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拍品专文
“I do believe in time travel. Time travel to the future. Time flows like a river and it seems as if each of us is carried relentlessly along by time's current. But time is like a river in another way. It flows at different speeds in different places and that is the key to travelling into the future.” – Stephen Hawking, How to Build a Time Machine, 2010
What is time? For centuries, this question has fascinated and confounded philosophers, scientists, and religious thinkers, and only recently have physicists begun to probe the nature of time as a dimension or structural substance. To Huang Yuxing, time is a river, flowing constantly and endlessly in a single direction, but with eddies and whirlpools and powerful currents along the way. His paintings of rivers and bubbles explore our conception and experience of time, using visual analogies as a means of capturing the metaphysical.
Huang Yuxing’s artistic oeuvre is made up of a number of distinct series, inspired by elements such as trees and human architecture. The paintings in is River Series depict antastical worlds filled with swirling pools and ascading veils of liquid colour, while the works in his Bubble Series are dominated by floating fluorescent globules, esembling polished grains of sand or cells seen through a microscope. This work, entitled The Bubbles Will Not Break The Time will not be Flowing from the Past to the Future (Lot 41) combines elements from both series, overlaying what appear to be bodies of water with bright droplets of colour.
As a single work, Bubbles Will Not Break is composed of two separate paintings, one large and one small. Huang Yuxing has stated that the two canvases represent “two moments, one sparse and the other dense; river water flows, and bubbles float on the water’s surface, sometimes colliding. The canvas surface undergoes repeated smudging and layering before completion, requiring several months’ work.” After all, though a river may behave differently from a bubble, both are made of the same essential substance taking on different forms. If a river represents the flow and passage of time, then perhaps bubbles symbolize individual moments, perfect and complete, but fleeting in their brief beauty. Two forms, to represent two conceptualizations of time. Thus, the statement “The bubble will not break, the time will not be flowing from the past to the future” is a manifesto, inscribed on each canvas to proclaim the artist’s defiance of time. In the real world, bubbles will inevitably pop, and time moves inexorably forwards. But in Huang Yuxing’s painted universe, bubbles last forever and the river of time will stand eternally still. His paintings capture a moment in eternity, presenting viewers with a permanent view of the ephemeral and transitory.
From a scientific perspective, colour is the visual phenomenon caused by a viewer's optical reaction to visible light, where stimulus received by the eyes is translated into perceptions of colour and space. In the history of Western art, principles regarding colour and light have long been central elements of aesthetic theory. However, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists revolutionized colour theory when they found that painted colours could not only imitate tones and shades from life, but could also be used to expand the range of visual experience. By placing contrasting colours next to each other, one could tap into the physiology of the human eye and the psychology of the brain, to create brighter, more luminous experiences of colour. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac took advantage of this technique – known as Pointillism – to create works that exploded with bright glowing hues. Henri Matisse stumbled upon the illusions made possible by careful placement of colour, and the fact that size can influence the impact of a patch of pigment; hence his work is filled with contrasting areas of colour that work together to achieve a balanced composition.
Born into the technological era, Huang Yuxing offers his own interpretation of colour by choosing to work with fluorescent pigments that give off a bright industrial glow, and shine neon under black light. “Fluorescent colour is the colour of our generation,” stated Huang in an interview with Christie’s. “There is no such colour system in traditional easel paintings. It is special, like a kind of vigorous vitality being compressed or unleashed.” The physical properties of fluorescent pigments, which have molecular properties that absorb UV light and reemit it at visible wavelengths, set such materials apart from traditional paints that can only reflect light. Like one of Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light sculptures (Fig. 1), which employed modern technology to explore the possibilities of colour expressed through neon light, Huang Yuxing chooses to use fluorescent paints as a symbol of contemporaneity, and for the visual effect that it has on the viewer.
Huang Yuxing’s ability to manipulate pure colours and geometric shapes echoes that of the pioneering abstract painter Vasily Kandinsky, who sought to create works that transcended all references to traditional figuration. His work Several Circles (Fig. 2) is an achievement in abstract composition, achieving visual drama using only a simple vocabulary of circles and colour. However, Huang Yuxing’s all-over approach to composition in the larger of the two canvases more closely resembles the luminous colour abstractions of Thomas Ruff’s Substratum Series (Fig. 3). These cameraless photographs are based on images of Japanese anime and manga, manipulated into stunning showcases of digital colour that seem to pulse with movement, much as Huang Yuxing’s bubbles do. Huang creates his paintings by layering countless washes of translucent neon paint onto the canvas, resulting in a work where colours glow with internal brightness, even while overlapping to produce unusual visual effects.
In some ways, the smaller of the two canvases is unusual within Huang Yuxing’s canon – the colours he uses are soft and dreamlike, and the composition is simple and spare. The river that churns through the larger painting is here a featureless expanse of ocean stretching towards the horizon, while only a few isolated bubbles drift above the sea. The overall image resembles a surrealist landscape, reminiscent of those painted by Yves Tanguy (Fig. 4). As one of the first artists to visualize the unconscious, Tanguy painted amorphous objects resting on an undefined plane of existence, depicting the human psyche as a physical place free of walls and boundaries. In a similar way, the smaller canvas in Huang Yuxing’s Bubbles Will Not Break gives spacetime a place and shape, capturing an aspect of the artist’s own psychological experience of time. The pairing of these two canvases – one imposing in its size, fluorescent brilliance and density, the other much smaller and subdued – may feel incongruous at first, but the two works speak the same visual language, depicting the same subject from two different perspectives. The larger canvas is attention-grabbing with its veil of rainbow spheres, but closed-off, while the smaller work is much more intimate, and provides a wider angle of perspective for the viewer. It is as if the same scene is being viewed from a distance, than magnified with the help of a microscope, giving the viewer different information and different ways of understanding the same subject. The two parts exist concurrently, with neither work coming before or after, forming a nuanced expression of the artist’s desire to delay the inevitable passage of time.
What is time? For centuries, this question has fascinated and confounded philosophers, scientists, and religious thinkers, and only recently have physicists begun to probe the nature of time as a dimension or structural substance. To Huang Yuxing, time is a river, flowing constantly and endlessly in a single direction, but with eddies and whirlpools and powerful currents along the way. His paintings of rivers and bubbles explore our conception and experience of time, using visual analogies as a means of capturing the metaphysical.
Huang Yuxing’s artistic oeuvre is made up of a number of distinct series, inspired by elements such as trees and human architecture. The paintings in is River Series depict antastical worlds filled with swirling pools and ascading veils of liquid colour, while the works in his Bubble Series are dominated by floating fluorescent globules, esembling polished grains of sand or cells seen through a microscope. This work, entitled The Bubbles Will Not Break The Time will not be Flowing from the Past to the Future (Lot 41) combines elements from both series, overlaying what appear to be bodies of water with bright droplets of colour.
As a single work, Bubbles Will Not Break is composed of two separate paintings, one large and one small. Huang Yuxing has stated that the two canvases represent “two moments, one sparse and the other dense; river water flows, and bubbles float on the water’s surface, sometimes colliding. The canvas surface undergoes repeated smudging and layering before completion, requiring several months’ work.” After all, though a river may behave differently from a bubble, both are made of the same essential substance taking on different forms. If a river represents the flow and passage of time, then perhaps bubbles symbolize individual moments, perfect and complete, but fleeting in their brief beauty. Two forms, to represent two conceptualizations of time. Thus, the statement “The bubble will not break, the time will not be flowing from the past to the future” is a manifesto, inscribed on each canvas to proclaim the artist’s defiance of time. In the real world, bubbles will inevitably pop, and time moves inexorably forwards. But in Huang Yuxing’s painted universe, bubbles last forever and the river of time will stand eternally still. His paintings capture a moment in eternity, presenting viewers with a permanent view of the ephemeral and transitory.
From a scientific perspective, colour is the visual phenomenon caused by a viewer's optical reaction to visible light, where stimulus received by the eyes is translated into perceptions of colour and space. In the history of Western art, principles regarding colour and light have long been central elements of aesthetic theory. However, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists revolutionized colour theory when they found that painted colours could not only imitate tones and shades from life, but could also be used to expand the range of visual experience. By placing contrasting colours next to each other, one could tap into the physiology of the human eye and the psychology of the brain, to create brighter, more luminous experiences of colour. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac took advantage of this technique – known as Pointillism – to create works that exploded with bright glowing hues. Henri Matisse stumbled upon the illusions made possible by careful placement of colour, and the fact that size can influence the impact of a patch of pigment; hence his work is filled with contrasting areas of colour that work together to achieve a balanced composition.
Born into the technological era, Huang Yuxing offers his own interpretation of colour by choosing to work with fluorescent pigments that give off a bright industrial glow, and shine neon under black light. “Fluorescent colour is the colour of our generation,” stated Huang in an interview with Christie’s. “There is no such colour system in traditional easel paintings. It is special, like a kind of vigorous vitality being compressed or unleashed.” The physical properties of fluorescent pigments, which have molecular properties that absorb UV light and reemit it at visible wavelengths, set such materials apart from traditional paints that can only reflect light. Like one of Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light sculptures (Fig. 1), which employed modern technology to explore the possibilities of colour expressed through neon light, Huang Yuxing chooses to use fluorescent paints as a symbol of contemporaneity, and for the visual effect that it has on the viewer.
Huang Yuxing’s ability to manipulate pure colours and geometric shapes echoes that of the pioneering abstract painter Vasily Kandinsky, who sought to create works that transcended all references to traditional figuration. His work Several Circles (Fig. 2) is an achievement in abstract composition, achieving visual drama using only a simple vocabulary of circles and colour. However, Huang Yuxing’s all-over approach to composition in the larger of the two canvases more closely resembles the luminous colour abstractions of Thomas Ruff’s Substratum Series (Fig. 3). These cameraless photographs are based on images of Japanese anime and manga, manipulated into stunning showcases of digital colour that seem to pulse with movement, much as Huang Yuxing’s bubbles do. Huang creates his paintings by layering countless washes of translucent neon paint onto the canvas, resulting in a work where colours glow with internal brightness, even while overlapping to produce unusual visual effects.
In some ways, the smaller of the two canvases is unusual within Huang Yuxing’s canon – the colours he uses are soft and dreamlike, and the composition is simple and spare. The river that churns through the larger painting is here a featureless expanse of ocean stretching towards the horizon, while only a few isolated bubbles drift above the sea. The overall image resembles a surrealist landscape, reminiscent of those painted by Yves Tanguy (Fig. 4). As one of the first artists to visualize the unconscious, Tanguy painted amorphous objects resting on an undefined plane of existence, depicting the human psyche as a physical place free of walls and boundaries. In a similar way, the smaller canvas in Huang Yuxing’s Bubbles Will Not Break gives spacetime a place and shape, capturing an aspect of the artist’s own psychological experience of time. The pairing of these two canvases – one imposing in its size, fluorescent brilliance and density, the other much smaller and subdued – may feel incongruous at first, but the two works speak the same visual language, depicting the same subject from two different perspectives. The larger canvas is attention-grabbing with its veil of rainbow spheres, but closed-off, while the smaller work is much more intimate, and provides a wider angle of perspective for the viewer. It is as if the same scene is being viewed from a distance, than magnified with the help of a microscope, giving the viewer different information and different ways of understanding the same subject. The two parts exist concurrently, with neither work coming before or after, forming a nuanced expression of the artist’s desire to delay the inevitable passage of time.