闫平作品中的各类形式元素都非常活跃,无论是笔触、线条、形状还是色彩和空间结构，都给人留下动荡跃动，呼之欲出的印象。

　　Various forms of elements are very active in Yan Ping's works. Whether they are strokes, lines, shapes or color and spatial structures, they leave a volatile impression on people as if they are ready to come out of the painting.

　　最引人注意的动感来自画面色彩对比关系。她的色彩分割大块集中，显得利落而自如，尤其是大对比的亮色与固有色色块，在闪耀中显示丰富的基底质料，给画面带来不确定的动势。

　　The most striking dynamic comes from the screen color contrast. Her color segmentation is chunky and concentrated, which looks neat and comfortable. Especially the contrasting bright colors and proper color blocks, display abundant base material in the sparkles and bring the picture uncertain momentum.

　　闫平作品中的色彩不论倾向于视觉感受还是精神象征，都有一气呵成的整体性。 这种特点在她近年的作品中非常突出，如《去远方》、《少年江湖到处走》、《我本是男儿身》等，她的画面色彩运用难以归类于某家某派的风格标准，而是运用综合的手法来表现瞬间闪现的情感意象。随着中国文化中的民族主义觉醒，更多的艺术家从传统和已有的民间艺术中寻找启示，闫平也从自己最为敏感的色彩入手，探索更为个性的色彩表达方式。她将中国民间艺术用色程式注重象征性趣味与西方现代艺术注重视觉构成趣味结合，并突出现代审美意识。通过色彩让观者感到现代文化的缤纷与强烈。她善于强调色彩饱和度，让具有象征意义的固有色显示某种性格特征。

　　Regardless of the tendency to visual perception or spiritual symbols, colors in Yan's works are coherently integrated. This characteristic is very prominent in her recent works, such as Going the Distance, Juvenile Going about Jianghu, I was born a man. Her use of color in the picture is difficult to categorize in the standard of certain school or style, but shows instant flash of emotional imagery with an integrated approach. With the awakening of nationalism in Chinese culture, more artists look for inspiration from traditional and existing folk arts. Yan also started with her most sensitive colors to explore a more personal way of expressing colors. She combines the fun of Chinese folk arts color patterns, which focus on symbolism, with the fun of western modern art that pays attention to visual composition, and highlights modern aesthetic consciousness. By colors, she makes viewers feel the colorfulness and intensity of modern culture. She is good at emphasizing color saturation to make the symbolic proper colors display certain character traits.

　　有些作品用桃红色和翠绿色搭配，如《大雾的天》、《发现新大陆》、《好时光》等；或大红色与深绿色搭配如《逝水流年》、《你是我的潘安貌》等；有用钴蓝和杏黄搭配如《丢弃桃花源》、《去远方》等。这些响亮饱满的色彩搭配本身就产生了一种勇气，为了突破日常感，期望在冗长的各类风格中突出闪亮点，以求新鲜的感觉跃升于画面。这些突兀的色彩因为画家的处理而显得平衡，浅色画底的凹凸不平的肌理变化，让那些鲜艳浓郁的红色粉色柔和平稳，翠绿色和亮绿色充满光泽，就像新鲜的花儿的花瓣和绿色植物的光滑叶面一样，颜色成为物质本身的生命状态，是真实的存在，是厚重朴实的自然特质，也是画家心灵波动的韵律。在这种大胆对比色的强烈刺激下，观者会从视觉上受到震动，从而将裹挟着文化形态的信息，作为思考和回味的材料，铺垫着感情的升华。

　　Some of her works use the collocation of pink and emerald green, such as A foggy Day, Discovery of the New Continent, Good Times and so on; or the collocation of red and dark green like For Times Ran Fast, You Are Handsome in My Eyes. Some apply the combination of cobalt blue and apricot to the pictures, for example, Discarding the Peach Garden, Going the Distance, etc, These collocations of wild and rich colors themselves produce a kind of courage, to break through the daily routine, to expect to highlight the bright points from the lengthy and various styles, and to make a fresh feeling jump out of the screen. These queer colors, owing to the painter's processing, seem balanced. Uneven texture changes of light-colored painting base make those bright, rich red and pink soft and smooth, emerald and bright green full of gloss, just like fresh flowers' petals and green plants' smooth foliage. Thus, colors become the life state of substance itself, which is the real existence, the strong and plain natural traits as well as the painter's heart-beating rhythms. Being strongly stimulated by the bold contrasting colors, viewers would be shocked visually, and take the information that is mixed with culture, as materials for thinking and reviewing, to foreshadow the emotional sublimation.

　　用色彩张力营造的效果，不仅仅是生理的，更是文化形式的，艺术通过生命的经验获得它的形式。“颜色”可以代表一段记忆或感情，或是一种气味。它会潜入内心，成为好恶取舍的网络。它不仅在画布上固化为形态，也以心态和观念的方式影响着画家表现对象的选择和题材处理。那些留名青史的艺术家都有一条属于个人的彩色小径，他们都给后来者以启迪。在中国当代油画中，闫平的色彩形式探索具有鲜明的个性，为这个多元文化时代创造了一种新的趣味。

　　The effect created by color tension is not only physical, but also in cultural forms. That is, art gets its forms through the experience of life. "Color" may represent a piece of memory or feeling, or a kind of scent. It will sneak into the heart, becoming the network of the choice between good and evil. It not only solidified to form on the canvas, but also influences painters' choice of objects for performing and their treatment to subject in the forms of mentality and attitudes. Those artists who went down in history have left a personal color trail and they have enlightened the newcomers. In contemporary Chinese oil paintings, Yan’s exploration for color forms has a distinct personality, which creates a new fun for this multicultural era.

　　对闫平而言，真正的挑战是关于绘画的空间处理。这是画家面对一块空白画布首先要考虑的问题，也是绘画之所以是绘画的永恒课题。作品的形状、色彩、材质等都在其中生成，而绘画的叙事方式以及感人的力量也由此而来。一部绘画史如果看成是风格演变史，那么与艺术家处理空间的方式永远有密切联系，因为艺术从本源看，就是人类创造的一个并行于现实世界的另一个世界。古典主义艺术有古典主义的幻觉空间，现代主义艺术有现代构成空间，当代艺术主张拼贴和多时空并置……对于像闫平这样的中国画家来说，关键在于如何对待纷至沓来的西方美术史现象。80年代改革开放环境下，东西方艺术的不同时段和风格同时集中涌现，画家眼前有太多新鲜的观念和形式，眼花缭乱之际，不能不思考个人艺术道路的选择。和许多同辈艺术家相仿，闫平走上从写实到表现的道路。她进入属于现实主义传统主脉的艺术学院，当她转向更为自由和强烈主观表达的表现主义形式时，中国艺术界已经漫天飘舞着当代艺术的碎片。她和同时代出身于学院写实主义的艺术家一样，被“多重”传统所缠绕，有西方的，也有中国本土的，还有“中西融合”的。多元的艺术观念催生不同的绘画试探，她画面的空间结构处理也越来越富有戏剧性。

　　To Yan Ping, the real challenge is the spatial processing in painting. It is the first thing to consider for a painter when facing a blank canvas. Also, it is an eternal subject that painting is painting. The shape, color and texture of a work have generated out of spatial processing, then lead to the narrative mode in painting and a touching power. If a history of painting is regarded as the history of style evolution, then it is always in close contact with the way an artist processes the space, for viewing art from its origin, it is the other world created by human that parallels to the real world. Classical art possesses classical illusionary space, and modern art has modern constituting space. Contemporary art advocates collage and multiple space juxtaposition...For Chinese painters like Yan, the key lies in how to deal with an avalanche of western art history. Under the circumstance of reform and opening up in the 1980s, different periods and styles in eastern and western art had sprung up all at once. There were too many new concepts and forms in front of the painters. During the dazzle, they had to ponder about selecting their personal artistic path. Similar to peer artists, Yan took her path from realism to performance. She studied in the School of Arts that belonged to the traditional main veins of realism. But when she turned to more free and strong subjective expressionism, art world in China had been filled with fragments of contemporary art. Like contemporary artists from School of Realism, she was surrounded by "multiple traditions"western, local Chinese, and the combination of both. Diverse artistic concepts have spawned a variety of painting exploration, and processing of spatial structure in her paintings has become increasingly dramatic.

　　不管是文化主题构思系列的作品，还是由写生发展出来的风景和静物，闫平作品中那些飞扬的线条和“横涂竖抹”的肌理效果，是使她作品看起来具有动荡感的重要因素。但这些线条色块并不是画中物像本身结构要素，它们好像是从画中人和花朵中飞出来的，在被画家创造的瞬间被凝固在画面上。于是这些线条成为整个画面的一种看似突兀实则必要的结构要素。同时线条本身的表现性，书写性的文化意象，也被提升到明显的位置。当然她的绘画不安的动感主要还是来自画面的内在结构，好像多重力的方向交织一起，不知从何而来也不知道向何而去……这种结构似乎有塞尚的影响，在移动的视线里物体自身显示一种存在，当然是人的视觉补充而产生的弥补。但闫平拉大或加强了这种瞬间错觉弥补的距离，比如，塞尚至多在几厘米之间移动他的视线，来形成距离移动感。而闫平可能在50厘米到一米间移动视线，也就是不像她的前辈那样将观看苹果时将一点点移动的变化同时画在一个画布上的苹果静物画中。她的方法是画一个绿色小蜥蜴布玩具时，眼光却落在50厘米之外的一块花布上，或者迅速扫一眼在其之上的别的什么东西或者别的什么色块，再用眼角余光扫一眼那绿蜥蜴。这就像一个人翻跟斗时看到的眼前物体，是翻腾动荡的，并且具有这种视觉的平衡性和现实性。因为这也是一种视线，一种观看角度，无论从哪一角度观看，都有其存在的属性。

　　Whether works of cultural theme concept series, or landscapes and still life developed by the sketch, those flying lines and crossed and vertical texture effect in Yan's works, are key factors to make her works look volatile. But these lines and color blocks are not structural elements of the objects in the picture itself, instead, they seem to fly out of the people and flowers in the picture, and were frozen on the screen once they were created by the painter. As a result, these lines become structural elements that are seemingly queer but necessary in the whole picture. At the same time, the expressiveness of the line itself and cultural imagery of writing have also been promoted to a prominent position. Of course, dynamic in her paintings is mainly from internal structure of the picture, as if directions of various forces are woven together, without knowing where they are from and where they would go......This structure seems to be influenced by Cézanne: In a moving sight, the object itself demonstrates a kind of existence, which, of course, is a complement due to people's to visual supplements. But Yan widens or reinforces the distance made up by the momentary illusion. For example, Cézanne would move his sight between few centimeters to form a distance with a sense of moving. However, Yan may move between 50 centimeters to one meter. That is, when watching an apple, unlike her predecessors, she doesn't paint the tiny change in distance in a still life painting of an apple on a canvas at the same time. Her approach is that, when drawing a small green lizard toy, her eyes would fall on a piece of cloth that is 50 centimeters away, or she glances at something or color blocks that is on the top of the cloth, and then glimpses at that green lizard. It's just like objects that people see when he somersaults, which are churning and with such visual balance and reality. Because this is a sight, a viewing angle, no matter from which angle people look, it has its own characteristics.

　　她画面这种现实性还来源于可经验的时空感，因为她在用叙事解决和补充平衡感，比如，画中人物或物体如何能够融入“倒塌”的废墟般的空间，而且需让观众感到实在，如《春风上已天》、《都有一颗勇敢的心》。再比如，那些茂密的繁花和“张牙舞爪”的枝叉，如何在没有“根”的空间里让人感到继续“活着”，如《叫春》、《似水流年》等。这的确要在一种既和现实关联，又不局限与现实的平面结构中寻找解决办法。在她90年代的《母与子》系列中，已经看到她为这样的结构解决平衡的努力。比如，母亲和孩子之间的关系，通过肢体语言的交叉缠绕而显得不平衡，那些胳膊和腿就像生长出来的树枝一样，在那里舞动着。因为无论是母亲为了给孩子洗澡还是和孩子逗着玩儿，都不是安安静静的，没有通常绘画中“母与子”那般舒缓而宁静，而是通过四肢语言表明一种欢悦嬉戏的状态。与之呼应的是房间内的家具，画具和光线，画家有意采取一种直角交错的结构，就像城市地下或者街道上空错乱的管道和电线，看起来有些不安，但非常有活力富有动态感。就像原野，长出各种植物，错落有致。这在她后期的作品中尤为明显，如《远方》、《心有飞鸟》、《相亲相爱不孤单》等，虽然大多为室内景色，但能感觉到画家在创作时参照的是写生中获得的体悟，那就是活泼的生长力和略显混乱的秩序感结合的效果。

　　The sense of reality in her paintings also comes from a sense of time and space, for she uses narration to solve and supplement balance. For example, how people or objects could integrate into the "collapsed" and ruined space, while make viewers feel real, such as Spring Breeze in March, All having a Brave Heart. Another example, how those lush flowers and twisted twigs in the space that without "roots"could make people feel that they still "survive", like Calling for Spring, For Time Ran Fast, etc,. It indeed requires a solution in a planar structure that is associated with reality, but not confined to reality. In her Mother and Son series in the 1990s, it could be seen that she tried to solve the balance for such a structure. For instance, the relationship between mother and child seems unbalanced by the winding body language. Those arms and legs look like new branches, waving there. Because whether mother bathes a child or plays with him, they cannot be quiet, unlike the commonly tranquil state in "mother and son"paintings. Instead, it is a joyful state indicated by limbs language. What echoes this is the furniture, painting stuff and light in the room. The painter intends to adopt a crossed rectangular structure, like the disordered underground pipes or wires above the city streets, which seem in disorder but are full of vitality. Like the wilderness, it grows a variety of plants in a picturesque order. This is particularly evident in her later works, such as Distance, Flying Birds in Heart, Loving Each Other Is Not Alone, etc,. Though most of these works are indoor scenes, people could feel that what the painter refers to in her creation is experience obtained in the sketch. It is the result of the combination of lively vigor and slightly chaotic order.

　　画家综合了现代主义绘画多种不同的语言结构，又不放弃一定的叙事性。以“意愿”，一种与现实错位的关系来表达一种视觉的想象。 这在她的《戏台班子》系列作品中表现的很鲜明。《戏台班子》在看似平常的景象中却分明涌动着不安，物象都在变化之中，日常就是一件件变化的人和事，没有开始也无结束，一切在过程中。但这种变动不经因为题材的可读性而得到缓解。观看者得到叙事内容的合理答案，焦虑即会平息。因为他们可以想象戏班人员在准备表演，混乱的瞬间被刹那定格，画家也在“合理”性解释中让观众吃下定心丸。

　　Painters combine a variety of different language structures in modernist painting, but don’t abandon certain narrative. Yan uses"will",a misplaced relationship with reality, to express a visual imagination. It is quite evident in her The Theatrical Troupe series. In the seemingly ordinary scenes, The Theatrical Troupe, however, surges disorder. Images are changing, daily routine is composed of changing people and things, without beginning or end. Everything is in the process.But this change would not be relieved by the readability of the theme. Viewers' anxiety would be eased when they get a reasonable answer to the narrative content. Because they could imagine that the troupe is preparing for the performance and that the moment of mess is frozen instantly. So the painter explains "reasonably" to and reassures the audience.

　　近年创作的系列作品，那些大花和裸女，叙事性相应减弱，而突现画面本体语言的探索。画中人物或隐或显，或淡定或愉悦，花儿、道具，房屋的架构如人的四肢或者花枝的生长，或伸展张扬，或夸张扭曲。更扩张的结构和用笔势能取代了原先比较具有叙事性的结构，如《心有飞鸟》系列，《我的太阳》，《似水流年》，《花儿明年还是一样的开》、《发现新大陆》等，作品的自由度和主观性也随之鲜明起来。

　　In her recent serial works, narrative of the big peony and naked woman are correspondingly weakened to emphasize on the exploration for the scene language. Figures in the painting appear or disappear, being calm or happy; structures of flowers, props and houses, like human’s limbs or flower branches, stretch or twist exaggeratedly. More expanded structure and pen potential have replaced the previous comparative narrative structure, such as Flying Birds in Heart series, My Sun, For Time Ran Fast, Flowers Still Open Next Year and Discovery of New Continent and other works. Their freedom and subjectivity become bright consequently.

　　画家在“颠来倒去”中向世界投去匆匆一瞥，于是，就颠覆了我们日常经验的可靠性，使观者可以从日常中窥视“不寻常”的片刻，看到了超乎寻常的世界关系。那种关系揭示了人与人，人与环境之间更为深刻和内在的真实性。它与一种更为激烈和紧张，也更具激情和活力的精神相联系。这实际上正是艺术史上的那些大师对视觉艺术的贡献。

　　Painters cast a glance at the world from an "upside-down" perspective. Then, the reliability of our daily experience is overthrown, which enables the viewers spy "unusual" moments from daily life and see the extraordinary relationships in the world. That relationship reveals deeper and more intrinsic authenticity between people, people and the environment. It is associated with a more intense and stressful, but more passionate and vital spirit. This is actually what the great masters in art history contribute to visual arts.

2016年 雨水

2016 Rain Water