状态中，他非常内心和非常个人的体验构成一种隐晦的心理图象，以暗喻的方式把对生存的种种困惑表达出来。

王亚彬的作品与中国古典艺术的关系是显而易见的。他喜欢读古典文学中的诗词，志异小说，喜欢收藏那些汉唐的陶器，宋元的瓷器，喜欢道场庙画，而在所有的民间传说中他又最喜欢那些精灵古怪的故事。这个生于七十年代，在摇滚乐和酒吧文化中泡大的年轻人同时有着没落文人的情怀，他的作品有意无意间既有现代意味又富有古趣。他时常会想起冲着人笑的人首虫身的神们，想起长满桃花的洞，想起闲散山林的折枝者，泽水边的唱游者，想起林边的白鹿，天空的繁星，凤凰般趴在树上的山鸡……敏感和神经质的画家吟诗一样抚弄着他的画布，用色彩描绘着他的臆想和梦。他的作品是唯美的，虽然这唯美呈现着病态。在表现方法上，汉唐陶器、古代壁画班驳锈蚀的肌理都曾经给画家以灵感，他常常不急不躁地几遍甚至几十遍地涂抹、冲洗以及腐蚀，他要在画布上将感觉和心智推到极致，各种材料如泥巴、广告粉、丙烯、化妆品、酱油、稀硫酸等的尝试，使画面变得层次丰富，具有研读性，同时又使作品变得更加神秘和不可捉摸。自从他将绘画作为一种生活方式，他就希望作品能成为沟通心灵的纽带。在有序无序的组合中，在反反复复的渲染描绘中，既带有儿童般的天真和稚拙，又留下了艺术家生存经验和文化积累的痕迹。

王亚彬在黑夜的传说里梦游般地行走着。他以他独有的鬼气和才色，营造着一种东方式的神秘境界，把生活中潜在的不安，祥和，欢乐，抑郁，色情，晦涩，唯美都深藏其中，从而使作品充满魅力。

2002．5．13

Roaming in Dreams and Legends
Duan Zhengqu

To the Chinese art circle, Wang Yabin is entirely a novice. The reason undoubtedly being that maturity did not emerge in his works until 1999. Before this time, figurative expression had always been a major part of his creative process - intermittent autumnal showers, rusty copper coins, or musing portrayals of dejection often appeared as the subject of his works. At once bold and melancholy, his resplendent use of colour and almost manic brushstrokes bespoke the impetous joys and sorrows of a young man. The year 1999, however, marked the internalization of his style as a whole - one witnessed the softer contours, the calmer brushstrokes, the search for harmony and unity in colour, and the formation of a style that is distinctly poetic.

Wang Yabin is a poet and a wanderer. It is with a singular intelligence that he submerges his imagination into his paintings and renders them fantastical, fresh, and unique. At a first glance, the apparent simplicity of form in these maturer works is identical - almost without exception the paintings are bathed, like pieces after pieces of canvas, in rich tones of nocturnal grey, or earthly yellow, or (dark)red, or forest green, or sky blue. Yet as one continues to look and to scutiny, the surface of the paintings would lift itself up and transforms into nothing less than vast expanses, misty waters, and the racing clouds of the firmament at dusk. Images resembling a child's doodle, of a farmer on the back of a pig, of cherry blossoms in a spring breeze, or simply, of a wooden bed outside a farmhouse and cups and bowls on a table, are fragmented and left to float and wander in a dark chimeric world associated with the fantastical and the bizarre. In this land of dreams the titles of the paintings seem to be mechanisms that tempts you to probe, reflect, and search - for the victim in 'Injustice', for the destination in 'Voyage', for the whys and wherefors of 'The Bearded Ocean' and 'The Eagle Hunt' - and eventally succomb to the urge to stare, and even to touch.

The affinity of Wang Yabin's works to Chinese classical is not only discernable but obvious. He is a avid reader of classical poetry, a collector of Han and Tang pottery and porcelain of the Song Dynasty, a lover of all that is weird and fantastical in folklore. Born and brought up in the age of rock music and pub culture of the 70s, this young artist's works evoke at the same time the taste of modernity and the scholarly sentiments of a past era. More than often he would think about the laughing gods with snake torsos and human limbs, of caves overgrown with cherry blossoms, of mountain folk hiking in the woods and singing by the lakes, of white deer, heavenly stars, and the phoenix-like roosters on trees - sensitive almost to the point of neuroticism, he caresses his canvases with verse and paints them with visions and dreams. His is an ideal beauty - somewhat morbid, but ideal. His style of representation finds inspiration in the rusted and mottled textures of ancient mural paintings and of Han and Tang dynasties ceramics, and he would often, with the utmost patience, carry out the processes of daubing, scouring and corrosion over and over again until the desired effects are achieved. With a fervour to bring the expression of sentimentality and sensitivity to the highest degree, he would experiment with materials of all sorts, so that the richness of texture in his works could be felt as an invitation to comprehend and decipher, and at the same time an enunciation of enigma and complexity. He adopts painting as a way of living, and he paints in order for the body of his work to bond with the soul; he respires the innocent joy of a child, and leaves behind the traces of culture and experience of an artist.

Roaming in dreams, star-gazing in the darkness of legends, Wang Yabin with his uniquely devilish talent creates for us an enigmatic land that is distinctly oriental, and inhabits it with all the anguish and serenity, enchantment and repression, eroticism and ambiguity, and above, the quest for beauty in everyday lives.