在中国当代艺术界，陈文令堪称一位迅速建立起自己艺术面貌的新锐人物。凭借着持续的努力和旺盛的创造力，他的作品一个系列接着一个系列面见艺坛，参加到多种展览活动之中，引人注目。更重要的是，他的作品因具有他自己艺术发展逻辑内在的牢靠性而获得鲜明的风格。在当代艺术创造中，观念的个性和风格的个性二者的统一至少是艺术成熟的基本标尺，在这个尺度上，陈文令构筑起了自己的世界。
　　已经有不少评论家指出陈文令的艺术源发于“消费社会”的现实土壤，事实上正是如此。对陈文令这一代艺术家来说，中国社会经济增长、物质富裕所带来的社会消费文化的发展，无论在视觉感性上还是在文化语境层面都给他们以深刻的影响，问题在于在传达自己对消费文化的感知上如何鞭辟入里，找到表达的方式，实现观念的陈述与形象的创造。从陈文令十多年来的作品中，可以看到他始终扣紧自己专注的感觉，也始终在艺术语言上探索与锤炼，力求用可视的形象表达精准的感知。在“消费社会”这个主题上，他的全部努力都落实在如何塑造“欲望的形象”这个具体的命题上，使一种社会现实的特征得到形象的表述。
　　可以说，陈文令的艺术透露出一种强烈的新现实主义的特征。他敏感于在一个极速膨胀的消费时代里社会滋生的享乐主义，一直在寻找表达、揭露并批判这种世俗现实的语言，其结果是在人与动物的“生物性”上找到了表达的契机。他的作品首先表现了人处于某种狂喜或者快乐的状态，在极度自我的状态中暴露出物欲的本性，这也可以视为是对物质生活场景的艺术放大。他也大量将人与动物塑造在一起，表达了人与动物、人的行为与动物的行为界限消失的情形。在形象的精神状态上，人的表情如动物般的简单和痴迷，而动物则有着拟人式的心境和欲望。而无论是人或者动物，都是那样精神异常，幸福亢奋。这是一种“拟人化”和“拟物化”并置的方法，陈文令在探索的过程中获得了这样一种方法，也按照这种方法在不断的作品系列中使语言获得增值与繁衍，由此形成一种自足的具有内在驱动力的发展态势。
　　在某种程度上，陈文令是一位信守雕塑力量的艺术家，他不像许多同代人对艺术的媒介有不断转换的兴趣，而是坚持在雕塑这种艺术形式上作深度的探寻。他的作品最鲜明的特征是对于“膨胀”这种感觉的造型。在人与动物的形象塑造上，他运用了宽厚浑实的体块和大量有弹性的曲线，使“欲望”这个抽象的概念透过形象的体积、肌肤的质感和通体的线条得以传达，并且有一种从内部涨溢出来的感性。在近年的作品中，他更多地使用庞大体量的作品或单个形象的重复构成一种种令人迷幻的景观，在那里，人与物、植物与动物、物的整体与细节粘连在一起，形成弥漫和延绵的氛境，折射出现实的斑斓光彩，又有强烈的虚幻性。在许多情况下，陈文令已经不是在雕塑一个具体的形象，而是运用雕塑的语言形成一种充满生活与生命气息的场景。
　　当一个艺术家拥有某种形式语言的鲜明特征时，对其艺术形式的来源也容易受到诘问。这个问题不仅对陈文令是可能发生的，其实对整个中国当代艺术都是通用的，回答这个问题或者找到这个问题的答案，需要既从艺术家的观念来源也要从艺术家的语言来源两个方面去做追寻。从陈文令的生活经历来看，这两个来源首先具有同一性。他的作品看上去有很强的寓言性，作品中的人和物都是被放大的“欲望”的体现，但是这种欲望所萌生的土壤不仅来自经济社会发展的都市土壤，也包括来自乡土的生活习俗。陈文令自幼生活在福建南部的乡村，在那里，浓郁的乡土习俗充满对于富裕的祈愿与理想，在物质生活得以不断提高的情形下，物质性欲望的膨胀与扩展成为一种社会心理趋势，也同时形成了新的生活景观。这些环境元素对陈文令的思想意识显然有着直接的感染，尽管他无意总体的描述这种活生生的情境，但是他却有着直接的感受。他所能做的也就是表达欲望感的“感”字，并且通过对“感”的表达使现实的情境变得具体而又鲜活。在这个意义上，他的艺术语言不是简单地来自艺术史中已有的风格，而是来自他自己经历和体验过的生活气息，当然在这个过程中，乡土文化浓郁的场景和视觉的造型也给予他以启发。在某种程度上，陈文令作品中夸张的造型和浑圆的体块等形式语言与闽南民间艺术中的传统有着暗合的关系，他敏感地捕捉到了生活经验中的视觉元素，并且将这些元素予以推向极端的处理。
　　陈文令已经举办过多次展览，但是这次展览与以往不同的是除了展出他新近的雕塑作品，同时还展现他重返故里、参加家乡庙会所拍摄的场景。在极为热烈的民俗活动中，我们可以清楚地看到陈文令艺术的本土来源。在那里铺天盖地的祭祀场面所展现出物质的力量，已匪夷所思地形成一种视觉奇观。这两类作品——影像的纪录与他的雕塑，无论在内容上还是在形式上都具有清晰的关联，也揭示出陈文令这些年艺术创作的真正谜底。在这个意义上，陈文令的艺术可以说是“形有所据”。

2008年9月

Chen Wenling:A Well Grounded Form

In the Chinese contemporary art circle, Chen Wenling is indeed a rising star who quickly establishes his artistic outlook. With persistent diligence and vigorous creativity, he presents the world of art with one series of work after another. He also participates in various exhibitions and attracts the attention of many people. More importantly, due to the consistency within the developing logic of his art, his works are characterised by a salient feature. In the contemporary art, the unity between the personality of conception and the personality of style is at least the basic measurement of mature art. By this standard, Chen Wenling has constructed his own world of art.
Many a critic has pointed out that Chen's art originates from the reality of “consumer society”. It is so indeed. For artists in Chen's generation, the consumer culture bought by the development of Chinese economy and the resulting material abundance exerts profound influence on them both in terms of visual perception and cultural context. The problem faced by them is how to find an appropriate way to express their perception of consumer culture deeply and insightfully, realising the delivery of conception and creation of image at the same time. Judging from his works of more than a decade, we are able to observe that Chen closely follows his own focal perception, explores and refines his artistic language along the way and strives to express a precise perception with a visual image. With the “consumer society” as his theme, he focuses all his effort to the specific topic of how to materialise the “image of desire” so that he is able to represent vividly the features of this social reality.
It could be said that Chen's art is strongly neo-realistic. He sensitively perceives the hedonism growing in the society at the age of rapidly swelling consumerism. An artistic language to express, reveal and criticise this worldly reality is what he seeks and he finally finds his channel of expression by resorting to the “biological being” common to both man and animal. His works first present man at the state of certain ecstasy and glee, exposing the true nature of material desire in an ultimately egoistic phase, which can also be regarded as an artistic magnification of scenes from the material life. In many of his works, he juxtaposes the features of man and animal in one sculpture, thus depicts the situation when the demarcation between man and animal or human behaviours and animal behaviours disappears. In terms of the mental state of sculptures, the expression on the face of a man is as simple and obsessed as an animal, whereas the animals are given man-like mental states and desires. No matter man or animal, they all appear to be in a deviated state of mind, happy and stimulated. The juxtaposition of “personification” and “hypostatization” is a method acquired by Chen in his exploration of art. He adopts this method nonstop in his series of works so that it multiplies and gains more value, forming a developing momentum propelled by a self-sufficient driving power within.
To a certain extent, Chen Wenling is an artist who believes in the power of sculpting. Unlike many of his peers who have a constant interest in changing the medium of their art, he insists on in-depth explorations of sculpting as a form of art. The most conspicuous feature of his art works is the modelling of a sense of “expansion”. In his modelling of man and animal, he utilises broad and solid body parts together with many elastic curves to enable the abstract concept of “desire” to express itself through the volume of the sculpture, the texture of its skin and lines of its body, with a perceptible feeling that desire is spilling out from its inside. In his recent works, he tends to use a single gigantic sculpture or the repetition of a single image to form a hallucinating scene where man and animal, flora and fauna, the details and the whole are reduced to a blur, resulting in a pervasive and continuous atmosphere. It is powerfully illusive yet it is a refraction of the reality. In many cases, it is not a single and concrete image that Chen Wenling is trying to produce but rather a scene full of life and vitality created by the language of sculpture.
When an artist possesses a certain distinctive feature in his formal language, the origin of such form often comes under question. This problem is not only applicable to Chen Wenling but also to Chinese contemporary art as a whole. To answer this question, we need to trace the source of both the artist's conception as well as his artistic language. According to his life experience, these two share the same source. His works are immensely allegorical, both the man and things are magnified embodiments of “desire”, however, city, where social and economical progress are mainly made, is not the only source of desire; customs from the countryside also contributes its share. Chen Wenling grew up in a village in southern Fujian province, where local folk custom is filled with supplications and dreams about wealth. With the rising living standard, material desires expand and enlarge into a social psychological trend and invokes new scenes of life. These environmental elements have a direct influence on Chen's thoughts. Although he has no intention to depict these vivid scenes as a whole, he still has direct perceptions of them. What he can do is to represent the sense of desire, the expression of which makes real situations specific and alive. In this sense, his language of art is not a simple appropriation from existing ones in the history of art, but a touch of life he himself has experienced. Certainly, powerful scenes and visual modelling in the folk culture also inspire him in the process. To a certain extent, formal languages like the exaggerated modelling and round body parts in Chen's work are correlated with the traditions of southern Fujian folk art. Sensitively, Chen captures certain visual elements from life and pushes them to the extremes in his work.
Chen Wenling has staged many exhibitions, but what sets this one apart is that besides his latest sculptures, the scenes he videoed at a temple faire when he returned to his home town is also on display. Amid the heated folk activities, we are able to see the local source of Chen's art clearly. The overwhelming scenes of sacrifice, which have somehow turned into a visual miracle, demonstrate the power of materials. These two works, video documentation and his sculptures is clearly related either in content or in form, which also reveals the final answer to the riddle of Chen's recent artistic creation. In this sense, the art of Chen Wenling is indeed an art with “well grounded form”.

 Fan Di'an
 Sep. 2008