与画家曾浩（大家常把他称为小曾浩）认识纯属偶然，2005年冬我全身投入写博士论文阶段，为了专心写作，我需找远离都市烦扰的安静环境，于是暂借画家朱金石位于来广营费家村的画室，恰好与曾浩画室相邻。当晚上写作较累的时候，我总会到他的画室聊天，或他到我这边聊天，多半是一边喝茶一边聊艺术。一往二来，彼此便熟悉起来。曾浩为人平和，谈话间总带有笑容。然而，他的画似乎与其性格相反，表现出很强的入世意识，即对现实的关注、批判与反讽。从个人创作线索看，作为一位画家，曾浩不仅重视绘画的表现形式，而且秉持非常独立的批判精神——充分表达个人的立场、观点、态度。这正是他的个人品格。

曾浩的绘画充分表露了90年代社会文化经验，体现在图像与现实、观念与形式并重的表现方式。众所周知，自90年代至今，中国现代社会在经济飞速发展中裹挟着各种各样不正常的腐败现象，到处盛行的灯红酒绿、歌舞升平的表象下隐含着精神虚空和一些溃败的伤口，以及肤浅的文化，如此日益庸俗的文化已渗透到平民的日常生活和行为方式之中，整个社会弥漫着肉欲、物欲的消费，全民几乎面临是精神信仰的缺失。面对如此的社会现实景观，曾浩以批判的眼光触及到这样的社会问题。如同社会学家敏感的目光，画家以其犀利的画笔揭示了图像背后隐藏的问题。所以，他以形象去表现去剖析其中的矛盾或冲突。当然，他摒弃简单而表面地模仿现实生活，而是展示图像表征下深层的政治与生活的关系，这实际上表明了他自觉的社会批判意识，揭开了已完全被浮华遮蔽了的真实世界的面目，找到了自己赖以言说的内容与形式。

事实上，曾浩的绘画给人的第一印象就是图像与欲望的关系。如果说欲望就犹如是对物的一种动态形式，那么图像之于欲望则彰显的是一种形象的定格。这些定格的形象却展现出让人看到愉悦的东西，这种诱发人去看的动机无不包含了催化剂的意义。在这一点上，它因与对象相关联而得以使其自身呈现出现实化的特征。因此，曾浩作品所蕴涵的情欲、色欲、物欲的形象——从门神图像到泡泡图像及其他图像，都具有一定的隐喻和象征的特点。当然，任何艺术图像本身都是真实生活的映像，并折射或触摸到了中国社会现实和文化状况，诸如权力、物欲、消耗、浮华等等。曾浩的绘画并没有采用现实主义叙述方法，而是以隐喻的象征性语言释放了物象隐含的指涉信息——不稳定性、易碎、脆弱、膨胀、不安等。所以，这些图像呈现了艺术家对现实世界日益精神信仰缺失的困惑与焦虑。

作为一位画家，除了对社会问题关注之外，曾浩在创作中特别追求在绘画形式与风格上的个性语言——融合了写实基础与波普语言，并揉合了现实暗喻与形而上批判。曾浩特意把艳丽的色彩处理成带有塑料般透亮感的绘画界面。他深知画家拥有个人风格与形式的重要性，即建立了一套自己的表现形式。曾浩在其作品中找到了符合自己的语言方式，如以平涂方法表现出物象带有塑料质感的透明感，这种透明感的物象又显露其欲望与脆弱的文化表征，如此的形式贯穿于身体、肖像、建筑、日常生活等等。它们让人容易联想到对当下社会孕育的不确定性问题的暗示与讽喻。无论如何，曾浩绘画的独特表现语言，既是心理层面的，也是感官层面的，还是社会性层面的。

众所周知，在当代文化多元背景下，中国当代艺术在总体上趋于淡化意识形态或弱化政治性的情况下，艺术家是不是还要坚守独立的批判精神，非常值得思考，曾浩的绘画显然是一个案例的确证。正如大家对中国当代艺术现象都有目共睹的那样，虽然艺术发展大有去意识形态或政治之势，但面对如今社会掺杂着凝滞腐败和道德危机，坚持鲜明的艺术批判性仍是其社会学的本质，这也正是他绘画的价值所在，因为在画家看来，绘画既表现了个人的情感，也表述了个人的社会立场和观点。因此，绘画图像对公众具有穿透性的感染功能，即艺术对社会现实进行的介入或干预，也就是对公众起到直接或间接的教育、提醒和感化的作用。

纵观曾浩不同时期的作品，他拥有自身明确的绘画语言，即以风格和形式建立的绘画逻辑，建构了个人独特的表现方式。当然，绘画的语言必需通过理性的判断、分析和再现来把握视觉结构，事件与形象的结合和表现，依赖于挪用、组合、拼贴、过滤、想像来生成一种超真实的“真实”，从而打破了那种已知的经验系统，让绘画尽现其开放而自由的语言特征——把现实词汇转化成视觉化，而视觉化就具有想像的空间。他的作品经常出现那种带有塑料般透明易脆的形象，其实这在某种程度上就是“隐喻”或“暗语”，具体说，就是一种表现的藉口和一种想像的出口。曾浩在其绘画中，并没有沿用传统的具象的叙述手法作画，相反，他以接近“平涂”的形式与“波普”的元素进行了重构，具体可在其近年创作的作品“活着”（2012）、“泡泡鼓舞去奋斗”（2014）和“泡影”（系列，2014）中得到充分体现。与之前画的央视大楼或与鸟巢相关的宏大形象不同，他摆脱了以往描绘物象略显拘谨的感觉，转而描绘自己熟悉的形象或日常事物，画面处理得异常松动而自由，并增强了个人的绘画性。事实上，曾浩作品的个性语言就在于他把绘画的秩序、图式及创新放在了一个整体性框架之中，以一种开放的视觉语言让观众从图像之外去辨识与思考。这正是让人喜欢他绘画的原因所在。

所以说，曾浩的绘画不仅仅是形式。……

Zeng Hao: Painting Is More Than Just Form

Huang Du

Meeting Zeng Hao (He was known by people as “Little Zeng Hao” ) was completely by chance. It was the winter of 2005 and I was devoting myself in my PhD dissertation. In order to concentrate on my writing, I needed a quiet and peaceful environment away from the bustling urban city. So I stayed at painter Zhu Jinshi's studio located in Laiguangying, Feijiacun. The studio happened to be next to Zeng Hao’s. When I felt really tired at night, I would go to his studio and chat with him, sometimes he would come to mine. For the most times we drank tea while talked about art. We slowly became close with each other. Zeng Hao is a gentle and calm guy, always smiling when he talked to me. Yet his paintings seem to be contrary to his personality. They present extreme awareness of the society. His work pays close attention to social reality and demonstrate strong criticism and irony. Knowing his train of thought in his work process, what is realized is that as an artist who works with painting as his medium, Zeng Hao not only pays attention to the formal element of his work, but also holds strongly independent ideas in criticism by extensively expressing his individual standpoint, opinion and attitude. They sum up his character and his artistic integrity.

Zeng Hao’s paintings fully expose the social and cultural experience of the 1990s while representing the coexistence of vision and reality, concept and form. As we all know, since the 1990s, Chinese modern society has developed various kinds of corruption phenomenons that accompanied the rapid development in economics. The prevailing entertainment and luxurious lifestyle of the society are fig leaves covering the spiritual emptiness and the festered wounds from its history. The shallow culture has leaked into the peoples’  behavioral pattern and daily life. The entire society are packed with sexual and material desires. The country is facing a problem of lacking spirituality and belief. In confrontation to a landscape of such social reality, Zeng Hao touches on these social issues through his critical vision. He uses his sharp strokes almost like an sociologist's susceptive eye to reveal the hidden problems behind the picture. In this case, he uses painting to present the conflicts and contradiction between his subjects. He gave up on simple imitations to real life. Instead he reveals deeper relationships between politics and life under the cover. This indicates his autonomous consciousness in social criticism, and disclosed a reality that was concealed under the vanity. They become reliable forms and contents for presenting his ideas.

The first impression Zeng Hao’s paintings gives his viewers is the relationship between image and desire. If we say desire is like a dynamic form of materiality, then image should be a still frame of desire. These still frame images present subjects that viewers can take pleasure in, and their motive of seducing attention from its viewers functions as a catalyst. They acquired realistic features through their relevancy to the subjects. Hence the elements of eroticism, sexuality and materialism in Zeng Hao’s work—from the image of the Door God to images of bubbles— all contain certain metaphoric and symbolic properties. Of course, any artistic imagery is a reflection of reality that refracts or touches on the reality and cultural conditions of the Chinese society such as power, materialism, consumption and vanity. Zeng Hao does not use realism as a method of narration in his paintings. Instead he uses an implicit and symbolic language to express information hidden deeply within his subjects, its unsteadiness, fragility, expansion and disturbance. Thus, these images present senses of confusion and anxiety from the artist he feels that are due to the lack of spiritual belief in reality.

As an artist, besides focusing on social issues, Zeng Hao has a strong pursuit for personalized artistic language on painting in form and style. This language consists of a foundation in realism, a language in pop art, and they are integrated with metaphors for reality and a metaphysical criticism. He intentionally treated vivid colors as lucent plastic interfaces. He is well aware of the importance for an artist to have personalized form and style, so he established his unique formal expression. Zeng Hao has successfully discovered techniques that accord with his own artistic language, such as using smearing to achieve a flat ground to present the quality of lucent plastic materials. This transparency reveals a symbolism to the fragile desires according to the cultural representation. This form continues through subject matters of figure, portrait, architecture and the everyday. They trigger the viewers to ponder on the metaphors made on the uncertainty to the future of today’s society. On every account, the unique expressive language in Zeng Hao’s paintings is extendible to psychological planes, sensual planes and social planes.

In the multicultural context of the contemporary society, Chinese contemporary art in general tends to weaken ideological forms or touches little upon political thematics. In current situations, should artists persist on individual criticism is a important question to reflect on. Zeng Hao’s painting is a firm sample. As a phenomenon widely recognize in Chinese contemporary art, although the artistic development has a tendency to avoid ideologies or politics, but when facing with the moral crisis and corruptions in today’s society, artists who persist in artistic criticism are the foundations of its sociology. This is the value of Zeng Hao’s work. In the perspective of a painter, painting not only expresses personal sentiments but also expresses individual stances and opinions to society. Thus, paintings have a value in affecting the public. In other words, they become an interference to social reality through art, which could directly affect and education, alert, and sympathize with the public.

Zeng Hao’s work through different periods contains specific individual art language, thus the logic he creates through his style and form also construct his unique expression. Of course, the language of painting must grasp the visual structure through rational decisions, analysis, and repetition. The combination and presentation of an event and image that relies on appropriation, combination, collage, filtering, imagination to generate a hyperrealistic “reality”  are approaches made to breaks away from the accepted experience system, and gives painting its liberate and open properties—visualizing a vocabulary in to an image which has the capacity for imagination. A repeated element in His works are the crisp clear, plastic figures. To some extent this becomes a “metaphor”. In specific, this works as an excuse for expression, or an outlet for imagination. Zeng Hao does not follow traditional representational painting techniques. In contrary, he reconstructs them with flat painting technique and “pop” elements. These qualities are used to their best extend in his recent works Alive (2012), Bubble Inspires Us to Strive (2014), and Bubble Spectacles (series, 2014). Unlike previous painted works of CCTV tower or the Bird Nest Stadium images, Zeng Hao broke away from restrained formal representation of subjects and turned to painting familiar everyday subjects. His canvas is treated in a relaxed and unstrained process, and has intensified his unique artistic quality in painting. Indeed, the personalized language in Zeng Hao’s works are Zeng Hao’s personalized language which included gathering painting systems, images, and innovation and putting them in a holistic framework that allows his viewer to reflect and identify in an open visual language outside of the image. This is exactly why people are fond of his paintings.

And so, paintings of Zeng Hao are much more than just form.