ADRIATIC 亚得里亚

前言

狮語画廊荣幸呈现艺术家陈开的全新个展《亚得里亚》。展览集中展出创作于2023

至2025年间的“亚得里亚”系列，汇聚数件大尺幅绘画与一组名为《间隙》的小幅油画作品。陈开运用重复而专注的点彩，将一段关于海岸光线与空气的记忆，编织成一系列在静默中生长、蕴含呼吸的视觉织物，标志着他在色彩探索、绘画连续性以及抽象情感维度上的显著推进。

“A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.”

“绘画并不是经验的图像，而是一种经验本身。”

——马克·罗斯科 (Mark Rothko)

罗斯科的这一宣言，恰为解读陈开的艺术实践提供了核心的视角。他的创作始于一次在意大利的里雅斯特海岸的深刻凝视：日落的光如何沉降，海面的空气如何颤动，身体沉浸时，时间的质感变得缓慢而可触。这些瞬时感知并未导向对风景的描绘，而是沉淀为驱动绘画的内在能量。画布上无尽累积的色点，其目的并非再现海的形态，而是挽留“被光触碰过的记忆”，捕捉一种在心头亮起却难以言传的知觉状态。这正契合了罗斯科“色彩即情绪场域”的观点：绘画的本质在于构建一个自足的情感与体验现场。这种将内在体验转化为视觉现场的实践，便在画布上体现为一种修行般的劳作。在亚得里亚系列《晴日》、《拂晓之后》等作品中，陈开以油彩与油画棒，施行着数以万计的点状笔触。每一笔都是一个小型的决定，它们从透明的底色中逐渐浮现，相互回应、层层叠加，最终形成一个有机的、仿佛自有生命的网格结构。远观时，画面是浑然一体的光色氛围；近看时，则是无数微小痕迹的集会——有些密集如絮语，有些松散如呼吸，共同编织出时间的质地。于陈开而言，点彩是一种冥想，也是一种坚持。它摒弃了挥洒的戏剧性，转而信赖在时间中缓慢累积的力量；这种柔韧而坚定的方式，与抽象表现主义的“英雄式手势”形成对照，也隐隐回应着他作为酷儿的身份经验。与倾注了巨大意志的宏幅之作呼应的是一组题为《间隙》的小幅油画作品，它们源自工作室的日常实践：调色板上残留的颜料，画笔洗涤时不自觉的流淌……它们并非计划内的创作，而是主旋律间的呼吸孔，是严谨逻辑之外偶然渗入的即兴诗篇。展览《亚得里亚》不仅是对一片海的回应，更是一种在加速时代中逆向而行的绘画信念。在这些作品面前，观看本身需要被重新校准：它邀请我们驻足、靠近，在目光漫游于无数细点之间的过程中，画面中那来自记忆与长久劳作的亮度才会悄然浮现。那是一道稳定而温润的光，是绘画在时间中不断生成所留下的最微妙、却最持久的证据。

Foreward Leo Gallery is pleased to present Adriatic, a new solo exhibition by the artist Chen Kai. The exhibition features works from the Adriatic series created between 2023 and 2025, bringing together several large-scale paintings alongside a group of small oil paintings titled Interval. Through disciplined and pointillist gestures, Chen Kai weaves a memory of coastal light and air into a series of visual fabrics that grow quietly and seem to breathe. These works mark a significant development in his exploration of color, the continuity of painting, and the emotional dimensions of abstraction.

“A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.”

—— Mark Rothko Rothko’s declaration offers a key insight into understanding Chen Kai’s artistic practice. His work begins with an intense moment of looking along the coast of Trieste, Italy: the way light settles at sunset, the subtle trembling of air on the water’s surface, and how the texture of time becomes slow and tactile when the body sinks into the sea. These fleeting perceptions did not lead to a depiction of landscape; instead, they crystallized into an inner energy that drives the painting process. The endless accumulation of points of color on the canvas is not intended to recreate the sea’s form, but to hold onto a "memory touched by light," capturing a perceptual state that flares within yet resists articulation. This resonates with Rothko’s understanding of color as an emotional field, and with his belief that painting constructs a self-contained site of feeling and experience.

This transformation of inner experience into a visual field takes shape through a labor akin to a practice of devotion. In works such as Adriatic (Clear Day) and Adriatic (Sunrise), Chen Kai employs tens of thousands of dot-like strokes using oil paint and oil stick. Each mark is a small decision. Emerging gradually from a translucent ground, the points respond to one another and accumulate layer by layer, eventually forming an organic lattice that seems to possess its own breathing rhythm. Viewed from afar, the paintings appear as unified atmospheres of color and light; up close, they disperse into gatherings of minute traces—some dense like murmurs, others sparse like breaths—collectively weaving the texture of time. For Chen Kai, pointillism is both meditation and perseverance. It rejects the theatricality of gestural flourish and instead trusts the slow strength of cumulative time. This supple yet insistent mode of making stands in contrast to the "heroic gesture" of Abstract Expressionism and subtly echoes the artist’s lived experience as queer. In dialogue with the monumental works shaped by such sustained intention is a group of small oil paintings titled Interval. Emerging from the everyday rhythms of the studio—residual pigments on the palette, the unconscious flow of paint washed from brushes—they are not planned compositions but moments of breathing within the larger body of works improvisational poems that slip into the otherwise rigorous logic of the series. Adriatic is not only a response to a particular sea, but also a painterly conviction that moves counter to the accelerated tempo of the present. These works ask the viewer to recalibrate the act of looking: to pause, to approach, and to allow the eye to wander among the countless points of color. Only through this slow attention does the faint radiance—born of memory and sustained labor—begin to reveal itself. It is a steady and gentle light, the most subtle yet enduring trace left by painting as it continually unfolds over time.