石至莹的“无垠的草坪”

石至莹(1979年出生,生活工作于上海)是个画家,她那标志性的黑白画常直板地描绘标准化的景观:无垠开阔的 海、禅沙园、草坪,观者眼前唯此无他。其最新系列的创作灵感得自意大利知名作家伊塔洛•卡尔维诺的《帕洛玛尔先生》一书;上海科恩画廊为石至莹举办的首次 个展“无垠的草坪”展出了该系列的多张小幅水彩画及几幅大型油画,均发人冥想。

石至莹曾多次参与多方机构组织的群展,包括艺术+上海画廊、悉尼白兔艺术中心,而个展则包括2009年在北京尤伦斯艺术中心举办的“从太平洋——公海”,及2010年在北京空白空间举办的“天上,人间”。

石至莹就此次在科恩画廊的个展接受“燃点”专访,探讨其艺术创作。

燃点:哪些艺术家与艺术作品对你的形式与知性风格的发展有所影响?

石至莹: 严培明,杉本博司,马远(宋),Pina Bausch等等许多--和中国的很多传统绘画。

燃点:你的作品同文学究竟有怎样的关联?尤其是与伊塔洛·卡尔维诺(Italo Calvino)?

石至莹:伊塔洛·卡尔维诺在中国也是很受欢迎的作家,因为他的《看不见的城市》和中国有关。至于 选择《帕洛玛尔》这本书,是因为在这本书里,卡尔维诺要说的是一种” 帕洛玛尔体验” 。帕洛玛尔可以是卡尔维诺,也可以是我,也可以是每一个人。他所体验的世界,包括自然,城市生活,生存所需的物质基础,以及对人本身所做的思考。如果放在 一个宇宙的全景下看的话,地球上的每一个人都是大同小异的。这种体验对我来说也是人类共同体的一种体验,我对此很感兴趣。

燃点:时间在你的创作中扮演着怎样的角色?

石至莹:我对”永恒”很感兴趣。有些事从远古一直到未来,都是不会改变的,而且也是我们每个人都拥有。

燃点:你将个人思考融入尺幅不一的绘画中。请问你是如何考虑画作尺幅的?

石至莹:大小的尺寸我倒没有刻意去安排过,都是随着所画的内容进行调整的。

燃点:为什么全都只是黑白画?

石至莹:1,有时候黑白色让人有更多的想象空间。

2,据说婴儿在三个月之内所看到的世界也是黑白的,什么才是更为真实的?

3,在中国传统水墨画中,有”墨色能生五色”一说,墨色运用好的话也是可以相当丰富的。

 

The Infinite Lawn Shi Zhiying

Q&A: Shi Zhiying’s “Infinite Lawn”

by Christopher Moore / June 1, 2012.

Shi Zhiying, “The Infinite Lawn,” oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm, 2012

Shi Zhiying: The Infinite Lawn,” solo exhibition by Shi Zhiying.

James Cohan Gallery (1/F, Building 1, No. 1 Lane 170 Yueyang Lu, Shanghai). May 26–July 26, 2012.

Shi Zhiying (b.1979; lives and works in Shanghai) is a painter known for her stark black-and-white paintings of rather uniform vistas — the wide, open sea, Zen sand gardens, blades of grass that occupy the viewer’s horizons. In her latest series, she takes inspiration from Italo Calvino’s Mr. Palomar; these watercolors, along with large, meditative oil paintings, are being shown in her first solo show at James Cohan Shanghai.

Shi Zhiying has participated in group shows at various venues, including Art+Shanghai and White Rabbit, Sydney, while her solo shows include “From

the Pacific Ocean to the high Seas” at UCCA, Beijing (2009), and “Paradise on Earth” at White Space Beijing (2010).

For her latest exhibition at James Cohan Gallery, Shi Zhiying talks to randian about her artistic process.

randian: Which artists and art works have influenced the development of your formal and intellectual style?

Shi Zhiying: Yan Peiming, Sugimoto Hiroshi, Ma Yuan (Song dynasty “realist” painter), Piña Bausch and many others and many traditional paintings from China.

randian: What is the relationship between your work and literature, particularly Italo Calvino?

Shi Zhiying: Italo Calvino is also a popular writer in China, because his Invisible Cities have some connection to China. As for choosing Palomar, it’s because that in the book, Mr. Palomar, Calvino talked about a Palomar experience, which could be Calvino, or could also be me, or else could be everyone and anyone. The world he experiences includes nature, urban living, the material basis demanded by life, and the reflection on the self. If we look from the macroscopic scale of a universe, then every person on earth is basically the same. This experience, for me, is also a common experience of humanity, and this question interests me a lot.

randian: What role does time play in your works?

Shi Zhiying: I am fascinated by the “eternal.” Some things haven’t changed from the distant past all the way to the present and the future. They are something which everyone possesses.

randian: You’ve expanded the personal scale of a small drawing into large tableaux, how would you describe the change in the substance of the image?

Shi Zhiying: Size was not something I organized in a conscious way. It was something I arranged according to the content of the painting.

randian: Why do you work only in black and white?

Shi Zhiying: 1. Sometimes, black and white allows for greater imaginative space.

2. It is said that infants see the world in black and white until the age of three months old. So which in fact is more real?

3. In traditional Chinese ink painting there is an idea that “ink can create the five colors.” When ink is manipulated in the right way, it can be quite rich.