莱昂纳德•科恩说：“万物借由裂痕，那是光照进来的地方。”那如果时间是碎片？我们又会在那层层叠叠的缝隙中得到什么？丁文卿说：“我们生活在这个新时代，然‘旧’时光的影子已镶嵌进我们基因的深处。……我们是不同时间所稼接出的生命，我们亦是时光碎片所沉积的造物。”时间的碎片将我们区别开，我们因为“时光”披上不同的“衣裳”。

 

从1990年开始学习山水画创作，到2002年步入交通大学艺术设计系，再到从广告人转向职业艺术家。时光的流转带来身份的转变，也让丁文卿更深的嵌入对艺术的“执着”。而在其这近三十年的学习和创作中，他的“山水观”也在时间碎片的不断组合下，逐渐清晰。九岁便师从萧派山水画家施国敦的丁文卿，无疑对一山一水，一木一石有着属于他的独特记忆。那是他的童年，是他的懵懂，也是将他引向未来的伏笔。如今，当自然山水离我们愈来愈远，当丁文卿对山水的理解愈加自由，当时间的沉淀带来愈加自我的更迭，丁文卿逐渐将他对水墨的情怀、对传统文化的珍视、对故人往事的追忆化为云雾缭绕般的独特景象中。在似是梦境、似是往昔的画面营造下，丁文卿的“山水自然”被引向更深的“精神指向”。在他构建的“奇景”里，他用他的表现方式和语言观察着当下的社会、唤醒着当下的我们，也思辨着当下的他。或是以小见大的独得一隅，或是虚实相生的幻景一处。丁文卿逐渐放下对山水刻画的传统定式，转而将其化为一种“个人经验”下的线索和图式。晕染与勾勒、遗忘与唤醒、传统与当代，丁文卿让我们看到了一名“八零后”艺术家，是如何用水墨、用山水、用时光诠释出属于这个时代的“山水观”。在其近期的创作中，有一个有趣的系列正在不断被展开。在这个被称之为“忘记了的备忘录”的系列里，丁文卿将我们引向一个寻常而又极不合理的视野之中。或许这正是丁文卿的魅力，他用看似寻常的景物，撩拨着我们的记忆，让我们意识到时间赋予每个人的不同。他模糊了时间的维度，也模糊了时空的距离，他展现着时光的骤变与沉静。

 

对于丁文卿和来到这个展览的每个人而言，这场名为“时间碎片”的展览，或许真的只是一个“碎片化”的存在。但我依旧期冀着，希望这块“碎片”可以拼凑出更鲜活、更独特的你、我、他。

 

 

Ding Wenqing: Fragments of Time

Leonard Cohen wrote the lyrics, “There is a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in.” Then if time is all in fragments, what can we get from the cracks? As for Ding Wenqing, he said, “We are now living in a new era, however the shadow of the old ‘times’ are already deeply integrated into our genes… We were given birth by the grafting of time; we are also the sediments of the time fragments.” We are distinguished from each other by time fragments and we put on different “clothes” because of “time”.

Ding started to paint Chinese traditional landscape paintings from 1990 and was admitted to the Department of Art Design in Jiaotong University. He worked at first in the advertising industry and then became a professional artist. His profession changed as time went by, as he developed a deeper “obsession” to art. Over the past three decades, Ding’s perspective towards Chinese traditional landscape painting has also been clearer. He learned from Shi Guodun, who is the master of Xiao’s School of Chinese traditional landscape painting, at the age of nine. And it is undoubted that he has had a unique impression of every one of the mountain, river, wood, and stone since then. Although he was then only an innocent child, the experience did lay the foundation for his future. Today when we are drifting further and further away from natural mountains and rivers, Ding, however, has a more freestyle understanding of them. Ding has been refreshing and updating himself all this time and he gradually integrates his affection to ink painting, the traditional culture and the past into the ubiquitous landscapes he creates. They are misty, nostalgic, dream-like paintings in which Ding’s idea of the mountains and rivers is pointing towards a more in-depth level of meaning. In the landscapes he created, Ding observed and reflected the current society in his own ways and own languages. He woke us up and reflected himself. Little by little, Ding lets go of the traditional paradigm of landscape painting and turned it into a clue to “personal experience”. His paintings range from depicting a limited corner which refers to a much larger place telescoped, to describing a fairyland that contains a mixture of the virtual and the real. His techniques vary from smudging to delineating. And the various themes including forgetting and recollecting, as well as the traditional and the contemporary, show us a post-80s artist’s perspective of landscape painting, and how he uses ink, landscape painting and time to interpret his ideas. Among his recent works, one series is particular intriguing. It is named as “A Forgotten Memo”, and it presents a normal but irrational environment. This is probably where Ding’s charm lies. He is good at triggering our memories with seemingly mundane stuff, so that we realize the differences between us that are all given by time. He blurs the dimension of time and the distance of space. He shows us the calmness and changing of time.

To Ding Wenqing and every one who comes to this exhibition that is named as “Time Fragments”, the exhibition may be really a fragmental existence. However, I am still wishing that this very “fragment” could help build a more vivid and unique person, whoever that could be.