Submerged in fallen petals: The paintings of Luo Min
Translated from Chinese by Hatty Liu. Scroll down for original.
In his book Capitalist Realism—Is There No Alternative?(2009), British philosopher Mark Fisher summed up the motions of curating, exhibiting, and going to exhibitions and its state of combined weariness and anxiety as “depressive hedonia.” Many artists are forced to exist in this vast matrix, feeling a persistent mania for productivity that in reality produces nothing. Most exhibitions in New York come from a place of obsession—either born from the interplay of capital and status, or paradoxically, the urge to set oneself apart from this machinery. But when I first encountered Luo Min’s paintings, these usual repetitive rhythms of New York fell apart. I found my old standards of judgment and knowledge acquisition to be lacking. I momentarily forgot how to think.
I had heard about Luo Min’s show from a friend back home, who told me that an artist from our parts was in New York. I have very few friends left back home, and they rarely come to New York. My own artistic journey was one that led me resolutely away from home, traveling on a fast lane where life could be reshaped and rebuilt without a backward look. Having traveled halfway around the globe, to come face to face with another artist from home was a novel experience for me.
In Luo Min’s paintings, I find visceral scenes from my past brought to life as if they are black-and-white photo negatives hand-painted in color: the riverside town where I lived as a child, the athletic center where I swam during summer vacations, childhood friends, relatives with familiar faces I can’t recall, the calligraphy books that I stenciled in day after day, those long summers under the specter of communism that I longed to escape without knowing how…. I let this double exposure of memories wash me, as those delicate, sincere petals and stems on her canvas wash and redevelop time anew. Her fallen petals and withered branches are always fragile and tinged with sorrow, yet passionate and pure.
Among the painted flowers, there are photo negatives of people; some completely, others in fragments; some smiling, and others with inscrutable looks. The flowers have the texture of swimming beneath the paper, pointing at both the past and future, containing both the tenderness of bygone days and the pain of separation to come. Faces swim beneath the flowers as if gathering and dispersing beneath ripples on water: mother, sister, son, classmate, and playmate, and shadowy phantoms we can no longer name—ephemeral memories coexist with those recollections we must repeatedly scrub away. Luo Min’s Among the Flowers series reminds me of the 14th-century Middle English ballad “Maiden in the Mor Lay”:
Maiden in the mor lay,
In the mor lay,
Seven-night full
Seven-night full—
Well was her meat.
What was her meat?
The primrose and the violet.
What was her bower?
The red rose and the—
What was her bower?
The red rose and the lily flower.
The past seemed like the moorland in the poem.
Luo Min is not shy about her past. She was a maid growing up in a communist moorland. Having no freedom was the norm, yet the lives of ordinary people more urgently needed meditation in the garden. Her father graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Art with a degree in dyeing and weaving. He was born to be an artist but fated to design floral patterns for a silk factory. He knew the name of every flower in their garden: hollyhocks, yellow cosmos, marigolds, asters, cornflowers, morning glories…. Her mother was a colorist at a state-owned photo studio, a profession now relegated to the last century. Luo Min’s childhood home was strewn with paintbrushes, cotton balls, watercolors, ink, palette knives, ceramic tiles, blank films, and paperweights. On the repair table, there was always a photo needing restoration, sheet after sheet of mottled, yellowing black-and-white prints that would come to life with just a little watercolor mixed with oil paint. A happy childhood is a base hue of innocence for all the difficulties ahead. No one can predict what someone will experience when she leaves behind childhood and merges onto worldly lanes when she becomes a daughter or a mother. In the darkroom, wet prints are still hanging on a clothesline to dry, like futures yet to be formed.
Later, Luo Min entered the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Art as their first postgraduate student in oil painting and worked for a time as a stage designer for the PLA’s art troupe. Ironically, this “red” and correct environment kept Luo Min grounded with a tender penetration. She is constantly suspicious of smooth operations and techniques, of things that are too easy or open-and-shut. Still later, she gave up everything in China to move abroad and care for her son. Everything she’d experienced in the communist moorland was like a dress rehearsal for a dream.
With this approach of gentle skepticism to learning, Lu Min’s masterful Chinese bird-and-flower drawings have a sense of being guided by a divine force; at the same time, she’s fascinated by classical oil painting. She yearns to make spontaneous portraits of people, yet cannot escape being entangled flowers. She’s entangled, too, between Luzhou, Chengdu, Beijing, New York, and Australia. Impossibly, on her canvas, these irreconcilable materials of water and paper, images and words, photography and oil painting detach and invade one another, amplifying detail and space through their interchange. Look closely at her paintings, and you’ll see that the faces of the people are blurred, but the line drawings of birds are clear; the stems and veins of the plants are sharp.
Luo Min’s work is no jin hui dui “ash fragment” art, nor Renaissance tones nor even postmodernist pastiche. Rather, with a slow, lingering force rarely seen in our modern day, she has invented her own style that runs precisely counter to the products of capitalist acceleration. She replicates the flowers of the contemporary world as if imitating the Ming dynasty calligraphy of Wang Chong and Wen Zhengming. There’s a sense of carefree tranquility comparable to Wen’s poem: “Jade-like osmanthus blossoms/ The full moon hangs above the street/ A refreshing night chill.”
As Henri Bergson said, reality is a continuous process of becoming in time, while time is a non-linear durée experienced by all of us individually and internally. The elegant mystery of Luo Min’s paintings allowed me to dream a wakeful yet fantastic dream in the space between paper, water, and hues. We travel the world, but when we return, the world is still as Wen Zhengming described: “Pomegranate petals strew across the yard/ The ground is shaded by green leaves/ I wake from a nap mumbling to myself.”
潜泳落花枝： 罗敏的画
第一次在纽约遇到画家罗敏时，我正在例行每周的看展行程，就像无数生活在纽约的艺术家一样，我们早已将看展、参展、策展内化为稠密生活的一部分，我们为要不要去那些人头涌动的艺术活动陷入反反复复的不安，欣喜，焦躁，fomo。Mark Fisher早已把这种疲惫和焦虑症总结为抑郁的享乐主义，即，我们总是被迫活在一种巨大的模拟当中，一种对于生产主义的狂热，实际上又没有生产出任何东西的惯性里。大多时候，纽约这个城市发生的展览都是出于一种魔怔，由各种资本和身份转动促成的魔怔，或者为了反对这个机器而竭力证明自己别样性的魔怔。但在接触到罗敏的画时，我在纽约的节奏和惯性好像失效了，往日评判的标准和习得的知识也似乎失效了。一时不知道如何思考。因为罗敏的展，是一个故乡的家人朋友远程通知我去的，说，有个老家的画家朋友也在纽约。事实上我在故乡的朋友稀少，且他们几乎都不会来纽约，而我自己的艺术追求之路更是和故乡背道而驰之路。我们在快速行径的运输轨道上不回头的加工和重建自己的生命和生活。而在绕过半个地球之后，我面对一个故乡来的画家，这种经验反而是新奇的。
在罗敏的画里，一种跟我的肉身经验过于亲近的往日之景如黑白胶卷被手工上色，又从泳池的浅水区逐渐浮现：小时候居住的江边小城，暑假游泳的体育场馆，面目亲切却又模糊的亲人，孩童时期的玩伴，日复一日临摹的字帖，想要逃离却又无所适从的，共产主义幽灵下的漫长夏天…. 一种仍在生成的记忆双重冲洗了我，就在那脆弱又真挚的，层层叠叠的山石榴，黄桷兰，爬藤月季，酢浆草的枯枝朵中，时间被重新冲洗和生成。罗敏的落花和枯枝，总是脆弱哀婉又热烈纯粹。花间，有人像的底片，有的完整，有的破碎，有的在微笑，有的表情难以琢磨。在一种纸间潜泳的质感中，这些花同时指向未来和过去，同时包含往日的柔情和未来的消逝和分离的。而花，是秒表，是时针，又是储存时间的水的波纹。人的面貌在花中潜泳和聚散。母亲，妹妹，儿子，同学，玩伴，以及叫不出名字的影子和幽灵，一闪而过的和反复涂抹的记忆它们是并存的….罗敏的「花间」系列，让我想起包慧怡翻译的一首14世纪的中古匿名诗《少女躺在荒原中》”少女躺在荒原中/少女躺在荒原中/躺在荒原中/整整七夜，整整七夜…她吃什么食物呀？报春花，还有/她的食物挺可口/报春花和紫罗兰/她住什么房呀？红玫瑰，还有—/她住什么房呀？/红玫瑰和百合花”。荒原大概就像过去的那个时代。
罗敏并不避讳谈及她的出身，她是一位生长于共产主义荒原里的少女。没有自由是正常，而普通人的生命更紧急如花园中的冥想。父亲毕业于四川美院染织专业，也是个天生的艺术家，却只能为丝绸工厂工作，设计印花布料。在童年的茂密公园里，每一株花卉的名字，都熟稔于父亲缄默的内心：蜀葵花，硫华菊，孔雀草，万寿菊，翠菊，矢车菊，满天星…而母亲则是国营照相馆的上色师，这是一个留存于上世纪的职业。罗敏的家里充满了毛笔、棉花、水彩、墨、刮刀、瓷砖、底片、镇纸、整修台中间，小时候总是能看到需要修补的照片，一张张斑驳、发黄的旧底片与照片。 只需要用水彩颜料和油彩颜料结合，黑白照片就能活过来。童年是缓慢的，无忧无虑的，也是纯净透明，快乐的童年让日后复杂的岁月都垫上一页纯净的底色。无法预计一个人离开童年，成为世界轨道里的一部分，成为女儿，成为母亲后，会经历什么。在黑夜里暗红的小屋，水盆里即将被冲洗出来胶片照片，它们还夹在绳子上，就是我们正等待着被冲洗的未来。罗敏后来就读于解放军艺术学院，是那个艺术学院第一位油画研究生，后来在文工团做过一段时间舞台设计。恰好是这看似很红，很正式的学校，让罗敏时刻保持着一种温柔的锋芒。她总是怀疑圆滑的操作和技巧，怀疑太过容易和大开大合的东西。再后来，为了出国照顾儿子，她放弃了在国内的一切。就像在共产主义的荒原中排练了一场梦。对于习得和惯有的总是带着温柔的质疑，这让罗敏在精通中国画中的花卉鸟虫的白描，常常被神来的线条牵引，同时，她又迷恋被古典油画所罩染；她追求一气呵成的人物闲笔，也总是在花草之间腾挪折腾。她在泸州，成都，北京，纽约，澳洲之间腾挪折腾。在一种不可能中，水和纸，画和文字，摄影和油画，这些本来相斥的材质脱离又入侵，折断从而获得放大的细节和空灵。仔细看这些画里，人的面貌和表情是模糊的。但鸟的白描是清晰的。植物的枝干和纹路是清晰的。我们跟时空的距离是变动的，在悬崖中回望的。飞鸟一闪而过又絮絮叨叨，而花朵是最奋不顾身的惊艳的美。
不是锦灰堆，不是古典主义的酱油调子，也不是后现代主义的拿来和拼贴，罗敏在一种缓慢而悠长的力量中发明了自己的风格，这种风格可贵在于，它是与资本主义加速主义的各种产物背道而驰的。罗敏在画中如临摹明代名士王宠和文征明的小楷一样临摹当代世界的花朵，带着一种悠然， “桂花浮玉/正月满天街/夜凉如洗”，在如今，获得缓慢和清淡的力量，好像成为了最珍贵最奢侈的东西。在属于童年夏日的花园里，不曾因为紧张而失明的，已经枯萎所以不再枯萎的，没有赌博和怀疑的，属于任何游泳池和任何清晨的，为了无用的炼金术，从锦灰堆中冒出的花，鸟，故人，尽管他们在现实的世界不断衰落和消逝，但，只要有画在，它们就能重新在灰暗的底片生长出色彩。那些在未来失明前的鱼鳞、泳镜、若隐若现的手、池水、不知名的小鸟都将重新浮现。那些静谧的有如来自明代的花瓣…有的不相搭接，有的似连非连，有的若即若离，有的疏朗揖让，每一朵里似乎都有无数朵花瓣，但不变的是，它们将永远保持天真和隽永。柏格森语，现实是在时间中持续不断地成为的过程，现实是一种绵延（La duree) 的非线性的又弥散的内在力量。罗敏的画婉约迷离，让我有机会做了一次清醒又虚幻的梦，在属于纸、水和颜色的午睡中间。漫游世界，归来时，世界仍旧 “庭下石榴花乱吐 / 满地绿阴亭午 / 午睡觉来时自语”。
Luo Min’s artist book Broken Branch Flowers is forthcoming with Accent Sisters Press in Spring 2025.
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