- 杨小彦 / Xiaoyan Yang
尽管处于青春的晚期，迄今为止，刘明鉴却显然无法忘怀少年时所持有的念想与执着，对他而言，那似乎是一场无始无终而又惊心动魄的虚拟游戏，其中的主角始终是身着各类艳装的猛狮浪猫，它们是梦魇的典范，只在孤寂无人之时若隐若现，不时让观者毫无缘由地分泌出无拘无束的莫名兴奋！它们出入于水晶宫堆砌的浩瀚宇宙之中，晶体因它们的出场而化身为巨大的单个细胞，活脱脱像透明的基因那样，在天与地的狂喜中互相对峙，既拒绝交配，又互为镜像，用以揭示对方实存的秘密。然后，同样没有缘由，暗红色的大章鱼现身了，柔软的触须长着滥情的吸盘正在缓慢地张开着，伸向了蔚蓝色的虚无。恍惚间，天眼从时间的深处走了过来，牢固地占据着远远超出十维的天体，让空间在纠缠与折叠中没心没肺地自我繁衍。
我拒绝任何可能的追问，静静地观赏着刘明鉴多年来创作的系列作品，任由思绪自由地飞奔，好彻底检验一下可能滋长的内心感受。要知道，我与他属于两代人，属于隔代交割而又彼此陌生的实存。有意思的是，正是在这样的对峙情境之中，我的感受居然如前述那样，具有诗一般的透明与放肆。我不禁好奇，并在好奇中寻找可能的答案。我好奇的是，刘明鉴的创作意图究竟指向哪里？作品背后发散出来的强烈而精致的感悟，是他内心难以割舍的往事，还是耿耿于怀的对未来的执意？显然，他的作品是叙事的，有一种修辞的逻辑统领着画面中重复出现的形象；此外，他的作品又是反叙事的，因为出现在画面中的形象，像符号那般不断地出现，提示着与此相关的背影，比如，流行的游戏角色，以及由游戏创作者所重新组装的、因而再次陌生化的远古传说。刘明鉴的作品告诉我，他所痴迷的是一种心理现实：对于曾经的无忧，他真心如斯！身处日常成长，他发疯似地体验，然后将之表现在画作的构成之中，好让各色奇特的形象如情思般丝丝入扣地涌过来，其中，有夜魔惨淡的笑声，有血色真爱的泣诉，有嗜血另类的偏执，以及水晶球在暗中的膨胀，独眼在历史中不间断地挣扎。
眼是一个重要的征象，更是一种具有意义的有效隐喻，直指人心且不留情面。2017年，刘明鉴创作了一幅名为《荷鲁斯之眼》的油画，画面形象是一只闪耀着异光的眼，四周的触须既是意指光芒四射，同时又是章鱼可能的喻示。其实，在游戏与传说之中，章鱼本身就具有传奇的力量。《静谧的克拉肯》把这一传奇具象化了，红色的巨触穿越罗马拱门像光芒一般伸向四周，让狮子的昂奋变得低调而含蓄。“克拉肯”（Kraken）是北欧传说中的海怪，是原始时代对于不时闪现的拥有巨大体型的章鱼的神话式定义，它来源于工业化之前渔人与大海搏斗的难忘经历，当可怜的鱼舟在波谷浪峰中艰难前行之时，突然之间，一条可怕的触须像粗壮的麻绳那样纠缠过来，深渊般的吸盘贪婪地吮吸着鲜活的血水，现场那种惊恐，如果真的能够置身于这现场时，就一定会在绝望中转化为凄美的预言。我这样的描述可能并不是笔者的虚构，刘明鉴内心就一直渴望着能够亲临这可能的现场，好让预言成真。
怪不得一直有艺术家对“克拉肯”做美得让人窒息的观察。我想起小时候阅读凡尔纳著名的《海底两万里》时的那种突发的颤抖，因为几条巨大到不可思议的章鱼柔软的触须紧紧纠缠着神秘的潜水艇并试图把它拖向深渊时，我第一次强烈感受到了窒息，并第一次意识到肉身被控制的疼痛。
我之所言并非虚妄，刘明鉴的《三方的窥视》提供了精彩的答案。画面中有狮子人，有滋长不已的水晶，有荷鲁斯之眼，有光芒般扭动的触须。“三方”本身就是意指三种品格，其一是审查者，其二是表演者，其三是窥视者，三者合一，恰好喻示了人生的全部：人生如戏，人人都是表演者，只是，在台上时，你是角色，或者进入某类角色，表演给谁看？给审查者，他们正端坐在台下，一丝不苟地在挑刺。两者之外则是无休无止的窥视，像暗夜中的不可见的紫外光，直逼脆弱的人心。窥视有三个层次，分别为逼视、盯视和凝视。其实，这三种窥视表情都是一样的，如果观者是麻木的话，一定看不出其中的差别。差别只取决于审查者的判断！当你觉得你获得了情爱时，你发现的是凝视；当你收获到对峙时，你面对的是盯视；如果你不愿意屈服，那么，同样的眼神就变成了凶猛的逼视。当我这样描述的时候，我发现无意中已经提示了《三方的窥视》的主题，那就是，只有审查者是实存的，它既有能力剥夺窥视，更有能力定义窥视。也就是说，眼睛的意义来自被窥视者的感受，来自对方，而不是来自自身。肉身的处境在这里暴露无遗，肉身其实是孤独的，无力的，因为肉身总是被定义的，被审查者，被窥视者，被表演者。
这样，我想我们就可以从容的进入刘明鉴的艺术世界了。刘明鉴的作品中总是这样几种形象：狮子人、猫人、水晶球、流浪之眼，以及，章鱼的触须，柔软而狰狞。有趣的是，刘明鉴笔下的狮子人和猫人，性别是有所犹疑的。总的来说，狮子人属于男性，猫人属于女性。但是，有时，似乎没有什么特别的逻辑上的理由，狮子人变成了女性，而猫人多少有点雄性的因子存在。装饰狮子和猫的是迷人的时装，这一点绝对应该是刘明鉴的私人定制。为什么？这一点值得让观赏者自己去思考，刘明鉴其实没有单一的解释。
从描绘风格上看，刘明鉴的作品近乎冷然，尽管是油画，但手法却有工笔的意味，造型清晰，所有转折的细节均一丝不苟地呈现出来，衣纹、图案、不同面向的结构，甚至包括水晶体，所有块面都有交代，用绘画通常的用语来说，就是很硬边，没有通常所谓的虚化。这让我不期然地想起了沃尔夫林，他针对十七世纪的巴洛克艺术，曾经作出一个著名的形式主义的风格总结，用“图绘性”形容那个年代以鲁本斯为典型的风格，而把十五世纪丢勒的画法概括为“线描”。沃尔夫林的结论不一定经受得起艺术史的严格检验，但却对此后的艺术家以极大的启发，让他们在“图绘”和“线描”两方面有更为大胆的创新。准确来说，刘明鉴的画面风格并不是严格意义上的“线描”，相反，在表面的线性硬边的处理之中，却包括了他对“图绘”式的场面转折的深度理解。作品的空间正是借助于这样一种结合两者的处理而获得了极好的效果。当然，刘明鉴这样的处理，更多的不是所谓形式主义的策略，而是对画作主旨的一种视觉定义。
坦率的说，刘明鉴的艺术才刚刚起步，未来，他在处理风格上一定还会有更加让人喜悦的延伸。我之所以乐于做这样的判断，是因为在他现存的创作中，已经表现出一种独特的风度，这风度足以让他能够更为从容地行走在人类精神的世界中。我期望着，并希望将来还有机会讨论他的作品。
2019年8月9日草于温哥华
Although in his late youth, Mingjian Liu has obviously been unable to forget the thoughts and obsessions he had when he was a teenager. To him, it seemed to be a thrilling virtual game with no beginning and no end, in which the protagonist is always the strong lions and wandering cats in all kinds of colorful costumes. They are the models of nightmares, only looming when they are lonely, and let the viewers secrete unrestrained inexplicable excitement from time to time for no reason! They enter and exit the vast universe stacked in the Crystal Palace. The crystals are transformed into huge single cells because of their appearance. They are alive and free like transparent genes, facing each other in the ecstasy of heaven and earth. Although they refuse to mate, they mirror each other to reveal the secrets of the other party's existence. Then, again without any reasons, the big dark red octopus appeared, and the soft tentacles with debauching suckers were slowly opening, reaching out to the azure nothingness. In a daze, the Sky Eye walked over from the depths of time, firmly occupying a celestial body far more than ten dimensions, allowing the space to multiply unconsciously in the entanglement and folding.
I refused any possible questionings. I quietly watched the series of works created by Mingjian Liu over the years, allowing my thoughts to fly freely to thoroughly examine the inner feelings that may grow. You know, he and I belong to two generations. We belong to the real existences that are separated by generations and are strange to each other. What is interesting is that it is in such a confrontational situation that my feelings are as transparent and presumptuous as in the poetry, which I forementioned. I cannot help being curious and have been looking for possible answers in curiosity. What I am curious about is, where does Mingjian Liu's creative intention point? Is the strong and exquisite sentiment emanating from behind the works a past that he cannot let go of in his heart, or is it a persistent obsession with the future? Obviously, his works are narrative, and there is a rhetorical logic that governs the repeated images in the pictures. In addition, his works are anti-narrative, because the images appearing in the pictures constantly appear like symbols. It reminds the back figures related to the images, such as popular game characters, and ancient legends that have been reassembled by game creators and thus defamiliarized again. Mingjian Liu’s works tell me that what he is obsessed with is a kind of psychological reality: he is so sincere about the worry-free once he has cherished! In the daily growth, he experienced it crazily, and then expressed it in the composition of the paintings, so that all kinds of peculiar images flowed in with meticulous care like emotions. Among them, there are the bleak laughter of the night demon, and the weeping complaints of the true bloody love. There is the alternative paranoia of the bloodthirsty, as well as the expansion of the crystal ball in the dark, and one-eyed struggles uninterruptedly in history.
The eye is an important sign, and it is also a meaningful and effective metaphor that directly points to the heart and does not show mercy. In 2017, Mingjian Liu created an oil painting titled "Eye of Horus". The image of the picture is an eye shining with extraordinary light. The tentacles around it are both radiant and a possible metaphor for an octopus. In fact, in games and legends, octopus itself has legendary power. "Quiet Kraken" embodies this legend. The giant red tentacle passes through the Roman arches and stretches out like rays of light, making the lion's excitement low-key and subtle. "Kraken" (Kraken) is a sea monster in Nordic legend. It is the mythical definition of the octopus with huge size that flashes from time to time in the primitive age. It comes from the unforgettable experience of fishermen fighting with the sea before industrialization. When a poor fish boat was struggling in the troughs and peaks, suddenly, a terrible tentacle entangled like a thick twine, and the abyss-like sucker greedily sucked the fresh blood. If you can really be in this panic scene, you will surely transform it into a poignant prophecy in despair. My description may not be my fiction. Mingjian Liu's heart has always been eager to be able to visit this possible scene in person, so that the prediction can come true.
No wonder there have always been artists who have made breathtakingly beautiful observations of "Kraken". I think of the sudden tremor when I was reading Verne’s famous "Twenty Thousand Miles Under the Sea" when I was a child, because the soft tentacles of several incredibly huge octopuses entangled the mysterious submarine tightly and tried to drag it into the abyss. I felt suffocated strongly for the first time, and for the first time realized the pain of being controlled by the physical body.
What I said is not false, Mingjian Liu's "Tripartite Peeping" provides a wonderful answer. There are lion people, crystals that grow endlessly, the eyes of Horus, and tentacles that twist like rays of light. "Tripartite" itself means three kinds of character: one is the censor, the other is the performer, and the third is the peeper. When the three are combined in one, it indicates the whole life. Life is like a play, and everyone is the performer. When you are on stage, you are a role, or enter a certain type of role. To whom will you show? To the reviewers. They are sitting upright down the stage, meticulously prickling. Outside of the two, there is endless peeping, like the invisible ultraviolet light in the dark night, reaching the fragile heart. There are three levels of peeping, namely: looking closely, staring fixedly, and gazing. In fact, these three peeping expressions are all the same. If the viewer is numb, there must be no difference. The difference depends only on the judgment of the reviewers! When you feel that you have gained love, what you find is gazing; when you find confrontation, what you face is staring; if you are unwilling to give in, then the same look becomes a fierce stare. When I described it in this way, I found that the theme of "Tripartite Peeping" was inadvertently prompted: that is, only the censor is real, and it has the ability to deprive peeping and more capable of defining peeping. In other words, the meaning of the eyes comes from the feelings of the peeped person, from the other party, not from oneself. The situation of the physical body is completely exposed here. Actually, the physical body is lonely and powerless, for it is always defined by the censored, the peeped, and the performed.
In this way, I think we can enter the art world of Mingjian Liu calmly. There are always several images in Mingjian Liu's works: the lion man, the cat man, the crystal ball, the wandering eye, and the octopus' tentacles, which are soft and hideous. What's interesting is that in Mingjian Liu's works of lion man and cat man, the genders are somewhat hard to distinguish. In general, the Lions are males, and the Cats are females. However, sometimes, it seems that there is no special logical reason why the lion man has become a female, and the cat man has a somewhat male factor. The lions and cats are in glamorous fashions, which should definitely be customized by Mingjian Liu. Why? This point is worth letting the viewers think about it themselves. In fact, Mingjian Liu does not have a single explanation.
From the perspective of the depiction style, Mingjian Liu’s works are almost cold. Although they are oil paintings, the technique has the meaning of fine brushwork: the shape is clear, and all the turning details are meticulously presented; the clothes lines, patterns, different aspects of the structure, and even including crystals; all blocks and surfaces have explanations. In the usual terms of painting, it is hard edge, without the usual so-called blur. This reminds me unexpectedly of Wolfflin. He once made a well-known formalist style summary of Baroque art in the seventeenth century, using "graphics" to describe that era with Rubens as a typical example, and summed up Dürer’s painting in the fifteenth century as "line drawing." Wolfflin's conclusions may not withstand the rigorous test of art history, but they have greatly inspired subsequent artists to make bolder innovations in both "graphic drawing" and "line drawing". To be precise, Mingjian Liu's painting style is not strictly a "line drawing"; on the contrary, in the treatment of the linear hard edges on the surface, it includes his in-depth understanding of the "graphic drawing" style of scene transitions. The space of the work has achieved excellent results by means of such a combination of the two treatments. Of course, Mingjian Liu's treatment is more not a so-called formalist strategy, but a visual definition of the subject of the painting.
Frankly speaking, Mingjian Liu's art has just started, and in the future, his handling style will surely have a more pleasing extension. The reason why I am willing to make such a judgment is because he has shown a unique demeanor in his existing creations, which is enough to enable him to walk in the world of human spirit more calmly. I look forward to it and hope that in the future there will still be opportunities to discuss his works.
Completed in Vancouver on August 9, 2019