展期 Period：
2023.12.2—2024.1.7
艺术家 Artist：
策展人 Curator：
地点 Venue：
前言 Preface：
李宝荀是这样的艺术家：与其说他在绘画，不如说他在实践。实践是行动和思考的双重叠加状态。思考是他行动的导航，行动紧跟他的思考，目的地是最终呈现出来的画面，但这也只不过是一个视觉上的结果而已。对于一个好艺术家来讲，结果其实并不是最重要的。这特别像一个数学概念：虚数。
在17世纪的笛卡尔命名这个概念之前的漫长世纪里，虚数被认为是真实不存在的数字。作为一个数学概念，它有着晦涩、玄奥、令人难以理解的一面。我无意在这里做数学概念的科普，或许莱布尼茨的说法能够帮助我们快速洞悉其中的奥妙：“虚数是神灵遁迹的精微而奇异的隐避所，它大概是存在和虚妄两界中的两栖物。”在李宝荀的作品中，我们轻而易举地就能够辨别出画面中的“真实不存在”，甚至在随便哪一个目光和画面相遇的刹那，你都有机会捕捉到那个莱布尼茨所言的“两栖物”。
这个“两栖物”充满了是是而非，非非而是的纠结、缠绕和争议。它像一个幽灵，漂浮在画面中，漂浮在画面所在的空间，它构成了一个特殊的氛围，它既是它之所是，也是它之所不是。一方面，它在你的认知维度和参照系的帮助下，无限地趋近于存在，无限地近似某物，另一方面，它又迅捷地远离、逃逸出你的框定，只留下某物的残余物或者说遗弃物，最终它表现为署名李宝荀的一摊色块、笔触和渐次模糊却永不消失的雪泥鸿爪。或许，这个“两栖物”身上这股与身俱来的李叔同所谓的“各有渡口，各有各舟”的宿命感，正是李宝荀作品的意义所在。
用“临界区域”这样的概念来命名一系列作品，甚至在《两面性》这样的命名里，我们都能隐约管窥到艺术家的思考轨迹和行为动机。在计算机程序语言的世界里，临界区域指的是一次仅允许一个进程使用的共享资源，且这个共用资源又无法同时被多个进程同时访问，意思是多个进程必须互斥地对它进行访问。这种独特的表征，这种在李宝荀作品中随处可见的命名方式，又在一个更为深刻地层面上暗合了莱布尼茨在对虚数的阐释中使用的几个概念：“遁迹”“精微而奇异”“隐蔽所”。
“纠缠”“互斥”“存在”“虚妄”“两栖物”等等这些随时处于临界区域，又随时处于叠加状态的漂浮不定的幽灵属性，差不多像血液和基因一样，存在于李宝荀的这些作品之中，它们像是同一个集团的董事会成员一样，共同投资并构建了艺术家李宝荀作品中的“虚数”特征。
Li Baoxun is such an artist, rather than painting, he is practicing. Practice is a dual superposition of action and thinking. Thinking is the navigation of his actions, actions follow by his thinking, and the final picture is his destination, but this is just a visual result. For a good artist, the result is not the most important thing. This is particularly like a mathematical concept: imaginary numbers.
For centuries before Rene Descartes named the concept in the 17th century, imaginary numbers were thought to be numbers that didn't really exist. As a mathematical concept, it is obscure, mysterious, and difficult to understand. I have no intention of popularizing mathematical concepts here. Perhaps Leibniz’s statement can help us quickly understand the mystery: “Imaginary numbers are subtle and strange refuges for gods to escape. It is probably an amphibious between the worlds of existence and illusion". "In Li Baoxun's works, we can easily identify the "non-existence of reality". Even at any moment your eyes meet the picture, you will have the opportunity to capture "amphibians" what Leibniz said.
This "amphibious" is full of entanglements, entanglements and controversies. It is like a ghost floating in the picture, floating in the space where the picture is located. It constitutes a special atmosphere. It is existence, it is nothingness. It is both existence and nothingness. On the one hand, with the help of your cognitive dimension and frame of reference, it approaches existence infinitely and approximates something infinitely; On the other hand, it quickly moves away and escapes from your frame, Only the remnants or abandonment are left, which eventually manifests as a pool of color blocks, brush strokes and gradually blurred but never-disappearing traces signed by Li Baoxun. Perhaps, this "amphibious" has the inherent sense of destiny that Li Shutong called " Every boat has its own ferry", which is the significance of Li Baoxun's works.
Using a concept like "Critical Region " to name a series of works, or even in a name like "Duality", we can vaguely get a glimpse of the artist's thinking trajectory and behavioral motivations. In the world of computer programming languages, a critical area refers to a shared resource that is only allowed to be used by one process at a time, and this shared resource cannot be accessed by multiple processes at the same time, which means that multiple processes must access it mutually exclusive. This unique representation, this naming method that can be seen everywhere in Li Baoxun's works, also echoes several concepts used by Leibniz in his interpretation of imaginary numbers at a more profound level: "escape", "subtle and strange", and " refuges ".
"Entanglement", "mutual exclusion", "existence", "illusion", "amphibious", etc. are always in Critical Region, the floating and uncertain ghost attributes that are constantly in a superimposed state, almost like blood and genes, exist in these works of Li Baoxun. They are like board members of the same group, jointly investing in and constructing the "imaginary number" feature in artist Li Baoxun's works.
