展期 Period：
2023.10.14—2023.11.14
艺术家 Artist：
策展人 Curator：
地点 Venue：
新闻稿 Press Release：
伯年艺术空间欣然宣布，将于2023年10月14日至11月14日期间推出艺术家曾臻个展“在黄昏时燃烧”。本次展览由谭维担任策展人，将呈现艺术家新近创作的二十余幅绘画作品。
深度叙事性的虚拟游戏伴随曾臻的成长，在长时段接收虚拟视觉体系影响下，超现实化的视觉图像成为艺术家绘画的主要构成来源。游戏中的虚拟角色、自然中的现实光景、历史人文中的神话哲学，艺术家将元素交错使用、相互延伸。将虚拟世界中的本体和现实世界触动的真实情感相交织，在画布上产生新的视觉可能。
图像、造型和各种视觉产品都是创作者、研究者所必须面对的基本对象，艺术史上所谈论到的各种人造式的物件都可以作为图像研究的起点。自石器时代洞穴画到中世纪艺术的界说，再以文艺复兴一直到20世纪的各种现当艺术运动，但如果将目光焦点锁定在图像意义和创作意图上，不同时期的图像含义备受当时的社会背景、使用用途的震荡有所别。以希腊神话时期作品为例，大多与其所象征的意义有连结，都是以希腊神话作为文献文本所产生的后设形象：以自然事物作为对象再以故事图像作为解释手段并建构概念。而曾臻借由其认知的神话概念、虚拟角色作为对象，以普遍存在的自然事物作为解释手段，从而建构作品画面上的图像故事。换言之，当文本赋予各种情感、概念被图像化解释时，所谓的神话故事就更趋同于个人化，被自然的关联到人自身的情感价值上，让无情草木与神人英雄同悲共喜，也就是马克思所谓的“自然的人化”，观者被自然的带入共情之中。
当曾臻在对抽象概念进行描述中，用到了大量“拟人像“的方式：希腊悲剧中的英雄与天意对抗、北欧神话中诸神黄昏时的毁灭视悲剧等等。当柏拉图提出画家的影像制作活动只是对摹本的再摹仿时，文艺复兴艺术家彻底回应了模仿说对艺术和图像所做的抨击，他们让图像直接体现概念，以“拟人像”证明了画家可以和人文学者平起平坐。而贡布里希更是指出：“拟人图像可以被看作是柏拉图理念的肖像。” 拟人像则是艺术家无法直接描绘的事物赋予“人形化”的表现，比如：爱、恨、贪嗔、勇气等概念，也可以粗浅的归纳为：人物+配件=概念。艺术家曾臻利用这样的图像制作方式，更具体的表达其穿插于神话历史与赛博未来中的复杂情感与神性思索。
回到马克思提出的“自然的人化”，从现实层面解释，是人通过劳动将自然界转化为人类社会，使之成为人的“扩展体”。这种转化不仅仅是物质的，更是意识形态的，体现了人类对自然的共情，在此过程中，自然不再是一个冷漠、陌生的存在，而是被赋予了人的特质和情感。曾臻把繁复的思考拟人化，将超自然的、神秘的力量赋予了人的形象，将神话中的神明与人类的情感、欲望和冲突相结合，使之更加接近人的现实生活体验，使之成为美感的产物。如朱光潜先生所说 “美感的世界纯粹是意象世界”，展览主题“在黄昏时燃烧”，当诸神黄昏面对浩劫时，继续如飞蛾扑火般的涌进，正是艺术家曾臻用图像搭建出的意象世界。
BONIAN SPACE is pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition, Don't Go Gentle into That Twilight, by artist Zeng Zhen from October 14th to November 14th, 2023. Curated by Tan Wei, the exhibition will present over 20 paintings from the artist's recent practice.
Zeng Zhen grew up with deep narrative virtual games. Under the long-term influence of the virtual visual system, surreal visual images have become the main component of his paintings. The virtual characters in the game, the realistic scenery in nature, and the mythological philosophy in history and humanities are intertwined and extended by the artist. The ontology in the virtual world is intersected with the real emotions generated in the real world, creating new visual possibilities on canvas.
Images, shapes, and various visual products are fundamental objects that creators and researchers must face. Various artificial objects mentioned in art history can be the starting point for image research. From grottoes paintings in the Stone Age to the definition of medieval art to various modern-contemporary art movements from the Renaissance till the 20th century, if we focus on the meaning of images and the creative intention of authors, the connotation of images in different periods are subject to different social backgrounds and usages. Take works from the Greek mythological period as an example, most of them are connected to their symbolic meaning, which are meta-images created by taking Greek mythology as a literary text—constructing concepts with natural things as objects and story images as explanatory means. Zeng, instead, uses the mythological concepts and virtual characters he recognized as objects and universally existing natural things as explanatory tools to construct the image stories on canvas. In other words, when the text is endowed with various emotions and concepts with visual interpretation, the so-called mythological stories tend to be more personalized, and naturally connected to the emotional value of human beings. Allowing heartless plants to share sorrow and joy with heroes and gods is what Marx called the “humanization of nature,” in which empathy is naturally generated among viewers.
When describing abstract concepts, Zeng applies a large number of “anthropomorphic” methods, including the confrontation between heroes and providence in Greek tragedies and the devastating tragedies such as the Twilight of the Gods in Nordic mythology. When Plato proposed that artists’ image production was only the imitation of a copy, Renaissance artists completely responded to the criticism of imitation theory on art and images, allowing the image to directly reflect the concept and proving that painters can be on par with humanities scholars by “anthropomorphic” works. Gombrich further pointed out that “anthropomorphic images can be regarded as portraits of Plato’s ideas.” Anthropomorphic images involve offering human characters to things that cannot be directly described by artists, such as love, hate, greed, courage, and other concepts, which can also be roughly summarized as “characters plus accessories equal to concepts.” Zeng utilizes this image production method to more specifically express his complex emotions and divine contemplation interspersed in mythological history and the future of cyberspace.
From a practical perspective, Marx’s proposal of “humanization of nature” refers to the process by which humanity employs labor as a means to transform nature into human society, making it an “extension” of humanity. The transformation is material and ideological, reflecting human empathy for nature. In this process, nature is no longer cold and unfamiliar, but endowed with human characteristics and emotions. Zeng personifies complex thinking, endows the human image with supernatural and mysterious powers, and combines mythological deities with human emotions, desires, and conflicts. In doing so, works are closer to real-life experiences and become a product of aesthetics. As Mr. Zhu Guangqian said, “The world seen with aesthetic vision is purely an image world.” The exhibition theme “Burning at Dusk,” indicating that the gods continued to rush in like moths to the fire regardless of the catastrophe in front of them, is precisely the image world created by Zeng with images.
