展期 Period：
2023.11.8—2023.12.12
艺术家 Artist：
学术主持 Academic Advisor：
林寿宇基金会 The Estate of Richard Lin Show Yu
策划 Planner：
邵依洋 Laura Shao Yiyang
地点 Venue：
蜂巢当代艺术中心 Hive Center for Contemporary Art（上海）
新闻稿 Press Release：
蜂巢当代艺术中心荣幸地宣布，将于2023年11月8日至12月12日在蜂巢|上海推出艺术家林寿宇的个人回顾展。此次展览由蜂巢当代艺术中心国际发展部总监邵依洋策划，伦敦林寿宇基金会学术支持，特别致谢：Jean-Claude LIN Lü-Dun林履敦; Jean-Pierre LIN Sao Ming林少明; Sumi A R LIN; Katya LIN LODGE; Malu R J LIN SWAYNE。展览将聚焦林寿宇于1950至1980年代的重点创作，是林寿宇首次在中国大陆画廊的大型个展，也是蜂巢自2015年华人抽象大展“秩序的边界”后二度推出林寿宇先生的作品。
撰写林寿宇的作品是一项非常艰巨的任务，这篇序言谨代表我个人对他创作核心的思考和提炼，包括童年时亲眼目睹的经历以及之后数十年的思考，我将尽可能地援引林寿宇遗产文献档案作为相关说明。我试图尽力重塑他创造力的灵感来源和众多影响。林寿宇基金会特此致谢蜂巢当代艺术中心，尤其是国际发展部总监邵依洋（Laura Shao Yiyang）和她的团队为此次展览所作出的努力。我们非常荣幸能够与蜂巢当代艺术中心合作。
林寿宇在童年和青少年时期经历了一系列在教育上的迁移和变化，包括幼年时期在日本家庭的生活，青少年后期寄宿于香港拔萃男书院和随后的英国萨默塞特郡的米尔菲尔德学校。在远离家乡的童年岁月里，对音乐的持续热爱以及吟唱中国古典戏曲为他建构了心灵的庇护所，并且伴随着他日后在工作室中最具创造力和生产力的通宵达旦的绘画和创作。
如果说在战后伦敦学习艺术和建筑培养了他对于功能、空间和形式的知识，那么书法无疑从年幼时就训练了他的眼和手，使他能够以优雅的草书创造出完美的比例和间距。此外，在传统中式院落的成长经历也是影响他创作的重要因素。林寿宇在法国诺曼底巴约市圣母教座堂的素描、水彩以及雕版版画的实践成为他日后“黑色太阳”系列的起源。作为国际艺术家协会的一员（A.I.A），在1933年至1958年间，他的大量作品与与巴勃罗·毕加索（Pablo Picasso）、乔治·布拉克（Georges Braque）、胡安·米罗（Joan Miro）等一同展出，并且受邀参加了该协会的25周年庆典。
从与Gimpel Fils画廊合作开始到Marlborough的代理时期，林寿宇的作品完成了自表达起伏涌动相互交融的日月风云之相，到由画布、颜料、金属、有机玻璃和“色彩缤纷的白”等多媒介“构成主义”面貌的转变。在林寿宇有关结构关系和比例的作品中，数学概念框架反复出现，包括黄金分割、无理数等，对这些概念的思考直接影响了林寿宇对间隔和空间彼此关系的审美。在“构成主义”同期，将油画颜料管直接挤压在光面卡纸上的即时作品，也即“手势”系列，对林寿宇而言，不仅是一种新书法的表现形式，更是体现了“气”的强大能量。
“抉择比切入点更重要”（The decision is more important than the incision），这句外科手术格言恰恰适用于进入“绘画”的切口。林寿宇在构建他的白色混合媒材作品时动作极其缓慢，相比之下，动态切入和更古典的图像则依赖于快速自发的准确性。他采取机会主义的经济原则对待时间和材料，往往在旧图录或信封的空白页上，规划着他的作品，而他的作品本身则源自各个阶段不同时间特征的成果。人们总说林寿宇在创作中使用了多重媒介，而他最常用媒介其实是“时间”。
林少明
2023年10月14日
于英国
Hive Center for Contemporary Art is honoured to announce the retrospective of Richard Lin Show Yu at Hive Shanghai, on view from 8 November to 12 December, 2023. This exhibition is organised by Laura Shao Yiyang, director of International Development at Hive. The exhibition is supported by the Estate of Richard Lin Show Yu, with special recognition to Jean-Claude LIN Lü-Dun, Jean-Pierre LIN Sao Ming, Sumi A R LIN, Katya LIN LODGE, and Malu R J LIN SWAYNE. This retrospective focuses on Richard Lin Show Yu’s significant works from the 1950s to the 1980s. It is Lin’s first major exhibition at a gallery in mainland of China, also his second time showing at Hive, following the 2015 major exhibition of Chinese abstractionists, “The Boundaries of Order”.
It is a very daunting task to write about Richard Lin Show Yu. This prologue represents a distillation of my own reflections, regarding key aspects of his work experienced as a childhood bystander observer and later musings over the decades. Where possible, within the limitations of this brief account I draw upon archival sources within the Richard Lin Show Yu Estate Archive as pertinent illustrations. For the most part I am attempting to create an image of ideas and influences supporting his creative energy. The Estate of Richard LIN Show Yu would like to thank Hive Center for Contemporary Art, and in particular Laura Shao Yiyang, Director of International Development, and her team, for this exhibition. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with Hive.
Childhood and adolescence for Richard Lin Show Yu was marked by a succession of educational displacements including an early childhood period in a Japanese household; late adolescence boarding in Hong Kong to attend the Diocesan Boys’ School and then boarding at Millfield School in Somerset, UK. In these childhood years away from home, a lasting love for music, singing along to Chinese Classical Opera contributed to the building of a protective inner sanctuary that would later accompany his most creative and productive all-night sessions of painting and constructing in the studio.
If the language of architecture in post-war London taught RLSY about function, space and form, surely calligraphy physically educated his eye and hand to deliver the faultless proportions and spacing with his elegant cursive calligraphy from a young age. Another important influence was growing up in a complex of traditional Chinese compound houses. Freehand architectural sketches, some with water colour washes, notably of the city of Bayeux and its cathedral pre-figure the later and much larger major ‘Dark Sun’ series. Spanning 1933-1958, as a member of Artists International Association (A.I.A), a number of RLSY contemporary works are displayed alongside Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Joan Miro, and many others invited to celebrate the A.IA 25th anniversary.
The atmospheric suns and moons, clouds and forests, deep bold colours ebbing and flowing and bleeding into each other, some of epic dimensions-the ‘old masters’-of his Gimpel Fils days followed by later geometric coalescence into sharp-edged shapes and polished surfaces leading to his multimedia ‘constructivist’ works of canvas, paint, metal and Perspex and the ‘many colours of white’ defining the Marlborough Gallery epoch. Mathematical conceptual frameworks recurred in conversations about structural relationships and proportion, including the geometry of the Golden Mean and the irrational number √2 i.e. the length of a diagonal to a 1×1 square. These mathematical ideas influenced Richard Lin Show Yu’s aesthetics of intervals and the relationships of one space with another. Contemporaneous to his ‘constructivist’ works and in complete contrast are the ‘gestural’ studies comprising instantaneous works of squeezed oil-paint tubes onto stiff glossy paper placed on the floor, literally creating a work in the moment and with great energy or ‘Chi’ in RLSY’s words resulting in neo-calligraphic expressions.
‘The decision is more important than the incision’: a surgical maxim which applies precisely to incision ‘drawing’ but as with gestural works, Richard Lin Show Yu worked slowly to construct his white and mixed media works. By contrast the gestural incision and more classically graphic works depended on rapid spontaneous accuracy. He used an opportunistic economy of time and materials to determine his next works which depended on varying temporal characteristics at different stages of fruition, planning on the blank pages of old catalogues or envelopes. He is said to have worked with multimedia, but the medium he used most was ‘Time’.
Jean-Pierre LIN Sao Ming林少明
London, UK
14.10.23
