(Reporter Jiang Xiaoming/Photo)
Come to see Bu Di's exhibition on a rainy day. Walking to the third exhibition hall, there are five sculpture platforms made of gray aerated bricks scattered in the more than 600-square-meter site, on which more than a dozen works are placed like monuments. Such use of space, later discussed with people who have curated at the Hive Center for Contemporary Art for nearly a decade, "must be relatively luxurious".
The light is no longer the same, according to Bu Di's meaning, the brightness is only adjusted to 12% of the usual day, and the joint effort is to create a clear, solemn and gloomy mood. In the past, he also checked all aspects of the layout of solo exhibitions, even which flannel to choose for the cover of the album (which he regarded as a continuation of the exhibition) and the font kerning of the title had to be personally designed. He is their creator, and if these lines, paints, and bricks become living creatures, he will have enough confidence to look around them and say, "Even your hair has been counted." ”
Bauhaus and Emperor Huizong of Song
In order to pay tribute to the minimalist master Carl Andre (a former railway brakeman, who believes that undecorated materials are themselves artistic sculptures), Bu Di draws on his practice of allowing sleepers, bricks, and iron blocks to naturally express and bring beauty in an unprocessed way, and the neatly stacked brick walls are of their own, not only conveying the sense of temple and the majesty of the building base, but also the texture of the bricks can sometimes echo the lines in the painting to form a match; Functionally, it can shelve the painting, "the drawing board is not hanging there, it is poked there." It looks like it grows and seems to be moved at any time", and he can put books on hold, and the pedestal along the wall in the second exhibition hall is full of books, which Bu Di said is his "learning path".
The reading books that inspired him at different stages were laid out in a row, and before anyone pressed him, he recruited them all - Mies Van Der Rohe, the German architect and the last president of the Bauhaus, designed the atlas of the Illinois Institute of Technology campus next to a page turned by Song Huizong's "Poems", with four thin gold characters written "Dancing Butterfly Fan Xiang"; Black and white photographs of Chinese gardens next to surreal existential sculptor Alberto Giacometti; The magazine with Malevich's works as the cover and about Soviet art in 1920-1930 is placed next to Zhang Guangyu's illustrated collection ... The list seems to be endless, with repeated references to the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, the Swiss artist Paul Klee, Egyptian jewelry, and ancient bronzes.
In addition to being beautiful and practical, rows of degradable, insulated and environmentally friendly, after dismantling the exhibition directly pulled away the carrier put into construction, finally clicked, "This is all a natural cycle, within this 'Dao'." Or you can't afford this topic, you start a Xunzi topic, follow the laws of nature, if you use all the things that will be wasted after building, find a way to do and say, you deceive. ”
"Something has not been made" is the name given by Bu Di for this solo exhibition, "'There is something' is to say the phrase Xunzi, this painting is all related to things, not the history of art, not the history of civilization, it is from objects, materials, buildings." 'Unfulfilled' is a humble word, and this beauty with oneself is oriental. I didn't have a result in this exhibition to tell. I want people to ask how you learn, and I want to tell them clearly and honestly how I learned, no good or bad, but I just want to say that my personal method is like this - look at how the previous generation or someone you like solves specific problems, such as Josef Albers' book I have read many times, his relationship between orange and green, he does color research, can't you finish learning from him? Or his thing, you happen to be the opposite, of course you have to know what he has to refute. ”
The books at home were overwhelming, and if he couldn't put down Bu Di, he gave them to his friends by the ton. The latest way to watch is not only to learn the results, but also to stare at the annotations, looking all the way to see where the other party learned from. Addicted to the game of finding the roots of aesthetics, he even painstakingly pasted a serial number under each work, corresponding to the book spread out next to it, telling the audience which pictures made the picture in front of him. "Maybe no one looks at it like this, but I have to express that I learned where the differentiation came from today", the mystery is unreserved and careless, "There is no mystery for me, I hope everyone can have their own learning experience." I'm an hourglass myself, looking at a lot of stuff and finally sifting through a bit. ”
To stabilize something that is not fixed, you need to have structure
A few decades ago, Francis Bacon made a similar expression, calling himself a grinder, grinding everything he saw to pieces, and the complex image was finally able to give birth to a new image in his mind. But unlike Bu Di's heart-wrenching efforts, this year's issue of Portrait of Francis Bacon states that "he openly discusses some of the influences on his work, but remains mysterious about others, as if retaining this revelation would preserve the long-term potential of his disturbing images." The common attitude of shame and admission of the learning object or the rush to get rid of the learning object in the creator disappeared to Bu Di, "Some people don't want to say where they learned it, so I am especially willing to say why they learned from him, what they learned from him, put the book here, and you can know it at a glance when you draw." I am afraid that others will not know, that others will say that I came out of thin air, and I will tell others that I came from learning. ”
Continuing to compare, there are still some similarities between the two that can be said. For example, Bacon only received very little school education, nor did he have any form of formal painting training, and Bu Di did not go to the Children's Palace, and always said that he "did not go to school very seriously", junior high school, high school did not successfully graduate, now over fifty, the trend regards this as his huge advantage, "I am a primary school student in any industry, and I have a strong hobby and sense of independent expression." The child loves to express, although immature, but he is very studious. I said that I was a schoolboy praising me"; For example, Bacon's title of "grinder" is not exaggerated, he did have an unusual ability to know what helps his art and to be able to absorb this information very flexibly, so he became a furniture designer and interior designer in a matter of months at a young age. Bu Di is also interested in design, and in 2014 An Di magazine came to the door to shoot, calling the three-storey house designed by him and spent 10 years arranging as "a true fairy tale of a contemporary artist", "Antiques and beautiful contemporary design accumulated over the years have combined to make this unique residence." ”
Statues that exist for thousands of years coexist with turquoise Smeg refrigerators, and new appliances with industrial design aesthetics, such as Memphis floor lamps and Apple's original computer, and old objects such as antiques and colonial furniture found from all over the world secretly blend in all corners of the spacious space. When the house was still "very small", he "wanted to design the house", and the way to get started was still a simple "practice and see". He bought the BBK VCD that had just come out at that time, in addition to watching the plot of the movie, he also looked at the decoration, looking at the ratio between doors and windows, between window sills and windows, and the height, width, and breadth of religious buildings in various countries. First make the space to make the structure, I will make the house for people, and it will be through at once. He has been commissioned to design two restaurants in Beijing.
"I think artists, [especially] middle-aged artists, if they don't understand architecture, if they don't understand music, their art will feel less reliable." He often encourages his young friends to listen to Bach, "First, it doesn't bother you, and second, in the end, you hear his variations, and it doesn't matter if he is changing, because the structure is very rigorous." I also love to watch modern dance, I keep moving, it's quite sudden and strange, and I crawl all over the floor. In fact, the dance structure is also very stable, how changeable at this time is the same as my painting, why do you want to make that kind of curve, it is stable, but not fixed. To stabilize something that is not fixed, you need to have a structural and ideological framework in it. ”
In his mind, pruning a tree, building a house, and understanding a melody are no different from painting a brushstroke, all inseparable from loose but rigorous structural pillars, "as long as I master the unchanging structure now, I will not be afraid." Every time I tell them about painting, I have to talk about the earliest Greek god pillar Dolih. Why does it sustain me? Just because it is unnatural, close to nature, like an eternal thing. The pyramid is also stable, but too exaggerated, too much like a building, the column is only part of the building, but it supports a connection. ”
Translated into the canvas, the emphasis on structure adjusts his vision of the outside world. From small paintings to large Summer Palaces, it no longer honestly sketches, his eyes repeatedly glance at it, dismantling all the doors and windows one by one like a scalpel, and the color retains the bright lake surface, while the rest of the winter willow branches and hillside pavement are unrecognizable, turning into messy lines or regular squares, conveying the feeling after the original shape has disappeared. "I usually walk through the gate behind the Beigong Gate, there are many ruins in the back mountain that are not protected, the foundations are there, the structures are there, and there are trees left on the side. Those structures are most important to me. It's that thing is regular, dealing with architecture and this scale, for example, trees planted here. Sometimes it is relatively unpopular to see the aesthetic scale of the past. Especially when you go to Xiangshan, you can see the relationship between the temple and the tree and the sense of religion and majesty of the white pagoda at the end. ”
These garden works were placed in the second exhibition hall under the name "Roadside Pine Forest" together with the 2017-2019 nature paintings, "during which I wanted to extract some new [inspiration] from the natural landscape." These pine trees are those near the studio, in the middle of the road, right next to you, and what you have ignored suddenly becomes attractive one day. It's particularly interesting that art sometimes ends up being inexplicable. If there is no fixation, it must be fixed, and that is too easy. ”
Beijing Hive Center for Contemporary Art, the exhibition of Bu Di's works, two audience members watching the work "She - Tribute to Glenn Gould" (Reporter Jiang Xiaoming/Photos)
"Without a long gaze, why do you draw it?"
As we get older, things don't get easier, but they get tougher. The law that practice makes perfect has not been tested in Bu Di, and for most of his life, he has experienced a long "degradation". At the age of 9, he had painted thousands of complete works, and as a teenager, he was selected to send 122 paintings to the Mobil Children's Art Festival in Hong Kong, where he attended his solo exhibition accompanied by his father. When he arrived in Hong Kong, someone took him to hamburger, someone funded the publication of a 50 yuan album for him, someone accompanied his paintings with poems one by one, and the report on the legendary child occupied half the front page of the newspaper. It was the 1980s, and as a minor, he had his first bespoke suit because he went to Hong Kong.
In his home, after his wife walked forward enthusiastically, he turned over these materials, he sat on his knees on a chair, looking indifferent, 1.9 meters tall, his upper body was loosely wearing a casual coat, his half-white hair had not been groomed for a long time, and he showed an uncertain smile when facing the photographer's lens the day before because he did not look in the mirror for a long time. He looked at these traces carefully preserved by his parents, waved his big hand, and was lazy, "Why do you want to mention it?" ”
It seemed to have become someone else's life, and he had no memory. The "early days" of his self-defined painting were drastically shrunk to a decade ago, when painting was a state of play. A large painting of about two meters on one side often starts from the lower left corner, and within three or five days, it will be "long" by itself. "At that time, I felt that I was talented, relying on all the visual experience and learning, drawing a picture with my eyes closed, and it was very rich and interesting. Can't stop it, the slowest is a month. ”
In the past one or two years, the output of a painting is often measured in half a year. The time spent in the studio continues unabated. He got up at 8 a.m. every day, read in the sunshine for four hours in the morning, went to the studio to paint after lunch, and did not return home until 7 p.m.
Sometimes painting for a long time, more often used to see, layer by layer, gaze at it, "you will see the invisible things, see the unknown possibilities." This is more important than what is visible. But if you don't have something you can see, you can't show what you can't see. Everything lies in the feeling you have after gazing, and when these two are combined, they become the product of temporality. The temporality of my paintings is particularly important, and observing one day is definitely different from three days. If you don't take the time, the painting doesn't hold. Without a long gaze, why do you draw it? ”
The way the pen is dropped has also changed, first there is a general setting in mind, and then I keep looking in the setting, "For example, draw five circles first, and finally it may become seven." He cites a painting in the center of the third chapter, "Discipline and Faith," entitled "She – A Tribute to Gould" (curator Yang Zi explains, "Pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982) is best known for playing Bach's Gothenburg Variations, and the record of his reinterpretation of the piece before his death is also included in the 'Roadside Pines' literature section, a record that Bu Di listened to repeatedly in his studio. Gould's interpretation is sometimes seen as deviant, but in fact it is done because he has insight into the internal structural relationships of music and his ability to show the deep connection between Bach's music, which is full of calm counterpoints, and modern music that moves towards abstraction").
The main body of the picture is a stacked oval, inspired by Brancusi's work "Sleeping Muse", to represent the female body, the background is a red, the bottom finger-wide beige was painted more than thirty times, from the side of the thick layer, just to try what best matches the red, "must get a drawing board to try"; Another "Fugue 4 Bisma Garden", also a tribute to the cellist who is good at interpreting Bach, wanted the gray of the subject to emit as if it was a layer of cellophane light, "adjusted many times, added pink and green, and finally combined the relationship between this color and line, in order to express the comprehensive beauty of what I want to say, what I can't see, and imagine his image in heaven." ”
He repeatedly emphasized that what he painted was neither abstract nor figurative, but concrete art, "specific to the relationship between each line and each point, every color is not enough." That red is this red, it's the red that I concentrated on, so I can't fix the painting no matter how much it is repaired. ”
Bu Di "A.D. A.D." 2022 acrylic, pencil, canvas 180cm×180cm
"Solve the problem you want to solve"
Previously unconsidered details are now the focus of thought, and previously unquestionable answers have gradually become unsolvable questions.
When he rose to prominence, Pang Jun (an oil painter and then lecturer in the Department of Music and Art at Hong Kong Baptist College) wrote a foreword to his album, which states that "Bu Di is undoubtedly a genius, often a gifted child, may not be a successful master in the future." For a child with a talent for drawing like Bu Di, it seems that there is no need to restrain him with old teaching methods and techniques, but let him explore the required skills from his own ideas."
Bu Di's father, Bu Weiqin, was active in the art circle, a member of the China Artists Association, and befriended Yuan Yunsheng and others. In the face of his son, who has shown interest in painting since he was a child, Bu Weiqin never holds a brush to teach specific techniques, but trains him in a more inspiring way. For example, when he was very young, take a simple living utensil to let him look at it for a very short time, and then draw its shape from memory; A little older, consciously let him watch the stage, movies, TV dynamic scenes (dance, martial arts, etc.), at that time Bu Di often used one finger as a pen, the other palm as paper, silently drawing fleeting images; Later, he listened to "Erquan Reflecting the Moon", Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony", and Berlioz's "Fantasy Symphony" conducted by Seiji Ozawa, and trained him to transform the invisible melody into his pen.
On the one hand, Bu Weiqin's education method was high-intensity (Bu Di later recalled that "during the summer vacation, my father said that after you finished your homework, you can go out to play with a long scroll, and the long scroll is more than ten meters"), and at the same time, it was encouraging and not demanding, so it did not attract the boredom or resistance of Bu Di and his sister Bu Hua, who later became an artist. In the face of each work of children, he never criticizes, and always analyzes the specific good after a "excellent".
It can be said that on the road of painter, Bu Di has neither experienced the struggle of exhaustion of inspiration and lack of ability, nor has he fallen into the bitterness of not being appreciated and unknown, and for a long time, he also considered himself to be in a state of self-satisfaction. "At that time, I felt that it was enough for the painter to solve two problems: first, solve what to paint; The second solution is how to draw. If you solve these two problems, you have a style, and if you have a style, you feel that this is at least valid. I think there are two kinds of what to paint, one is suitable for portraits, and the other is suitable for discovery, and he chooses the material. After finding your own drawing method, I solved how to draw, and I can draw anything. I think it's that kind of unbridled expression of talent, and it's different from anyone else. ”
But since the last time (2020) he finished the "Little Garden on the Ruler" art exhibition, he suddenly retreated to the original point and began to think about "why painting", "The more I think about it, the more I feel that this matter is old and I have to think about it." It's not about the results, it's about thinking about it every day. Just thinking about it will avoid a lot of unnecessary work. Why draw? Why did this painting appear? What problem is it to solve? Why solve the problem? Ask a few more questions and you will find the answer, and if you find the answer, you will - let's not talk about progress, we will advance. The direction of propulsion does not necessarily mean that it is the right direction, but it pushes you forward. ”
When I was a child, I watched martial arts too much, and I always felt that one day I would get someone's true inheritance, and after injecting internal strength, I could learn to descend the dragon eighteen palms, and I could get the opportunity to go to Huashan to discuss the sword. After waiting for decades, I found that there is no indispensable opportunity, "chance is to keep learning".
"I just practiced every day, I didn't say what I achieved, I said for a long time, I didn't say how good I was, I just showed a process of my learning. It's like going to the moon, you have to do it little by little, not just strap a balloon. Practice may not bring success, but it can bring you thinking, painting is actually solving the problem you want to solve. The solution isn't necessarily right, but you have to do it, it's as simple as that.
"You know that things are infinite, so there is no ambition. But you love it, and it's especially interesting to spend time doing things. Artists are not theorists, not philosophers, and they don't discuss why human beings come and where they go, but you have to have a line, and you have to move up, and you first have to have a framework to practice. Painting is not for a finished painting, in a space you make it relatively balanced and acceptable to yourself, of course, it is finished; But there is another end, such as seeing a person kowtowing on the Sichuan-Tibet line that day and asking him when he will arrive. Later, I realized that it didn't matter where I went, and when I reached the end, when I came back, he saved up the money, and he continued to kowtow again, because every head of the kowtow was important, and that one was particularly important. ”
Southern People Weekly reporter Sun Lingyu Southern People Weekly intern reporter Liu Jiaru Cao Jiaxuan