傅文俊 Fu Wenjun

观念摄影近二十年来，多通过后现代艺术的方式，运用拼贴、挪用等方式，结合现代化媒介进行创作，它们为今天的艺术家创造了新的可能性，使创作变得更加主观和主动。抓住历史的切片，通过科技与媒介的力量进行虚拟的生成，正是傅文俊长期以来所关注并进行创作的方式。傅文俊的作品是在时间与空间轴上进行的自由创作。在他的观念摄影创作中，常常通过在不同时、空中的游走，唤醒观者对于当下的重新解读。在当代的影像创作中，傅文俊自觉地运用电脑技术、摄影技术，将之组合起来构成新的视觉方式。他主动构成、创造着一个合成的结果，现实在被合成的过程中，成就了一种理想或想象。他为我们提供了一种看待事物的视角与方式，提示我们如何看待过去已经发生的事实与正在进行的当下。这种平行化、超越时空的并置构成了一种具有“共时性”意味的效果。而“共时”本身即是一种态度。

Over the past two decades, conceptual photography has often adopted postmodern artistic strategies, employing collage, appropriation, and other methods in combination with modern media technologies. These approaches have opened up new possibilities for contemporary artists, rendering creation more subjective and proactive. Seizing fragments of history and using the power of technology and media to generate virtual constructs has long been the mode of practice that Fu Wenjun has consistently explored and developed. Fu Wenjun’s work unfolds as a form of free creation along the axes of time and space. In his conceptual photographic practice, he frequently moves across different temporalities and spatialities, awakening viewers to a renewed interpretation of the present. Within contemporary image-making, Fu Wenjun consciously integrates computer technology and photographic techniques, combining them to form new visual modes. He actively constructs and produces synthesized outcomes; in the process of synthesis, reality is transformed into an ideal or an imagination. His work offers us a particular perspective and method for seeing the world, prompting reflection on how we might understand both facts that have already occurred and the present that continues to unfold. This parallelized, trans-temporal juxtaposition generates an effect imbued with a sense of “synchronicity.” And synchronicity itself is, fundamentally, an attitude.

在傅文俊的新作《图腾》系列中，这种“共时性”以一种更为自由的方式呈现了出来。通过运用后期photoshop合成与虚幻环境再造的手法，艺术家使新近的数字技术与远古的人类记忆达成另类的合谋。首先，《图腾》系列作品可视为摄影与新媒体数字领域的跨界尝试，其具有丰富想象性与神秘性的视觉世界，往往使人想起《阿凡达》中的特效场景。经过抽取的画面颜色形成统一的色调，荧光般的效果造成一种不实的科幻感。他通常呈现予人的是一个反相的世界，这里的色彩与明暗异于日常经验，这使人物站立时的暗色阴影反变为画面中高亮的部分，其中不仅没有对于“不真实”的回避，反而强化了后现代式的拼贴效果。经过精心分析的人物衣饰构成了一种时空上的距离感，为画面带来吸引力。

In Fu Wenjun’s new Totem series, this sense of “synchronicity” is articulated in a freer and more expansive manner. Through post-production techniques such as Photoshop compositing and the reconstruction of virtual environments, the artist forges an alternative alliance between recent digital technologies and ancient human memory. First and foremost, the Totem series may be regarded as a cross-disciplinary experiment between photography and the digital domain of new media. Its richly imaginative and mysterious visual world often calls to mind the special-effects landscapes of Avatar. Extracted and unified color schemes establish a consistent tonality, while fluorescent effects generate an unreal, science-fiction-like atmosphere. What the artist typically presents is an inverted world, where color and light diverge from everyday experience. As a result, the dark shadows cast by standing figures are transformed into luminous highlights within the composition. Rather than avoiding “unreality,” the works deliberately intensify a postmodern collage effect. Carefully analyzed and constructed clothing and adornment create a sense of temporal and spatial distance, lending the images a compelling visual allure.

在营造这一新鲜视觉的同时，艺术家在另一方面，对于图腾的文化含义进行了彰显，并通过此进而探讨文化权力话语的命题。追溯图腾的历史，我们将发现它与血缘、归属的密切相关性。作为人类群体最初的原始信仰与坚持，图腾里根植着对于祖先及万物的崇敬，岩壁上的动物形象是狩猎者出于征服的欲望、还是依附与庇护的需要，尚无定论。然而它所具有的文化、社会生活上的含义，却具有广义的延伸性。而艺术家正是将这一主题置换于当下的语境，以这种新的合成方式进行表述。一般来看，图腾所生存于其中的原始文明往往被视为一个远古的概念（无论是史前的壁画、岩画，还是十九世纪之后的大洋洲、非洲雕塑，西方社会对其“原始性”的认知几乎没有太多不同）。因而，“原始”（Primitive）这一概念，更多是通过与西方现代文明形成参照式对立而存在的，与后者所对应的是，原始文明带有女性化、种族边缘性和阶级的被殖民化等特质。然而，略有讽刺意味的是，图腾这一事物本身所内涵的潜在文化隐喻，却与当今社会、文化、历史与生活遥相呼应。图腾崇拜即使在今天也能够得到具体而强烈的体现，值得注意的是，在作品中艺术家更多地，是对图腾自身文化含义的关注，他巧妙地对其进行彰显，将之化为探讨当下的切入点。
图腾意味着对于群体的归属，这一对于群体的选择，对于当下人来说，则产生于本民族与西方文明之间。一个时代被文化中心话语深深套牢，没有反省与批判，没有抉择与守护，盲目的追求与推崇或许已成为当下的常态。傅文俊曾表达过对于当下“图腾现状”的反思：“对文化中心话语的惟命是从、对西方中心主义的既定认知、以及对后殖民文化理论的盲目推崇，何尝不是一种图腾的崇拜。”工业革命后的流水线运作方式造就了安迪·沃霍尔式的商业图腾，商品的品牌力、符号化的生活方式、符号化的观念认知无不构成了新时代的“图腾现状”。艺术家关注到图腾所带有的非理性特质，在城市化、现代化的物质文明中，对于西方话语盲目、不加择取的崇尚，存在着深层的隐忧和病患。

While constructing this fresh visual language, the artist simultaneously foregrounds the cultural significance of the totem and, through it, probes questions of cultural power and discourse. Tracing the history of the totem reveals its close connection to bloodlines and belonging. As one of the earliest forms of human belief and commitment, the totem is rooted in reverence for ancestors and for all living things. Whether the animal images on rock walls emerged from hunters’ desires for conquest, or from needs for attachment and protection, remains unresolved. Yet the cultural and social meanings embedded in the totem possess a broad capacity for extension. It is precisely this theme that the artist transposes into a contemporary context, articulating it through a new mode of synthesis. Generally speaking, the primal civilizations in which totems originally existed are often regarded as belonging to a distant, ancient past—whether in prehistoric cave and rock paintings, or in the sculptures of Oceania and Africa after the nineteenth century. Western society’s perception of their “primitiveness” has changed little. Thus, the concept of the “primitive” exists largely through an oppositional reference to Western modern civilization. Corresponding to the latter, so-called primitive civilizations are often characterized as feminized, racially marginal, and class-wise colonized. Yet, somewhat ironically, the latent cultural metaphors embedded in the totem itself resonate across distances with contemporary society, culture, history, and everyday life. Totemic worship can still find concrete and powerful manifestations today. Notably, in his works the artist focuses more on the totem’s intrinsic cultural meanings, skillfully bringing them to the fore and transforming them into an entry point for examining the present. The totem signifies a sense of group belonging. For people today, the choice of such belonging often arises in the tension between one’s own national culture and Western civilization. An era can become deeply ensnared by the discourse of cultural centers, lacking reflection and critique, devoid of choice and guardianship; blind pursuit and veneration may well have become the norm. Fu Wenjun has reflected on the current “state of the totem” in these terms: unquestioning obedience to cultural-center discourse, the acceptance of Western-centrism as given, and the blind endorsement of postcolonial cultural theory—are these not themselves forms of totem worship? The assembly-line mode of operation following the Industrial Revolution gave rise to Andy Warhol–style commercial totems. Brand power, symbolized lifestyles, and symbolized modes of thought together constitute the “totemic condition” of a new era. The artist draws attention to the non-rational qualities inherent in totems, pointing to the deep-seated anxieties and maladies embedded within urbanized and modern material civilization—particularly in the uncritical and indiscriminate reverence for Western discourse.

在艺术家的个人创作经历中，我们似乎始终能够看到他对于中西文化话语权的关注。其在《十二生肖》、《万国园记》中体现出的强烈“历史意识”，不同于大多数创作类似题材的艺术家的纪实摄影手法，艺术家把作品的重心放在了场景本身所赋予的作品意义之中。他通过空间、建筑的历史记忆，深刻演绎“走过场”的动态历史。他将十二兽首与圆明园废墟进行前后景“合成”，对带有同一历史记忆与空间属性的事物进行嵌套式的处理，实现了这种不可能的“回归”。他将世博会建筑与洗劫之后的圆明园并置，前者的临时性与后者的永恒性，前者的繁荣与后者的落寞，构成充满意味的历史维度的视角。从圆明园的劫掠和烧毁到世博会的举办，中国同西方的关系发生着变化，尽管如此，他将历史以一种特有的现代方式带入现实，以图像的方式作为失忆的提醒。他对于历史的尊重体现于一遍遍地回溯历史，承载着记忆中不太光辉、却也不能被遗忘的部分。而在《图腾》系列中，他更像是一位讲述寓言的人，以远古的故事阐述当代的寓言。在那些看上去近乎乐园的土地之上，人们密切遵循着巫术的法则，依附于图腾神物的庇护，而在一个全球化的时代中，艺术家则对这一规则的强制性与权威性提出了质疑。

Throughout the artist’s personal creative trajectory, one can consistently discern his sustained attention to the dynamics of cultural discourse and power between China and the West. The pronounced “historical consciousness” manifested in works such as Twelve Chinese Zodiac Signs and Story of the Expo Garden distinguishes his practice from the documentary approaches commonly adopted by artists working with similar themes. Rather than relying on documentary photography, he places the conceptual weight of the work on the meanings generated by the sites themselves. Through the historical memory embedded in space and architecture, he profoundly articulates the dynamic history of a “show of formality.” By compositing the twelve animal heads with the ruins of the Old Summer Palace into foreground and background relationships, he nests elements that share the same historical memory and spatial attributes, achieving an otherwise impossible “return.” By juxtaposing the architecture of the World Expo with the plundered remains of the Old Summer Palace, he establishes a historically charged perspective in which the temporality of the former confronts the permanence of the latter, and prosperity stands in contrast to desolation. From the looting and burning of the Old Summer Palace to the hosting of the World Expo, China’s relationship with the West has undergone profound transformation. Yet Fu Wenjun introduces history into the present through a distinctly modern visual strategy, using images as reminders against collective amnesia. His respect for history is embodied in repeated acts of retrospection, bearing those less glorious—yet unforgettable—layers of memory. In the Totem series, by contrast, he appears more like a teller of parables, using ancient narratives to articulate contemporary allegories. On lands that seem almost paradisiacal, people adhere closely to the rules of witchcraft and depend upon the protection of totemic deities. Within the context of globalization, however, the artist raises questions about the coercive force and authority of such rules, subjecting them to critical scrutiny.