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迷墙：昨天，空间，现在——应天齐艺术作品分析（节选
无论是应天齐笔下的“徽州遗留物”(《木雕系列》)还是“罗马古城”(《庞贝》、《罗马》)或是不知何地何时的墙面与木纹(例如《见光》、《老庄》、《问道》)等，都是应天齐所思考的时间与空间的问题。这里的时间，不仅指涉时光的消逝，它也寓意着人类精神文明史的变迁。这里的空间不仅是物自身与周围的环境，它也交织着什么是物，什么是存在，什么是真实等诸多问题。以作品《罗马》为例，在历史之中，人们不断地建造着真实的城市建筑和形而上的罗马精神，而这种真实不断地又被时间所打破，它变得神秘起来，幻生幻灭，它既是真实的可观建筑残留物，又无法使之复原原有的真实建筑整体与罗马精神，它既是物的真实存在，又受制于现实中的观看角度和历史情怀。而今天的存在就真的那么可信吗?人们总是不相信，拿着一张旧的地图可以发现新的大陆。但寻找到新的大陆之后，旧的世界又留下了什么?可以说，应天齐的作品中涉及到了这些复杂的问题。一段崭新的墙面和被时间剥落的墙体有着什么样的关系?木纹原有的裂痕与被作者刻意加深的印痕又有什么关系?在应天齐作品《消失的故事》与《失忆》中今天与昨天仿佛在一瞬间相会相遇，但也因此付出了沉重的代价，那些曾经真实存在的世界与图景，变得如此遥不可及，仅仅留下一段残垣断壁，让人们去缅怀，去深思。
应天齐近期的许多作品之中，总有一束不知来自何处的光。这种光更像是一种时间，一种记忆，一种即将远去的现在。它像是一个诗人，从混沌中发掘万物的关联，又在关联中醒悟一种人生的真谛和永恒。光贯穿于所有可见物体之上，但当我们需要调动生命的能量的时候，必然要将其聚集在一个焦点之内。例如作品《裂缝》、《见光》之中应天齐将光进行提取，从散落的状态之中，寻找一束可以打破黑暗的亮光。而此时的光，正是在黑暗被撕破之后，通往一种解脱与自由的向导。更多的时候，作者在对光的刻画上，凝聚了一种期盼，一种对现状的不安。应天齐作品中的光犹如即将远去的声音，但又不断地在大片的黑暗之中提醒一种断裂的可能。这种断裂更多的时候是针对人们在当下的处境，我们发现，当我们试图接近现实，接近“当下”的时候，我们走得越多、越久，离我们所需要的“当代”反而越远。此时，应天齐所刻画的物象的意义也就不再局限于一种简单的再现之中，而是转化为借用现实中的“存在”去追溯历史中的往昔。
作品《竹帘》之中，作者使用了实物竹帘作为材料，颇为有趣的是竹帘不仅仅作为实物，对竹帘的选择是经过一番深思熟虑的。应天齐将早已风化、陈旧的竹帘镶嵌于画面之上，并在此基础之上用画笔及颜料在此实物之上进行刻画，加深了竹帘的波折与阴影部分，使得竹帘看起来更为凹凸不平，这种方式将二维空间中的图像与三维空间中的实物相互交织，并很难区分出你我，观者只有通过抚摸才能发现画面中的竹帘是采取的实物。而画面的右上角几块拼贴的金属板，又再次将实物运用于画面，四块不同大小的金属板构成了具有视觉及感官韵味的结构形式，光滑的表面又与竹帘的凹凸不平产生了极大的反差关系。画面最左边的黑色，以极度平整的绘制方式和金属的平整形成了呼应，一个是绘制的平整，一个是机械制作的平整，两者之间不仅仅是视觉关系，很大程度上它是手工绘制和工业制造的碰撞。然而画面中大面积的墙面又是艺术家不断地对细微局部的刻画所成。这就形成了非常有趣的视觉与物存在的互生关系。
作品《木雕紫气》中，一块真实的古木雕浮现于画面的中间位置，而左右则是分割均匀、严密的大面积黑色块。在古木雕的后面一块平整、光滑的白色竖行体衬托在背景之中，这种分割关系，将古木雕也分割成两块，形成断裂之势。从向心力的角度来看，两边的黑色色块的向外运动使得木雕被双向力所折断。这种折断不仅仅是一种发生意义上的存在，它也将物质之间的对立、矛盾关系带来的分裂进行了阐述。在这里，应天齐使用真实的古代明清木雕将其放置于2009年绘制的作品之中，实质上是一种穿越时空的再生产，对意义与关系的再次界定，空间意义上的存在与时间意义上的存在也在此时被打破，两者的边界与互涉显得模糊不清。
作品《木板墙之一》中，应天齐使用了原木的木纹切片表皮进行粘贴，并在原木之上刻画原有木门的纹理深处和木纹上的自然疤痕，这种方式加剧了原有木纹的表现力。但这绝非是简单的写实或是意图再现，而是更为深层的挖掘物的真实，绘画制造的真实。在这个角度上，此时的木纹已不再简单地作为形式，而是作为观念，作为对物自身的真实存在与精神操控中的虚拟存在的关系分析。
A Wall of Enigmas: Yesterday, Space, Now An Analysis of Ying Tianqi,s Artworks(selection)
Cui Cancan
Whether it is Ying,s “Leftovers of Huizhou” (Wood Sculptures Series), or “Ancient Rome” (Pompeii and Rome), or the no-one-knows-from-when-and-where walls and wood grain (like Exposure to Light, Laozi and Zhuangzi, and Asking Dao), they are all the problems of time and space that haunt Ying. The time here not only refers to the vanishing of time and tide, but also implies the evolution and development of human civilization in terms of spirit. The space here is not only the object and its surroundings either; it is also intertwined with such questions as what is an object, what is existence, and what is reality, etc. Take Rome for example. In history, the construction of real city buildings and of metaphysical Roman spirit continued, but frequently subjected to breach by time and as such mystified, sometimes illuminating, sometimes illusory. The painting reflects the real and observable relics of buildings on the one hand, yet it is beyond its capacity to restore all the original buildings and the Roman spirit on the other; it is real existence in terms of materials, but it also falls prey to the viewer,s perspective and his or her historical sentiments. We cannot help asking: Is today,s existence really believable? People doubt that one can discover the new continent with an old map. But when the new continent is found, what is left out from the old world? We can say that such complicated questions are available in Ying,s works. What is the relation between a stretch of brand-new wall surface and the wall body ripped off by time? And what is the relationship between the original rifts of a wood grain and the author,s deliberately deepened ones? In Ying,s works The Vanishing Tale and Amnesia, it seems that yesterday and today meet in a flash, but as a result a huge price is paid; the world and sceneries that once were tangible become too remote to be touchable, with only a stretch of broken wall left behind for meditation and reminiscing.
In many of Ying,s recent works we can always see a beam of light coming from we don,t know where. This kind of light is more like a kind of time, a kind of memory, and a kind of now that is to go afar. It is like a poet, who explores the relations of all things in chaos, and finds there in a sudden the truth and eternity of life. Light spreads over all visible things but it will have to be narrowed to a focus when we need it to optimize the energy of life. For instance, in works Crack and Exposure to Light, Ying, by seeking and picking from the scattered state, manages to find a beam of light to break the darkness. This light serves as the guide to one,s relief and freedom after the darkness is torn up. Indeed, most of the time, the author,s depiction of light embodies a kind of anticipation and a kind of restlessness towards the reality. In other words, the light in Ying,s works is like a sound that is about to go afar and meanwhile constantly heralds the possibility of cracks in the large areas of blackness. And this kind of cracks is mostly pointed to our present situation. Because we find that, when we try to approach the reality, approach the “living present”, the more and the longer we cover, the farther we are away from the “Comtemporay era” we want. So, the meaning of the objects created by Ying is not limited to just a kind of simple representation, but rather, by borrowing the “existence” from reality, a way via which to trace the past drowned in history.
In the work Bamboo Curtain, the author uses a real bamboo curtain as the material for the creation. What is fun is more than the real bamboo curtain as the material; the decision to include it is a considered idea. Because Ying, after embedding the weathered and worn bamboo curtain in the picture, continues to work on it with brush and pigment to deepen the parts of folds and shades so it looks more uneven and rough. After so doing, the two-dimensional image is interwoven with the three-dimensional real thing, so much so that they are hard to distinguish and the viewer has to touch it to find out whether the bamboo curtain in the picture is a real thing or not. On the right upper top of the picture is another case of employing real stuff: the collage of four real metal plates in different sizes, which constitute the structural form with visual impact and sensory appeal. Thus, the smooth surface of the metal plates generates a sharp contrast as against the uneven roughness of the bamboo curtain. On the far left is the black, which, in its neatly painted manner, echoes the neatness of the metal. One is painted neatness, the other manufactured neatness, so the two constitutes more than a visual relation, to a large extent it is the collision of manual painting and mass manufacture. However, the large areas of wall surface in the picture are born of the artist,s incessant hard work at the minute details. All these consequently produce the highly interesting inter-generative relationship between visual sense and the real material.
In the work Woodcarving Sculpture Purple Air, a piece of real wood sculpture emerges in the middle of the picture, on either side being large areas of even-segmented black blocks. Behind the ancient wood sculpture is a piece of white, level and smooth vertical line body as a foil in the background. This segmentation relationship also divides the ancient wood sculpture into two pieces, resulting in a seeming fracture. Centrifugally speaking, the tension from the outward movement of the black blocks on two sides leads to the break of the wood sculpture. This break is not just a genetic existence; it also casts light on the break-up caused by the opposing and contradictory relationship of material. In this 2009 work, Ying,s embedding of a piece of real wood sculpture from Ming or Qing Dynasty is by nature a reproduction across time and space, a redefinition of meaning and relation, where existence in the sense of space and existence in the sense of time also broken, with their borders and interface blurred.
In the work Wooden Wall NO.1, Ying employs veneers to help create the work. After the gluing, he works on the depth of the grains and the burls on the veneers to enhance the expressivity of the original grains. Yet this is by no means a simplistic realism or re-presentation, but rather, a digging deeper of an object,s authenticity? Or a painting-generated authenticity? From this perspective, the grains should not be taken just a form, but rather as a concept, as an analysis of relation between the real existence of the object itself and its virtual existence in spiritual manipulation. Ying also makes a small rectangular hollow with a tool in the original board so the real existence of the object itself is again deconstructed. When the existence and authenticity are physical and meanwhile manipulated by the author, material, authenticity, and existence are complexly interlaced and this constitutes one of the things that Ying finds of great interest. In a similar work Wooden Wall NO.2, the artist, on the one hand, many times deconstructs the real meaning, and on the other, based on the reality, works on the veneers with the brush more than one time, for effect, to enhance the depth of the grain and the unevenness. To contrast with this, the author paints in its full sense a neat and level black block in the lower part of the picture. And this black color block is also multi-pointing: it is a composing part in terms of form and structure and, a deconstruction of realism and of re-presentation-generated authenticity on the one hand; it meanwhile adds to the aura of mystery in terms of narrative on the other. For example, when the door and window are nailed steadfast with battens, why a breach is left in the surface of the wooden wall?
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