The book on Yin Zhaoyang:Landscape into Shanhe is a compressive overview of a sustained and impressive practice which opens out a transpersonal account of a Chinese response to Western aesthetic modernity, as well as the Chinese Classical tradition. Rather than an assumption of a ready-made Modernity, the essays in this publication demonstrate a sensitive awareness of how an artist might construct a relationship to the situation of a disrupted and even broken modernity due to the conditions of Chinese history. What was at stake with the passage of a Late Modernity for a generation of practices, was the appropriation of a memory system that is a product of this context. This implied a revitalised response to tradition, as well as a navigation of exact passages within Western painting. This could be theorised as an operation of aesthetic complexity based upon folds within the distinct memory systems. There is a lush immediacy to this painting style that also contains within a mediative repose born out a relationship to mark making of a much more distant time.

 

A pre-occupation with the depiction of mountains demonstrates the principle of the combination of aesthetic appropriation if we examine a painting such as Guo Xi’s ‘Early Spring’ (1072) and Paul Cezanne’s ‘Mont Sainte Victoire with Large Pine’ (1887). There is a paradox at the heart of such a contrast because many of the exploration of each painter appear to overlap and be in accord with each, despite a thousand-year temporal difference. What is presented in such a contrast are questions related to the privileging, and it is dealing with such complex relationships that the essays nuance in exacting ways to open the third space of a Contemporary response to such conjunctions. What also follows from such comparative explorations are relations between inscriptive processes, intensities (particularly of colour), gestural mark making, abstractions, relationships of visibility and invisibility, the play of mind and matter, and the beyond of representation. Central to these facets, is what is the relationship between the subject of perception and the object of attention and with this the pulverisation or collapse of difference between them. The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty theorised this aesthetic flux as the ‘flesh’ of the world. In this the mountains co-mingle with the mind and through this a medium of having a non-dual world arises. The publication presents a vision of the art of Yin Xhaoyang as resonating with the feeling of this ‘flesh’ of the world that contains the circulation of a chain of figures which occasions aesthetic excess. It is eruptive in its manifestation because this excess appears to exceed the figures that are employed to present as if what is sayable is never in front of what is seeable. This gives rise to the sense that the publication has a weight that is an outcome of a surplus of not everything that might be said being available to language. Painting appears to contain the touch feel of the world which is why they are not purely documents of light nor reducible to the figurations they appear absorbed within. They are beside themselves as documents of a world that is to come.

Every book on art must elect a method through which it is read. An art historical schematic account elects an overview connected to an unfolding narrative that offers itself as a convincing logic that such a method will render the subject as a knowable subject. The multiple micro-narrative of this book opens out different passages and stylistic encounters, which is closer to a labyrinth through which the reader might collect different fragmentary insights. The visual mapping that attends this is both relational but also singular and this makes possible the act of dwelling within this space because the text itself is already based on the perception that writing is a spacing of sense in which not everything needs to be signified. This opens out to a double gesture, the first aesthetic and the other ethical in which the essayist lend their insights whilst refuses the temptation to attempt to totalise. This is in accord with the art that is being offered to such a gestural reflex.

The art exhibits itself; the book presents the potentiality of the relationships which are offered by the work, a play of image and temporality comes to the fore, and matters of obscurity, sink back into a shadow region at the threshold of what might have been presented.
The book is a system of notation which regulated to desire to be witness alongside the desire to know. It is the generation of a context: personal, aesthetic, temporal, historical. No order can be assumed by these circulations as they are the chaotic starting point for an invention. The extent to which invention occurs opens out discrete spaces in which the reader might dwell.

The book is an assembly of figures, densities, intensities, offerings, withdrawals, encounters, pleasures.

Turning these pages creates a rhythm. Without this rhythm there is a dull assembly, a trophy like product. The reader is faced on the one side with a poetics and on the other side didactics. Didactics is sober, poetics excessive, rhythm comes alive with such contraries. The reader is caught up in such a rhythm in wanting to learn, but also wanting to be party to a redistribution of sense. The reader becomes aware that the appropriation of the artist is not in any way like that of the spectator, but rather follows a course that is empathetic to the complexities of the aesthetic process.

How can an artist trace influence as disparate as those that are cited here. Art historical logic would not be able to create a deductive set of figures for this, but an artist can bend the notes that enables this occur. The work is the sum of all the notes that are bent, all the layers that are generated, and all the folds which are processed. There is a great deal of disorganisation to pass through to stay with such complexity. Aesthetic autonomy resides in such a passage.

The book proves little but does add to the weight of significance. The art works remain true to their pulsation born out of their existence as a sensuous shining. They find their truth there, and resonance within such particles of becoming manifest.

 

The Cold Mountain
Oil on canvas 180 x 280cm 2013

 

《尹朝陽:山河形勝》一書全面回顧了這位藝術家持續而卓越的創作實踐，展現了一種超越個體視角的敘述方式，不僅回應了西方美學現代性的影響，也深深植根於中國古典傳統。與其說是對既有現代性的承襲，不如說本書中的文章展現了一種敏銳的意識，探討藝術家如何在中國歷史的特殊語境下，面對一個支離破碎、甚至殘缺不全的現代性，並試圖與之建立聯繫。對於某一代藝術實踐而言，晚期現代性的演進意味著對記憶系統的重新挪用，而這一記憶系統正是該歷史背景的產物。這不僅關乎傳統的再激活，也涉及對西方繪畫脈絡的精准梳理與吸收。我們可以將其視為一種美學複雜性的運作，在獨特的記憶系統層疊交織之中展開。尹朝陽的繪畫風格既充滿濃郁的即時感，又蘊含著一種沈靜的冥想氣質。這種氣質源於他對筆觸與痕跡的獨特理解，而這種關係可追溯至遙遠的歷史時空。

對山嶽意象的關注體現了一種美學挪用的原則，這一點在郭熙的《早春圖》（1072）與保羅·塞尚的《有大松樹的聖維克多山》（1887）之間的對比中尤為明顯。這一對比的核心隱藏著一個悖論——儘管兩位畫家的創作相隔千年，但他們的許多探索卻彼此交疊，甚至在某些層面上趨於一致。這樣的對比引出了關於藝術價值取向的思考，也揭示了傳統與現代、東方與西方在視覺表現上的微妙關聯。本書中的文章正是通過對這些複雜關係的精准剖析，開闢出一種「第三空間」，以當代視角回應這一交匯所帶來的思辨。這種比較探索還延伸出了多個關鍵議題，包括繪畫的筆觸方式、色彩的張力（尤其是色彩的強度）、手勢性的筆觸運用、抽象的構造、可見與不可見之間的關係、精神與物質的交融，以及超越再現的表達方式。其中的核心問題在於：感知的主體與被關注的對象之間究竟存在何種關係？這種關係是否意味著兩者的界限最終被瓦解，甚至完全消融？哲學家莫里斯·梅洛-龐蒂（Maurice Merleau-Ponty）曾將這種美學流動性理論化，稱其為「世界的肉身」（flesh of the world）。在這一觀念之下，山巒與意識交融，催生出一種超越二元對立的世界觀。本書將尹朝陽的藝術視為這一「世界的肉身」觀念的回響，其中流轉著一系列形象的鏈條，並在這一過程中催生出某種美學上的「過剩」——一種超越形象本身、使得「可言說之物」永遠追趕不上「可見之物」的張力。正是這種特質，使得本書呈現出一種獨特的分量感——一種源自言語無法完全承載其意義的「盈餘」。繪畫似乎承載著世界的觸感，因此它們既不是單純的光的記錄，也無法被還原為自身所展現的具象形態。它們超越了自身，成為對「未來世界」的見證。

 

 

每一本關於藝術的書籍都必須選擇一種閱讀的方法。傳統的藝術史敘述通常採用整體性的視角，將藝術的發展納入層層展開的敘事之中，並通過這種方法構建出一種令人信服的邏輯，使藝術成為可被理解的對象。然而，本書的多重微敘事則開啓了不同的路徑與風格性的邂逅，它更像是一座迷宮，讀者可在其中收集零散而深刻的洞見。與此相伴的視覺映射既是關聯性的，又是獨特的，這種特質使得「棲居」在這一空間成為可能。書寫本身即是一種「意義的間距化」（spacing of sense），並非一切都需要被指認或闡明。由此延展出一種雙重姿態：一方面是美學的，另一方面是倫理的。書中的文章提供了見解，但同時拒絕被「整體化」的誘惑。這一方法呼應了所探討的藝術本身——它以手勢性的回應抵抗著被徹底界定的可能。

藝術自身即是展現；而書籍則呈現出作品所激發的潛在關係。在這一過程中，圖像與時間性的遊戲浮現於前，而某些隱晦之處則退回陰影地帶，在原本可能被揭示的邊界徘徊。這本書是一個符號系統，它在「見證的渴望」與「理解的慾望」之間尋找平衡。它創造了一種語境——個人的、美學的、時間性的、歷史性的。這些交錯流動的內容無法被預設為某種秩序，因為它們本身便是創新的混沌起點。而創新發生的程度，則決定了哪些獨立的空間得以開啓，讓讀者在其中棲居。

這本書是由形象、密度、強度、給予、撤回、相遇與愉悅所構成的集合。

翻動這些書頁便喚起出一種節奏。若無此節奏，書籍便淪為一堆呆板的拼合物，宛如一座靜置獎杯式的陳列品。讀者在閱讀時，一面直面詩性，一面觸及教誨。教誨是冷靜的，詩性則充滿張力，而正是這對立的張弛，使節奏躍然於紙上。讀者在這樣的節奏中穿行，一方面尋求理解，另一方面又期待在意義的變動中找到歸屬。漸漸地，他們意識到，藝術家的挪用方式與旁觀者截然不同——它並非置身事外的觀看，而是一種對審美過程複雜性的深度共鳴。

藝術家如何追溯那些看似毫無交集，卻在某處暗自相連的影響，如同這裡所列舉的種種源流？藝術史的邏輯無法用演繹的方法歸納出一套明確的形象體系，但藝術家可以扭轉音符，使其得以發生。作品正是所有被扭曲的音符、所有被疊加的層次、所有被折疊的軌跡的總和。要在這樣的複雜性中立足，必須穿越重重無序。而美學的自主性，正是在這場穿行中悄然展開。

這本書並未提供確鑿的證明，卻增加了意義的分量。藝術作品始終忠於自身的律動——它們在自身的感官光輝中獲得存在，並在那裡找到真理，在顯現的粒子之中激發共鳴。

 

 

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Text by Jonathan Miles
Edited by Michelle Yu