艺术家｜对话艺术家潘小荣（上篇）
潘小荣、孙玥双个展“回响”展览现场 The installation view of Reverberation
Courtesy of BLANKgallery
潘小荣 Pan Xiaorong
“对于我来说，我们是个继承者，历史你没有机会去开头，那你只能沿着他们这条路再去创造。”
潘小荣 Pan Xiaorong
自由的形状-金木水火土，The Shape of Freedom-Five elements
2022，布面丙烯 Acrylic on canvas, 200 × 120cm × 5
B: 有没有哪位艺术家或者思想家至今仍在持续地对您的创作理念带来灵感和影响？为什么会以抽象作为您的绘画语言?
P: 真正接触当代艺术以后，对我影响最大是丁乙老师。我大概是08年看到他的原作，看到之后我觉得我的艺术理想也能够实现。他一直是我创作灵感或者很多动力的一种源泉, 他是对我来说是至关重要的。包括现在如果不是跟他认识，我也不会对自己有那么高的期待。
潘小荣 Pan Xiaorong
自由的形状 The Shape of Freedom
2022，布面丙烯 Acrylic on canvas, 80 × 60cm
这三个人的色彩感觉太厉害了，我都没办法绕过去了。所以我想怎么去表达我的色彩感觉是个问题，但我又不想用西方的色彩观去表达。所以我一直在寻找。16年以后就在实验，把自己当成一个不懂色彩的人，基本上就在那里玩，自己去找一种色彩感觉。但是现在画出来的色彩也不是传统的，是用了一种比较边缘的材料去做。
关于艺术家
潘小荣 Pan Xiaorong, Courtesy of BLANKgallery
主要参展经历包括：
“微粒场”，一个艺术，上海（2019）；“继续——M50创意园二十周年特展”，香格纳画廊，上海（2019）；“新抽象——第二回展”，HdM画廊，北京（2019）；“和维画廊&HADRIEN DE MONTFERRAND画廊@第四届香港巴塞尔艺术展”，香港会议展览中心，中国香港（2016）；“Small is Beautiful”，Jewelvary Art and Boutique,上海（2015）；“对流——全息的上海创作实录”，上海韩国文化馆，上海（2015）；“复象的幽灵”，玉衡艺术中心，上海（2015）
重要机构收藏: M+希克收藏
相关链接：
现场 | BLANKgallery 潘小荣、孙玥双个展 : 回响 Reverberation
现场｜BLANKgallery群展：春潮 Spring Blooming
B: Mr. Pan, can you tell us about your opportunity to become an artist?
P: Actually, I didn't mean to be an artist at the beginning, I started to learn painting when I was in the second year of junior high school, but when I first started to learn painting, I thought I could become a painter, and I think this is very important. Later I thought back, I was quite good at penmanship at that time, and I didn't practice it deliberately, and then I became famous for writing at school. I felt that I was quite persistent in aesthetics, so I thought I could become a painter, and I could come all the way through, probably because the starting point was a bit higher than others.
B: You just said that you write well in pen, which makes me unconsciously think that you might go towards the traditional ink and wash style, what made you choose to explore contemporary art?
P: I think it's a matter of personality, but maybe it's also because of my family. My family is not very traditional, coming from a family of calligraphers and painters. I think writing calligraphy is probably because my family has some knowledge of tradition, but my family has none at all. I was a very abrupt person. Then, in the process of learning, I slowly wanted to understand the outside world, to understand more avant-garde and newer things, and I was still more interested in things with individuality and humanity. So later on, when I started to paint, I wanted to do something from my own heart. Because contemporary art shows more personal and private content.
B: At first glance, your work looks like it focuses on technique, but after talking to you, I feel that your work is full of emotion.
P: Yes. I think I am still a passionate person, and I have strong subjective emotions. The space at the back of the exhibition hall I also want to express my tribute to four dimensions: the first is the five diptychs, a tribute to the traditional five elements of gold, wood, water, fire, and earth; the second is the diptychs, a reflection on the reality of real money and material life; the third is the triptychs, a tribute to the most essential love of art; and the last diptych is my favorite color, white, as a tribute to my heart.
B: Are there any artists or thinkers who continue to inspire and influence your work today? Why did you adopt abstraction as your painting language?
P: After I really came into contact with contemporary art, my greatest influence was Mr. Ding Yi. I saw his original works in 2008, and after I saw them, I felt that my artistic ideal could be realized. He has always been a source of inspiration and motivation for me, and he is very important to me. If I didn't know him now, I wouldn't have such high expectations for myself.
B: This question may make you feel uncomfortable, but it's true that some people would say you look like Mr. Ding Yi when they first see your work.
P: I don't mind it very much, first of all, it's good for me, but not harmful. Another reason is that I think my value may lie here. Because my artistic thinking is different from others, I have always felt that the unique point of contemporary art is that the kind of pioneer is predestined to be the kind of person who comes after me. For me, we are a successor, you don't have the opportunity to start with history, so you can only follow their path and create it again.
B: So you are a successor to this path, and in doing so, you are creating something new.
P: Yes. The most important point is that I think today's contemporary art is tomorrow's traditional art. What may look very contemporary today may be something very traditional tomorrow. If today's contemporary art cannot become tomorrow's traditional art, it is of little value. I saw things from this point, and then I realized that I was actually part of the historical chain, and I accepted it openly. I came across a teacher who had such a sense, so I followed him - not only Mr. Ding but also Mr. Yu Youhan in front of me - I wanted to follow this lineage backward.
Another aspect is that I think beyond painting in my creation. This is related to a very radical view I had when I was in college when I thought that I entered contemporary art only after crossing over to painting. Of course, this view is radical, but I think it helped me.
B: It's radical but it's also become your own unique way of creating and language, which constitutes you.
P: Yes. It's important for me to cross over to painting, which makes me feel as if everything can be used, and that's one of the things that I feel my path is more open.
B: I noticed that your current method is slightly different from your earlier method of knife carving, can you share your current method?
P: This is something I only found in the first six months. When I moved to this studio in about 2016, I wanted to actively change my style. I was more anxious when I was carving on paper, and I was thinking of doing big paintings that were not limited in size, but carving on paper is limited in size. Another thing is that I have a better sense of color, even though Mr. Ding keeps saying that I have a poor sense of color (laughs).
B: Why would he say that?
P: Because he has a great sense of color, he is a person who has a special talent for color, so he thinks I have a bad sense of color and told me not to paint color. But I think I have a special feeling for color. Because color touches me.
The first one is Van Gogh's colors. When I first saw Van Gogh's works in the Shanghai Library, I felt that the colors he put on them, even without deliberately painting the image, each color were like a gemstone that touched me. The second is the color of Changyu. I was particularly impressed when I saw an auction brochure with a painting called Potted Flowers on a Blue Background. The painting had a very blue background, the lines were outlined in white, and the flowers on top were very radiant, also outlined in white. That's why I'm fascinated by Changyu, I think he's a great artist. If we had promoted Changyu earlier, the aesthetics would have been different. And then I found that Changyu's colors are very concise. Then there is Mr. Ding, whose color sense is too strong.
These three people's color sense is so powerful that I can't even get around it. So I thought how to express my color sense was a problem, but I didn't want to use the Western color view to express it. So I've been looking for it. 16 years later, I've been experimenting, thinking of myself as a person who doesn't know anything about color, basically just playing around and finding a color feeling by myself. But the colors I paint now are not traditional, they are made with a more marginal material.
B: What kind of edge material is it?
P: It's a non-mainstream material like chalk, not oil paint or acrylic paint. There was a time when I was a little bit confused, and I was just going around and couldn't find my way. The epidemic also hit, and I was not in a good state. In the beginning, from '16 to '19, I was studying color, shattering all the concepts of color, shattering all the color theories I had read in school, and then looking for them again. In 19 years, after the epidemic came, I saw many things around me, and I felt that I had not experienced life and death, or great events, unlike those who had experienced the Cultural Revolution. For me, probably the biggest thing at the moment is the new crown. As an artist, relatively speaking, I will go to maintain sensitivity, and some people may say I am over-sensitive. At that time I felt that the important position of art in my mind had declined a bit, and I was not in a very good state in the past few years.
But last year, the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out, and suddenly I realized that the Russian-Ukrainian war was much more damaging than the New Crown. Because the new crown can be said to be a natural disaster, natural and man-made disasters are still a little more acceptable. But the Russian-Ukrainian war was more brutal, and I didn't want to understand the intricate reality behind it. Slowly I think art is still very important, and that kind of importance is unique, very clean, and pure. I still want to do a kind of art that transcends life. I still like to do pure things, like color, personal unique language, and so on.
(To be continued)
About Artist
Pan Xiaorong (b.1985) was born in Jiangxi Province and currently lives and works in Shanghai. 2004-2008, he studied at the Oil Painting Department of Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts. He also studied under the supervision of renowned artist Ding Yi and was a finalist in the 2009 Creative M50 Award for Creative Emerging Artists.
Main exhibitions
“Grain Field”, ANART, Shanghai, China(2019); “Continuance——The 20th Anniversary Special Exhibition of M50”, ShanghART, Shanghai, China(2019); “New Abstraction: Chapter 2”, HdM Gallery, Beijing, China(2019); “Small is Beautiful”, Jewelvary Art and Boutique, Shanghai, China(2015); “Between Two Waves – Holographic Creation in Shanghai”, KOREAN CULTURAL CENTER, Shanghai, China(2015)；“The Spectres”, Alioth Art Center, Shanghai, China(2015)
Institutional Collection: M+ Sigg Collection
正在展出 Current Exhibition