城市生活的异在者——评王南飞的创作

王南飞作品所表现的题材是当代中国的城市生活，基本上可以分为相对隐私化的室内生活和城市街道的公共生活两大类。这两类题材，其实也是今日许多艺术家关注城 市化进程的主要对象。有趣的是，作为一位年轻的女性，她的城市生活的艺术表现，并没有许多她的同类的作品中所每每出现的花花草草，也没有什么漫无边际的美 妙幻想，反倒是直接关注城市生活人与人的相互关系，无论它是私密化的还是公开化的。也就是说，作为一位女性，她并没有在创作中为自己编造一个充满幻想的浪 漫色彩的神秘园，使自己耽迷于其中而独自哀怜，反倒是让自己的视点超越于女性自我的局限性，从一个客观的角度来观察和表现当代中国城市生活的日常景象。

这 个客观的角度当然不是照相式的简单再现和复写，而是一种异在于城市景观之外，却又能够揭示和捕捉它的种种流弊的立场。这种立场决定了她的客观实际上是一种 主动的干预，是用视觉语言的方式来呈现当代城市变化中的人与人的关系的某种异样性。她对城市公共空间的生活场景的反映，主要集中在沟通城市各个区域之间的 交通干道上。与其说她是在描绘这些街道的华丽和马路的宽广本身，毋宁说她是在刻画发生在这些公共空间中的种种人间闹剧，那些过路者、谈情说爱者、闲荡者、 看热闹者，还有偷情做爱者，等等，等等，都是光天化日之下城市里人们生动写照，它们构成了每日充斥着城市生活的内容。也许它们并不是同时发生的，但艺术家 却在同一个画面里并置并且强化这些事件，而为了表达出这些事件的复杂和无序状态，人物形象的比例大小和光影投射的方向角度，都有意识地表现出不同和差异。

       这 种场景之间和人物之间的混同和共生，实际上是中国当代农村城市化和城市都市化进程中不可避免的难题，失地农民和下岗职工，退休老人和无业青年，老板和二 奶，警察与罪犯，所有的人都在城市的空间里相互碰撞、追逐，彼此面面相觑，却犹如陌路人。画面上经常出现的汽车扎堆相会和人群相互观望的场面，似乎暗示着 人们某种焦躁不安和渴望奇迹发生的心理情绪。王南飞把自己置于街道和马路的上空，俯视这里已经发生和即将发生的一切，她异在于眼前的一切，同时又与眼前的 一切有着千丝万缕的联系和瓜葛，因为这是她自己不得不生活于其中的环境。

与 室外街面上的各色人等混杂交错的场面相比，室内生活也并非有条不紊，酒桌旁、泳池里、澡盆边和果树下，到处都充满了欲望的诱惑。在这样的室内空间里，似乎 欲望的宣泄和表露远外的公共空间来得直接和大胆，惟有那桃花树下窗台上品茗谈天的一对男子，才流露出城市生活难得的自在和逍遥。如果仔细留意的话， 王南飞对待城市公共空间和私密空间，在表现材料上是不同的：前者更多地是以平面油画的媒介形式来体现的，而后者则是选择了带有装置和雕塑意味的着色木雕和 画框相结合的形式。因为城市空间里发生的各种事件和各色人等的混杂与无序性，所以似乎用一个平面的带有边框的画布来限制，反倒能给在视觉上带来一种积蓄能 量的感觉；而私人空间里发生的故事，如果不用立体的三维雕塑和装置的形式来展示，似乎无法在视觉上有力地揭示出涌动在私密室内的人与人之间的暧昧与情色关 系。

对 于室外题材，王南飞的创作手法采取的是聚合不同对象于同一画面并且居高临下的俯视姿态；对于室内题材，她的手法是拆散和打开封闭空间，将那些不可告人的故 事公之于众。在这一合一拆中，当代城市生活里人与人之间岌岌可危和光怪陆离的关系，被她这个城市变迁的见证人揭示了出来。没有宏篇巨制的因果逻辑，也没有 卿卿我我的呢喃低语，王南飞就这样以个人的方式来面对她所终日身处其中的城市生活，找到其中的某些片段，以一种与这种城市文化并不直接相融的异在立场来表 现这些片段。这些作品就摆在这里，没有任何的强迫，却让人看后难以忘却。或许，一个女性的城市异在者，就应该这么朴实地呈现她所看到和所理解的城市生活。

Wang Nanfei’s art explores contemporary urban life in China by examining the public and private lives or urban residents. Though this is a recurring theme in contemporary art, this work is remarkable. Unlike previous work by this woman artist, in these she avoids using flowers and grass that stem from a boundless, beautiful imagination. She bores in on the core values of city life and the relationships between people, whether private or public. She does not engage in fantasy or create a romantic, mysterious garden for herself. She abandons herself to the city and its realities, yet she also transcends the self and any limits that might be imposed by her sex by objectively viewing and portraying the everyday moments in city life found in China today.           

Yet, this objective view is not that of photography, overt realism or imitation; it contains a kind of difference arising from being outside of the city scene, a view addresses urban living and its abusiveness. She uses this objectivity and her narrative to reveal life in the city’s public space, turning to every area of the city. It might be better stated to say that she paints the human farce in the public space rather than the fancy street itself. Strangers, lovers and ordinary people talk on the street, saunter, watch, spy, make love: these are real depictions of city people forming the content of the everyday city life that surrounds us. Maybe these things didn’t all happen at the same time, but they are here in one painting, expressing the complicated, the ruled and the unruly. The differences in human figure proportions and shadow directions and angles symbolize the various relationships and discrepancies involved.    

The effect of these scenes of human life reveal the difficulties found in today’s urban living. Cities have become metropolises; farmers have lost their fields; laborers have lost their jobs; the retired and elderly cast about for meaning or something to do; youth struggle to begin their lives. Wives, policemen and criminals encounter each other on the street; everybody comes into contact with the other in the city space, including strangers and people from other lands. Some of the characters gaze at a traffic jam or watch each other; all of this appears in the paintings, hinting at the fretfulness in life and a desire for some kind of mercy. Wang Nanfei put herself above the street, viewed what happened below and hints at what is to come; she creates a new point of view, while at the same time facing everything that involves her, because she is a part of this environment too; she must sink or swim in the same pool of fortune with everyone else.

While the streets are comparatively anonymous and cold, the indoor lives of others are full of lust: there’s drinking on the side of a table and scenes in a pool, bathtub, under a fruit tree...the expressions of lust are bravely stated and straightforward. Only two men drinking tea at a window reflect the peaceful, relaxed and perhaps the material aspects of urban life. These paintings rely upon the use of oil on canvas; her sculptures are of wood and paper. Because all kinds of things are happening and all kinds of people are tossed together into the mix of city life, she uses a flat frame for purposes of control to create a feeling of visual energy. The stories often take place in a private space; if she had not used a three-dimensional installation to express these relationships, it would seem difficult to have expressed these living emotions in any other way.

Outdoors, Wang Nanfei overlooks her subjects, using them to focus her painting views and ideas. Her ideas penetrate and reveal otherwise closed spaces, including the secrets of the public space. As a witness of this rapidly changing city, she hones in on the precariously bizarre and gaudy relationships found around us. There is no big logic, no low voice talk: Wang Nanfei uses her own ways to face her everyday life space, to probe the fragments and to express herself about these fragments from various points of view, without making a direct connection with any external sources of power or control, making this work unforced, yet unforgettable. Wang Nanfei brings us a specific woman’s perspective on how she sees and understands city life.