Lose an Opportunity Close at Hand
有关中西文化的探讨可谓老生常谈，但是中西方文化之间的差异、分歧、共通之处影响着各自历史文化与艺术的独特走向。近期，我创作了一组名为《失之交臂》的艺术作品，仅从画面的构成元素来看，就可以了解到作品的意图。我以西方艺术的经典雕塑《维纳斯》为原型，结合代表中国传统文化的石窟造像。两种绘制元素分别代表了东西方在文化领域中不同的艺术发展历程及其走向。这里我所说的文化是指狭义范畴的文化概念，即人类在社会历史发展过程中所创造的，排除物质创造活动及其结果部分，而主要针对精神创造，其中包含了知识、信仰以及艺术。
在近期的创作中，我将更多的注意力放在中、西方文化的相关理论中，前期创作的《信手拈来》（油画）系列作品与这次的《失之交臂》具有共同的文化指向。就个人而言，我对人类所面临的信仰问题十分关注，在早期的观念摄影中有许多有关佛、儒、道各文化信仰的观念。从早期创作的《他心通》、《幻化》、《无界》作品为创作根基，使其中所表现的造像与西方艺术创作符号相遇。由于中西方文化特点与思维方式的不同，两者的艺术家在同一时空创作出不同类型的作品，抑或在不同时空拥有统一的艺术风格，既而导致了中西方文化发展线路中各失之交臂的艺术原点。
创作中我将维纳斯与佛教造像并置在一起，两个文化符码反应出的不仅仅是两种文化下简单的艺术现象，其中也涵含着大量的指向性思索。仅从图像上来说，维纳斯是希腊化时期一尊表现人体之美的雕塑，人物原型来自于希腊神话代表爱与美之神的阿芙洛蒂忒。与维纳斯相遇的是大足石窟中北魏造像时期的佛像。北魏时期，佛教在中国兴起，并引发了一场造像热。两种不同时空与文化信仰的结点，以同样的艺术样式表现出不同的美学取向。维纳斯充分展现了西方人权主义色彩，以及崇尚科学的艺术理念，佛教造像则充分表明了中国文化中浓重的形而上学和奴役的思想。不同的哲学理念成就了两种不一样的经典。而中、西文化对艺术创作的影响又岂止这一个艺术现象？中国传统文化以儒学为主，兼有诸子百家各派。这种兼容并著的文化特点往往具有统一及整体的思维观念。所以中国艺术的发展往往集前人之所长，在传承古法基础上有别于古法。既而形成统一融合的艺术发展之路。西方则重哲学，哲学强调的是分析。这一文化特点往往注重个体局部的实证思维。所以西方往往以一种流派推翻另一流派。呈现出分裂与否定的发展路线。这是两种文化导致的不同的发展逻辑。落实到具体的艺术创作，中国重写意，西方重写实。中国注重内容与形式浑然一体的“归一”，西方则提倡内容与形式的可分性等等。
我之所以将中、西方文化的经典之作以这样的方式并置在一起，正是要表明东、西文化客观存在的差异。与此同时，表明存在差异并不意味着谁优谁劣，差异的存在保证了多元文化的继续发展。任何一个民族和国家都不可能摆脱自身的文化传承，而为来自外部的强加力量而有所颠覆。真正的艺术，无关国别。当代艺术的创新不能靠移花接木，搬弄新术语，而是要在尊重自身发展脉络的基础上细心的研究艺术发展规律中存在的可能性。这样才能留下与西方失之交臂却可被称之为经典的艺术创作。
Discussions surrounding Eastern and Western cultures may seem timeworn, yet the differences, divergences, and points of convergence between them continue to shape the distinct trajectories of their respective histories, cultures, and artistic traditions. Recently, I created a body of work titled Lose an Opportunity Close at Hand. From the compositional elements alone, the intention of the works can already be discerned. In this series, I take the classical Western sculpture Venus as a prototype and combine it with grotto sculptures that represent traditional Chinese culture. These two visual elements respectively symbolize the differing paths and directions of artistic development in the cultural histories of the East and the West. Here, the notion of “culture” refers to culture in a narrow sense—that is, the body of spiritual creation produced by humanity throughout the course of social and historical development. It excludes material production and its outcomes, and instead focuses primarily on spiritual creation, encompassing knowledge, belief systems, and art.
In my recent practice, I have directed greater attention toward theoretical discourses related to Eastern and Western cultures. The earlier oil painting series Pick at Random shares a common cultural orientation with the current body of work Lose an Opportunity Close at Hand. On a personal level, I am deeply concerned with questions of belief faced by humanity. In my early conceptual photography, many works explored belief systems rooted in Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Works such as Thought Reading, Illusory Metamorphoses, and No Realms form the conceptual foundation of my practice, enabling the figurative imagery they present to encounter symbolic languages drawn from Western art. Owing to fundamental differences in cultural characteristics and modes of thinking between East and West, artists from these traditions have produced divergent forms of expression within the same time and space, or, conversely, have arrived at similar artistic styles across different historical moments. This has, in turn, led to missed artistic points of origin—moments where Eastern and Western cultural trajectories passed close to one another, yet ultimately lost the opportunity to converge.
In my creative process, I place Venus and Buddhist sculptures side by side. These two cultural codes reflect far more than simple artistic phenomena arising from different cultures; they also embody layers of directed and reflective inquiry. From an iconographic perspective alone, Venus is a Hellenistic sculpture that celebrates the beauty of the human body, derived from Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty in Greek mythology. Encountering Venus in my work are Buddhist figures from the Northern Wei–period sculptures of the Dazu Grottoes. During the Northern Wei dynasty, Buddhism flourished in China, giving rise to an extensive movement of religious sculpture. These two nodes—situated in different times, spaces, and belief systems—employ similar artistic forms to express distinctly different aesthetic orientations. Venus fully embodies the Western emphasis on humanism and an artistic philosophy grounded in the reverence for science and the human body. Buddhist sculpture, by contrast, reveals the strong metaphysical orientation within Chinese culture, as well as ideological structures shaped by hierarchy and spiritual transcendence. Divergent philosophical foundations thus gave rise to two fundamentally different artistic classics. Yet the influence of Eastern and Western cultures on artistic creation extends far beyond this single example. Traditional Chinese culture is rooted primarily in Confucianism, while also encompassing the diverse schools of thought of the Hundred Philosophers. This inclusive and coexistent cultural structure tends toward unified and holistic modes of thinking. As a result, the development of Chinese art often integrates the strengths of its predecessors—differing from ancient models while remaining grounded in their transmission—thereby forming a path of synthesis and continuity. Western culture, by contrast, places strong emphasis on philosophy, and philosophy privileges analysis. This cultural trait often foregrounds empirical thinking focused on the individual and the particular. Consequently, Western art history frequently advances through one movement overturning another, revealing a developmental trajectory marked by rupture and negation. These are two distinct logics of cultural evolution. When translated into concrete artistic practice, Chinese art prioritizes expressive abstraction (xieyi), while Western art emphasizes realistic representation (xieshi). Chinese aesthetics value the unity and inseparability of content and form—a state of “returning to oneness”—whereas Western traditions tend to advocate the separability of content and form. These contrasts further underscore the fundamentally different cultural frameworks that shape artistic creation in East and West.
The reason I juxtapose classical works from Eastern and Western cultures in this manner is precisely to underscore the objective differences that exist between them. At the same time, acknowledging difference does not imply a hierarchy of superiority or inferiority. On the contrary, the very existence of difference ensures the continued vitality and development of cultural plurality. No nation or people can sever itself from its own cultural lineage, nor can it be overturned by externally imposed forces. True art transcends national boundaries. Innovation in contemporary art cannot be achieved through superficial grafting or the mere manipulation of new terminology. Instead, it requires a careful investigation into the possibilities embedded within the laws of artistic development, grounded in respect for one’s own cultural trajectory. Only in this way can one produce works that may pass by Western paradigms—lose an opportunity close at hand, so to speak—yet still stand as artistic classics in their own right.