形象彌留之處:關於黃至正創作中的形象學思考
文|陳晞
當我初次觀看黃至正的《備忘錄》(2019)系列作品時,首先衝入腦中的聯想是關於記憶如何在逐漸遺失、損壞與散落的過程中,逐漸容身於形象之不朽維度中。生命的記憶與關係,是否只能選擇逐漸逝去?又或者,是皈依於不朽的形象之中?在黃至正的創作實踐中,這樣的提問也一直迴盪在他刻意營造的破碎形象裡。然而,在觀看過其他作品之後,我卻又被某些在作品形象內外壓抑的事物所勾引著。
在黃至正的作品中,銀箔背景與吸收墨汁的縫線之間構築幾乎支離破碎的形象,以及金箔轉印影像的負片視覺,令我聯想到波東斯基(Christian Boltanski, b.1944)某些肖像裝置與現成物作品中的幽靈性,以及對於重拾之物的紀念意味。不論是面對大他者歷史的創傷,或者是私人經驗中的悲歡離合,這種幽靈性似乎是當代藝術以現成物與影像裝置詮釋記憶與創傷時散發的氣質。比起完好、乾淨的記憶,殘影敗像似乎更讓黃至正感到安適。
在此之前與之後,黃至正持續以生命經驗中親密(或曾經親密)之人、物與特定所在的形象作為對象物,創作一系列如《詠嘆調》(2021)、《渺小》(2018)與《侵蝕的記憶》(2017)等以數位影像轉印金屬箔的技術重組水墨畫材、轉化工筆畫構圖輪廓的複合媒材作品。然而,儘管我們可以從作品中的媒材特性感受到藝術家視生命與經驗為脆弱和易損之物,黃至正卻有意識地壓抑了畫面中情感與敘事表達的一面。無論我們是否能猜測到畫面中的圖像與影像的故事緣由,我們都難以單從畫面感受到本來寫實影像要傳遞給我們的訊息,也無法從「藝術家如何描繪圖像」的這種繪畫性表現思維中,推測黃至正的意圖。甚至,就算我們知道了系列作品《暗湧》(2017)中的影像緣由,藝術家也藉由負片處理般的金箔轉印影像,形象與感官也都是負片處理,超脫觀看中的意淫。
過往關於黃至正作品的藝評中,大多關注藝術家如何將生命經驗中的圖像透過影像處理方法,藉以重新選集(anthology)記憶的脆弱性形象。例如王靜霏(2017)認為,黃至正作品中的形象與圖層在「不朽的物體:永恆的經驗」之私性與普遍性關係,可與榮格(Carl Gustav Jung, b.1875)的分析心理學概念「集體潛意識」(Collective subconsciousness)對照[1];陳湘汶(2016)則提及了藝術家對金屬箔與圖像等創作媒材的創造性損壞,以鍊金術比喻其對家庭關係、生命經驗、物質與記憶之生死(或其不朽)的轉化[2]。陳寬育(2019)藉著黃至正2019年的個展「奶油正好融化」,討論了在《備忘錄》中的選集方法,認為藝術家是「將收集而來的物件和影像製成標本集」,並且在影像與衣物內涵的索引性與幽靈性特質,「讓過去一次又一次地重返。」[3]而游原一(2021)則提及了黃至正藉由破碎或變質的作品表面「延伸借喻物件背後的不確定性[4]」,以此擴充王靜霏提出的「集體潛意識」觀點中、形象與意象之普遍性與私人影像/圖像之間命題的思考範例。
藉著上述評論,我們可以歸納出黃至正現階段作品中的特質:它以個人的選集品味,交織私人經驗中的影像與普遍性形象。這些畫面時常是藉由刻意的破損與模糊,擬造出一種我們在觀看媒材變質時聯想到的歲月痕跡,同時在模糊的過程中,否定影像和圖像作為形象寫實的精確性,並使影像與圖像得以在畫面上歸返到圖像學者湯姆・米歇爾(W.J.T. Mitchell)視角中的「零度形象」[5]。模糊化與抽象化是黃至正與不少當代藝術家同樣在思考「影像如何不只是影像」、「記憶如何不只是記憶」時的常見途徑,而目前黃至正創作中的模糊化與抽象化方法,其獨特之處可能是來自於他對於金屬箔的迷戀。這樣的迷戀或許是來自於藝術家在如今的當代藝術世界裡,一種識別度上的自我堅持,又或者是自身所學背景藕斷絲連的遺緒。像是我們可以從《花草偈》與其他形象線條穩固的平面作品中,看見黃至正受到東海大學美術系環境所涵養的工筆白描技法,又或者是他對於紙本、金箔等材料的熟悉程度。從這些創作中,亦不難注意到其畫面構圖方法與使用的媒材上接近工筆畫,讓他的作品也偶有參展於探討當代水墨與膠彩創作的展覽[6]。然而他並不是以一位畫家的手在創作平面作品,其作品中的色彩,多是處在色相與色環所構成的色彩世界之外,多是以物質本身的顏色取代設色。藝術家在平面作品中,只以金屬箔與墨的變奏為色,又或者是在立體裝置作品中,將金屬的氧化反應演示歲月留下的色彩。藝術家似乎將這樣的物質性,以及改造物質性的手,視為平面作品中的生熟表現。
以金屬箔材料的變造與轉印,轉化圖像在選集之後的形象,是黃至正創作的特徵。藝術家常常是藉由材料的特性翻轉影像與圖像的敘事性,但他並不將低限的形象視為生命記憶在抽象化之後的歸所。陳寬育曾將系列作品《容器─隧道》(2019)中的低限繪畫實踐視為一種從幻覺主義(illusionism)通往本質主義(essentialist)的精神,但回過頭來看,其實金屬箔本身在膠彩畫裡面的位置,已經具有超脫於畫面世界的效果在其中。通常它會被視為某種脫俗入聖的裝置或裝飾被使用在膠彩畫中,有時候是背景、神性的光環又或者是人物身上的裝飾。例如我們可以從陳進(b.1907)的膠彩畫中,以金屬箔與增厚劑描繪實在性(literalness)的裝飾物看出端倪。又或者是在姚瑞中(b.1969)的「金碧山水」中,以臺灣各地宮廟使用的996金箔取代中國水墨畫中的留白,讓硬筆山水環繞在抽離時空的異質金身世界[7]。正因為金屬色與金屬箔材料異於膠彩的水干顏料、天然礦物顏料的色彩世界之外,它的格格不入與珍稀性,才能在藝術史與物質文化史中佔有一種與色彩不同的地位。
黃至正現階段作品中的本質主義精神,存在著在藝術家之手與選集上的矛盾,這種矛盾性與金色材料在佛教思想與物質實踐之間的矛盾有著有趣的呼應。佛教雖強調物質世界為虛幻、藉此批判傳統意義上的真實(conventional reality),其實踐思想的過程中卻常常使用珍稀物質,像是在《阿彌陀經》中的淨土由黃金鋪地,以珠寶作為階梯,而佛陀三十二相中則描述佛陀的皮膚若非金色,也一定是珍稀珠寶。佛教研究學者柯嘉豪(John Kieschnick)認為,這是佛教用來強調佛陀「最終是超越一切地域性的審美觀與物質價值」的一種手段[8]。不過與其說黃至正在作品中使用的金箔,是柯嘉豪口中的超越,不如說是藉由材料將畫面進一步的超脫(nirvana)。而正是金屬箔超脫了平面作品中的影像與圖像本來具有的感官,也超脫了本來負片影像中時常給我們聯想到的幽靈性特質。黃至正正是以負片手法翻轉了影像與圖像本來的寫實意義,又以金屬箔材料,讓這些影像從本來通往「零度」形象的路途中,轉而超脫到其他難以被指認的世界之中。
儘管金、銀與銅箔都同屬膠彩畫中的金屬箔材料,但在黃至正的作品中,箔料的物性更受到臺灣漢人祭祀文化裡的物質美學牽引。例如,在臺灣地方信仰中,貼上銀箔的銀紙通常被用來祭祀祖先以及鬼魂。而貼上金箔的金紙則多用於祭祀神明。在黃至正的創作中,銀箔也通常被藝術家使用在對於日常消逝之物的轉化,而金箔更多被用於一些具有昇華意味的、世界主義式的、神秘主義裝飾風格的作品裡,例如在《暗湧》中,一個個青春胴體展露無遺,金箔使這樣的場合如極樂世界一般,形體通透於這個涅槃世界之中。這使金屬箔在黃至正作品中的意義,有著與以往膠彩畫中截然不同的意義。《閃燃》(2017)、《備忘錄》與《詠嘆調》皆帶有藝術家對日常逝去之物的重拾與召喚,但他的目的並不是讓這些形象復活,反而是再一次地宣告它們的死亡,以及揭示我們永遠無法(再次)親密的距離。相較之下,透過金箔世界中的超脫與銀箔世界的死亡,黃至正在兩者材料中所見得的終途僅管並不相同,但同樣具有一種壓抑形象的意圖在裡面。在《閃燃》到《詠嘆調》之間,藝術家如標本般對待靜物的形象,卻似乎並不滿足於將形象變成低限的抽象化視覺,他讓這些形象的輪廓在畫面中像是即將支離崩解的幽魂。藉著箔的物性與殘損的影像,黃至正試著以一種負性徵狀壓抑著圖像與影像,以此尋找一種負形象(negative image)的實踐,探索這個現代主義以來,形象在抽象與具象二元論之外的其他維度。
畢竟,不管圖像與影像再怎麼被壓抑、再怎麼陌生化,我們總在觀看作品中時會有諸如「這是誰?這又是從哪裡來的?」等這般指認形象的慾望。另一方面,敘事卻又並非黃至正藉由選集以複合形象的意義所在。對於描述與指認的欲拒還迎,或許是許多當代創作者糾葛的事情,黃至正依戀作品形象與圖像所內涵的訊息,以及它們的死亡,進而使他決定不讓這些形象變成一種純粹抽象的形象,而成為一種負形象,一種形象被目光照射之後的影子。有人將這種形象與記憶在指稱上的失落歸類為「冷」—這個國內在討論戰後抽象與低限藝術時常常被使用的感官詮釋詞,不過標本般的乾燥感可能更貼近藝術家作品中的負性徵狀,既不死亡,也拒絕一昧地前往不朽。捷克裔法國籍作家米蘭昆德拉(Milan Kundera, b.1929)曾經對形象與不朽進行闡釋,他認為不朽的是形象而不是人,個體是他人發現動作、手勢等形象魅力的通道。而正是形象對於人的感召,使人產生了作為「自我形象」的誤認[9]。因此在臺灣近年來常被提及的前輩雕塑家黃土水(b.1895)口中的精神之不朽,並不是個人思想上的不朽,而是讓自己成為那巨大的、稱之為「藝術精神」形象的一份子。在這個意義上,黃至正作品中的負形象,是一種有別於不朽之「死而不亡」的崇高存在之外的另一種存在狀態。
回到文章開頭關於「作品形象內外壓抑的事物」的感官牽引,負片、破損、簡化圖像與影像的手法,成了一道形象通往意義之反面(而不是無意義)的門,黃至正依照它們的命運,為其分別鋪上了金箔或銀箔的步道,讓這些事物各自通往它處。這些事物是藝術家既想透過創作超脫,卻又需避免它在藝術的公眾凝視中見光死。金屬箔的物性與膠彩、水墨的技術思維提供了他陌生化的途徑,刮去作品中的生命圖像之我執,又讓記憶在皈依形象之不朽之前,暫時封存在金身與銀服之中。那麼,在這樣的負形象中,黃至正又將如何讓我們重新認識那些壓抑的事物?
[1] 王靜霏,〈關於生命中最裏層的記憶 - 淺論黃至正創作〉,《放築塾代誌》,放築塾創意行銷有限公司出版,第19期,2017年1月號,頁48-50。
[2] 陳湘汶,〈記憶的鍊金術—黃至正的創作〉,2016,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。
[3] 陳寬育,〈標本集、記憶容器與光 ――關於黃至正的「奶油正好融化」個展〉,2019,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。
[4] 游原一,〈物感思憶作為一種創作設定-關於黃至正的「水銀落地」〉,2021,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。
[5] 米歇爾以美國符號學者皮爾斯(C.S.Peirce,b.1839)界定的「肖像符號」透過視覺的內在感覺性質產生的聯想,引申了形象可以被認為是一個非物質實體、一個幽靈般的、幻影般的顯現,並依靠某種物質支持浮出表面或獲得生命。
[6] 例如由水墨研究學者吳超然於高雄小畫廊策展的「水墨×複數II新世代水墨展」(2017)。
[7] 詳見拙作〈從顛覆到觀自在─姚瑞中與神連線的《離垢地》〉,非池中藝術網,2019/11/04,文章搜尋時間為2022/01/30,文章網址:https://artemperor.tw/focus/2938。
[8] 詳見柯嘉豪John Kieschnick,《器物的象徵:佛教打造的中國物質世界》,遠足文化出版,2020/12/23,頁11-12。
[9] 黎子元,〈米蘭・昆德拉專輯 02. 不朽的是形象而不是個人〉,哲學01,2019/05/21。文章搜尋時間為2022/01/30,文章網址:https://reurl.cc/oeVnGj。
文|陳晞
當我初次觀看黃至正的《備忘錄》(2019)系列作品時,首先衝入腦中的聯想是關於記憶如何在逐漸遺失、損壞與散落的過程中,逐漸容身於形象之不朽維度中。生命的記憶與關係,是否只能選擇逐漸逝去?又或者,是皈依於不朽的形象之中?在黃至正的創作實踐中,這樣的提問也一直迴盪在他刻意營造的破碎形象裡。然而,在觀看過其他作品之後,我卻又被某些在作品形象內外壓抑的事物所勾引著。
在黃至正的作品中,銀箔背景與吸收墨汁的縫線之間構築幾乎支離破碎的形象,以及金箔轉印影像的負片視覺,令我聯想到波東斯基(Christian Boltanski, b.1944)某些肖像裝置與現成物作品中的幽靈性,以及對於重拾之物的紀念意味。不論是面對大他者歷史的創傷,或者是私人經驗中的悲歡離合,這種幽靈性似乎是當代藝術以現成物與影像裝置詮釋記憶與創傷時散發的氣質。比起完好、乾淨的記憶,殘影敗像似乎更讓黃至正感到安適。
在此之前與之後,黃至正持續以生命經驗中親密(或曾經親密)之人、物與特定所在的形象作為對象物,創作一系列如《詠嘆調》(2021)、《渺小》(2018)與《侵蝕的記憶》(2017)等以數位影像轉印金屬箔的技術重組水墨畫材、轉化工筆畫構圖輪廓的複合媒材作品。然而,儘管我們可以從作品中的媒材特性感受到藝術家視生命與經驗為脆弱和易損之物,黃至正卻有意識地壓抑了畫面中情感與敘事表達的一面。無論我們是否能猜測到畫面中的圖像與影像的故事緣由,我們都難以單從畫面感受到本來寫實影像要傳遞給我們的訊息,也無法從「藝術家如何描繪圖像」的這種繪畫性表現思維中,推測黃至正的意圖。甚至,就算我們知道了系列作品《暗湧》(2017)中的影像緣由,藝術家也藉由負片處理般的金箔轉印影像,形象與感官也都是負片處理,超脫觀看中的意淫。
過往關於黃至正作品的藝評中,大多關注藝術家如何將生命經驗中的圖像透過影像處理方法,藉以重新選集(anthology)記憶的脆弱性形象。例如王靜霏(2017)認為,黃至正作品中的形象與圖層在「不朽的物體:永恆的經驗」之私性與普遍性關係,可與榮格(Carl Gustav Jung, b.1875)的分析心理學概念「集體潛意識」(Collective subconsciousness)對照[1];陳湘汶(2016)則提及了藝術家對金屬箔與圖像等創作媒材的創造性損壞,以鍊金術比喻其對家庭關係、生命經驗、物質與記憶之生死(或其不朽)的轉化[2]。陳寬育(2019)藉著黃至正2019年的個展「奶油正好融化」,討論了在《備忘錄》中的選集方法,認為藝術家是「將收集而來的物件和影像製成標本集」,並且在影像與衣物內涵的索引性與幽靈性特質,「讓過去一次又一次地重返。」[3]而游原一(2021)則提及了黃至正藉由破碎或變質的作品表面「延伸借喻物件背後的不確定性[4]」,以此擴充王靜霏提出的「集體潛意識」觀點中、形象與意象之普遍性與私人影像/圖像之間命題的思考範例。
藉著上述評論,我們可以歸納出黃至正現階段作品中的特質:它以個人的選集品味,交織私人經驗中的影像與普遍性形象。這些畫面時常是藉由刻意的破損與模糊,擬造出一種我們在觀看媒材變質時聯想到的歲月痕跡,同時在模糊的過程中,否定影像和圖像作為形象寫實的精確性,並使影像與圖像得以在畫面上歸返到圖像學者湯姆・米歇爾(W.J.T. Mitchell)視角中的「零度形象」[5]。模糊化與抽象化是黃至正與不少當代藝術家同樣在思考「影像如何不只是影像」、「記憶如何不只是記憶」時的常見途徑,而目前黃至正創作中的模糊化與抽象化方法,其獨特之處可能是來自於他對於金屬箔的迷戀。這樣的迷戀或許是來自於藝術家在如今的當代藝術世界裡,一種識別度上的自我堅持,又或者是自身所學背景藕斷絲連的遺緒。像是我們可以從《花草偈》與其他形象線條穩固的平面作品中,看見黃至正受到東海大學美術系環境所涵養的工筆白描技法,又或者是他對於紙本、金箔等材料的熟悉程度。從這些創作中,亦不難注意到其畫面構圖方法與使用的媒材上接近工筆畫,讓他的作品也偶有參展於探討當代水墨與膠彩創作的展覽[6]。然而他並不是以一位畫家的手在創作平面作品,其作品中的色彩,多是處在色相與色環所構成的色彩世界之外,多是以物質本身的顏色取代設色。藝術家在平面作品中,只以金屬箔與墨的變奏為色,又或者是在立體裝置作品中,將金屬的氧化反應演示歲月留下的色彩。藝術家似乎將這樣的物質性,以及改造物質性的手,視為平面作品中的生熟表現。
以金屬箔材料的變造與轉印,轉化圖像在選集之後的形象,是黃至正創作的特徵。藝術家常常是藉由材料的特性翻轉影像與圖像的敘事性,但他並不將低限的形象視為生命記憶在抽象化之後的歸所。陳寬育曾將系列作品《容器─隧道》(2019)中的低限繪畫實踐視為一種從幻覺主義(illusionism)通往本質主義(essentialist)的精神,但回過頭來看,其實金屬箔本身在膠彩畫裡面的位置,已經具有超脫於畫面世界的效果在其中。通常它會被視為某種脫俗入聖的裝置或裝飾被使用在膠彩畫中,有時候是背景、神性的光環又或者是人物身上的裝飾。例如我們可以從陳進(b.1907)的膠彩畫中,以金屬箔與增厚劑描繪實在性(literalness)的裝飾物看出端倪。又或者是在姚瑞中(b.1969)的「金碧山水」中,以臺灣各地宮廟使用的996金箔取代中國水墨畫中的留白,讓硬筆山水環繞在抽離時空的異質金身世界[7]。正因為金屬色與金屬箔材料異於膠彩的水干顏料、天然礦物顏料的色彩世界之外,它的格格不入與珍稀性,才能在藝術史與物質文化史中佔有一種與色彩不同的地位。
黃至正現階段作品中的本質主義精神,存在著在藝術家之手與選集上的矛盾,這種矛盾性與金色材料在佛教思想與物質實踐之間的矛盾有著有趣的呼應。佛教雖強調物質世界為虛幻、藉此批判傳統意義上的真實(conventional reality),其實踐思想的過程中卻常常使用珍稀物質,像是在《阿彌陀經》中的淨土由黃金鋪地,以珠寶作為階梯,而佛陀三十二相中則描述佛陀的皮膚若非金色,也一定是珍稀珠寶。佛教研究學者柯嘉豪(John Kieschnick)認為,這是佛教用來強調佛陀「最終是超越一切地域性的審美觀與物質價值」的一種手段[8]。不過與其說黃至正在作品中使用的金箔,是柯嘉豪口中的超越,不如說是藉由材料將畫面進一步的超脫(nirvana)。而正是金屬箔超脫了平面作品中的影像與圖像本來具有的感官,也超脫了本來負片影像中時常給我們聯想到的幽靈性特質。黃至正正是以負片手法翻轉了影像與圖像本來的寫實意義,又以金屬箔材料,讓這些影像從本來通往「零度」形象的路途中,轉而超脫到其他難以被指認的世界之中。
儘管金、銀與銅箔都同屬膠彩畫中的金屬箔材料,但在黃至正的作品中,箔料的物性更受到臺灣漢人祭祀文化裡的物質美學牽引。例如,在臺灣地方信仰中,貼上銀箔的銀紙通常被用來祭祀祖先以及鬼魂。而貼上金箔的金紙則多用於祭祀神明。在黃至正的創作中,銀箔也通常被藝術家使用在對於日常消逝之物的轉化,而金箔更多被用於一些具有昇華意味的、世界主義式的、神秘主義裝飾風格的作品裡,例如在《暗湧》中,一個個青春胴體展露無遺,金箔使這樣的場合如極樂世界一般,形體通透於這個涅槃世界之中。這使金屬箔在黃至正作品中的意義,有著與以往膠彩畫中截然不同的意義。《閃燃》(2017)、《備忘錄》與《詠嘆調》皆帶有藝術家對日常逝去之物的重拾與召喚,但他的目的並不是讓這些形象復活,反而是再一次地宣告它們的死亡,以及揭示我們永遠無法(再次)親密的距離。相較之下,透過金箔世界中的超脫與銀箔世界的死亡,黃至正在兩者材料中所見得的終途僅管並不相同,但同樣具有一種壓抑形象的意圖在裡面。在《閃燃》到《詠嘆調》之間,藝術家如標本般對待靜物的形象,卻似乎並不滿足於將形象變成低限的抽象化視覺,他讓這些形象的輪廓在畫面中像是即將支離崩解的幽魂。藉著箔的物性與殘損的影像,黃至正試著以一種負性徵狀壓抑著圖像與影像,以此尋找一種負形象(negative image)的實踐,探索這個現代主義以來,形象在抽象與具象二元論之外的其他維度。
畢竟,不管圖像與影像再怎麼被壓抑、再怎麼陌生化,我們總在觀看作品中時會有諸如「這是誰?這又是從哪裡來的?」等這般指認形象的慾望。另一方面,敘事卻又並非黃至正藉由選集以複合形象的意義所在。對於描述與指認的欲拒還迎,或許是許多當代創作者糾葛的事情,黃至正依戀作品形象與圖像所內涵的訊息,以及它們的死亡,進而使他決定不讓這些形象變成一種純粹抽象的形象,而成為一種負形象,一種形象被目光照射之後的影子。有人將這種形象與記憶在指稱上的失落歸類為「冷」—這個國內在討論戰後抽象與低限藝術時常常被使用的感官詮釋詞,不過標本般的乾燥感可能更貼近藝術家作品中的負性徵狀,既不死亡,也拒絕一昧地前往不朽。捷克裔法國籍作家米蘭昆德拉(Milan Kundera, b.1929)曾經對形象與不朽進行闡釋,他認為不朽的是形象而不是人,個體是他人發現動作、手勢等形象魅力的通道。而正是形象對於人的感召,使人產生了作為「自我形象」的誤認[9]。因此在臺灣近年來常被提及的前輩雕塑家黃土水(b.1895)口中的精神之不朽,並不是個人思想上的不朽,而是讓自己成為那巨大的、稱之為「藝術精神」形象的一份子。在這個意義上,黃至正作品中的負形象,是一種有別於不朽之「死而不亡」的崇高存在之外的另一種存在狀態。
回到文章開頭關於「作品形象內外壓抑的事物」的感官牽引,負片、破損、簡化圖像與影像的手法,成了一道形象通往意義之反面(而不是無意義)的門,黃至正依照它們的命運,為其分別鋪上了金箔或銀箔的步道,讓這些事物各自通往它處。這些事物是藝術家既想透過創作超脫,卻又需避免它在藝術的公眾凝視中見光死。金屬箔的物性與膠彩、水墨的技術思維提供了他陌生化的途徑,刮去作品中的生命圖像之我執,又讓記憶在皈依形象之不朽之前,暫時封存在金身與銀服之中。那麼,在這樣的負形象中,黃至正又將如何讓我們重新認識那些壓抑的事物?
[1] 王靜霏,〈關於生命中最裏層的記憶 - 淺論黃至正創作〉,《放築塾代誌》,放築塾創意行銷有限公司出版,第19期,2017年1月號,頁48-50。
[2] 陳湘汶,〈記憶的鍊金術—黃至正的創作〉,2016,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。
[3] 陳寬育,〈標本集、記憶容器與光 ――關於黃至正的「奶油正好融化」個展〉,2019,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。
[4] 游原一,〈物感思憶作為一種創作設定-關於黃至正的「水銀落地」〉,2021,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。
[5] 米歇爾以美國符號學者皮爾斯(C.S.Peirce,b.1839)界定的「肖像符號」透過視覺的內在感覺性質產生的聯想,引申了形象可以被認為是一個非物質實體、一個幽靈般的、幻影般的顯現,並依靠某種物質支持浮出表面或獲得生命。
[6] 例如由水墨研究學者吳超然於高雄小畫廊策展的「水墨×複數II新世代水墨展」(2017)。
[7] 詳見拙作〈從顛覆到觀自在─姚瑞中與神連線的《離垢地》〉,非池中藝術網,2019/11/04,文章搜尋時間為2022/01/30,文章網址:https://artemperor.tw/focus/2938。
[8] 詳見柯嘉豪John Kieschnick,《器物的象徵:佛教打造的中國物質世界》,遠足文化出版,2020/12/23,頁11-12。
[9] 黎子元,〈米蘭・昆德拉專輯 02. 不朽的是形象而不是個人〉,哲學01,2019/05/21。文章搜尋時間為2022/01/30,文章網址:https://reurl.cc/oeVnGj。
Where Images Lingers: Regarding the Imagology within Huang Chih-Cheng’s Art Creations
By Chen Hsi
When I first took a close look at the Memo series (2019) by Huang Chih-Cheng, the first thing that came across my mind was that memories can finally rest in the immortal dimension of imagology as they are gradually lost, perished, and scattered in the real world. I asked myself: Are the memories and relations in life doomed to fade away? Or are they perhaps simply transformed into immortal images to last in eternity? Within Huang’s art practices, these questions are also repeatedly posed through the broken images he deliberately builds. However, when I looked into Huang’s other works, I found myself deeply drawn to the things suppressed both in and out of the images of these works.
In Huang’s work, the fragmented structures formed by silver foil backgrounds and ink blotted stitches along with the negative film effects on gold foil transfer printings remind me of the ghastly installations of portraits and ready-made objects created by Christian Boltanski (b.1944). Both artists have incorporated monumental implications for the revived past. Whether it be the immense historical traumas or the personal joys and sorrows of reunion and separations, this phantom quality seems to permeate most contemporary artworks that use ready-made objects and photo installations to interpret the memories and traumas in life. Likewise, compared to intact graceful memories, Huang seems to find refuge in remnant shadows and broken images instead.
Both prior and after the Memo, Huang has the tendency to pick his subjects from the people, objects, or places that have (or had) an intimate connection with him. Series including Aria (2021), Slight (2018), and Rusty Memory (2017) all transferred digital images onto metallic foils to restructure and transform the material and composition of ink painting and meticulous painting through mixed media. However, even though Huang has clearly projected his opinions on the fragility and vulnerability of life and experiences through the nature of these media, he has also intentionally suppressed the emotions and narrations behind the scenes. Even though whether or not we guess the stories behind the scenes, the original messages these realistic photos were trying to convey will remain obscure as the art expressions of the paintings keeps the audience away from conjecturing the artist’s intentions through pondering the making process of the pictures. Even if we somehow figure out the stories behind the series Undertow, with the negative film effect on the gold foil transfer prints, the artist has brought the images and senses into the world of negative space to keep his audience aloof from the hallucination in their visions.
In the past, art criticisms regarding the works of Huang Chih-Cheng have largely focused on how he has reiterated the fragility of memory in his own anthology through processing photo images connected to his life experiences. For instance, in 2017, Wang Jing-Fei pointed out that “the imperishable objects versus perpetual experiences” within the privacy and generality found in the layers and images of Huang’s works have reflected Carl Jung’s concept of collective subconsciousness.[1]
In 2016, Cheng Hsiang-Wen indicated that the artist’s creative deterioration of metallic foils in the pictures stand as an alchemical metaphor for the transformation of his understanding in family relationships, life experiences, physical matters, as well as the coming and going (or perhaps immortality) of memory.[2] Through Huang’s solo exhibition The Butter Just Melted in 2019, Chen Kuan-Yu discussed the manner of selection behind the Memo series. Chen believed that the artist had “made the collected items and photo images into a herbarium,” and that within the photo images and clothes lies a phantom-like indexical quality that “allows the past to revisit again and again.[3]” In 2021, Yu Yuan-I expanded Wang Jing-Fei’s suggestion of the “collective consciousness” within generality of imagology and ideology in conjunction with private photos and pictures, and indicated that Huang Chih-Cheng bears the intention of “extending the uncertainty behind metaphorical objects[4]” through broken or deteriorated surfaces.
From these art criticisms, we can conclude that the current works of Huang Chih-Cheng comprise the following traits: With personal preferences for anthology, the artist tends to weave images of private experiences together with general images, which are deliberately impaired and obscured to create associations of the past. With the obscuring process, the artist denies the photos and pictures to be the accurate representation of reality. Through this way, the photos and pictures are able to return to the “zero point” proposed by visual art theorist W.J.T. Mitchell. Altering images through indistiction and abstraction has been the choice of art expression not only for Huang Chih-Cheng, but also for other contemporary artists, who are in the quest of seeking “the image beyond pure image,” and “memories beyond simple memories.” For now, Huang’s means of presenting obscurity and abstraction in his subjects are perhaps characterized by his obsession with metallic foils. Such obsession could have come from the pursuit of identity and recognition in the contemporary art world, while it also could have been an inseparable connection to the artist’s learning background. In Huang’s The Flower Sutras and other two-dimensional works with solid shapes and figures, the meticulous line drawing techniques and the familiarity with media including paper and gold foil that Huang acquired in the Fine Arts Department of Tunghai University are clearly visible. In these works, the composition and meticulous manner of handling the media are almost impossible to be overlooked. This is why Huang’s works are occasionally seen in exhibitions of contemporary ink painting and glue color painting.[5] However, Huang does not simply create two dimensional works as a painter. The colors in his works often consist of the original colors of the materials, which have replaced paint along with the color world formed by hue and the color wheel. The only colors visible in these two dimensional pictures are the variations of metallic foil and ink. In three dimensional installations, oxidized metals have been used to demonstrate the colors left behind by the years past. The artist seems to identify this type of materiality and the transformation of substances as a mature indication of two dimensional work.
The transformed images in the anthology characterized by the alteration and transfer printing of metallic foils are Huang Chih-Cheng’s signature traits. The artist often transforms the narratives behind the photos and pictures through the characteristics of his chosen materials. However, Huang does not believe that minimalized images are the end of abstract life memories. Chen Kuan-Yu once described the practice of minimal painting in Vessel-Tunnel (2019) as a demonstration that turns illusionism into essentialism. In the world of glue painting, metallic foils have brought effects that transcend simple paintings. They are often seen as some sort of consecrated installation or embellishment in glue color painting, in which metallic foils are found in the background as devine halos or ornaments on a person. For example, in glue color paintings by Chen Jin (b.1907), metallic foils and thickeners that accentuate the literalness of the ornaments also reflect the same aspect. For Yao Jui-Chung (b.1969), his “gold and green landscape” formed by the application of gold foil made of 996 gold is used in temples across Taiwan in replacement of the traditional blank leaving in Chinese ink painting. In Yao’s painting, the heterogeneous golden world detached from spacetime is surrounded by the landscape constructed through hard-pen techniques.[6] The color and texture of the metallic foils stand out from the dry mineral pigments used in glue color painting. Though it may be a bit out of place, it is exactly the rarity that granted foil a unique position in the history of art and material culture.
The essentialism in Huang Chih-Cheng’s current works involves the paradox between the hands of an artist and his hand-picked anthology. This type of paradox interestingly echoes the paradox within the use of golden materials in the theology and material practice of Buddhism. Although Buddhism emphasizes the vanity of the material world to criticize conventional reality, rare treasures are often used to hypostatize Buddhist theology in practice. For instance, in the “Amitabha Sutra,” the pure land (Buddhist paradise) is described to have gold as pavements, and jewels as stairs. In “The 32 Signs of Great Men,” the skin of a Buddha is either gold or rare treasure. Buddhist scholar John Kieschnick believes that this is a way to emphasize that “the Buddha ultimately transcends the limits of regional aesthetics and material values.[7]” However, the gold foils used in Huang Chih-Cheng’s works are not so much the transcendence in Kieschnick’s idea as the pursuit of nirvana for the images through materials. The gold foils not only transcend the original senses brought by the given photos and pictures, but also surpass the common ghastly quality of a negative. Through the negative film effect, Huang has transformed the original realism in these photos and pictures. With the use of metallic foils, these images have detoured from the original “zero-point” route to a world beyond the reach of identification.
Even though gold, silver, and copper foils are all metallic foils used in glue color painting, the foil quality applied in Huang’s works are closer to the material aestheticism in the ancestral worship culture among the Han Chinese in Taiwan. For instance, in Taiwan’s folklore religion, silver foil is attached to silver hell bank notes as a worship to ancestors and ghosts. Gold foil, on the other hand, is mostly used on the gold paper for the worship of gods and goddesses. In the works of Huang Chih-Cheng, silver foil is often used as a transformation of the ordinary things that pass us by in our everyday life. On the contrary, gold foil is often applied to works with sublimate implications, nationalism, and mysticism. Nevertheless, in the series Undertow, youthful bodies with translucent forms are exposed and revealed one after another in the nirvana made of gold foil, which carries a significance utterly different from past glue color paintings. In the series Flash (2017), Memo, and Aria, the artist summoned the things once were not to revive these images, but to redeclare their death, and to remind us that we shall never stand beside the same things ever again. Although on the surface, the sublimation in the world of gold foil and the death in the world of silver foil have nothing in common in terms of their fateful ends projected by Huang, they both connote a suppressive image the artist had in mind. From Flash to Aria, the artist has treated the images of still life as if they were specimens. And yet, he didn’t seem to be satisfied with the minimalized abstract visuals of the images. The silhouettes of these images are like spirits on the fringe of vanishing. Through the physical property of foil and the fragmentation of images, Huang tries to suppress these photos and pictures with some sort of negative syndrome to put his quest of negative image into practice. Through this manner, he has explored the significance of image in dimensions beyond the dualism of reification and abstraction, which has dominated the art world ever since the start of modernism.
Afterall, no matter how oppressed and distant the photos and pictures are, as an audience we tend to have a desire to give them an identity. Therefore, we would ask questions like: “Who are these people?” or “Where does this come from?” Nonetheless, a narrative has never been what Huang Chih-Cheng has been aiming for through these mixed media images in the anthology. Perhaps most contemporary artists have struggled with the choice between depiction and identification. Huang is so attached to the hidden messages behind these photos and pictures as well as their fatal ends that he refuses to turn them into simple abstract images. Instead, he made them into negative images, which are shadows under his torch-like eyes. With the absence of identification, some people categorize this type of image and memory as “cold”— a sensuous term often used in the discussions of postwar abstract and minimal art in Taiwan. The specimen-like dehydration is perhaps closer to the negative symptoms in the artist’s works, which are neither dead or immortal. Similarly, Milan Kundera, a Czech writer who went into exile in France had also elaborated on the relationship between image and immortality. In his idea, immortality is found within an image instead of a person. A subject is the path for others to discover the charisma of movement, hand gesture, and image. Since an image calls for human attention, it is inevitable for humans to mistake it as “self image.”[8] In recent years, people in Taiwan have often brought up the spiritual immortality proposed by Taiwan’s pioneering sculptor Huang Tu-Shui (b.1895). However, the immortality Huang Tu-Shui had in mind has nothing to do with personal ideology, but becoming a part of the great image of “the art spirit.” In this aspect, the negative image in the works of Huang Chih-Cheng also stands apart from the sublimation of immortality in the “undead death.”
As mentioned in the beginning of the article, through the guidance of senses, negative film effect, brokenness, and simplified photos and images, the things suppressed both in and out of the works of Huang Chih-Cheng have opened a door that leads to the reverse side of meanings (certainly not meaninglessness). According to their designated fate, Huang has picked between gold or silver pavements for the subjects to reach to their own fateful ends. Although the artist longs to transcend these matters through creativity, he also has to avoid their doom in public sight. The physical quality of metallic foils and the techniques of glue color and ink painting provide the artist a means to distant the subject from its viewers. As the egos of these life images within the works are scraped away, memories are temporarily sealed in gold and silver before they are made into immortal images. How then, shall Huang Chih-Cheng bring us a brand new understanding towards these suppressed subjects through negative images?
[1] 王靜雯,〈關於生命中最裏層的記憶 - 淺論黃至正創作〉,《放築塾代誌》,放築塾創意行銷有限公司出版,第19期,2017年1月號,頁48-50。 [Wang, Ching-Wen. (2017). Guanyu shengming zhong zui liceng de jiyi- qianlun Huang Chih-Cheng chuangzuo. FUNmatter, 19, 48-50.]
[2] 陳湘汶,〈記憶的鍊金術—黃至正的創作〉,2016,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。[Chen, Hsiang-Wen. Alchemy of Memory- Works of Huang Chih-Cheng. Retrieved January 30, 2022, from Huang Chih Cheng Portfolio Website. Web site: http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html]
[3] 陳寬育,〈標本集、記憶容器與光 ――關於黃至正的「奶油正好融化」個展〉,2019,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。[Chem, Kuan-Yu. Hortus Siccus, the Memory Vessel, and the Light― Regarding “The Butter Just Melted,” a Solo Exhibition of Huang Chih-Cheng. Retrieved January 30, 2022, from Huang Chih Cheng Portfolio Website. Web site: http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html]
[4] 游原一,〈物感思憶作為一種創作設定-關於黃至正的「水銀落地」〉,2021,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。[Yu, Yuan-I. Wugan siyi zuowei yizhong chuangzuo sheding - guanyu Huang Chih-Cheng de shuiyin luodi. Retrieved January 30, 2022, from Huang Chih Cheng Portfolio Website. Web site: http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html]
[5] Ex. Ink x Multiplicities II (2017) curated by Wu Chao-Jen in Show Gallery, Kaohsiung.
[6] 詳見拙作〈從顛覆到觀自在─姚瑞中與神連線的《離垢地》〉,非池中藝術網,2019/11/04,文章搜尋時間為2022/01/30,文章網址:https://artemperor.tw/focus/2938。
[Chen, Hsi. (2019, November 14). Cong dianfu dao guan zizai─Yao Jui-Chung yu shen lianxian de ligoudi. Art Emperor. Web site: https://artemperor.tw/focus/2938]
[7] 詳見柯嘉豪John Kieschnick,《器物的象徵:佛教打造的中國物質世界》,遠足文化出版,2020/12/23,頁11-12。[Kieschnick, J. (2020). In Qiwu de xiangzheng: Fojiao dazao de zhongguo wuzhi shijie = The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (pp. 11–12). Walkers Cultural Enterprises, Ltd.]
[8] 黎子元,〈米蘭・昆德拉專輯 02. 不朽的是形象而不是個人〉,哲學01,2019/05/21。文章搜尋時間為2022/01/30,文章網址:https://reurl.cc/oeVnGj。[Li, Zi Yuan. (2019, May 21). Milan Kundera zhuanji 02. buxiu di shi xingxiang er bushi geren. Philosophy 01. Web site: https://reurl.cc/oeVnGj]
By Chen Hsi
When I first took a close look at the Memo series (2019) by Huang Chih-Cheng, the first thing that came across my mind was that memories can finally rest in the immortal dimension of imagology as they are gradually lost, perished, and scattered in the real world. I asked myself: Are the memories and relations in life doomed to fade away? Or are they perhaps simply transformed into immortal images to last in eternity? Within Huang’s art practices, these questions are also repeatedly posed through the broken images he deliberately builds. However, when I looked into Huang’s other works, I found myself deeply drawn to the things suppressed both in and out of the images of these works.
In Huang’s work, the fragmented structures formed by silver foil backgrounds and ink blotted stitches along with the negative film effects on gold foil transfer printings remind me of the ghastly installations of portraits and ready-made objects created by Christian Boltanski (b.1944). Both artists have incorporated monumental implications for the revived past. Whether it be the immense historical traumas or the personal joys and sorrows of reunion and separations, this phantom quality seems to permeate most contemporary artworks that use ready-made objects and photo installations to interpret the memories and traumas in life. Likewise, compared to intact graceful memories, Huang seems to find refuge in remnant shadows and broken images instead.
Both prior and after the Memo, Huang has the tendency to pick his subjects from the people, objects, or places that have (or had) an intimate connection with him. Series including Aria (2021), Slight (2018), and Rusty Memory (2017) all transferred digital images onto metallic foils to restructure and transform the material and composition of ink painting and meticulous painting through mixed media. However, even though Huang has clearly projected his opinions on the fragility and vulnerability of life and experiences through the nature of these media, he has also intentionally suppressed the emotions and narrations behind the scenes. Even though whether or not we guess the stories behind the scenes, the original messages these realistic photos were trying to convey will remain obscure as the art expressions of the paintings keeps the audience away from conjecturing the artist’s intentions through pondering the making process of the pictures. Even if we somehow figure out the stories behind the series Undertow, with the negative film effect on the gold foil transfer prints, the artist has brought the images and senses into the world of negative space to keep his audience aloof from the hallucination in their visions.
In the past, art criticisms regarding the works of Huang Chih-Cheng have largely focused on how he has reiterated the fragility of memory in his own anthology through processing photo images connected to his life experiences. For instance, in 2017, Wang Jing-Fei pointed out that “the imperishable objects versus perpetual experiences” within the privacy and generality found in the layers and images of Huang’s works have reflected Carl Jung’s concept of collective subconsciousness.[1]
In 2016, Cheng Hsiang-Wen indicated that the artist’s creative deterioration of metallic foils in the pictures stand as an alchemical metaphor for the transformation of his understanding in family relationships, life experiences, physical matters, as well as the coming and going (or perhaps immortality) of memory.[2] Through Huang’s solo exhibition The Butter Just Melted in 2019, Chen Kuan-Yu discussed the manner of selection behind the Memo series. Chen believed that the artist had “made the collected items and photo images into a herbarium,” and that within the photo images and clothes lies a phantom-like indexical quality that “allows the past to revisit again and again.[3]” In 2021, Yu Yuan-I expanded Wang Jing-Fei’s suggestion of the “collective consciousness” within generality of imagology and ideology in conjunction with private photos and pictures, and indicated that Huang Chih-Cheng bears the intention of “extending the uncertainty behind metaphorical objects[4]” through broken or deteriorated surfaces.
From these art criticisms, we can conclude that the current works of Huang Chih-Cheng comprise the following traits: With personal preferences for anthology, the artist tends to weave images of private experiences together with general images, which are deliberately impaired and obscured to create associations of the past. With the obscuring process, the artist denies the photos and pictures to be the accurate representation of reality. Through this way, the photos and pictures are able to return to the “zero point” proposed by visual art theorist W.J.T. Mitchell. Altering images through indistiction and abstraction has been the choice of art expression not only for Huang Chih-Cheng, but also for other contemporary artists, who are in the quest of seeking “the image beyond pure image,” and “memories beyond simple memories.” For now, Huang’s means of presenting obscurity and abstraction in his subjects are perhaps characterized by his obsession with metallic foils. Such obsession could have come from the pursuit of identity and recognition in the contemporary art world, while it also could have been an inseparable connection to the artist’s learning background. In Huang’s The Flower Sutras and other two-dimensional works with solid shapes and figures, the meticulous line drawing techniques and the familiarity with media including paper and gold foil that Huang acquired in the Fine Arts Department of Tunghai University are clearly visible. In these works, the composition and meticulous manner of handling the media are almost impossible to be overlooked. This is why Huang’s works are occasionally seen in exhibitions of contemporary ink painting and glue color painting.[5] However, Huang does not simply create two dimensional works as a painter. The colors in his works often consist of the original colors of the materials, which have replaced paint along with the color world formed by hue and the color wheel. The only colors visible in these two dimensional pictures are the variations of metallic foil and ink. In three dimensional installations, oxidized metals have been used to demonstrate the colors left behind by the years past. The artist seems to identify this type of materiality and the transformation of substances as a mature indication of two dimensional work.
The transformed images in the anthology characterized by the alteration and transfer printing of metallic foils are Huang Chih-Cheng’s signature traits. The artist often transforms the narratives behind the photos and pictures through the characteristics of his chosen materials. However, Huang does not believe that minimalized images are the end of abstract life memories. Chen Kuan-Yu once described the practice of minimal painting in Vessel-Tunnel (2019) as a demonstration that turns illusionism into essentialism. In the world of glue painting, metallic foils have brought effects that transcend simple paintings. They are often seen as some sort of consecrated installation or embellishment in glue color painting, in which metallic foils are found in the background as devine halos or ornaments on a person. For example, in glue color paintings by Chen Jin (b.1907), metallic foils and thickeners that accentuate the literalness of the ornaments also reflect the same aspect. For Yao Jui-Chung (b.1969), his “gold and green landscape” formed by the application of gold foil made of 996 gold is used in temples across Taiwan in replacement of the traditional blank leaving in Chinese ink painting. In Yao’s painting, the heterogeneous golden world detached from spacetime is surrounded by the landscape constructed through hard-pen techniques.[6] The color and texture of the metallic foils stand out from the dry mineral pigments used in glue color painting. Though it may be a bit out of place, it is exactly the rarity that granted foil a unique position in the history of art and material culture.
The essentialism in Huang Chih-Cheng’s current works involves the paradox between the hands of an artist and his hand-picked anthology. This type of paradox interestingly echoes the paradox within the use of golden materials in the theology and material practice of Buddhism. Although Buddhism emphasizes the vanity of the material world to criticize conventional reality, rare treasures are often used to hypostatize Buddhist theology in practice. For instance, in the “Amitabha Sutra,” the pure land (Buddhist paradise) is described to have gold as pavements, and jewels as stairs. In “The 32 Signs of Great Men,” the skin of a Buddha is either gold or rare treasure. Buddhist scholar John Kieschnick believes that this is a way to emphasize that “the Buddha ultimately transcends the limits of regional aesthetics and material values.[7]” However, the gold foils used in Huang Chih-Cheng’s works are not so much the transcendence in Kieschnick’s idea as the pursuit of nirvana for the images through materials. The gold foils not only transcend the original senses brought by the given photos and pictures, but also surpass the common ghastly quality of a negative. Through the negative film effect, Huang has transformed the original realism in these photos and pictures. With the use of metallic foils, these images have detoured from the original “zero-point” route to a world beyond the reach of identification.
Even though gold, silver, and copper foils are all metallic foils used in glue color painting, the foil quality applied in Huang’s works are closer to the material aestheticism in the ancestral worship culture among the Han Chinese in Taiwan. For instance, in Taiwan’s folklore religion, silver foil is attached to silver hell bank notes as a worship to ancestors and ghosts. Gold foil, on the other hand, is mostly used on the gold paper for the worship of gods and goddesses. In the works of Huang Chih-Cheng, silver foil is often used as a transformation of the ordinary things that pass us by in our everyday life. On the contrary, gold foil is often applied to works with sublimate implications, nationalism, and mysticism. Nevertheless, in the series Undertow, youthful bodies with translucent forms are exposed and revealed one after another in the nirvana made of gold foil, which carries a significance utterly different from past glue color paintings. In the series Flash (2017), Memo, and Aria, the artist summoned the things once were not to revive these images, but to redeclare their death, and to remind us that we shall never stand beside the same things ever again. Although on the surface, the sublimation in the world of gold foil and the death in the world of silver foil have nothing in common in terms of their fateful ends projected by Huang, they both connote a suppressive image the artist had in mind. From Flash to Aria, the artist has treated the images of still life as if they were specimens. And yet, he didn’t seem to be satisfied with the minimalized abstract visuals of the images. The silhouettes of these images are like spirits on the fringe of vanishing. Through the physical property of foil and the fragmentation of images, Huang tries to suppress these photos and pictures with some sort of negative syndrome to put his quest of negative image into practice. Through this manner, he has explored the significance of image in dimensions beyond the dualism of reification and abstraction, which has dominated the art world ever since the start of modernism.
Afterall, no matter how oppressed and distant the photos and pictures are, as an audience we tend to have a desire to give them an identity. Therefore, we would ask questions like: “Who are these people?” or “Where does this come from?” Nonetheless, a narrative has never been what Huang Chih-Cheng has been aiming for through these mixed media images in the anthology. Perhaps most contemporary artists have struggled with the choice between depiction and identification. Huang is so attached to the hidden messages behind these photos and pictures as well as their fatal ends that he refuses to turn them into simple abstract images. Instead, he made them into negative images, which are shadows under his torch-like eyes. With the absence of identification, some people categorize this type of image and memory as “cold”— a sensuous term often used in the discussions of postwar abstract and minimal art in Taiwan. The specimen-like dehydration is perhaps closer to the negative symptoms in the artist’s works, which are neither dead or immortal. Similarly, Milan Kundera, a Czech writer who went into exile in France had also elaborated on the relationship between image and immortality. In his idea, immortality is found within an image instead of a person. A subject is the path for others to discover the charisma of movement, hand gesture, and image. Since an image calls for human attention, it is inevitable for humans to mistake it as “self image.”[8] In recent years, people in Taiwan have often brought up the spiritual immortality proposed by Taiwan’s pioneering sculptor Huang Tu-Shui (b.1895). However, the immortality Huang Tu-Shui had in mind has nothing to do with personal ideology, but becoming a part of the great image of “the art spirit.” In this aspect, the negative image in the works of Huang Chih-Cheng also stands apart from the sublimation of immortality in the “undead death.”
As mentioned in the beginning of the article, through the guidance of senses, negative film effect, brokenness, and simplified photos and images, the things suppressed both in and out of the works of Huang Chih-Cheng have opened a door that leads to the reverse side of meanings (certainly not meaninglessness). According to their designated fate, Huang has picked between gold or silver pavements for the subjects to reach to their own fateful ends. Although the artist longs to transcend these matters through creativity, he also has to avoid their doom in public sight. The physical quality of metallic foils and the techniques of glue color and ink painting provide the artist a means to distant the subject from its viewers. As the egos of these life images within the works are scraped away, memories are temporarily sealed in gold and silver before they are made into immortal images. How then, shall Huang Chih-Cheng bring us a brand new understanding towards these suppressed subjects through negative images?
[1] 王靜雯,〈關於生命中最裏層的記憶 - 淺論黃至正創作〉,《放築塾代誌》,放築塾創意行銷有限公司出版,第19期,2017年1月號,頁48-50。 [Wang, Ching-Wen. (2017). Guanyu shengming zhong zui liceng de jiyi- qianlun Huang Chih-Cheng chuangzuo. FUNmatter, 19, 48-50.]
[2] 陳湘汶,〈記憶的鍊金術—黃至正的創作〉,2016,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。[Chen, Hsiang-Wen. Alchemy of Memory- Works of Huang Chih-Cheng. Retrieved January 30, 2022, from Huang Chih Cheng Portfolio Website. Web site: http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html]
[3] 陳寬育,〈標本集、記憶容器與光 ――關於黃至正的「奶油正好融化」個展〉,2019,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。[Chem, Kuan-Yu. Hortus Siccus, the Memory Vessel, and the Light― Regarding “The Butter Just Melted,” a Solo Exhibition of Huang Chih-Cheng. Retrieved January 30, 2022, from Huang Chih Cheng Portfolio Website. Web site: http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html]
[4] 游原一,〈物感思憶作為一種創作設定-關於黃至正的「水銀落地」〉,2021,搜尋自黃至正藝術家網站,文章搜尋日期為2022/1/30,文章網址:http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html。[Yu, Yuan-I. Wugan siyi zuowei yizhong chuangzuo sheding - guanyu Huang Chih-Cheng de shuiyin luodi. Retrieved January 30, 2022, from Huang Chih Cheng Portfolio Website. Web site: http://huangchihcheng.weebly.com/essay.html]
[5] Ex. Ink x Multiplicities II (2017) curated by Wu Chao-Jen in Show Gallery, Kaohsiung.
[6] 詳見拙作〈從顛覆到觀自在─姚瑞中與神連線的《離垢地》〉,非池中藝術網,2019/11/04,文章搜尋時間為2022/01/30,文章網址:https://artemperor.tw/focus/2938。
[Chen, Hsi. (2019, November 14). Cong dianfu dao guan zizai─Yao Jui-Chung yu shen lianxian de ligoudi. Art Emperor. Web site: https://artemperor.tw/focus/2938]
[7] 詳見柯嘉豪John Kieschnick,《器物的象徵:佛教打造的中國物質世界》,遠足文化出版,2020/12/23,頁11-12。[Kieschnick, J. (2020). In Qiwu de xiangzheng: Fojiao dazao de zhongguo wuzhi shijie = The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (pp. 11–12). Walkers Cultural Enterprises, Ltd.]
[8] 黎子元,〈米蘭・昆德拉專輯 02. 不朽的是形象而不是個人〉,哲學01,2019/05/21。文章搜尋時間為2022/01/30,文章網址:https://reurl.cc/oeVnGj。[Li, Zi Yuan. (2019, May 21). Milan Kundera zhuanji 02. buxiu di shi xingxiang er bushi geren. Philosophy 01. Web site: https://reurl.cc/oeVnGj]
盲文書吏—從黃至正的〈詠嘆調〉談起
文|沈裕昌
彷如煙燻或淋洗過,散發著石墨般柔軟的幽暗亞光,各式痕跡隱現其間,喚起曾經及可能的作工,如因檐雨闌干而脹鬆發泡的牆漆皮,或因摩挲耳鬢而斑駁油光的鏡架腳,無論漫長的浸漬或無聲的刮削,其中裹挾著連續的時光。然而這些痕跡就像落入暗井裡的瑣物,浮出難以辨識為訊息的碎響,聽者似乎與這些迷離噪音一起跌入深淵之中,因為他傾注所有心力去追蹤這些極微弱的訊號,反而丟失了推估時間與空間的慣常尺度。這些痕跡既像事物已絕滅後的餘蹤,又像將生成的兆隙。時間以完全悖反的向度展延開來,如拔河的麻繩,在間歇的震盪與平衡中,連續性崩塌為戈耳狄俄斯之結。痕跡忽聚忽散,似乎可以將其辨識為回憶中某事物的局部形狀,但隨即又消解為純粹的痕跡。意義在無意義中閃爍其詞。
閃電劃斷星圖,樹杈分撥雲叢。水銀流淌於石墨上,兩種滑順游移出兩種光芒。銀白色的細長線段,像車燈忽然照出了林間蛛網,散落出秩序的方向,經常是流蘇般的枝條,佛焰般的花序,仿花叢的蕾絲。然而光芒中有暗影,像光在光之上灼出焦痂,或光在光之內斂聚亮度。於是,水銀色的線段並不如乍見時那麼清晰可辨,石墨色的基底也不再如此地晦暗不明。白底上的黑文可以是吞沒光線的裂痕,黑底上的白文也可以是滲透光線的縫隙。石墨色的破碎塊面,像漣漪忽然撞上波平如鏡,捕捉到重力的擴散。痕跡上刻寫著痕跡,然而閃電並不真的劃斷星圖,樹杈也並不真的分撥雲叢。如果閃電的劃斷是幻象,星圖的連續也是幻象,但星圖卻因其實不相連,而根本上不可劃斷。無意義在無意義中閃爍其詞。
連珠跳躍的點,或截斷的線,震盪出訊號的流向。水銀與石墨間的阻抗,圖與地的辯證,在側光下銷融為暈霧中的平面。然而坑窪陷落在閃電與樹杈之上,蟻隊隆起於星圖和雲叢之下,訊號在水銀與石墨凝成的波面踏石而行,凌步而去。「詠嘆調」一詞,原意指空氣。孔竅是生氣的入口,也是膿血的出口,可見的事物通過它被吞沒,不可見的事物透過它而賦形。成列的洞口,皮膚的毛孔,毛蟲的假眼,有什麼東西穿行其下,有什麼東西凝視我們,溫熱的體液吸引腐食的蠕蟲,翅骨製的笛鑿出飛升的音階。指尖從列孔間拈出氣流,將嘆息補綴成歌調。蠕蟲從孔竅下釋放生命,啃嚙出軀體的輪廓。身形逐漸消解,身影逐漸清晰。掛鐘與眼鏡,紙船與皮鞋,時空的測量儀,往彼岸的載具。無意義在意義中閃爍其詞。
正面與背面,連續與斷裂,失眠與昏迷,焦慮與厭倦。挖掘是為了替補,橫貫在都心的老舊線路,上載到雲端的工事藍圖,泛黃的記憶,透視的體系。蟻隊裝配蜂針,循著噴墨輸出的地面標線仰伏前進,可視化的費洛蒙,或無聲的單行道。然而蟻隊混淆了費洛蒙與餌食,因為紙本輸出並不同於螢幕顯示,噴頭的行動也不重複滑鼠的軌跡。印刷噴頭如誤導辦案的竊賊,精心設置激發合理想像的痕跡,仔細抹去自己身前的足印,倒行離開現場。縫紉車針如貪食的獵物,以其足印取代餌食,終於按照獵人規劃的路線,抵達陷阱。蟻隊追蹤的是偽裝成線的點,蟻隊自身則是看似為點的線。訊號在訊號間傳遞,文字在文字內書寫。訊息覆蓋訊息,文字塗改文字。墨汁沖刷噴墨,標線隱入棉線,餌食進入蟻腹。意義在意義中閃爍其詞。
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黃至正長年以韓國狀紙和金屬箔作為基底材,將經過數位技術加工的影像與圖像轉印其上。影像大多來自家庭攝影,內容包含自家宅院,如房屋的立面外牆;家族成員的獨照或合照,如懷抱幼兒的年長女性;能夠喚起家族記憶的私人物件,如掛鐘、紙船、眼鏡、皮鞋。此外,他還偏好使用一些讓人想起人類個體的動植物影像,如佇立枝頭的鳥、漠野中的樹;以及具有年代感的傢俱或物件,如信箱、燈箱、老屋、行李箱、氣球、掛鐘、酒瓶、椅子。圖像大多來自人體解剖和動植物圖鑑,包含剝去皮膚的半身側像,頭顱、手掌等器官,肌肉、骨骼、神經、血管等組織,覆蓋在人體表面的鳥類或哺乳類動物及其器官,如羽翼、鱗甲、毛皮,以及作為頭冠、服飾出現,或持拿於手上的被子植物及其器官,如枝葉、花朵、果實。醫療圖像,如診治、實驗、傳染、解剖等疾病歷史圖像,和藥物、統計、紀錄、調查等醫療檔案文件影像。宗教圖像,如禱告、牧養。情慾圖像,如裸身、性器、擁吻、纏綿。
儘管黃至正在其創作中使用了大量的平面影像,及透過影像複製的圖像,但是相較於影像本身,他似乎更著迷於「顯影」的材料與手法。黃至正對於材料語彙的感受、理解和運用,可見於其有意識地將金屬箔的性質,對照到影像與圖像的內容。銀箔具有因硫化而變色的化學性質,金箔的性質則高度穩定而不變色,黃至正依此將其創作分為兩個系列。銀箔系列所轉印的大多是影像,藉銀箔隨時間逐漸硫化變色的性質,圍繞著記憶訴說其面對家族的內在情感。金箔系列所轉印的則多為圖像,以金箔能抵抗時間變化、並因此為人所欲求的性質,圍繞著慾望思考疾病、醫療、宗教、性與生命等外在論題。有趣的是,為了讓銀箔能更好地表現其硫化後的色澤,「銀箔—影像」系列經常只保留影像的輪廓線,「金箔—圖像」系列則相對完整地保留了圖像的所有細節。黃至正的〈詠嘆調〉(2021),無論是金屬箔的種類或所轉印的影像內容,皆可以合理地將其歸類為「銀箔—影像」系列。
若將〈詠嘆調〉設置為起始點,逆向梳理黃至正的創作史,我們可以將〈詠嘆調〉的思路與手法,回溯至〈不存在的幽靈〉(2020)、〈閃燃〉(2017)、〈星象〉(2017)、〈侵蝕的記憶〉(2016)等作品,甚至可以溯及更早期的〈小事系列〉(2012),以及被視為創作生涯起點的〈膺花〉(2010)、〈女媧造物供養像〉(2009)。有鑒於從〈小事系列〉到〈侵蝕的記憶〉之間,其處理紙張、金屬箔、墨的手法,皆有非過渡性的強烈轉變,且本畫冊收錄最早的一件作品便是〈侵蝕的記憶〉,因此本文談論黃至正的創作,將以其近年的「銀箔—影像」系列為主,包含了〈詠嘆調〉、〈不存在的幽靈〉、〈閃燃〉、〈星象〉、〈侵蝕的記憶〉等五個系列作品。這些作品所使用的材料非常一致,手法則隨影像的內容而有所調整,因此略有差異。
「銀箔—影像」系列皆使用韓國狀紙,以〈詠嘆調〉為例,創作過程大致如下:在紙面刷無酸樹脂,貼鋁箔後噴墨輸出影像,電動縫紉機用棉線勾勒出影像輪廓,刷墨汁後留下可觸的輪廓線,並保留墨汁漬痕,貼銀箔後待硫化變色即告完成。〈不存在的幽靈〉和〈星象〉的創作手法完全一致,與〈詠嘆調〉的差異只在略去貼銀箔的步驟。〈閃燃〉與〈詠嘆調〉的差異則在略去貼鋁箔的步驟,直接在影像上貼銀箔,並用硫磺加速硫化的速度和程度。至於〈侵蝕的記憶〉和〈詠嘆調〉的創作手法高度相似,差異只在前者車縫的並非影像的輪廓線,而是將貼上不同金屬箔、轉印不同影像、形狀與大小不一的狀紙,縫合為近似舊衣物的造形。
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韓國狀紙是韓國傳統畫用紙,纖維長而質地堅韌,能承受反覆的刷染過程而不起毛,是臺灣膠彩創作者經常使用的繪畫基底材。韓國狀紙的製作材料是構樹或楮樹皮,製作程序是將樹皮曬乾、泡軟,在鹼水中蒸煮後打成紙漿,用抄紙簾以搖盪的方式抄製成紙,加壓、烘乾,徹底去除水分後即成紙。因此,如果我們將「造紙術」理解為「以水為媒介,將植物纖維分散後重組成薄片」的技術,同時將黃至正的創作方式理解為「以數位為媒介,將影像分散後重組成影像」,不難發現兩者具備同樣的組織邏輯。「銀箔—影像」系列中的家庭攝影所喚起綿長的家族記憶與強韌的親人情感,與構樹或楮樹皮長而強韌的植物纖維,兩者之間亦具有某種巧妙的轉喻關係。事實上,「影像」與「書寫」同為抵抗遺忘的「記憶技術」,而「紙張」則不只是書寫的載體,也是影像的載體。
然而這些「記憶技術」及其載體,卻與其試圖留存的對象同樣脆弱易逝。為了強固紙張,使其易於書寫而不洇墨,並保護紙面上的書寫痕跡,造紙之外還需發展塗佈技術。東亞傳統造紙與書畫用的塗層材料是膠礬水,今日造紙工業與黃至正用的塗層材料則是人工樹脂。人工樹脂當然不同於天然樹脂,但兩者皆是接觸空氣而硬化後,仍具有彈性與疏水性的黏性液體。樹脂本是植物為了保護傷口而分泌的黏液,因此取樹脂時必先破壞樹皮。但若為了製紙而取樹皮,則需要去除樹皮中的樹脂。因此,先用分離樹脂的樹皮造紙,再用分離樹皮的樹脂塗佈其上,最後甚至將樹木的影像或圖像轉印其上,則可將其理解為「以技術為媒介,將樹分散後重組成樹」的過程。隈研吾認為人們砍伐樹木製造建築,又以植物造形裝飾建築表面,是為了以植物掩飾建築反自然的罪行。那麼,人們在紙張上描繪植物,是否也為了向植物贖罪?記憶技術協助我們克服遺忘,因而記憶總是關於失去的記憶。
金屬箔是宗教美術與工藝美術中常見的繪畫材料,金箔更已成為神聖性與裝飾性的同義詞,黃至正在「金箔—圖像」系列中,在金箔上轉印各種疾病、宗教與情慾圖像,便是承襲此一材質語彙。然而,銀箔在黃至正的創作脈絡中卻有別於金箔的宗教與裝飾意涵,此一材質作為修辭更多地指向攝影的歷史,即被稱作「達蓋爾法」的「銀版攝影法」。雖然銀版攝影法所使用的並非銀箔,而是銀鹽,但前者因其容易硫化變色而成為日本畫與膠彩畫中廣為使用的表現技法,後者則因鹵化銀的高感光性而成為早期攝影中不可或缺的的顯影材料,然而兩者皆在銀這種穩定性僅次於金的低反應性金屬中,發現其敏感的一面。此外,銀鹽的感光與銀箔的硫化,皆需要一定的反應時間。但是銀鹽捕捉的是明晰可辨的影像,銀箔捕捉的卻是氤氳朦朧的光暈。就此而言,銀箔似乎介於金箔與銀鹽之間,也即介於永恆不朽與稍縱即逝之間,可謂兩者的辯證綜合。銀箔上的斑斕痕跡,銘寫的並不是感傷的懷舊時光,而是當代的時間刻度。
鑽孔與磨製技術的出現,標誌著新石器時代的來臨,而石器鑽孔技術本身就是磨製技術的延伸。在黃至正的「銀箔—影像」系列中,從〈侵蝕的記憶〉、〈星象〉、〈不存在的幽靈〉到〈詠嘆調〉,皆使用電動縫紉機在韓國狀紙上車縫棉線。金屬針在紙張上穿孔的技術雖非磨製,但是無論骨針、石針或金屬針,其發明與製作,皆離不開磨製技術。石器鑽孔技術,是以尖銳木石沾濕沙鑽磨石器,若把銳物替換為線,沾濕沙切磨,即為石器切割技術。作為鑽具的銳物和作為切具的線,皆是用來切分器物的工具。但有趣的是,若將銳物與線合二為一,即以針具穿孔引線,就可成為縫合器物的工具。人類與其樹棲先祖皆有對生拇指,故皆具有抓握能力。但是樹棲猿類的手指彎曲,指端窄尖,拇指較短,故適於抓握棒狀物如樹枝;人類的手指短直,指端寬平,拇指粗壯,更適於抓握球狀物如石塊。棒狀與球狀的造形殊異,樹枝與石塊材質亦不同,但是鑽孔技術與縫合技術,卻可以將異質之物合二為一,一如針線工具本身。縫紉連結了不可連結的異質者,這種連結異質性的能力,不只可以跨越材質,更可以跨越時空。縫紉留下的痕跡,即斷續的連續線段,最終成為所有連結異質者的標誌性痕跡——從記號到訊號,從文字到星圖,皆然。
書畫用的墨汁,與噴墨輸出用的墨水,兩者雖然皆為圖文的載體,但其在生成圖文方面的差異,卻遠大於組成物質方面的差異。前者生成圖文的方式是手工塗繪,後者則是數位訊號。前者複製圖文的方式是手工描摹,後者則是機械複製。黃至正在「銀箔—影像」系列中雖同時使用了墨汁塗繪和噴墨輸出,但其使用的手法和目的,卻截然不同。在黃至正的創作中,噴墨輸出的用途是處理黑白分明但具有複雜細節的圖像,因此其追求的是清晰;墨汁塗繪的用途是降低鋁箔強烈的金屬反光,並在鋁箔表面留下墨水漬痕,藉以在平滑的表面增添痕跡,因此其追求的是模糊。噴墨輸出的圖像雖看似具備了豐富的細節,但是在畫面上真正令人沉迷其中的視覺對象,卻是塗繪在鋁箔上的墨汁漬痕,以及銀箔上的硫化色澤。它們是詩歌的跨行,是書頁的餘白,是阿芙蘿黛蒂足下的浪花浮沫。
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黃至正在本文論及的幾個系列中,最引人深思並貫穿大多數作品的手法,即為了在噴墨輸出的單調線條上增添痕跡,並避免被墨漬與硫化色澤所覆蓋,而選擇在噴墨線條上車縫棉線。這意味著,為了在模糊中看見清晰,必須使清晰變得比模糊更模糊;為了在噪音中辨識訊號,必須將訊號變成噪音的噪音。經過棉線車縫後的噴墨線條,雖然不可見,卻變得可觸,有如仰賴觸覺進行視讀的盲文。用棉線來描摹墨線,則有類於抄寫。黃至正在這幾件作品中的所作所為,像是雖明眼卻抄寫著盲文的抄書吏。然而影像可見而不可觸,盲文可觸而不可見,因此用盲文來抄寫影像,嚴格來說已經不是抄寫,而是一種翻譯。但是這種翻譯,並非在可類比的語言間對譯,而是在不可類比的東西之間翻譯那不可譯之物。因此,這些被棉線車縫過的墨線,不只喚起了某種辯證知覺,還創造了某種辯證媒介,後者或可謂之「文字—影像」,它在某種意義上可以被理解為手工製造的數位訊號。
文|沈裕昌
彷如煙燻或淋洗過,散發著石墨般柔軟的幽暗亞光,各式痕跡隱現其間,喚起曾經及可能的作工,如因檐雨闌干而脹鬆發泡的牆漆皮,或因摩挲耳鬢而斑駁油光的鏡架腳,無論漫長的浸漬或無聲的刮削,其中裹挾著連續的時光。然而這些痕跡就像落入暗井裡的瑣物,浮出難以辨識為訊息的碎響,聽者似乎與這些迷離噪音一起跌入深淵之中,因為他傾注所有心力去追蹤這些極微弱的訊號,反而丟失了推估時間與空間的慣常尺度。這些痕跡既像事物已絕滅後的餘蹤,又像將生成的兆隙。時間以完全悖反的向度展延開來,如拔河的麻繩,在間歇的震盪與平衡中,連續性崩塌為戈耳狄俄斯之結。痕跡忽聚忽散,似乎可以將其辨識為回憶中某事物的局部形狀,但隨即又消解為純粹的痕跡。意義在無意義中閃爍其詞。
閃電劃斷星圖,樹杈分撥雲叢。水銀流淌於石墨上,兩種滑順游移出兩種光芒。銀白色的細長線段,像車燈忽然照出了林間蛛網,散落出秩序的方向,經常是流蘇般的枝條,佛焰般的花序,仿花叢的蕾絲。然而光芒中有暗影,像光在光之上灼出焦痂,或光在光之內斂聚亮度。於是,水銀色的線段並不如乍見時那麼清晰可辨,石墨色的基底也不再如此地晦暗不明。白底上的黑文可以是吞沒光線的裂痕,黑底上的白文也可以是滲透光線的縫隙。石墨色的破碎塊面,像漣漪忽然撞上波平如鏡,捕捉到重力的擴散。痕跡上刻寫著痕跡,然而閃電並不真的劃斷星圖,樹杈也並不真的分撥雲叢。如果閃電的劃斷是幻象,星圖的連續也是幻象,但星圖卻因其實不相連,而根本上不可劃斷。無意義在無意義中閃爍其詞。
連珠跳躍的點,或截斷的線,震盪出訊號的流向。水銀與石墨間的阻抗,圖與地的辯證,在側光下銷融為暈霧中的平面。然而坑窪陷落在閃電與樹杈之上,蟻隊隆起於星圖和雲叢之下,訊號在水銀與石墨凝成的波面踏石而行,凌步而去。「詠嘆調」一詞,原意指空氣。孔竅是生氣的入口,也是膿血的出口,可見的事物通過它被吞沒,不可見的事物透過它而賦形。成列的洞口,皮膚的毛孔,毛蟲的假眼,有什麼東西穿行其下,有什麼東西凝視我們,溫熱的體液吸引腐食的蠕蟲,翅骨製的笛鑿出飛升的音階。指尖從列孔間拈出氣流,將嘆息補綴成歌調。蠕蟲從孔竅下釋放生命,啃嚙出軀體的輪廓。身形逐漸消解,身影逐漸清晰。掛鐘與眼鏡,紙船與皮鞋,時空的測量儀,往彼岸的載具。無意義在意義中閃爍其詞。
正面與背面,連續與斷裂,失眠與昏迷,焦慮與厭倦。挖掘是為了替補,橫貫在都心的老舊線路,上載到雲端的工事藍圖,泛黃的記憶,透視的體系。蟻隊裝配蜂針,循著噴墨輸出的地面標線仰伏前進,可視化的費洛蒙,或無聲的單行道。然而蟻隊混淆了費洛蒙與餌食,因為紙本輸出並不同於螢幕顯示,噴頭的行動也不重複滑鼠的軌跡。印刷噴頭如誤導辦案的竊賊,精心設置激發合理想像的痕跡,仔細抹去自己身前的足印,倒行離開現場。縫紉車針如貪食的獵物,以其足印取代餌食,終於按照獵人規劃的路線,抵達陷阱。蟻隊追蹤的是偽裝成線的點,蟻隊自身則是看似為點的線。訊號在訊號間傳遞,文字在文字內書寫。訊息覆蓋訊息,文字塗改文字。墨汁沖刷噴墨,標線隱入棉線,餌食進入蟻腹。意義在意義中閃爍其詞。
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黃至正長年以韓國狀紙和金屬箔作為基底材,將經過數位技術加工的影像與圖像轉印其上。影像大多來自家庭攝影,內容包含自家宅院,如房屋的立面外牆;家族成員的獨照或合照,如懷抱幼兒的年長女性;能夠喚起家族記憶的私人物件,如掛鐘、紙船、眼鏡、皮鞋。此外,他還偏好使用一些讓人想起人類個體的動植物影像,如佇立枝頭的鳥、漠野中的樹;以及具有年代感的傢俱或物件,如信箱、燈箱、老屋、行李箱、氣球、掛鐘、酒瓶、椅子。圖像大多來自人體解剖和動植物圖鑑,包含剝去皮膚的半身側像,頭顱、手掌等器官,肌肉、骨骼、神經、血管等組織,覆蓋在人體表面的鳥類或哺乳類動物及其器官,如羽翼、鱗甲、毛皮,以及作為頭冠、服飾出現,或持拿於手上的被子植物及其器官,如枝葉、花朵、果實。醫療圖像,如診治、實驗、傳染、解剖等疾病歷史圖像,和藥物、統計、紀錄、調查等醫療檔案文件影像。宗教圖像,如禱告、牧養。情慾圖像,如裸身、性器、擁吻、纏綿。
儘管黃至正在其創作中使用了大量的平面影像,及透過影像複製的圖像,但是相較於影像本身,他似乎更著迷於「顯影」的材料與手法。黃至正對於材料語彙的感受、理解和運用,可見於其有意識地將金屬箔的性質,對照到影像與圖像的內容。銀箔具有因硫化而變色的化學性質,金箔的性質則高度穩定而不變色,黃至正依此將其創作分為兩個系列。銀箔系列所轉印的大多是影像,藉銀箔隨時間逐漸硫化變色的性質,圍繞著記憶訴說其面對家族的內在情感。金箔系列所轉印的則多為圖像,以金箔能抵抗時間變化、並因此為人所欲求的性質,圍繞著慾望思考疾病、醫療、宗教、性與生命等外在論題。有趣的是,為了讓銀箔能更好地表現其硫化後的色澤,「銀箔—影像」系列經常只保留影像的輪廓線,「金箔—圖像」系列則相對完整地保留了圖像的所有細節。黃至正的〈詠嘆調〉(2021),無論是金屬箔的種類或所轉印的影像內容,皆可以合理地將其歸類為「銀箔—影像」系列。
若將〈詠嘆調〉設置為起始點,逆向梳理黃至正的創作史,我們可以將〈詠嘆調〉的思路與手法,回溯至〈不存在的幽靈〉(2020)、〈閃燃〉(2017)、〈星象〉(2017)、〈侵蝕的記憶〉(2016)等作品,甚至可以溯及更早期的〈小事系列〉(2012),以及被視為創作生涯起點的〈膺花〉(2010)、〈女媧造物供養像〉(2009)。有鑒於從〈小事系列〉到〈侵蝕的記憶〉之間,其處理紙張、金屬箔、墨的手法,皆有非過渡性的強烈轉變,且本畫冊收錄最早的一件作品便是〈侵蝕的記憶〉,因此本文談論黃至正的創作,將以其近年的「銀箔—影像」系列為主,包含了〈詠嘆調〉、〈不存在的幽靈〉、〈閃燃〉、〈星象〉、〈侵蝕的記憶〉等五個系列作品。這些作品所使用的材料非常一致,手法則隨影像的內容而有所調整,因此略有差異。
「銀箔—影像」系列皆使用韓國狀紙,以〈詠嘆調〉為例,創作過程大致如下:在紙面刷無酸樹脂,貼鋁箔後噴墨輸出影像,電動縫紉機用棉線勾勒出影像輪廓,刷墨汁後留下可觸的輪廓線,並保留墨汁漬痕,貼銀箔後待硫化變色即告完成。〈不存在的幽靈〉和〈星象〉的創作手法完全一致,與〈詠嘆調〉的差異只在略去貼銀箔的步驟。〈閃燃〉與〈詠嘆調〉的差異則在略去貼鋁箔的步驟,直接在影像上貼銀箔,並用硫磺加速硫化的速度和程度。至於〈侵蝕的記憶〉和〈詠嘆調〉的創作手法高度相似,差異只在前者車縫的並非影像的輪廓線,而是將貼上不同金屬箔、轉印不同影像、形狀與大小不一的狀紙,縫合為近似舊衣物的造形。
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韓國狀紙是韓國傳統畫用紙,纖維長而質地堅韌,能承受反覆的刷染過程而不起毛,是臺灣膠彩創作者經常使用的繪畫基底材。韓國狀紙的製作材料是構樹或楮樹皮,製作程序是將樹皮曬乾、泡軟,在鹼水中蒸煮後打成紙漿,用抄紙簾以搖盪的方式抄製成紙,加壓、烘乾,徹底去除水分後即成紙。因此,如果我們將「造紙術」理解為「以水為媒介,將植物纖維分散後重組成薄片」的技術,同時將黃至正的創作方式理解為「以數位為媒介,將影像分散後重組成影像」,不難發現兩者具備同樣的組織邏輯。「銀箔—影像」系列中的家庭攝影所喚起綿長的家族記憶與強韌的親人情感,與構樹或楮樹皮長而強韌的植物纖維,兩者之間亦具有某種巧妙的轉喻關係。事實上,「影像」與「書寫」同為抵抗遺忘的「記憶技術」,而「紙張」則不只是書寫的載體,也是影像的載體。
然而這些「記憶技術」及其載體,卻與其試圖留存的對象同樣脆弱易逝。為了強固紙張,使其易於書寫而不洇墨,並保護紙面上的書寫痕跡,造紙之外還需發展塗佈技術。東亞傳統造紙與書畫用的塗層材料是膠礬水,今日造紙工業與黃至正用的塗層材料則是人工樹脂。人工樹脂當然不同於天然樹脂,但兩者皆是接觸空氣而硬化後,仍具有彈性與疏水性的黏性液體。樹脂本是植物為了保護傷口而分泌的黏液,因此取樹脂時必先破壞樹皮。但若為了製紙而取樹皮,則需要去除樹皮中的樹脂。因此,先用分離樹脂的樹皮造紙,再用分離樹皮的樹脂塗佈其上,最後甚至將樹木的影像或圖像轉印其上,則可將其理解為「以技術為媒介,將樹分散後重組成樹」的過程。隈研吾認為人們砍伐樹木製造建築,又以植物造形裝飾建築表面,是為了以植物掩飾建築反自然的罪行。那麼,人們在紙張上描繪植物,是否也為了向植物贖罪?記憶技術協助我們克服遺忘,因而記憶總是關於失去的記憶。
金屬箔是宗教美術與工藝美術中常見的繪畫材料,金箔更已成為神聖性與裝飾性的同義詞,黃至正在「金箔—圖像」系列中,在金箔上轉印各種疾病、宗教與情慾圖像,便是承襲此一材質語彙。然而,銀箔在黃至正的創作脈絡中卻有別於金箔的宗教與裝飾意涵,此一材質作為修辭更多地指向攝影的歷史,即被稱作「達蓋爾法」的「銀版攝影法」。雖然銀版攝影法所使用的並非銀箔,而是銀鹽,但前者因其容易硫化變色而成為日本畫與膠彩畫中廣為使用的表現技法,後者則因鹵化銀的高感光性而成為早期攝影中不可或缺的的顯影材料,然而兩者皆在銀這種穩定性僅次於金的低反應性金屬中,發現其敏感的一面。此外,銀鹽的感光與銀箔的硫化,皆需要一定的反應時間。但是銀鹽捕捉的是明晰可辨的影像,銀箔捕捉的卻是氤氳朦朧的光暈。就此而言,銀箔似乎介於金箔與銀鹽之間,也即介於永恆不朽與稍縱即逝之間,可謂兩者的辯證綜合。銀箔上的斑斕痕跡,銘寫的並不是感傷的懷舊時光,而是當代的時間刻度。
鑽孔與磨製技術的出現,標誌著新石器時代的來臨,而石器鑽孔技術本身就是磨製技術的延伸。在黃至正的「銀箔—影像」系列中,從〈侵蝕的記憶〉、〈星象〉、〈不存在的幽靈〉到〈詠嘆調〉,皆使用電動縫紉機在韓國狀紙上車縫棉線。金屬針在紙張上穿孔的技術雖非磨製,但是無論骨針、石針或金屬針,其發明與製作,皆離不開磨製技術。石器鑽孔技術,是以尖銳木石沾濕沙鑽磨石器,若把銳物替換為線,沾濕沙切磨,即為石器切割技術。作為鑽具的銳物和作為切具的線,皆是用來切分器物的工具。但有趣的是,若將銳物與線合二為一,即以針具穿孔引線,就可成為縫合器物的工具。人類與其樹棲先祖皆有對生拇指,故皆具有抓握能力。但是樹棲猿類的手指彎曲,指端窄尖,拇指較短,故適於抓握棒狀物如樹枝;人類的手指短直,指端寬平,拇指粗壯,更適於抓握球狀物如石塊。棒狀與球狀的造形殊異,樹枝與石塊材質亦不同,但是鑽孔技術與縫合技術,卻可以將異質之物合二為一,一如針線工具本身。縫紉連結了不可連結的異質者,這種連結異質性的能力,不只可以跨越材質,更可以跨越時空。縫紉留下的痕跡,即斷續的連續線段,最終成為所有連結異質者的標誌性痕跡——從記號到訊號,從文字到星圖,皆然。
書畫用的墨汁,與噴墨輸出用的墨水,兩者雖然皆為圖文的載體,但其在生成圖文方面的差異,卻遠大於組成物質方面的差異。前者生成圖文的方式是手工塗繪,後者則是數位訊號。前者複製圖文的方式是手工描摹,後者則是機械複製。黃至正在「銀箔—影像」系列中雖同時使用了墨汁塗繪和噴墨輸出,但其使用的手法和目的,卻截然不同。在黃至正的創作中,噴墨輸出的用途是處理黑白分明但具有複雜細節的圖像,因此其追求的是清晰;墨汁塗繪的用途是降低鋁箔強烈的金屬反光,並在鋁箔表面留下墨水漬痕,藉以在平滑的表面增添痕跡,因此其追求的是模糊。噴墨輸出的圖像雖看似具備了豐富的細節,但是在畫面上真正令人沉迷其中的視覺對象,卻是塗繪在鋁箔上的墨汁漬痕,以及銀箔上的硫化色澤。它們是詩歌的跨行,是書頁的餘白,是阿芙蘿黛蒂足下的浪花浮沫。
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黃至正在本文論及的幾個系列中,最引人深思並貫穿大多數作品的手法,即為了在噴墨輸出的單調線條上增添痕跡,並避免被墨漬與硫化色澤所覆蓋,而選擇在噴墨線條上車縫棉線。這意味著,為了在模糊中看見清晰,必須使清晰變得比模糊更模糊;為了在噪音中辨識訊號,必須將訊號變成噪音的噪音。經過棉線車縫後的噴墨線條,雖然不可見,卻變得可觸,有如仰賴觸覺進行視讀的盲文。用棉線來描摹墨線,則有類於抄寫。黃至正在這幾件作品中的所作所為,像是雖明眼卻抄寫著盲文的抄書吏。然而影像可見而不可觸,盲文可觸而不可見,因此用盲文來抄寫影像,嚴格來說已經不是抄寫,而是一種翻譯。但是這種翻譯,並非在可類比的語言間對譯,而是在不可類比的東西之間翻譯那不可譯之物。因此,這些被棉線車縫過的墨線,不只喚起了某種辯證知覺,還創造了某種辯證媒介,後者或可謂之「文字—影像」,它在某種意義上可以被理解為手工製造的數位訊號。
The Braille Scribe– Regarding Aria and Other Works by Huang Chih Cheng
By Shen Yu Chang
The veiled traces permeate a soft dim light resembling that of a graphite as if they had been smoked or washed by showers of rain. These traces recall the works that once were or might have been. They are like the peeling, bubbling paint on a swelled wall corroded by eavesdrops, or the oily mottled glasses temple tips that have been rubbing against the sideburns for ages. Whether it be the prolonged drizzle of rain or the silent attrition at the tips of glasses temples, an incessant time frame is hiding behind the scenes. These traces are like trifles fallen into a dark well, echoing obscured clinks that can hardly be called signals, drawing listeners deep down the abyss. When the listeners give their all in tracking down the feeble signals, ignorance towards the conventional measurements of time and space will inevitably follow. These traces reflect both the marks of the things once were and a glimpse of what is to be. Time is extending in an entirely contradicting dimension. Like a hemp rope for the tug-of-war, all shivers and balances leading towards the ultimate and sequential fall is the Gordius knot. The flickering traces can be the fragmented silhouette of a memory, yet as the mirage fades, nothing will be left behind besides pure traces. The meaning remains evasive in all the meaninglessness.
A lightning cuts through the star chart while branch crotches dissect the clouds above. Streams of mercury drift through the graphite, beaming two rays of light. The silvery white threads almost correspond with forest cobwebs spotlighted by a car at night. The orderly manner of the dispersion resembles tassel-like branches, the inflorescence of a spadix, and the patterns of flowery laces. However, shadows within the rays are like burned scars above the light as beams of light converge within the light. Therefore, the silvery white threads are no longer as distinct as it first appeared to be, nor is the graphite base as obscured as it once was. As black scribbles on a white base can be seen as the crevices that engulf light, white scribbles on top of a black surface can also be the rifts that permeate light. The broken pieces of graphite reflect a ripple disturbing the motionless glassy water, and capture the diffusion of gravity. Traces are being carved on top of traces. And yet, as lightnings do not actually cut through the star chart in the sky, nor do the branch crotches divide the clouds above. If the cuts of lightning were illusional, the continuity of the star chart is equally illusional. Since there really isn’t any continuity in a star chart, there’s nothing to cut. Therefore, the meaninglessness remains evasive in all the meaninglessness.
Whether it be the connected dots, the segmented threads, or the waves of signals in vibration, the friction between the mercury and the graphite is contending for the image above and the foundation below. The side light fuses the two into a misty surface. Nevertheless, the aperture falls above and between the lightning and the tree crotches as an army of ants bulge beneath the clouds and the star chart with signals finding themselves tipping on top of waves of mercury and graphite, gliding in each move. The original meaning for the word aria is “air,” which finds its way in all forms of openings. The orifices of our body are both the entryways for life, and the very exits for pus and blood. All things visible are swollen through them as everything invisible finds its form through them. Rows of openings including the pores in our skins and the false eyes of a caterpillar render the sensation that something moving beneath the surface is watching us. Warm body fluids attract worms that live on corroded and rotten matters. A flute made of wing bones sings a flying note. Our fingertips force the air to flow through different openings, turning sighs into songs. Worms release life under the openings, nipping the silhouette of a corpus. The shape of a body gradually dissolves as its figure comes to light. From wall clocks to glasses, paper boats to leather shoes, these measurements of time are the carriers that take us to the world on the other side. The meaninglessness remains evasive in all the meanings.
The front versus the back, continuity versus fragmentation, insomnia versus coma, anxiety versus weariness– inquiries are made for the purpose of replacement. A timeworn circuitry traverses the heart of the city. Its construction blueprints are uploaded to the cloud as the age-old memories with yellowish tints project the system with its figures in perspective. Figuratively speaking, the stitches are almost an army of ants, which gird themselves up with stingers, crawling and tracing the inkjet printed road signs on the ground, visualizing pheromones and the silent one-way street. And yet, the ants have confused the baits for the pheromones since the print does not fully reflect the picture on the screen, nor do the movements of a printer nozzle duplicate the traces of a computer mouse. The thief-like nozzle mapped out the crime scene meticulously, luring its targets to follow the rational routes in their minds. The footprints of the nozzle are carefully wiped clean as it retreats the site reversely. The spindle is like a voracious predator luring the prey with its own footprints instead of baits. The prey is doomed to follow the path towards the trap preset by its predator. In this way, the army of ants track down the dots disguised as lines, whereas the line of ants is mistaken as simple dots. Signals are passed among signals as words are written in between words. Messages are covered by other messages while words are written over words. As the ink washes the print, the lines hidden beneath the cotton threads are like baits ended up inside the stomachs of ants. The meaning remains evasive within all the meanings.
*
For years, Huang Chih-Cheng has been using Korean jangji (also known as hanji or Korean mulberry paper) and metal foil as his substrates for transferring processed digital images. Most of the images come from family photos including the ones taken in his own backyard, the facade or external walls of the house, individual photos and group photos of family members that include an old lady holding a baby. Other than people, objects such as wall clocks, paper boats, glasses, and leather shoes are also involved. Besides these private materials, he also prefers the use of animal or botanic images that reminds people of humans. These encompass a bird standing at the tree top, trees in a desert, and aged furniture and household objects such as mailboxes, lightboxes, old houses, luggages, wine bottles, and chairs. A lot of the images came from human anatomy atlas and animal or botanic picture collections. Organs consisting of skinned profiles, skulls, and hands, along with tissues such as muscles, bones, nerves, and vessels had all once been his chosen subjects. Heterogeneous fusions include birds hovering on top of the human body, mammals and their organs like wings, feathers, scales, and furs are made into crowns and clothes as stems, leaves, flowers, fruits of angiosperms and other parts of the plant are turned into accessories held in a hand. The theme of diseases and medical science takes medical images concerning the aspects of treatment, experiment, infection, and anatomy along with their historical and documented images regarding medicine, statistics, records, and investigation. Religious topics on praying and shepherding along with lustful images of nudity, sexual organs, kisses, and caresses are all within his reach.
Although Huang does use a massive amount of graphic images in his works, as he duplicates these photo images, he seems to focus more on the materials and the process of photographic development than the images themselves. Huang holds a keen perception and understanding in application of material languages. This can be seen in his choice of metallic foils, and how contents of photos and other images are intentionally maneuvered into the foils. The color of silver foil changes as it is vulcanized, whereas the nature of gold foil is highly stable due to the lack of discoloration. In such manner, the use of gold or silver divides Huang’s works into two categories, which I define as the series of “silver foil–photo images” and the series of “gold foil–images.” The series of silver foil transfers mostly photo images. As the tints of silver foil vary in vulcanization, the discoloration surrounded by memories recounts the internal emotions held towards the family as the time goes by. On the other hand, images of various themes are transferred in the gold foil series. The gold foil is resistant to the passing of time. This natural quality has been a part human desire for ages; thus, Huang utilized the material in the discussions concerning the human desires within diseases, medication, religion, sex, and life. Interestingly, in order to accentuate the color of vulcanized silver foil, the series of “silver foil–photo images”often keep the silhouette of photos only, whereas the image details in the “gold foil–images” are relatively fully reserved. Therefore, the categorization of Aria (2021) by Huang Chih-Cheng fittingly falls in the category of “silver foil–photo images” both in terms of the choice of metallic foil and its content of images.
If we sketch out the timeline of Huang Chih-Cheng’s artworks with Aria being the center point and trace his works reversely, we will be able to find the thoughts and techniques put into Aria also in works including Fictional Spirit (2020), Flash (2017), Constellations (2017), and Rusty Memory (2016). We will even be able to trace them in his much earlier works such as the Little Things series (2012), The Flower (2010), NuWa Made Animal (2009), etc., and find the same manner of handling paper, metallic foil, and ink. From the Little Things series to Rusty Memory, there lies no transition to bridge his dramatic changes. His earliest work included here is the Rusty Memory. Therefore, as this article discusses the works of Huang Chih-Cheng, Huang’s recent works in the series of “silver foil–photo images” such as Aria, Fictional Spirit, Flash, and Constellations are taken as the base for analyses. Among these works, a consistency in terms of choice of materials is visible with minor adjustments in techniques as the content of images varies.
All works in the “silver foil–photo images” series use janji. With Aria as an example, the creative process is roughly as follows: First, an acrylic medium is brushed onto the paper with aluminum foils attached on top. Then, images are printed through an inkjet printer followed by stitches of an electric sewing machine outlining the silhouette of the printed images. Once the ink is brushed onto the foil, a tangible silhouette will remain, reserving marks of ink on the surface with a finish of additional silver foils. The work is done once the vulcanization of silver foil is completed. The same creative techniques are used for Fictional Spirit and Constellations with the only difference in the lack of silver foil attachment. The difference between Flash and Aria is the omission of aluminum foil with the silver foil directly attached on top of the images as the application of sulfur accelerates and deepens the vulcanization. As for Rusty Memory and Aria, the two are extremely alike in terms of techniques; the only differences is that the former not only outlines the silhouette of the images with stitches of threads, but also attaches various types of metallic foils, along with different images printed on top of jangjis of multiple shapes and sizes sewn into the forms of aged clothing.
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Jangji is the paper used in traditional Korean paintings. Its long and tensile fibers are capable of enduring repeated brush dyeing without pilling, and has been a common painting substrate among glue painting artists in Taiwan. The manufacture of jangji uses the bark of paper mulberry. During the manufacturing process, the bark is first sun-dried, soaked, and then boiled in alkaline solution before pulping. A mold screen will then be dipped inside the slurry of paper pulp, followed by gentle shakes to align the fibers into a uniform sheet. The sheet of jangji will then be pressed and dried for complete dehydration. Therefore, if we take papermaking as a process that breaks and reconstructs botanic fibers into sheets with water as the medium, Hung’s art method can be understood as a deconstruction and reconstruction of images with digital technology as the medium. The two share the same structure and logic. The family photos in the “silver foil–photo images” series carry family memories and relationships so lasting and strong that they create a metonymy between these images and the long and tensile fibers of mulberry. In fact, both photo images and writings are memorization techniques to resist oblivion. As the carrier of these techniques, the paper serves not only as the carrier of writings, but also the carrier of images.
However, these memorization techniques and their carriers are just as fragile and fleeting as the substances they are attempting to preserve. In order to strengthen the paper to prevent it from smudging so that the traces of writings can sustain on the top, the development of coating technique is essential apart from the papermaking skills. Traditionally, oriental papermaking used gelatin alum solutions for coating. However, today’s papermaking industry uses epoxy, the same material used by Huang Chih-Cheng. Although epoxy is entirely different from natural resin, they both are viscous liquids that retain flexibility and hydrophobicity once solidified in the air. However, to make paper from barks, resin must first be removed. It has to be extracted from a bark in the initial process, and then later applied onto the sheet made of bark again, which sometimes even had images of wood printed on top in a final product. The whole process can be seen as a deconstruction and reconstruction of wood with techniques as the media. Architect Kengo Kuma believes that by cutting down trees to build architectures and embellishing the surface of buildings with woods, humans are hiding their anti-nature crime by adopting plants onto architectures. Then, are people also illustrating plants on top of paper as an atonement? Surely memorization techniques help us to resist the loss of memories; however, memories are always about the things that are lost.
Metallic foils are often found in the painting materials of religious art and industrial art, among which gold foil has even become an emblem for sacredness and ornament. In the series of “gold foil–images” by Huang Chih-Cheng, the transfer of various diseaseful, religious, and sexual images onto the gold foil all reflect the material language of gold. However, silver foil bears a different implication in Huang’s works. Here, the rhetorical implication of silver foil points towards the history of photography, in which the method of daguerreotype also applied silver-plated coppers in its photographic process. Back then, silver salts were applied in daguerreotype instead of silver foil. They were indispensible in the early years of photographic development due to the high light sensitivity of silver halide, whereas silver foil and its discoloration nature under vulcanization were widely adopted in the artistic expressions of traditional Japanese paintings and glue paintings. Among low reactive metals, the stability of these two silver media are preceded only by gold. Moreover, it takes quite an amount of time for both the light sensitivity of silver salts and the vulcanization of silver foil to react and develop. Nevertheless, as silver salts are capable of capturing clear photo images, silver foil can only retain misty halos. For that matter, the nature of silver foil seems to fall between gold foil and silver salts, or, in other words, in between the everlasting and the transience, and serves as the dialectical fusion of the two. The scribbles of variegated traces on the silver foil illustrate not the sentimental past that once was, but the contemporary time scale that is.
The techniques of drilling and polishing marked the coming of the Neolithic period. The technique of stone drilling itself is the extension of stone polishing. Within Huang’s “silver foil–photo images” series from Rusty Memory, Constellations, Fictional Spirit to Aria, threads were all stitched onto the jangji through an electric sewing machine. Although piercing paper with a metal needle is far from polishing, the invention and making of needles of bone, stone, and metal all required the process of polishing. The Stone drilling technique takes a sharpened wood or stone drill dipped in moisturized quartz sands as abrasives to drill and pierce through ground stones. If the drill was replaced with sanded filaments to cut through stones, it becomes the stone cutting technique. Both are objects used for segmentation. Yet interestingly, if you turn them into needles and threads and combine the two, they become tools for sewing segmented pieces. Humans and their arboreal ancestors both have opposable thumbs, and are thus capable of grabbing. Nevertheless, the fingers of arboreal apes were crooked with narrow fingertips and shorter thumbs, and were thus fit for grabbing cylinder objects such as tree branches only. One the other hand, having shorter and straighter fingers with wider and flatter fingertips alongside thicker and stronger thumbs, humans are capable of maneuvering round objects like stones. The difference between cylinder and round objects lies not only in shape, their nature also varies as materials vary. For example, tree branches and stones are simply different in substance. Yet, the techniques of drilling and sewing are capable of combining these two heterogeneous substances. The sewing kit itself is a combination of two heterogeneous substances. The action of sewing is the action that connects heterogeneity. This ability to connect heterogeneity is not only a capability of breaking through substances, but also through time. Traces of sewing leave interrupted but continuous lines, which will end up being symbolic traces like all other heterogeneity connectors– It was and is the same from signs to signals, writings to constellations.
Although the ink used in painting and the ink for inkjet printing are both carriers of pictures and writings, their different ways of carrying out the contents are far greater than their divergence in substance. The content of the former is hand-painted while the latter is accomplished through digital signals. In other words, the former depends on the work of human hands to replicate pictures and writings while the latter completes the duplication by machine. Although the series “silver foil–photo images” by Huang Chih-Cheng uses ink in both painting and inkjet printing, their means and purposes are entirely different. In Huang's works, the use of inkjet printing is to process images of intricate details with distinct light and darkness; therefore, image definition is essential. Nevertheless, by painting with ink, Huang decreases the sharp metallic reflection of aluminum foil. The marks of ink on top of aluminum foil adds stains on the smooth surface; here, the artist is after obscurity. Although images out of the inkjet printer are filled with rich and intricate details, the image that truly attracts the viewers are the traces of ink painted on top of the aluminum foil and the vulcanized tints of silver foil. They’re like the run-on lines in a poem, the blank spaces on a book page, and the waves under the feet of Aphrodite.
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Huang Chih-Cheng’s series mentioned in this article are most fascinating in the creative means incorporated in the majority of his works. This includes adding textures to the monotonous lines printed by an inkjet printer, and the effort of sewing threads on top of the printed lines to prevent the print from being covered by ink and the vulcanized tints. This means that in order to see clearly in obscurity, the clear must be more obscure than the obscure. In order to identify signals among noises, the signals must first become the noise of all surrounding noises. The threads sewn on top of the printed lines may be invisible, but palpable. They are almost like braille read through the senses of touch. By tracing the ink-printed lines with threads, the works are almost like transcriptions. The role of Huang Chih-Cheng in these works is similar to a braille scribe with perfect vision. And yet, images are meant to be seen, not to be touched, whereas braille is meant to be touched, not to be seen. Thus, strictly speaking, transcribing images through braille isn’t transcription, but translation. However, this type of translation does not translate between analogizable languages. Instead, it is translating the untranslatable among the unanalogizable. Therefore, the printed lines and the machine sewn cotton threads not only recall some sort of dialectical sense, but also create a dialectical medium in between writings and images. To a certain degree, it can be taken as a handmade digital signal.
By Shen Yu Chang
The veiled traces permeate a soft dim light resembling that of a graphite as if they had been smoked or washed by showers of rain. These traces recall the works that once were or might have been. They are like the peeling, bubbling paint on a swelled wall corroded by eavesdrops, or the oily mottled glasses temple tips that have been rubbing against the sideburns for ages. Whether it be the prolonged drizzle of rain or the silent attrition at the tips of glasses temples, an incessant time frame is hiding behind the scenes. These traces are like trifles fallen into a dark well, echoing obscured clinks that can hardly be called signals, drawing listeners deep down the abyss. When the listeners give their all in tracking down the feeble signals, ignorance towards the conventional measurements of time and space will inevitably follow. These traces reflect both the marks of the things once were and a glimpse of what is to be. Time is extending in an entirely contradicting dimension. Like a hemp rope for the tug-of-war, all shivers and balances leading towards the ultimate and sequential fall is the Gordius knot. The flickering traces can be the fragmented silhouette of a memory, yet as the mirage fades, nothing will be left behind besides pure traces. The meaning remains evasive in all the meaninglessness.
A lightning cuts through the star chart while branch crotches dissect the clouds above. Streams of mercury drift through the graphite, beaming two rays of light. The silvery white threads almost correspond with forest cobwebs spotlighted by a car at night. The orderly manner of the dispersion resembles tassel-like branches, the inflorescence of a spadix, and the patterns of flowery laces. However, shadows within the rays are like burned scars above the light as beams of light converge within the light. Therefore, the silvery white threads are no longer as distinct as it first appeared to be, nor is the graphite base as obscured as it once was. As black scribbles on a white base can be seen as the crevices that engulf light, white scribbles on top of a black surface can also be the rifts that permeate light. The broken pieces of graphite reflect a ripple disturbing the motionless glassy water, and capture the diffusion of gravity. Traces are being carved on top of traces. And yet, as lightnings do not actually cut through the star chart in the sky, nor do the branch crotches divide the clouds above. If the cuts of lightning were illusional, the continuity of the star chart is equally illusional. Since there really isn’t any continuity in a star chart, there’s nothing to cut. Therefore, the meaninglessness remains evasive in all the meaninglessness.
Whether it be the connected dots, the segmented threads, or the waves of signals in vibration, the friction between the mercury and the graphite is contending for the image above and the foundation below. The side light fuses the two into a misty surface. Nevertheless, the aperture falls above and between the lightning and the tree crotches as an army of ants bulge beneath the clouds and the star chart with signals finding themselves tipping on top of waves of mercury and graphite, gliding in each move. The original meaning for the word aria is “air,” which finds its way in all forms of openings. The orifices of our body are both the entryways for life, and the very exits for pus and blood. All things visible are swollen through them as everything invisible finds its form through them. Rows of openings including the pores in our skins and the false eyes of a caterpillar render the sensation that something moving beneath the surface is watching us. Warm body fluids attract worms that live on corroded and rotten matters. A flute made of wing bones sings a flying note. Our fingertips force the air to flow through different openings, turning sighs into songs. Worms release life under the openings, nipping the silhouette of a corpus. The shape of a body gradually dissolves as its figure comes to light. From wall clocks to glasses, paper boats to leather shoes, these measurements of time are the carriers that take us to the world on the other side. The meaninglessness remains evasive in all the meanings.
The front versus the back, continuity versus fragmentation, insomnia versus coma, anxiety versus weariness– inquiries are made for the purpose of replacement. A timeworn circuitry traverses the heart of the city. Its construction blueprints are uploaded to the cloud as the age-old memories with yellowish tints project the system with its figures in perspective. Figuratively speaking, the stitches are almost an army of ants, which gird themselves up with stingers, crawling and tracing the inkjet printed road signs on the ground, visualizing pheromones and the silent one-way street. And yet, the ants have confused the baits for the pheromones since the print does not fully reflect the picture on the screen, nor do the movements of a printer nozzle duplicate the traces of a computer mouse. The thief-like nozzle mapped out the crime scene meticulously, luring its targets to follow the rational routes in their minds. The footprints of the nozzle are carefully wiped clean as it retreats the site reversely. The spindle is like a voracious predator luring the prey with its own footprints instead of baits. The prey is doomed to follow the path towards the trap preset by its predator. In this way, the army of ants track down the dots disguised as lines, whereas the line of ants is mistaken as simple dots. Signals are passed among signals as words are written in between words. Messages are covered by other messages while words are written over words. As the ink washes the print, the lines hidden beneath the cotton threads are like baits ended up inside the stomachs of ants. The meaning remains evasive within all the meanings.
*
For years, Huang Chih-Cheng has been using Korean jangji (also known as hanji or Korean mulberry paper) and metal foil as his substrates for transferring processed digital images. Most of the images come from family photos including the ones taken in his own backyard, the facade or external walls of the house, individual photos and group photos of family members that include an old lady holding a baby. Other than people, objects such as wall clocks, paper boats, glasses, and leather shoes are also involved. Besides these private materials, he also prefers the use of animal or botanic images that reminds people of humans. These encompass a bird standing at the tree top, trees in a desert, and aged furniture and household objects such as mailboxes, lightboxes, old houses, luggages, wine bottles, and chairs. A lot of the images came from human anatomy atlas and animal or botanic picture collections. Organs consisting of skinned profiles, skulls, and hands, along with tissues such as muscles, bones, nerves, and vessels had all once been his chosen subjects. Heterogeneous fusions include birds hovering on top of the human body, mammals and their organs like wings, feathers, scales, and furs are made into crowns and clothes as stems, leaves, flowers, fruits of angiosperms and other parts of the plant are turned into accessories held in a hand. The theme of diseases and medical science takes medical images concerning the aspects of treatment, experiment, infection, and anatomy along with their historical and documented images regarding medicine, statistics, records, and investigation. Religious topics on praying and shepherding along with lustful images of nudity, sexual organs, kisses, and caresses are all within his reach.
Although Huang does use a massive amount of graphic images in his works, as he duplicates these photo images, he seems to focus more on the materials and the process of photographic development than the images themselves. Huang holds a keen perception and understanding in application of material languages. This can be seen in his choice of metallic foils, and how contents of photos and other images are intentionally maneuvered into the foils. The color of silver foil changes as it is vulcanized, whereas the nature of gold foil is highly stable due to the lack of discoloration. In such manner, the use of gold or silver divides Huang’s works into two categories, which I define as the series of “silver foil–photo images” and the series of “gold foil–images.” The series of silver foil transfers mostly photo images. As the tints of silver foil vary in vulcanization, the discoloration surrounded by memories recounts the internal emotions held towards the family as the time goes by. On the other hand, images of various themes are transferred in the gold foil series. The gold foil is resistant to the passing of time. This natural quality has been a part human desire for ages; thus, Huang utilized the material in the discussions concerning the human desires within diseases, medication, religion, sex, and life. Interestingly, in order to accentuate the color of vulcanized silver foil, the series of “silver foil–photo images”often keep the silhouette of photos only, whereas the image details in the “gold foil–images” are relatively fully reserved. Therefore, the categorization of Aria (2021) by Huang Chih-Cheng fittingly falls in the category of “silver foil–photo images” both in terms of the choice of metallic foil and its content of images.
If we sketch out the timeline of Huang Chih-Cheng’s artworks with Aria being the center point and trace his works reversely, we will be able to find the thoughts and techniques put into Aria also in works including Fictional Spirit (2020), Flash (2017), Constellations (2017), and Rusty Memory (2016). We will even be able to trace them in his much earlier works such as the Little Things series (2012), The Flower (2010), NuWa Made Animal (2009), etc., and find the same manner of handling paper, metallic foil, and ink. From the Little Things series to Rusty Memory, there lies no transition to bridge his dramatic changes. His earliest work included here is the Rusty Memory. Therefore, as this article discusses the works of Huang Chih-Cheng, Huang’s recent works in the series of “silver foil–photo images” such as Aria, Fictional Spirit, Flash, and Constellations are taken as the base for analyses. Among these works, a consistency in terms of choice of materials is visible with minor adjustments in techniques as the content of images varies.
All works in the “silver foil–photo images” series use janji. With Aria as an example, the creative process is roughly as follows: First, an acrylic medium is brushed onto the paper with aluminum foils attached on top. Then, images are printed through an inkjet printer followed by stitches of an electric sewing machine outlining the silhouette of the printed images. Once the ink is brushed onto the foil, a tangible silhouette will remain, reserving marks of ink on the surface with a finish of additional silver foils. The work is done once the vulcanization of silver foil is completed. The same creative techniques are used for Fictional Spirit and Constellations with the only difference in the lack of silver foil attachment. The difference between Flash and Aria is the omission of aluminum foil with the silver foil directly attached on top of the images as the application of sulfur accelerates and deepens the vulcanization. As for Rusty Memory and Aria, the two are extremely alike in terms of techniques; the only differences is that the former not only outlines the silhouette of the images with stitches of threads, but also attaches various types of metallic foils, along with different images printed on top of jangjis of multiple shapes and sizes sewn into the forms of aged clothing.
*
Jangji is the paper used in traditional Korean paintings. Its long and tensile fibers are capable of enduring repeated brush dyeing without pilling, and has been a common painting substrate among glue painting artists in Taiwan. The manufacture of jangji uses the bark of paper mulberry. During the manufacturing process, the bark is first sun-dried, soaked, and then boiled in alkaline solution before pulping. A mold screen will then be dipped inside the slurry of paper pulp, followed by gentle shakes to align the fibers into a uniform sheet. The sheet of jangji will then be pressed and dried for complete dehydration. Therefore, if we take papermaking as a process that breaks and reconstructs botanic fibers into sheets with water as the medium, Hung’s art method can be understood as a deconstruction and reconstruction of images with digital technology as the medium. The two share the same structure and logic. The family photos in the “silver foil–photo images” series carry family memories and relationships so lasting and strong that they create a metonymy between these images and the long and tensile fibers of mulberry. In fact, both photo images and writings are memorization techniques to resist oblivion. As the carrier of these techniques, the paper serves not only as the carrier of writings, but also the carrier of images.
However, these memorization techniques and their carriers are just as fragile and fleeting as the substances they are attempting to preserve. In order to strengthen the paper to prevent it from smudging so that the traces of writings can sustain on the top, the development of coating technique is essential apart from the papermaking skills. Traditionally, oriental papermaking used gelatin alum solutions for coating. However, today’s papermaking industry uses epoxy, the same material used by Huang Chih-Cheng. Although epoxy is entirely different from natural resin, they both are viscous liquids that retain flexibility and hydrophobicity once solidified in the air. However, to make paper from barks, resin must first be removed. It has to be extracted from a bark in the initial process, and then later applied onto the sheet made of bark again, which sometimes even had images of wood printed on top in a final product. The whole process can be seen as a deconstruction and reconstruction of wood with techniques as the media. Architect Kengo Kuma believes that by cutting down trees to build architectures and embellishing the surface of buildings with woods, humans are hiding their anti-nature crime by adopting plants onto architectures. Then, are people also illustrating plants on top of paper as an atonement? Surely memorization techniques help us to resist the loss of memories; however, memories are always about the things that are lost.
Metallic foils are often found in the painting materials of religious art and industrial art, among which gold foil has even become an emblem for sacredness and ornament. In the series of “gold foil–images” by Huang Chih-Cheng, the transfer of various diseaseful, religious, and sexual images onto the gold foil all reflect the material language of gold. However, silver foil bears a different implication in Huang’s works. Here, the rhetorical implication of silver foil points towards the history of photography, in which the method of daguerreotype also applied silver-plated coppers in its photographic process. Back then, silver salts were applied in daguerreotype instead of silver foil. They were indispensible in the early years of photographic development due to the high light sensitivity of silver halide, whereas silver foil and its discoloration nature under vulcanization were widely adopted in the artistic expressions of traditional Japanese paintings and glue paintings. Among low reactive metals, the stability of these two silver media are preceded only by gold. Moreover, it takes quite an amount of time for both the light sensitivity of silver salts and the vulcanization of silver foil to react and develop. Nevertheless, as silver salts are capable of capturing clear photo images, silver foil can only retain misty halos. For that matter, the nature of silver foil seems to fall between gold foil and silver salts, or, in other words, in between the everlasting and the transience, and serves as the dialectical fusion of the two. The scribbles of variegated traces on the silver foil illustrate not the sentimental past that once was, but the contemporary time scale that is.
The techniques of drilling and polishing marked the coming of the Neolithic period. The technique of stone drilling itself is the extension of stone polishing. Within Huang’s “silver foil–photo images” series from Rusty Memory, Constellations, Fictional Spirit to Aria, threads were all stitched onto the jangji through an electric sewing machine. Although piercing paper with a metal needle is far from polishing, the invention and making of needles of bone, stone, and metal all required the process of polishing. The Stone drilling technique takes a sharpened wood or stone drill dipped in moisturized quartz sands as abrasives to drill and pierce through ground stones. If the drill was replaced with sanded filaments to cut through stones, it becomes the stone cutting technique. Both are objects used for segmentation. Yet interestingly, if you turn them into needles and threads and combine the two, they become tools for sewing segmented pieces. Humans and their arboreal ancestors both have opposable thumbs, and are thus capable of grabbing. Nevertheless, the fingers of arboreal apes were crooked with narrow fingertips and shorter thumbs, and were thus fit for grabbing cylinder objects such as tree branches only. One the other hand, having shorter and straighter fingers with wider and flatter fingertips alongside thicker and stronger thumbs, humans are capable of maneuvering round objects like stones. The difference between cylinder and round objects lies not only in shape, their nature also varies as materials vary. For example, tree branches and stones are simply different in substance. Yet, the techniques of drilling and sewing are capable of combining these two heterogeneous substances. The sewing kit itself is a combination of two heterogeneous substances. The action of sewing is the action that connects heterogeneity. This ability to connect heterogeneity is not only a capability of breaking through substances, but also through time. Traces of sewing leave interrupted but continuous lines, which will end up being symbolic traces like all other heterogeneity connectors– It was and is the same from signs to signals, writings to constellations.
Although the ink used in painting and the ink for inkjet printing are both carriers of pictures and writings, their different ways of carrying out the contents are far greater than their divergence in substance. The content of the former is hand-painted while the latter is accomplished through digital signals. In other words, the former depends on the work of human hands to replicate pictures and writings while the latter completes the duplication by machine. Although the series “silver foil–photo images” by Huang Chih-Cheng uses ink in both painting and inkjet printing, their means and purposes are entirely different. In Huang's works, the use of inkjet printing is to process images of intricate details with distinct light and darkness; therefore, image definition is essential. Nevertheless, by painting with ink, Huang decreases the sharp metallic reflection of aluminum foil. The marks of ink on top of aluminum foil adds stains on the smooth surface; here, the artist is after obscurity. Although images out of the inkjet printer are filled with rich and intricate details, the image that truly attracts the viewers are the traces of ink painted on top of the aluminum foil and the vulcanized tints of silver foil. They’re like the run-on lines in a poem, the blank spaces on a book page, and the waves under the feet of Aphrodite.
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Huang Chih-Cheng’s series mentioned in this article are most fascinating in the creative means incorporated in the majority of his works. This includes adding textures to the monotonous lines printed by an inkjet printer, and the effort of sewing threads on top of the printed lines to prevent the print from being covered by ink and the vulcanized tints. This means that in order to see clearly in obscurity, the clear must be more obscure than the obscure. In order to identify signals among noises, the signals must first become the noise of all surrounding noises. The threads sewn on top of the printed lines may be invisible, but palpable. They are almost like braille read through the senses of touch. By tracing the ink-printed lines with threads, the works are almost like transcriptions. The role of Huang Chih-Cheng in these works is similar to a braille scribe with perfect vision. And yet, images are meant to be seen, not to be touched, whereas braille is meant to be touched, not to be seen. Thus, strictly speaking, transcribing images through braille isn’t transcription, but translation. However, this type of translation does not translate between analogizable languages. Instead, it is translating the untranslatable among the unanalogizable. Therefore, the printed lines and the machine sewn cotton threads not only recall some sort of dialectical sense, but also create a dialectical medium in between writings and images. To a certain degree, it can be taken as a handmade digital signal.
2019 標本集、記憶容器與光 ――關於黃至正的「奶油正好融化」個展
文 / 陳寬育
為了讓過去的一部分能被當下的此刻(Aktualitiit)所觸及,兩者之間之必須沒有連續性。― Walter Bejamin
備忘錄8 Memo8 132x88cm 銀箔、胚布、線、衣物、複合媒材 silver leaf、greige、thread、clothes、mixed media 2019
「備忘錄」 系列
木木藝術以黃至正2019年的「備忘錄」與「容器─隧道」兩個系列新作推出「奶油正好融化」展。這是木木藝術改變畫廊內部空間後,全新格局的第一檔展覽,也是展現黃至正對媒材的持續嘗試,以及關於記憶與生命主題的創作探索,一次精緻而豐富的發表。
黃至正的「備忘錄」系列,來自個人兒時記憶中的景象。像是祖母和母親忙碌時汗濕的衣物與身體貼合所呈現的視覺感,以及舞動的人形般的,晾曬中的衣物在光線與風穿透下的輕盈透明質感。「備忘錄」系列所試圖展開的問題是,記憶是個人生命的建構過程嗎?對黃至正而言,「在市集尋找那些熟悉的二手衣,它們成為某個人不再需要的零件,而我把它們當作龐大的加密資料庫,破譯、揣測他人抽象的生命史。」將記憶與衣物、衣物與零件、零件與資料庫做為一套此系列的創作思考路徑,並延伸這樣的視覺經驗與感受,以記憶中相似的二手衣物、與成長經驗密切的家庭攝影影像等,利用具穿刺意象的縫線線條感與金箔的拼貼效果,經過燒灼、縫合、補綴等手法,呈現既固定又斑駁的雙重修辭效果。也就是說,當衣物做為記憶的痕跡與換喻、影像做為記憶的凝結與回返、而金箔與縫線的效果做為記憶的特質時,黃至正將自身的經驗和對記憶的探索,透過作品精煉成某種生命狀態的圖像。
為了試著進一步理解黃至正的作品,本文的開頭題辭(epigraph)藉由班雅明在《拱廊街計畫N卷》(The Arcades Project N)的一段句子做為書寫的線索,「為了讓過去的一部分能被當下此刻所觸及,兩者之間之必須沒有連續性。」(N7, 7)同時,我也看到人類學家Michael Taussig在閱讀到班雅明《拱廊街計畫N卷》時,試著以藝術家的創作方式做為隱喻、或體現為整個拱廊街計畫的「畫面」。在這篇上個禮拜才出刊的文章中,Taussig要我們「想像一位藝術家在盒子裡翻找不同顏色和形狀、鮮豔和不透明的鈕扣與別針,沒有想太多,只是想要將它們適配成一對或幾個「有意義的叢集」(a constellation that makes sense )。這些不同的鈕扣與別針就像是發生在過去的事件,藝術家跨越時間來創造各種有意義的配對組合,而忽略它們之間所發生的事。」[i]
Taussig的藝術家比喻很能闡明我所引用的班雅明的句子,而那個裝滿鈕扣與別針的盒子,或許正是黃至正所稱的龐大加密資料庫,藝術家在其中揀取、並配對成有意義的作品表現。從歷史感來看,這種方法是反線性時間的(antichronological),更也許有人會說這是種直覺的方法。然而,那是什麼的直覺?是誰的直覺?是歷史學家的還是歷史的直覺?當然,那是歷史的直覺;用Taussig的話來說,「歷史在等待它的機會。」
班雅明未完成的《拱廊街計畫》是一部充滿引文(citations)的書寫集合,是由閱讀筆記、心得、摘要、草稿、詮釋、照片組成的未竟書寫計畫。這正是在做為《拱廊街計畫》的理論與方法說明的「卷宗N」(Konvolut N)中班雅明所述的:「這項工作就是要將『無引號之引用』的藝術發展到極致,其理論依據與蒙太奇密切相關。」(N1, 10)《拱廊街計畫》或許是班雅明實踐心中夢想之書的過程,而引文就如同呼應他的寓言概念,具有被抽離原來語境後的異質甚至震驚效果,同時也代表著產生的某種新的力場或星叢,以及啟示的能力。在這裡,我想試著以「無引號之引用的藝術」來理解黃至正在「備忘錄」系列作品中處理物件與畫面的方式,以及整個系列的創作母題:關於記憶的呈現。同時也對應引文去脈絡化的啟示能力和某種像是半書半資料櫃般的「準成書」(quasi book)概念;特別是植物標本集的形式,及其寓涵的新脈絡的知識茁長潛能。
關於置入新脈絡的潛能與新可能性的問題,J. Hillis Miller曾將翻譯比擬為「植物標本集」(Hortus siccus):「翻譯的效果就是將原作品拔起(uproots)、改變其自然屬性 (denature),把它轉化成植物標本集,或是準備存放在無盡檔案(bottom-less)堆裡的標本乾燥花。」[ii]在這裡,我欲將「備忘錄」 系列的手法理解為藝術家對於記憶的引文技藝,並從引文的觀點轉化Miller的乾燥花比喻,連結同樣以植物標本集討論引文與選集的Michael Marder,再以植物標本集的比喻對黃至正的「備忘錄」 系列展開再閱讀。「Hortus siccus/Herbarium」原指供植物學家研究的植物標本收藏冊或收藏室,對Marder來說,寫作時引文之使用,就像是這樣的植物標本收藏冊(Hortus siccus)。植物標本集像是個「乾燥花園」,植物被選取並摘離了原本的環境脈絡,並安排成為陳列在收藏冊子裡的樣本,而這正是某種和「引文」蠻類似的結構。[iii]
在科學革命之前的「植物科學」(plant sciences)被稱為「植物學」(botany),是針對植物外型的形態比較學,如今botany已是一個懷舊稱呼。而這種博物學時期提供形態比較的植物標本收藏冊,也就是這些去除自然原生脈絡的植物在植物標本集中所具有的,是能與其他植物標本形態展開比較的新脈絡,以及最重要的,從這樣的比較與新脈絡的安排中,有著讓知識與思想茁長潛能的隱喻。Marder進一步將植物標本集理解為「選集」(anthology),選集意謂著包含各式各樣的、甚至不同作者的文句、詩詞或格言。在希臘文的語境裡,anthos + legein意謂著「花的收集」(flower + to gather),是以,做為「選集」的「書」就是種智慧與知識的(植物)標本集。
從植物標本集回到「備忘錄」系列,在我看來,黃至正同樣是在將收集而來的物件和影像製成標本集,我們在每一幅單獨的作品中,看見藝術家相同手法的不同畫面處理模式,主要依據衣服的形態與照片圖像選擇,將這些「標本」配置成獨特的記憶圖像。透過衣服、照片圖像與其主體的參照關係,影像與衣服帶有的索引性與幽靈性特質,讓過去一次又一次地重返,就像是鬼魂可能的回返般,作品表現為不斷地重複自身的鬼魅書寫。記憶在這裡的成立方式,透過一幅幅的記憶書寫,以宛如植物標本集和選集的形式創造出新的理解脈絡,甚至是那些帶有創傷的隱喻。
「容器─隧道」系列
「這些為巴黎拱廊街研究所做的筆記,是在一片萬里無雲的藍色天空下開始的,像是穹頂般籠罩著茂盛的葉子…而從巴黎國家圖書館閱覽室的拱廊頂部,明亮的夏日陽光自那夢幻的、沒有燈光的頂棚鋪灑下來。」(N1, 5)班雅明描寫他工作所在的巴黎國家圖書館的場景,以及在那樣具神性的啟迪光照中開始了《拱廊街計畫》的寫作。從對光線的描寫,來詮釋某項工作之啟動,總是那麼令人精神振奮、在那已由光線布置好的場景中,生命戲劇於焉登場。
我很快地便將這樣的工作狀態描繪連結到黃至正的創作,在對「容器─隧道」系列的自述中,黃至正緩緩說道:「這一系列跟建築物有關,特別是教堂的穹頂、拱門、窗戶,除了結構上的美感,我也喜歡當陽光射入時把整個空間變成某種神性的領域,我透過創作尋找相同的感受。」此外,還有黃至正將光與隧道的特質帶入繪畫性之討論,「隧道不屬於任何地方,回頭看隧道的燈光忽明忽暗,有種焦糖的感覺,也有種寧靜的力量。(繪畫的方式)就像書法般的運筆,尋找流動的方向,並在凝固的地方找到力量。」黃至正在「容器─隧道」這一系列的作品發展了感官的不同面向,從視覺出發但不只是視覺,那裡有著難以忽略的身體感與觸感,金箔反光且脆弱的質感、貼覆過程中細膩的身體動作、畫面的筆刷肌理,以及下筆前在腦海裡的完成畫面,繪畫過程中由手帶動的身體力量施展與制動等。關於朝向完美的慾望、對於意外生成痕跡的拜物。
然而,不應忘記光其實是問題重重的。從文藝復興到印象主義,甚至在當代藝術,光一直都是藝術的核心主題。同時,光及其隱喻在諸如啟迪/光照說(illumination)、反思/反身(reflection)、知識論的符合說(adequation)、理性(reason)與真理(truth)等主題中,也都是西方哲學重量級的面向。另一方面,戰後批判理論對於表象(appearance)的意識型態批判,對再現體制的質問,卻也是深植於對光(以及視覺)的懷疑論,或者說是對「視覺中心主義」(ocularcentrism)的批判;而這個反視覺(anti-ocular)的思想傳統從柏拉圖就開始了,認為在表象之下隱藏著更深的真實。
「容器─隧道」作品將視覺圖像純粹化,簡化到只剩剪影圖樣、色塊式的幾何結構。我認為,這裡有著藝術家對於繪畫的「視覺再現傳統」與「物質性強調」的雙重應對模式,既服從又反叛。首先既以洞口或容器等具體意象回應繪畫做為幻覺的「幻覺主義」(illusionism)視覺傳統,再來又像是迷戀「觸覺感知」,強調其材料物質性支撐的本質主義者(essentialist)。也就是說,黃至正在「看起來像什麼」,與「顏料、金箔、筆觸等材質效果」的細緻經營中同時處理了繪畫的兩大經典問題面向,那麼,黃至正的繪畫是否突顯了什麼樣的當代意義?尤其是,如果我們回顧1981年那篇宣告繪畫終結的文章,當Douglas Crimp以Daniel Buren為例,從後現代的角度指出現代主義繪畫的終結。其中尤其是對Barbara Ross仍將繪畫置於優越藝術地位的批判,以及Crimp在思考當現代繪畫走到像是Reinhardt那樣,喊出「每個人都能畫出的最後一幅畫」的狀態時,繪畫便已走到盡頭。當時,Crimp認為繪畫應打開關於攝影影像、美術館機構與藝術世界的問題域。但這些都在1980年代的那個時刻,充滿了政治效果。[iv]
事實上,「容器─隧道」系列作品看似溫順回應了20世紀以來的繪畫議題,其實是優雅地拒絕落入那些「老東西」裡了。但黃至正並不是迴避,而是在具有容器與隧道雙重喻意的繪畫作品中,試著灌注「光」的存在;雖然,這系列作品並不是發光體,然而在創作引領的思想層次上,金箔、銀箔在黑色紙質底上幻化成光,豐富盈滿的神聖性之光。我覺得這正是當代繪畫的一大特點,每個畫家或藝術家的創作所堅持守護的都是那道屬於自己的光,無論那是班雅明在巴黎圖書館裡看到的光,或是當代藝術家透過創作實踐手法之設定或設計,展開對於自我處境甚至人類境況的回應。
在2012年的一場講座中,Giorgio Agamben討論藝術家在當代意謂著什麼?藝術在當代的位置是什麼時總結道:「藝術只是一種方式,由我們稱之為藝術家的那些人們,將自己維持在某種持續的『練習/實踐』(practice)狀態中、並設法將這樣的生命組構成一種生命形式:如畫家的生命、木工的生命、建築師的生命等。在那裡,和世界上每一種的生命的形式(form-of -life)相同,其實真正的問題不過就是保持生命的滿足與幸福。」[v]而黃至正在木木藝術的展覽標題「奶油正好融化」,就是透過藝術在充滿生命覺察的自我貼近中,也在展覽標題與作品呈現出來的那溫暖、潤滑、與滋養的光之意象中,試著以藝術家持續的實踐,向著隧道口的光再前進哪怕是一點點。
[i]Michael Taussig, 2020, Unpacking My Library: An Experiment in the Technique of Awakening, in Critical Inquiry 46, pp. 421-435.
[ii]J. Hillis Miller, Manuel Asensi, 1999, Black Holes: J. Hillis Miller; or, Boustrophedonic Reading. California: Stanford University Press, 151.
[iii]Michael Marder, 2014, The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. i-vii.
[iv]Douglas Crimp, 1981, The End of Painting. October, 16, pp. 69-86.
[v] Giorgio Agamben, 2019, Creation and anarchy: the work of art and the religion of capitalism. California: Stanford University Press, 13.
文 / 陳寬育
為了讓過去的一部分能被當下的此刻(Aktualitiit)所觸及,兩者之間之必須沒有連續性。― Walter Bejamin
備忘錄8 Memo8 132x88cm 銀箔、胚布、線、衣物、複合媒材 silver leaf、greige、thread、clothes、mixed media 2019
「備忘錄」 系列
木木藝術以黃至正2019年的「備忘錄」與「容器─隧道」兩個系列新作推出「奶油正好融化」展。這是木木藝術改變畫廊內部空間後,全新格局的第一檔展覽,也是展現黃至正對媒材的持續嘗試,以及關於記憶與生命主題的創作探索,一次精緻而豐富的發表。
黃至正的「備忘錄」系列,來自個人兒時記憶中的景象。像是祖母和母親忙碌時汗濕的衣物與身體貼合所呈現的視覺感,以及舞動的人形般的,晾曬中的衣物在光線與風穿透下的輕盈透明質感。「備忘錄」系列所試圖展開的問題是,記憶是個人生命的建構過程嗎?對黃至正而言,「在市集尋找那些熟悉的二手衣,它們成為某個人不再需要的零件,而我把它們當作龐大的加密資料庫,破譯、揣測他人抽象的生命史。」將記憶與衣物、衣物與零件、零件與資料庫做為一套此系列的創作思考路徑,並延伸這樣的視覺經驗與感受,以記憶中相似的二手衣物、與成長經驗密切的家庭攝影影像等,利用具穿刺意象的縫線線條感與金箔的拼貼效果,經過燒灼、縫合、補綴等手法,呈現既固定又斑駁的雙重修辭效果。也就是說,當衣物做為記憶的痕跡與換喻、影像做為記憶的凝結與回返、而金箔與縫線的效果做為記憶的特質時,黃至正將自身的經驗和對記憶的探索,透過作品精煉成某種生命狀態的圖像。
為了試著進一步理解黃至正的作品,本文的開頭題辭(epigraph)藉由班雅明在《拱廊街計畫N卷》(The Arcades Project N)的一段句子做為書寫的線索,「為了讓過去的一部分能被當下此刻所觸及,兩者之間之必須沒有連續性。」(N7, 7)同時,我也看到人類學家Michael Taussig在閱讀到班雅明《拱廊街計畫N卷》時,試著以藝術家的創作方式做為隱喻、或體現為整個拱廊街計畫的「畫面」。在這篇上個禮拜才出刊的文章中,Taussig要我們「想像一位藝術家在盒子裡翻找不同顏色和形狀、鮮豔和不透明的鈕扣與別針,沒有想太多,只是想要將它們適配成一對或幾個「有意義的叢集」(a constellation that makes sense )。這些不同的鈕扣與別針就像是發生在過去的事件,藝術家跨越時間來創造各種有意義的配對組合,而忽略它們之間所發生的事。」[i]
Taussig的藝術家比喻很能闡明我所引用的班雅明的句子,而那個裝滿鈕扣與別針的盒子,或許正是黃至正所稱的龐大加密資料庫,藝術家在其中揀取、並配對成有意義的作品表現。從歷史感來看,這種方法是反線性時間的(antichronological),更也許有人會說這是種直覺的方法。然而,那是什麼的直覺?是誰的直覺?是歷史學家的還是歷史的直覺?當然,那是歷史的直覺;用Taussig的話來說,「歷史在等待它的機會。」
班雅明未完成的《拱廊街計畫》是一部充滿引文(citations)的書寫集合,是由閱讀筆記、心得、摘要、草稿、詮釋、照片組成的未竟書寫計畫。這正是在做為《拱廊街計畫》的理論與方法說明的「卷宗N」(Konvolut N)中班雅明所述的:「這項工作就是要將『無引號之引用』的藝術發展到極致,其理論依據與蒙太奇密切相關。」(N1, 10)《拱廊街計畫》或許是班雅明實踐心中夢想之書的過程,而引文就如同呼應他的寓言概念,具有被抽離原來語境後的異質甚至震驚效果,同時也代表著產生的某種新的力場或星叢,以及啟示的能力。在這裡,我想試著以「無引號之引用的藝術」來理解黃至正在「備忘錄」系列作品中處理物件與畫面的方式,以及整個系列的創作母題:關於記憶的呈現。同時也對應引文去脈絡化的啟示能力和某種像是半書半資料櫃般的「準成書」(quasi book)概念;特別是植物標本集的形式,及其寓涵的新脈絡的知識茁長潛能。
關於置入新脈絡的潛能與新可能性的問題,J. Hillis Miller曾將翻譯比擬為「植物標本集」(Hortus siccus):「翻譯的效果就是將原作品拔起(uproots)、改變其自然屬性 (denature),把它轉化成植物標本集,或是準備存放在無盡檔案(bottom-less)堆裡的標本乾燥花。」[ii]在這裡,我欲將「備忘錄」 系列的手法理解為藝術家對於記憶的引文技藝,並從引文的觀點轉化Miller的乾燥花比喻,連結同樣以植物標本集討論引文與選集的Michael Marder,再以植物標本集的比喻對黃至正的「備忘錄」 系列展開再閱讀。「Hortus siccus/Herbarium」原指供植物學家研究的植物標本收藏冊或收藏室,對Marder來說,寫作時引文之使用,就像是這樣的植物標本收藏冊(Hortus siccus)。植物標本集像是個「乾燥花園」,植物被選取並摘離了原本的環境脈絡,並安排成為陳列在收藏冊子裡的樣本,而這正是某種和「引文」蠻類似的結構。[iii]
在科學革命之前的「植物科學」(plant sciences)被稱為「植物學」(botany),是針對植物外型的形態比較學,如今botany已是一個懷舊稱呼。而這種博物學時期提供形態比較的植物標本收藏冊,也就是這些去除自然原生脈絡的植物在植物標本集中所具有的,是能與其他植物標本形態展開比較的新脈絡,以及最重要的,從這樣的比較與新脈絡的安排中,有著讓知識與思想茁長潛能的隱喻。Marder進一步將植物標本集理解為「選集」(anthology),選集意謂著包含各式各樣的、甚至不同作者的文句、詩詞或格言。在希臘文的語境裡,anthos + legein意謂著「花的收集」(flower + to gather),是以,做為「選集」的「書」就是種智慧與知識的(植物)標本集。
從植物標本集回到「備忘錄」系列,在我看來,黃至正同樣是在將收集而來的物件和影像製成標本集,我們在每一幅單獨的作品中,看見藝術家相同手法的不同畫面處理模式,主要依據衣服的形態與照片圖像選擇,將這些「標本」配置成獨特的記憶圖像。透過衣服、照片圖像與其主體的參照關係,影像與衣服帶有的索引性與幽靈性特質,讓過去一次又一次地重返,就像是鬼魂可能的回返般,作品表現為不斷地重複自身的鬼魅書寫。記憶在這裡的成立方式,透過一幅幅的記憶書寫,以宛如植物標本集和選集的形式創造出新的理解脈絡,甚至是那些帶有創傷的隱喻。
「容器─隧道」系列
「這些為巴黎拱廊街研究所做的筆記,是在一片萬里無雲的藍色天空下開始的,像是穹頂般籠罩著茂盛的葉子…而從巴黎國家圖書館閱覽室的拱廊頂部,明亮的夏日陽光自那夢幻的、沒有燈光的頂棚鋪灑下來。」(N1, 5)班雅明描寫他工作所在的巴黎國家圖書館的場景,以及在那樣具神性的啟迪光照中開始了《拱廊街計畫》的寫作。從對光線的描寫,來詮釋某項工作之啟動,總是那麼令人精神振奮、在那已由光線布置好的場景中,生命戲劇於焉登場。
我很快地便將這樣的工作狀態描繪連結到黃至正的創作,在對「容器─隧道」系列的自述中,黃至正緩緩說道:「這一系列跟建築物有關,特別是教堂的穹頂、拱門、窗戶,除了結構上的美感,我也喜歡當陽光射入時把整個空間變成某種神性的領域,我透過創作尋找相同的感受。」此外,還有黃至正將光與隧道的特質帶入繪畫性之討論,「隧道不屬於任何地方,回頭看隧道的燈光忽明忽暗,有種焦糖的感覺,也有種寧靜的力量。(繪畫的方式)就像書法般的運筆,尋找流動的方向,並在凝固的地方找到力量。」黃至正在「容器─隧道」這一系列的作品發展了感官的不同面向,從視覺出發但不只是視覺,那裡有著難以忽略的身體感與觸感,金箔反光且脆弱的質感、貼覆過程中細膩的身體動作、畫面的筆刷肌理,以及下筆前在腦海裡的完成畫面,繪畫過程中由手帶動的身體力量施展與制動等。關於朝向完美的慾望、對於意外生成痕跡的拜物。
然而,不應忘記光其實是問題重重的。從文藝復興到印象主義,甚至在當代藝術,光一直都是藝術的核心主題。同時,光及其隱喻在諸如啟迪/光照說(illumination)、反思/反身(reflection)、知識論的符合說(adequation)、理性(reason)與真理(truth)等主題中,也都是西方哲學重量級的面向。另一方面,戰後批判理論對於表象(appearance)的意識型態批判,對再現體制的質問,卻也是深植於對光(以及視覺)的懷疑論,或者說是對「視覺中心主義」(ocularcentrism)的批判;而這個反視覺(anti-ocular)的思想傳統從柏拉圖就開始了,認為在表象之下隱藏著更深的真實。
「容器─隧道」作品將視覺圖像純粹化,簡化到只剩剪影圖樣、色塊式的幾何結構。我認為,這裡有著藝術家對於繪畫的「視覺再現傳統」與「物質性強調」的雙重應對模式,既服從又反叛。首先既以洞口或容器等具體意象回應繪畫做為幻覺的「幻覺主義」(illusionism)視覺傳統,再來又像是迷戀「觸覺感知」,強調其材料物質性支撐的本質主義者(essentialist)。也就是說,黃至正在「看起來像什麼」,與「顏料、金箔、筆觸等材質效果」的細緻經營中同時處理了繪畫的兩大經典問題面向,那麼,黃至正的繪畫是否突顯了什麼樣的當代意義?尤其是,如果我們回顧1981年那篇宣告繪畫終結的文章,當Douglas Crimp以Daniel Buren為例,從後現代的角度指出現代主義繪畫的終結。其中尤其是對Barbara Ross仍將繪畫置於優越藝術地位的批判,以及Crimp在思考當現代繪畫走到像是Reinhardt那樣,喊出「每個人都能畫出的最後一幅畫」的狀態時,繪畫便已走到盡頭。當時,Crimp認為繪畫應打開關於攝影影像、美術館機構與藝術世界的問題域。但這些都在1980年代的那個時刻,充滿了政治效果。[iv]
事實上,「容器─隧道」系列作品看似溫順回應了20世紀以來的繪畫議題,其實是優雅地拒絕落入那些「老東西」裡了。但黃至正並不是迴避,而是在具有容器與隧道雙重喻意的繪畫作品中,試著灌注「光」的存在;雖然,這系列作品並不是發光體,然而在創作引領的思想層次上,金箔、銀箔在黑色紙質底上幻化成光,豐富盈滿的神聖性之光。我覺得這正是當代繪畫的一大特點,每個畫家或藝術家的創作所堅持守護的都是那道屬於自己的光,無論那是班雅明在巴黎圖書館裡看到的光,或是當代藝術家透過創作實踐手法之設定或設計,展開對於自我處境甚至人類境況的回應。
在2012年的一場講座中,Giorgio Agamben討論藝術家在當代意謂著什麼?藝術在當代的位置是什麼時總結道:「藝術只是一種方式,由我們稱之為藝術家的那些人們,將自己維持在某種持續的『練習/實踐』(practice)狀態中、並設法將這樣的生命組構成一種生命形式:如畫家的生命、木工的生命、建築師的生命等。在那裡,和世界上每一種的生命的形式(form-of -life)相同,其實真正的問題不過就是保持生命的滿足與幸福。」[v]而黃至正在木木藝術的展覽標題「奶油正好融化」,就是透過藝術在充滿生命覺察的自我貼近中,也在展覽標題與作品呈現出來的那溫暖、潤滑、與滋養的光之意象中,試著以藝術家持續的實踐,向著隧道口的光再前進哪怕是一點點。
[i]Michael Taussig, 2020, Unpacking My Library: An Experiment in the Technique of Awakening, in Critical Inquiry 46, pp. 421-435.
[ii]J. Hillis Miller, Manuel Asensi, 1999, Black Holes: J. Hillis Miller; or, Boustrophedonic Reading. California: Stanford University Press, 151.
[iii]Michael Marder, 2014, The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. i-vii.
[iv]Douglas Crimp, 1981, The End of Painting. October, 16, pp. 69-86.
[v] Giorgio Agamben, 2019, Creation and anarchy: the work of art and the religion of capitalism. California: Stanford University Press, 13.
2016 記憶的鍊金術—黃至正的創作
文/陳湘汶
在金箔上細密的圖像,時而是幻想場景、時而動物、時而是生物解剖圖,這些尺幅不大的畫面裡,累積了藝術家對材質與圖像的悉心照顧。
人與自然、人與人之愛
畢業於東海美術所的他有細膩的工筆能力,簡略地回溯他的創作脈絡,2009年《女媧造物供養像》以肖像的方式描繪了傳說中女媧造人之前,依時序初一造雞、初二造狗、初三造羊、初四造豬、初五造牛、初六造馬,初七才造出人,因此黃至正透過將動物結合榮貴的花圈,來回應在傳統農業社會當中,動物的地位之崇高,而人應當是謙卑的。這裡就能看出黃至正始終關心著的人與自然之平衡關係。到了2012年「小事系列」,藝術家開始將動物與植物的局部肢解組裝,這些介於植/動之間的新生命體,傳達藝術家對日常生活的缺憾,透過新的紙上生命來補足。
2011~2012年「幻化系列」開始使用金箔襯紙為底,黃至正擷取了人體器官、骨骼,結合動物形象,結構與結構之間以象徵星芒的線條縫合起來,像是魔法師一樣重新賦予他們生命。2012年《空氣樂園》、2013《腐朽花園》呈現給我們的是他發想自各類文本組裝後的全新場景,角色造型同樣取材於現實的文本如醫學解剖、動植物圖鑑等等,對黃至正而言,人體的血管與植物體內運送養分水分的管束相同,當藝術家的畫筆將這些管脈聯通起來,就像是真正賦予了他們生命。這些器官或動物在社會認知中的印象、或習性,引發藝術家為他們打造獨特的造型或樣態,賦予他們可供解讀的線索,讓這些角色與觀眾之間產生對話關係,而這些對話的基礎就是藝術對日常生活之感知。2014年《相遇時刻》黃至正直接為那些奇想的生命體打造劇場。「擬人化」的造型,鴿子、狼、大象等動物站立在台上,看似是搬演著某齣劇,實際上則為藝術家藉此暗喻人類社會對動物的箝制,與動物的無奈。
事先透過電腦繪圖,將薄如蟬翼的金箔固定在背紙上後送進印表機,輸出後再一筆一繪增補,將畫面逐步變得完整,在電腦螢幕上,黃至正拼裝不同的元素,像是一位導演般透過監視器看著舞台/劇棚裡的演員表現,進而指導;而另一方面,在這些演員演出的畫面被印製出來之後,這位導演也離開舒適的導演椅,執起細筆沾墨,用極近的距離端詳這些人物的穿著、背景細節,屏氣凝神地雕琢。
作為「腐朽花園」的延伸,目前黃至正發展的「饗宴」系列發想於柏拉圖《饗宴篇》,在他創作自述裡這麼描述著來自《饗宴篇》亞里斯托芬(Aristophanes)的想法:「最初的人是圓形的,有兩張一模一樣的臉孔、兩對胳膊和腿,有男人、女人、男女三種性別,人們對於自身感到相當滿意,當時眾神對人們感到懼怕,於是宙斯提議將人們一分為二,以為人們就會更加敬畏神,但人們怕被分開後思念自己的另一半,不斷地找尋對方,反而無暇祀奉神明。」他也引述了柏拉圖:「...我們本來是完整的,而我們現在正在企盼和追隨這種原初的完整性,這就是所謂的愛情。」「饗宴」系列裡人的臉孔首次在黃至正的作品中如此強烈地佔有面積,這些頭部解剖圖像以側面形式顯現原是為了清楚說明人體構造,原本在理性的圖鑑作法裡為求清楚示意而將器官切割成「一半」的作法,在藝術家的想像裡,它成為極其感性地、情慾的、尋覓愛情的證據。以往黃至正作品裡強調自然與人的平衡關係,到了「饗宴」系列則將思考的層次轉移到人與人之愛,不論是男與男、男女、女女...,回應到《饗宴篇》的時代,愛不僅是個人的,更是追求整體理型社會的關鍵。
險境探幽的煉金術士
在黃至正的創作過程中,在手法或材質上,都選擇了某種險徑—驚險的路徑—首先是在表面的金箔極其輕薄,必須用輕柔的手勢將它接合在紙面,而加固之後又必須透過印刷機的考驗,噴頭行走或紙張輸送時亦有可能破壞金箔表面。最近的葉子系列則是將乾燥過後的葉片背面貼上金箔,而後以樹脂覆蓋,但是時而出現未全乾的葉片隨時間流逝,有水分蒸發造成透明樹脂產生氣泡的現象,或者葉片在未加固前因為自然的彎曲而造成金箔表面的損壞等等。
當我們好奇這位藝術家為何不選擇以更加保險安全的方式,例如直接在電腦中繪製完整圖像再行輸出,或者以其他更加堅固的基底材來作畫,這些問題似乎能在他目前進行的與家庭照片有關之創作得到關於解答的提示。2016年最新的「侵蝕的記憶」系列,數張被藝術家選取出來的藝術家童年時期以及父母親年輕的照片,轉印在銀箔等不同的材質上,綜合了過往的幾種手法,如圖像拼貼、手繪、縫線等等,在黃至正的創作脈絡中,雖然以往創作皆反映他生活所見、所知,但都透過一層符號來代言;取材於家庭的作品可推回到2010年因家人逝世所做的《花草偈》,充滿悼念意味地呈現了經文與花蝶的圖樣,而家庭照片這次則是傳達較為甜蜜的記憶,父母年輕時出遊合照、藝術家與年幼的弟弟在襁褓中的影像等等,同樣結合器官、血管、花草的包覆,強調著家族血緣之緊密,同樣在選擇銀或金這樣活性極小的金屬為載體,象徵藝術家欲永久守護這份記憶,也如同他用金箔覆蓋枯黃的葉片,某些逝去時光所代表的死亡,對比金銀延緩衰老的生機,黃至正創作裡關於生與死的辯證,就如同煉金術中探討著宇宙質能流動轉換的永恆輪迴。
文/陳湘汶
在金箔上細密的圖像,時而是幻想場景、時而動物、時而是生物解剖圖,這些尺幅不大的畫面裡,累積了藝術家對材質與圖像的悉心照顧。
人與自然、人與人之愛
畢業於東海美術所的他有細膩的工筆能力,簡略地回溯他的創作脈絡,2009年《女媧造物供養像》以肖像的方式描繪了傳說中女媧造人之前,依時序初一造雞、初二造狗、初三造羊、初四造豬、初五造牛、初六造馬,初七才造出人,因此黃至正透過將動物結合榮貴的花圈,來回應在傳統農業社會當中,動物的地位之崇高,而人應當是謙卑的。這裡就能看出黃至正始終關心著的人與自然之平衡關係。到了2012年「小事系列」,藝術家開始將動物與植物的局部肢解組裝,這些介於植/動之間的新生命體,傳達藝術家對日常生活的缺憾,透過新的紙上生命來補足。
2011~2012年「幻化系列」開始使用金箔襯紙為底,黃至正擷取了人體器官、骨骼,結合動物形象,結構與結構之間以象徵星芒的線條縫合起來,像是魔法師一樣重新賦予他們生命。2012年《空氣樂園》、2013《腐朽花園》呈現給我們的是他發想自各類文本組裝後的全新場景,角色造型同樣取材於現實的文本如醫學解剖、動植物圖鑑等等,對黃至正而言,人體的血管與植物體內運送養分水分的管束相同,當藝術家的畫筆將這些管脈聯通起來,就像是真正賦予了他們生命。這些器官或動物在社會認知中的印象、或習性,引發藝術家為他們打造獨特的造型或樣態,賦予他們可供解讀的線索,讓這些角色與觀眾之間產生對話關係,而這些對話的基礎就是藝術對日常生活之感知。2014年《相遇時刻》黃至正直接為那些奇想的生命體打造劇場。「擬人化」的造型,鴿子、狼、大象等動物站立在台上,看似是搬演著某齣劇,實際上則為藝術家藉此暗喻人類社會對動物的箝制,與動物的無奈。
事先透過電腦繪圖,將薄如蟬翼的金箔固定在背紙上後送進印表機,輸出後再一筆一繪增補,將畫面逐步變得完整,在電腦螢幕上,黃至正拼裝不同的元素,像是一位導演般透過監視器看著舞台/劇棚裡的演員表現,進而指導;而另一方面,在這些演員演出的畫面被印製出來之後,這位導演也離開舒適的導演椅,執起細筆沾墨,用極近的距離端詳這些人物的穿著、背景細節,屏氣凝神地雕琢。
作為「腐朽花園」的延伸,目前黃至正發展的「饗宴」系列發想於柏拉圖《饗宴篇》,在他創作自述裡這麼描述著來自《饗宴篇》亞里斯托芬(Aristophanes)的想法:「最初的人是圓形的,有兩張一模一樣的臉孔、兩對胳膊和腿,有男人、女人、男女三種性別,人們對於自身感到相當滿意,當時眾神對人們感到懼怕,於是宙斯提議將人們一分為二,以為人們就會更加敬畏神,但人們怕被分開後思念自己的另一半,不斷地找尋對方,反而無暇祀奉神明。」他也引述了柏拉圖:「...我們本來是完整的,而我們現在正在企盼和追隨這種原初的完整性,這就是所謂的愛情。」「饗宴」系列裡人的臉孔首次在黃至正的作品中如此強烈地佔有面積,這些頭部解剖圖像以側面形式顯現原是為了清楚說明人體構造,原本在理性的圖鑑作法裡為求清楚示意而將器官切割成「一半」的作法,在藝術家的想像裡,它成為極其感性地、情慾的、尋覓愛情的證據。以往黃至正作品裡強調自然與人的平衡關係,到了「饗宴」系列則將思考的層次轉移到人與人之愛,不論是男與男、男女、女女...,回應到《饗宴篇》的時代,愛不僅是個人的,更是追求整體理型社會的關鍵。
險境探幽的煉金術士
在黃至正的創作過程中,在手法或材質上,都選擇了某種險徑—驚險的路徑—首先是在表面的金箔極其輕薄,必須用輕柔的手勢將它接合在紙面,而加固之後又必須透過印刷機的考驗,噴頭行走或紙張輸送時亦有可能破壞金箔表面。最近的葉子系列則是將乾燥過後的葉片背面貼上金箔,而後以樹脂覆蓋,但是時而出現未全乾的葉片隨時間流逝,有水分蒸發造成透明樹脂產生氣泡的現象,或者葉片在未加固前因為自然的彎曲而造成金箔表面的損壞等等。
當我們好奇這位藝術家為何不選擇以更加保險安全的方式,例如直接在電腦中繪製完整圖像再行輸出,或者以其他更加堅固的基底材來作畫,這些問題似乎能在他目前進行的與家庭照片有關之創作得到關於解答的提示。2016年最新的「侵蝕的記憶」系列,數張被藝術家選取出來的藝術家童年時期以及父母親年輕的照片,轉印在銀箔等不同的材質上,綜合了過往的幾種手法,如圖像拼貼、手繪、縫線等等,在黃至正的創作脈絡中,雖然以往創作皆反映他生活所見、所知,但都透過一層符號來代言;取材於家庭的作品可推回到2010年因家人逝世所做的《花草偈》,充滿悼念意味地呈現了經文與花蝶的圖樣,而家庭照片這次則是傳達較為甜蜜的記憶,父母年輕時出遊合照、藝術家與年幼的弟弟在襁褓中的影像等等,同樣結合器官、血管、花草的包覆,強調著家族血緣之緊密,同樣在選擇銀或金這樣活性極小的金屬為載體,象徵藝術家欲永久守護這份記憶,也如同他用金箔覆蓋枯黃的葉片,某些逝去時光所代表的死亡,對比金銀延緩衰老的生機,黃至正創作裡關於生與死的辯證,就如同煉金術中探討著宇宙質能流動轉換的永恆輪迴。
Alchemy of Memory- Works of Huang Chih-Cheng
/Chen Hsiang-Wen
Fine and detailed pictures on gold foil sometimes will be imaginary scenes, sometimes will be animals, sometimes will be anatomical maps of creatures. These pictures without large scale, accumulate careful care toward texture and graphics from artists.
Walking into the working space where Huang Chih-Cheng tidies up in the roof of his house, not only can you see his piled up old works, there are also samples which he tested on various metal foils and paints. There are experimental new works which he just bought back from his residence in Bywood Art Space, Kaohsiung on his desk. They are dried leaves in various sizes or Camphor Wood leaves with gold foil sticked on. On the wall close to his desk are leaves sent from friends in different places because of the calling on Facebook from artists.
Huang’s logo belongs to the series which draws on gold foil. Graduating from Tunghai Fine Art Graduation School has granular skills of Fine-Brushwork Painting. Starting from Illusion series, brand new scenes are presented to us from his ideas of assembling from various kinds of texts.These characters he usually put on stage which are like human beings and animals or anatomical maps with meaning of illustrated handbooks inspire artists to create unique styles or appearances for them and give them clues for explanation because of their images and habits in social cognition. For example, sutures on anatomical maps can directly be associated to medical suture, etc. These characters will have the relationship with audience with dialogues. The basis of these dialogues are the perceptions toward daily life of arts. Computer graphics let gold foil which is as thin as cicada’s wings be fixed on backing paper, be sent into a printing press. After output, handdrawing will be processed to complete the whole picture. On computer screen, Huang assembles different elements, like a director who watches actors on stage or in theatre through monitors, and then teach them. On the other hand, after the pictures of actors’ performances are printed out, this director also leaves his comfortable couch. In the shortest distance, he observes their clothing, details of background, and then picks up fine brushes and dips into ink, and carves with all his attention.
During Huang’s creating process, no matter on the aspect of methods or materials, risky ways are chosen, astonishing and dangerous one. First, fold foil on the surface is light and thin, you need to use gentle hand gestures to adjoin it on paper. After it is fixed, you need to face the challenges from printing press. During the process of moving of nozzles or conveyor of paper, the surface of gold foil may also be destroyed. Leaves series lately is to stick gold foil on the back of dried leaves, and then cover it with resin. However, sometimes, transparent resin on not fully dried leaves will have bubbles because of evaporation of water. Or natural curl of leaves before fixing can also cause damage on the surface of gold foil, etc.
When we are curious about why this artist doesn’t choose safer ways, for example, make output process be done after the complete picture is finished in computer, or use more stable support to draw. We may get hint which is about answers from his recent works which relates to his family pictures.Several pictures chosen by artists which are about his childhood and his parents when they were young are transfer printed on different materials like silver leaf and are combined with several methods from the past like picture collage, hand painting, and suture,etc. Among Huang’s context of creation, though his past works reflects what he sees and knows in daily life, they are all be spoken through marks. Talking about works about family, we can reflect back to 2010, his work “The Flower Sutras” was made because his families passed away. It presented the graphics of sutra, flowers, and butterflies. Family pictures this time convey sweet memories, like pictures about parents went on a trip, artist and his baby brother were still babies, etc. They both combined with organs, blood vessels, cover of flowers and plants to emphasize the tightness between family bond; They both choose metals with minimum activity like gold or silver as media to symbolize his desire to protect this piece of memory forever. It shows the same meaning when he covers withered and yellow leaves with gold foil. Some of the past time which symbolizes death contrasts against vibrancy with life and delaying on aging process because of gold and silver. Dialectic about life and death in the works of Huang Chih-Cheng is like eternal samsara of quality and energy in the universe which is discussed in alchemy.
/Chen Hsiang-Wen
Fine and detailed pictures on gold foil sometimes will be imaginary scenes, sometimes will be animals, sometimes will be anatomical maps of creatures. These pictures without large scale, accumulate careful care toward texture and graphics from artists.
Walking into the working space where Huang Chih-Cheng tidies up in the roof of his house, not only can you see his piled up old works, there are also samples which he tested on various metal foils and paints. There are experimental new works which he just bought back from his residence in Bywood Art Space, Kaohsiung on his desk. They are dried leaves in various sizes or Camphor Wood leaves with gold foil sticked on. On the wall close to his desk are leaves sent from friends in different places because of the calling on Facebook from artists.
Huang’s logo belongs to the series which draws on gold foil. Graduating from Tunghai Fine Art Graduation School has granular skills of Fine-Brushwork Painting. Starting from Illusion series, brand new scenes are presented to us from his ideas of assembling from various kinds of texts.These characters he usually put on stage which are like human beings and animals or anatomical maps with meaning of illustrated handbooks inspire artists to create unique styles or appearances for them and give them clues for explanation because of their images and habits in social cognition. For example, sutures on anatomical maps can directly be associated to medical suture, etc. These characters will have the relationship with audience with dialogues. The basis of these dialogues are the perceptions toward daily life of arts. Computer graphics let gold foil which is as thin as cicada’s wings be fixed on backing paper, be sent into a printing press. After output, handdrawing will be processed to complete the whole picture. On computer screen, Huang assembles different elements, like a director who watches actors on stage or in theatre through monitors, and then teach them. On the other hand, after the pictures of actors’ performances are printed out, this director also leaves his comfortable couch. In the shortest distance, he observes their clothing, details of background, and then picks up fine brushes and dips into ink, and carves with all his attention.
During Huang’s creating process, no matter on the aspect of methods or materials, risky ways are chosen, astonishing and dangerous one. First, fold foil on the surface is light and thin, you need to use gentle hand gestures to adjoin it on paper. After it is fixed, you need to face the challenges from printing press. During the process of moving of nozzles or conveyor of paper, the surface of gold foil may also be destroyed. Leaves series lately is to stick gold foil on the back of dried leaves, and then cover it with resin. However, sometimes, transparent resin on not fully dried leaves will have bubbles because of evaporation of water. Or natural curl of leaves before fixing can also cause damage on the surface of gold foil, etc.
When we are curious about why this artist doesn’t choose safer ways, for example, make output process be done after the complete picture is finished in computer, or use more stable support to draw. We may get hint which is about answers from his recent works which relates to his family pictures.Several pictures chosen by artists which are about his childhood and his parents when they were young are transfer printed on different materials like silver leaf and are combined with several methods from the past like picture collage, hand painting, and suture,etc. Among Huang’s context of creation, though his past works reflects what he sees and knows in daily life, they are all be spoken through marks. Talking about works about family, we can reflect back to 2010, his work “The Flower Sutras” was made because his families passed away. It presented the graphics of sutra, flowers, and butterflies. Family pictures this time convey sweet memories, like pictures about parents went on a trip, artist and his baby brother were still babies, etc. They both combined with organs, blood vessels, cover of flowers and plants to emphasize the tightness between family bond; They both choose metals with minimum activity like gold or silver as media to symbolize his desire to protect this piece of memory forever. It shows the same meaning when he covers withered and yellow leaves with gold foil. Some of the past time which symbolizes death contrasts against vibrancy with life and delaying on aging process because of gold and silver. Dialectic about life and death in the works of Huang Chih-Cheng is like eternal samsara of quality and energy in the universe which is discussed in alchemy.
2015 黃至正的生命圖象
文/大象藝術空間館 總監 鍾經新
讀覽黃至正「花草偈」作品,無論在形式(冊頁或經文)、主題象徵(宗教經典或藥草古書)、文化意義(宗教風俗),將東方文人寓意寄情的核心概念展露無遺。自2012年發表「食樂園」系列、2013年發表「幻化的永恆」系列到2014年「甦醒的季節」系列作品,黃至正探討生命議題的寓意皆採取類似手法呈現。且作品中不乏採用圖像學與符號學的概念釋出訊息,如「花草偈」中的藥草圖案或經文都有屬於宗教民俗的意涵,透過拆解、重組與編排成為其個人的心靈圖像,藉此紀念消逝的親人並撫慰自己的悲傷。
佛教中有藥師琉璃光如來佛,此佛誓願若有人身患重病,死衰相現,眷屬於此人臨命終時晝夜盡心供養禮拜藥師佛,讀誦藥師琉璃光王如來本願功德經四十九遍,即可消災除業、拔苦免難,往生者得以無病無痛地離世。此種藥師佛之信仰自古代起即十分盛行,台灣民間佛教喪禮儀式中仍沿用這樣的習俗。以藥草圖案排列而成的造形圖案,如同為往生者誦念的經文,期待他們輕鬆泰然地離去,但這樣的儀式行為表面上是為逝者而作,實則為求自我悲傷得以療癒 !
在現象學取向的藝術治療活動中,藝術創作成為當事人的一種媒介,透過此種型態的表達,當事人不僅能得到立即的解放,也能記錄其生活周遭所面臨的種種壓力或想逃避的種種經驗,讓當事人直接經驗及覺察個人內外在的現象世界,進而獲致自我發現。藝術治療的情境能提供微縮世界的經驗,讓當事人透過創作過程進行安全的探索,並嘗試問題解決,由此獲得新能量,重新面對自我和調適自己處於環境的定位。如「甦醒的季節」系列作品,黃至正面對更大的生命與環境議題時同樣以拆解與重組的方式,將人與自然、人與動物、自我與他人的關係以圖像的方式轉譯,試圖從中尋求自身因應的態度。
引用圖像與符號並重組而成的圖案,是黃至正作品中最令人玩味的部份,在東海美術系養成的筆墨能力,則為這些圖案增添細緻迷人的手感;以古書籍中的藥草造形為描繪主題,看似重現,實則為個人的「書寫」過程,稱為「書寫」是因為這些描繪都為了表達某種祝禱或某種悼念,且在書寫的過程中讓心念獲得疏導與排解。黃至正在『花草偈』作品自述中,強調為「紀念」而作,因此畫面上恭敬地以箔入畫,並在每一面構圖中放置如同背光的圓形圖案,彰顯每一位逝者在其心目中的尊崇與神聖地位。
黃至正以個人抒懷為創作的主幹,本應發展出內斂晦澀的作品樣貌,但其心念皆在於如何從外觀世界得到心中的答案,也就是從現象中探索、鋪排而後以自我的主觀重組、詮釋。2013年「幻化與永恆」系列作品中,黃至正視幻化為重生的擬態,又在這樣的擬態中,虔敬地以細筆、貼箔追尋永恆。原本純屬個人的心靈書寫,卻在以藝術創作追尋真理的過程中,逐漸窺見浩大繁茂的生命脈絡。若能持續以此心念持續創作,相信能發將「小我」的作品架構發展成為「大我」的氣象格局。
文/大象藝術空間館 總監 鍾經新
讀覽黃至正「花草偈」作品,無論在形式(冊頁或經文)、主題象徵(宗教經典或藥草古書)、文化意義(宗教風俗),將東方文人寓意寄情的核心概念展露無遺。自2012年發表「食樂園」系列、2013年發表「幻化的永恆」系列到2014年「甦醒的季節」系列作品,黃至正探討生命議題的寓意皆採取類似手法呈現。且作品中不乏採用圖像學與符號學的概念釋出訊息,如「花草偈」中的藥草圖案或經文都有屬於宗教民俗的意涵,透過拆解、重組與編排成為其個人的心靈圖像,藉此紀念消逝的親人並撫慰自己的悲傷。
佛教中有藥師琉璃光如來佛,此佛誓願若有人身患重病,死衰相現,眷屬於此人臨命終時晝夜盡心供養禮拜藥師佛,讀誦藥師琉璃光王如來本願功德經四十九遍,即可消災除業、拔苦免難,往生者得以無病無痛地離世。此種藥師佛之信仰自古代起即十分盛行,台灣民間佛教喪禮儀式中仍沿用這樣的習俗。以藥草圖案排列而成的造形圖案,如同為往生者誦念的經文,期待他們輕鬆泰然地離去,但這樣的儀式行為表面上是為逝者而作,實則為求自我悲傷得以療癒 !
在現象學取向的藝術治療活動中,藝術創作成為當事人的一種媒介,透過此種型態的表達,當事人不僅能得到立即的解放,也能記錄其生活周遭所面臨的種種壓力或想逃避的種種經驗,讓當事人直接經驗及覺察個人內外在的現象世界,進而獲致自我發現。藝術治療的情境能提供微縮世界的經驗,讓當事人透過創作過程進行安全的探索,並嘗試問題解決,由此獲得新能量,重新面對自我和調適自己處於環境的定位。如「甦醒的季節」系列作品,黃至正面對更大的生命與環境議題時同樣以拆解與重組的方式,將人與自然、人與動物、自我與他人的關係以圖像的方式轉譯,試圖從中尋求自身因應的態度。
引用圖像與符號並重組而成的圖案,是黃至正作品中最令人玩味的部份,在東海美術系養成的筆墨能力,則為這些圖案增添細緻迷人的手感;以古書籍中的藥草造形為描繪主題,看似重現,實則為個人的「書寫」過程,稱為「書寫」是因為這些描繪都為了表達某種祝禱或某種悼念,且在書寫的過程中讓心念獲得疏導與排解。黃至正在『花草偈』作品自述中,強調為「紀念」而作,因此畫面上恭敬地以箔入畫,並在每一面構圖中放置如同背光的圓形圖案,彰顯每一位逝者在其心目中的尊崇與神聖地位。
黃至正以個人抒懷為創作的主幹,本應發展出內斂晦澀的作品樣貌,但其心念皆在於如何從外觀世界得到心中的答案,也就是從現象中探索、鋪排而後以自我的主觀重組、詮釋。2013年「幻化與永恆」系列作品中,黃至正視幻化為重生的擬態,又在這樣的擬態中,虔敬地以細筆、貼箔追尋永恆。原本純屬個人的心靈書寫,卻在以藝術創作追尋真理的過程中,逐漸窺見浩大繁茂的生命脈絡。若能持續以此心念持續創作,相信能發將「小我」的作品架構發展成為「大我」的氣象格局。
Huang Chih Cheng’s “Icons of Life”
Chung Ching-hsin
Art Director, Da Xiang Art Space
Huang Chih Cheng’s “Flower Sutras” have thoroughly realized the Eastern intellectuals’ concept of expressing emotions through image, as exemplified in the form (book pages or experts from sutras), the topics and symbols (religious classics and ancient books about herbal medicine), and the cultural context (religion and customs). Also seen in his previous works “Food Paradise” (2012), “Memento Mori” (2013), and “Awakening of the season” (2014), Huang has used similar techniques and expressions to explore the meaning of life. He has repeatedly borrowed concepts from the fields of iconology and semiotics to communicate his messages. In “Flower Sutras”, all the herbal icons and scripts belong to a particular religious and cultural context. Through dismantling, rearranging, and choreographing these images of mind and soul, he tries to pay respect to his family members who have passed away while also healing himself for the loss and grief.
There is the Buddha of healing and medicine, or Bhaisajyaguru. If one is willing to recite for 49 times single-mindedly the Sutra of the Vows of the Medicine Buddha of Lapis Lazuli Crystal Radiance (藥師琉璃光王如來本願功德經), all sicknesses could be cured, all hindrances and difficulties resolved, and the deceased can depart this world with no pain and illness. Since ancient times, people have worshipped the Medicine Buddha. In traditional Buddhist funerals in Taiwan, people still assemble icons of medicinal herbs into different patterns. This custom carries the same meaning as chanting sutras to benefit the deceased. This ritual is meant for the deceased, yet in essence it is a healing process for the survivors.
In the phenomenological approach to art therapy, artistic creation has become a medium for the person involved to not only gain immediate relief, but to record the various experiences or pressure that one tries to escape. This would allow one to directly experience the phenomenal world and become aware of it, both internally and externally, so as to achieve self-realization. The context of art therapy offers a miniature world experience, in which one can safely explore boundaries, solve problems, gain new energy as a result, and eventually find a better balance between ourselves and the world we belong to. Just like in his previous work “Awakening of the season”, Huang, when facing big questions of life and environment that go beyond our own individual beings, he tries to dismantle and reorganize icons that capture the relations of human and nature, human and animals, and self and other. Through this process, he then tries to respond with his own stance and attitude.
The most intriguing aspect of Huang’s work is his usage and rearrangement of icons and symbols. His academic education in Tunghai University’s Fine Arts Department has trained him to create these exquisite and fascinating icons with hand-drawn texture. On the surface, he tried to “recreate” the medicinal herbs from ancient books; but it was actually a process of his personal “writing.” He drew and portrayed the icons to express feelings of condolence and sorrow, and through this process his sadness was channeled out and relieved. In Huang’s own note on “Flower Sutras”, he emphasized that these painting were meant for commemoration. To express one’s respect and admiration to the deceased, he used foil and arranged back-light circle in the center of each painting.
Huang’s intention was to express his own feelings through art, so his works might have felt inaccessible to the readers. Yet he demonstrated the attitude of searching inner answers from the outside, phenomenal world. In his 2013 work “Memento Mori”, Huang reverently used very delicate brushwork and pasted foil to develop an illusive camouflage, a disguise of rebirth, for he believed that eternity arises from illusions. It was meant to be some sort of very private, personal writing, yet in the process of art creation and truth seeking, his work allowed us to peep into the grand traces of life. If Huang could continue his works with such a mindset, I believe he will be able to expand the scope of his work from very personal to creating much broader meanings.
Chung Ching-hsin
Art Director, Da Xiang Art Space
Huang Chih Cheng’s “Flower Sutras” have thoroughly realized the Eastern intellectuals’ concept of expressing emotions through image, as exemplified in the form (book pages or experts from sutras), the topics and symbols (religious classics and ancient books about herbal medicine), and the cultural context (religion and customs). Also seen in his previous works “Food Paradise” (2012), “Memento Mori” (2013), and “Awakening of the season” (2014), Huang has used similar techniques and expressions to explore the meaning of life. He has repeatedly borrowed concepts from the fields of iconology and semiotics to communicate his messages. In “Flower Sutras”, all the herbal icons and scripts belong to a particular religious and cultural context. Through dismantling, rearranging, and choreographing these images of mind and soul, he tries to pay respect to his family members who have passed away while also healing himself for the loss and grief.
There is the Buddha of healing and medicine, or Bhaisajyaguru. If one is willing to recite for 49 times single-mindedly the Sutra of the Vows of the Medicine Buddha of Lapis Lazuli Crystal Radiance (藥師琉璃光王如來本願功德經), all sicknesses could be cured, all hindrances and difficulties resolved, and the deceased can depart this world with no pain and illness. Since ancient times, people have worshipped the Medicine Buddha. In traditional Buddhist funerals in Taiwan, people still assemble icons of medicinal herbs into different patterns. This custom carries the same meaning as chanting sutras to benefit the deceased. This ritual is meant for the deceased, yet in essence it is a healing process for the survivors.
In the phenomenological approach to art therapy, artistic creation has become a medium for the person involved to not only gain immediate relief, but to record the various experiences or pressure that one tries to escape. This would allow one to directly experience the phenomenal world and become aware of it, both internally and externally, so as to achieve self-realization. The context of art therapy offers a miniature world experience, in which one can safely explore boundaries, solve problems, gain new energy as a result, and eventually find a better balance between ourselves and the world we belong to. Just like in his previous work “Awakening of the season”, Huang, when facing big questions of life and environment that go beyond our own individual beings, he tries to dismantle and reorganize icons that capture the relations of human and nature, human and animals, and self and other. Through this process, he then tries to respond with his own stance and attitude.
The most intriguing aspect of Huang’s work is his usage and rearrangement of icons and symbols. His academic education in Tunghai University’s Fine Arts Department has trained him to create these exquisite and fascinating icons with hand-drawn texture. On the surface, he tried to “recreate” the medicinal herbs from ancient books; but it was actually a process of his personal “writing.” He drew and portrayed the icons to express feelings of condolence and sorrow, and through this process his sadness was channeled out and relieved. In Huang’s own note on “Flower Sutras”, he emphasized that these painting were meant for commemoration. To express one’s respect and admiration to the deceased, he used foil and arranged back-light circle in the center of each painting.
Huang’s intention was to express his own feelings through art, so his works might have felt inaccessible to the readers. Yet he demonstrated the attitude of searching inner answers from the outside, phenomenal world. In his 2013 work “Memento Mori”, Huang reverently used very delicate brushwork and pasted foil to develop an illusive camouflage, a disguise of rebirth, for he believed that eternity arises from illusions. It was meant to be some sort of very private, personal writing, yet in the process of art creation and truth seeking, his work allowed us to peep into the grand traces of life. If Huang could continue his works with such a mindset, I believe he will be able to expand the scope of his work from very personal to creating much broader meanings.