近些年来，艺术家南方一直以他的儿子小雨作为绘画的主角。如果说，在前一阶段，他更多是借助儿童这一母题来表达他对幸福的独特感受。那么，应该说，在近一阵子，他则更多是借助儿童这一母题来表达他对复杂人性的多角度理解。于是，复杂难解的人性与儿童的天真稚拙被巧妙地融合在了一起……而这样的处理，将可以使观众在结合自己生活经验的前提下，穿越画面的表象去理解更深层的含义。

　　我们的时代被人称为“数码时代”，这也使“机械复制”的现象日益严重。从南方的作品看去，他不但积极从时代的变化中寻求新的元素，还坚守了手工制作的价值观。应该说，这其实是对人性化的有效坚持，因为他强调的是心手一致的艺术表现。他已经越来越有意识地在抛弃照相的外貌，进而着力追求作品自身的绘画性，毫无疑问，这不仅使摄影图像由此转变为富于绘画性、隐寓性与诗意性的画面，而且与现实有着恰当的审美距离。当然，更加重要的是，南方还把属于个人的观感和当下历史的镜头很好地结合起来，结果创造了一种既能接近观众又有很强主观性的新型绘画。至于在对绘画性的追求上，按我的理解，由于南方保有一种自由开放的心态，所以他大胆地将西方表现主义绘画、传统民间年画、中国陶瓷以及卡通绘画等等元素进行巧妙的组合，这使得他的近作一方面具有亮丽的色彩、放松的造型和夸张的形式，另一方面，也在东方与西方、传统与现代、高雅与通俗之间，保持了很好的张力关系。应该说，这也是我称南方的近作为混合交叉的新绘画的原因。较前一阶段的作品，其艺术水平更高，也更具个人的特点。

　　美国的当代艺术理论家库斯比特曾经以《艺术的终结》为名出版了一本书。在书中，他对所谓的“艺术终结论”进行了强有力的驳斥。在他看来，自塞尚以来的“后现代艺术”是过分的强调了对于观念的表达，而忽视了艺术形式本身。这既在很大程度上拉开了艺术与大众的距离，也危及了艺术自身的地位。要改变“后艺术”的堕落状态，当代艺术家就应该像伟大的艺术前辈一样格外重视艺术的技巧，然后想办法使它在当代焕发出新的生命力。我猜想，在艺术家南方的心灵深处，一定很同意库斯比特的以上看法，要不然，他也不会重读卡拉瓦乔、歌雅、苏丁这些艺术大师的作品，并从中汲取营养。记得栗宪庭先生在多年前曾经写过一篇文章，叫《重要的不是艺术》，我认为，在很多艺术家不关注艺术观念的表达与人的生存状态的时候，这篇文章是极有价值与道理的，所以才会产生巨大的影响，但在今天，也就是在当代艺术的观念已为很多艺术家接受的时候，大声疾呼“重要的是艺术”也算是一种合理的补充。这当中，有一点否定之否定的意味。其实，这也导致南方近来把艺术表现放在了很重要的位置上。

　　祝南方不断跃上艺术的新台阶！

　　2010年1月22日于深圳美术馆

　　The Hybrid painting

　　Thoughts after watching NanFang's recent works

　　Lu Hong

　　In recent years, as an artist, Nanfang has always taken his son, xiaoyu, as the protagonist in the painting. If in the previous stage, he has expressed his unique feelings towards happiness by use of the child as motif. Then, it should be said that he expresses the multi-angle understanding to the complex human nature by use child as his motif. As a result the complex and complicated humanity are skillfully integrated into the child's innocence… By this kind of processing, the audience can understand the deep meaning through the superficial picture in the context of the premise of their own life experiences.

　　The time we live in has been called the "digital age", which will also make the phenomenon of "mechanical reproduction" become increasingly serious. Judged from Nanfang's works, we can see he not only searches for new elements from the changes of the times, but also sticks to the hand-crafted values. It should be said that is the effective insistence of humanity for he stresses on artistic expression of consistence between mind and hand. He has become more and more conscious to abandon the appearance of the photo and turn to the pursuit of the nature of painting. Undoubtedly, this kind technique has changed the photographic images into a painterly, metaphoric and poetic picture with appropriate aesthetic distance from the reality. Of course, what's more important is Nanfang has connected personal feelings with current historic event together very well to create a new type of painting with strong subjective to come close to the viewers. As for the pursuit of painting nature, according to my understanding, due to Nanfang's free and open mind, he boldly combine the elements of Western expressionism paintings, traditional folk paintings, and cartoon drawing skillfully, which give his latest works with the bright colors, relaxed style and exaggerated forms. On the other hand, his works maintains good relations between the East and West cultures, between tradition and modernity, between the elegance and popularity. It should be said that's the reason I call NanFang's latest works hybrid paintings. Compared with the previous works, these latest works has higher artistic values and personal character.

　　Kuspit, one of U.S. contemporary art theorists, has published one book with the name of "The end of Art". In this book, he strongly rebuked the so-called theory of 'The End of Art'. According to him, the post modern art over emphasized the expression of ideas but ignored the form of art itself after Cezanne. The trend has largely widened the distance between art and the general public, but also endangered the status of art itself. The contemporary artist should pay extra attention to the art techniques as well as their older generations in order to change the degeneration states of post-art, and then bring it back to new vitality adapting to times. I guess, in Nanfang's deep heart, he must agree with kuspit's opinion. If not, he would not reread the mastery works of Caravaggio, Cornwall Ya, Shamsuddin for nutrition. I still remember Mr. Li Xianting once wrote an article, titled "The important thing is not art" several years ago. This article becomes extremely valuable and reasonable with such impacts when many artists are not concerned about the expression of artistic ideas and human's existence situation.

　　Today, as contemporary ideas has been accepted by many artists, "The important thing is art" is reasonable supplement for them. It means negation of negation and led Nanfang put the artistic expression on a very important position.

　　Wish Nanfang create better works in artistic creation!

　　January  22, 2010 in Shenzhen Art Museum