“在这个对于精熟技艺日渐忽视的艺术世界，我们应当欣赏王衍成运用油画色彩的才能。”

Cheng's gifted handling of oil paint is something we should appreciate in light of an art world that pays less and less attention to technical mastery.

作者：乔纳森·古德曼

乔纳森·古德曼（JONATHAN GOODMAN）是一位致力于亚洲艺术的大学教授和作家，专注亚洲艺术评论逾二十年。

Wang Yan Cheng, Untitled (Triptych), 2018

看上去酷似赵无极的视觉表亲，王衍成在阿奎维拉画廊带来一场大型绘画展览，身处抽象表现主义发源并一度兴盛的纽约，他那些抽象表现风格的画作显得颇像这一流派的异国版本。至少对笔者而言，全然领悟这样的作品是困难的，在某种程度上，它们仿佛在效法上世纪中期的艺术成就。然而，公平而论，王衍成被法国政府授予过的荣誉（他获过的奖项包括法国艺术与文学骑士勋章、法国荣誉军团勋章、以及艺术与文学指挥官勋章）应当得到我们真切的赞赏，甚或声名。抽象表现主义依旧在一些艺术家个体的手中焕发着生命力，尽管它作为一场艺术运动的主导地位已然失落多年。这意味着即便如王衍成这样技艺高超的艺术家，也必须至少部分地采用一种学者式的手法，令往昔的影响淡入背景。王衍成的展览中，以大幅的绘画作品为主，其中有一件巨幅三联作品，奔湍纵横的色彩与浓厚的表面令人不时想起自然的形态，其他则不不然。在多数情况下，这些作品显得自在自为。它们的表现性在画家自我施加的规则之下蕴藉着自身的意义。在这个对于精熟技艺日渐忽视的艺术世界，我们应当欣赏王衍成运用油画色彩的才能。

Looking very much like the visual first cousin of Zao Wou Ki, Wang Yan Cheng offers a large show of paintings at Acquavella Galleries, where his Abstract Expressionist canvases appear very much like a slightly foreign version of an idiom originated and championed in New York. It is hard, at least for this writer, to fully accept work made of this sort, imitating to some extent achievements made in the middle of the last century. But it is fair to say that Cheng's output, recognized by the French government (his awards include the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the Legion of Honor, and the Commander Medal of French Arts and Literature) merits genuine appreciation, even renown. Abstract expressionism is still alive in the hands of individual artists, although its dominance as a movement has been over for many years. This means that even someone with as much technical skill as Cheng, must work at least partially in a scholarly manner in order to push the question of outdated influence to the background. Cheng's show, mostly of large paintings, with one epically sized, multi-panel work, emphasized billowing swathes of color and thick surfaces that at times suggest natural forms, others not. Most of the time the paintings seem to be self-referential. Their expressiveness takes on its own meaning within the self-imposed constraints of the painter. Cheng's gifted handling of oil paint is something we should appreciate in light of an art world that pays less and less attention to technical mastery.

Wang Yan Cheng, Untitled, 2019.

王衍成如今在巴黎和北京拥有工作室，此前曾求学于中国山东艺术学院、中央美术学院，以及法国圣太田大学。自上世纪80年年代末，他一直往来于法中两国之间。在本次展览中，法式的优雅与一种内隐自在的中式自然意趣相竞相成。其中的形态多深邃有机，长达307英寸的三联画作《无题》（2018）中便是如此。画中充溢着浩瀚恣肆的能量，呈灰、黑、绿、黄、蓝诸色，诸般形态如飞瀑流波，由一联涌向另一联，好似澎湃之海层层聚积的能量。左联的上半画幅充满黑绿两色的形态，中联则有海绿与碧蓝占据中央。右联中，茫茫的黄白两色稳居对角线左上的半个画幅，右下则有郁郁深蓝作为主宰。这幅画中有极强的雄心和极高的成就，近于水的色彩和节奏。《无题》（2019）彰显了王衍成作为一位色彩高手的技艺。画中充满纵向的绿色，白色居于中央，并在左右边缘现出杂糅融混的肌理和色调。绿色的纵形左侧是一些横向的丝缕，边沿亦呈现白、黑、石青、绿诸色杂合的效果。其表面的肌理丰饶复杂，体现出王衍成营造画面的功力。

Cheng now has studios in Paris and Beijing, having studied at the Shandong University of the Arts and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China and at Joan Monnet University in France. Since the late 1980s, he has traveled back and forth between France and China. In this show, French elegance vies with an existent but primarily hidden Chinese appreciation of nature. The forms are deeply organic, as in the 307-inch-wide triptych, Untitled (2018). Filled with surging, oceanic energies in gray, black, green, yellow, and blue, the forms cascade from one panel to the next like waves, suggesting the mounting energies we associate with an active sea. In the left, the upper register is filled with black and green forms, while in the middle panel we see sea-green and blue occupying its center. On the right panel, a yellow-white expanse holds the upper left half diagonally, while on the right, dark blue dominates. It is a painting of extreme ambition and accomplishment, close to the colors and the rhythms of water. Untitled (2019) emphasizes Cheng's skills as a colorist. It is filled with verticals that are green and white in the center, with a medley of effects and hues on the right and left edges. The green column has a series of horizontal skeins on its left, while the edges exhibit an amalgam of colors: white, black, slate blue, and green. The surface is complicated in texture, showing just how good Cheng is in constructing a painterly exterior.

Wang Yan Cheng, Untitled, 2019.

另一件《无题》（2019）同样关乎自然：画面的左上方有如一汪蓝色的镜湖，被一片蕴含秋意的棕色局部地包绕。画面的下半部生出一些黄、黑、蓝色的丝缕，映衬于白色的背景。这幅画作颇为抒情，犹如诸般效果与色彩相映相成的音乐一曲。我们对这一类作品有大致的了解，常常是艺术家扎实的技艺和切实的决策生成了诗意的洞见。注视着这些作品，我们很难不去联想观看抽象表现主义艺术时的记忆。然而，我们也看到，这些作品混合了西方与东方的感性，产生一种微妙的交融。确实，这融汇进行得如此完美，几乎难以令人区分。这是对王衍成之集大成能力的颂词，他的绘画技艺与表现抽象意象的水平皆配得上此誉。

Untitled (2019) also suggests nature: a blue, mirror-like pond in the upper left of the composition, which is partially framed by an autumnal brown. The bottom half of the composition produces skeins of yellow, black, and blue against a white background. The painting is highly lyrical, a musical work of joined effects and colors that support each other. We know this kind of work in general, in which poetic insight results from the high-functioning technical decisions of the artist. It is hard to see these paintings without calling up from memory one’s experience of Abstract Expressionist art. It is also true, though, that the works mix Western and Eastern sensibilities, which makes them subtle hybrids. Indeed, the combinations are so well merged it is more or less impossible to separate one from the other. This is a tribute to Cheng's ability to synthesize, both on the level of technique and the presentation of imagistic abstraction.

最后，我们来谈谈王衍成今年年的一件颜色灿烂的抽象油画新作《无题》（2019）， 以生动的色调混融浮现于观者眼前：巨大的橙/红/浅棕色团簇位于当中，左面毗邻暗蓝色的抽象过渡，以及黄色团块与流向极右方的淡绿色边缘。色彩虽近狂放不羁，王衍成却能做到从容有度。每幅绘画都有其自身的出色之处，整场展览亦可令人饱览相互关联的形态与色彩如何被一遍遍地表现，从而产生总体的力量，使我们更深地体会到这位艺术家的创作成就。王衍成是运用自身媒介的大师，他的风格实践或许并不新潮，他的感性却自有一种创新性和当代性。内在的创造力与高超的技艺相结合，使王衍成绘出令人铭记的艺术作品。

Lastly, Untitled (2019), a brilliantly colored abstract oil from this year, looms out toward the viewer with its vibrant mix of hues: a large orange/red/light brown mass in the middle is flanked on the left by a thick, dark blue abstract passage and a yellow mass and a pale green edging towards the far right. Despite the nearly anarchic riot of color, somehow Cheng maintains decorum. While each painting is impressive on its own, the exhibition has an overall force derived from seeing related forms and colors expressed over and over again in ways that expand our sense of the artist’s achievement. Cheng is a master of his medium, and while his stylistic practice may not be new, his sensibility is one of innovation and contemporaneity. Coupled with his high skill, Cheng's inherent creativity enables him to paint memorable art.