来源：Artdaily

游客在Bulgaria,Sofia国立国外艺术馆的曾梵志作品前

国际知名的中国当代艺术家曾梵志于上周五（6月11日）在保加利亚索菲亚国立国外艺术馆 National Gallery for Foreign Art的个人收藏展正式揭幕，保加利亚首相Boyko Borissov 与文化部长Vezhdi Rashidov出席了开幕典礼。

此次展览得以成行，缘起保加利亚巨商、艺术收藏巨擘Spas Roussev对曾梵志发出的邀约，并由前者亲自制定了贵宾名单，邀请了保加利亚国内外各界名流前来捧场。来自国外的嘉宾包括超级名模Elle MacPherson、时尚设计师Tommy Hilfiger、玛丽莲 梦露的御用摄影师Tommy Schiller、知名摄影师Annie Leibovitz、英国蛇形画廊Serpentine Gallery 总监Julia Peyton-Jones等。

此次个人收藏展展出了18件来自私人收藏的曾梵志作品，包括了90年代让其声名鹊起的《面具》系列。2008年，曾梵志《面具》系列中的一件作品在佳士得拍场中以970万美金成就了彼时中国现代艺术拍卖史上的新高。

文化部长Rashidov授予曾梵志和Tommy Hilfiger 黄金世纪Golden Century奖章，以表彰其对国际文化作出的卓越贡献。

曾梵志于1964年出生在中国湖北省武汉市，并小小年纪就立志画画。他对自己高标准、严要求，刻苦努力，终而成为一名其儿时梦想成为的打破语境、局限、时尚与时间的艺术家。

1991年，曾梵志毕业于武汉美术学院，中国的意识形态变迁与德国表现主义German Expressionism对他造成了深刻影响。他的早期绘画以其强有力的表现主义手法而显现出鲜明的个性特色，那些挑衅的潜在暴力表达与他大肆渲染痛苦的画布让人难以忘怀。

移居北京后，曾梵志从1994年开始创作《面具》系列。在《面具系列-第13号》中，画面主角：一名男子带着一个笑嘻嘻的白色面具，用他那双巨大而轮廓分明的手爱抚着一只达尔马提亚狗。主角男子与狗之间的亲密关系可以折射出艺术家对周遭世界的乐观情绪，然而，依然有种挥之不去的潜伏险恶存在于人们想象中的男子真脸上。他锋利的笔触通过描绘风格化的剧院面具与闷闷不乐的人类形体而彰显了强烈的心理张力。

焦虑与心理沉重感也可以从他的肖像作品中读出，其中包括一件创作于2009年的全新肖像作品。画面中，艺术家自己穿着一件红色礼袍，端坐在一个小板凳上，背景是庄严肃穆的绵延山丘。他目光热切地望向画外，他那彻底麻木不仁的鬼脸让观者切肤感受到其试图表达心理状态的强烈欲望。他的几乎所有肖像作品都雕画着标志性的荒唐大眼，表白的眼神好似看透了画布，看向不知处的画外所在，与观者面面相对，用他不屈不挠的诚挚创作与独家视角捕捉观者的内在自我。

曾梵志的风景绘画一改评论界一贯称道其表现主义的风格，用粗厚的木桩作渲染，有时也把人体与动物融入其中；他用近乎疯狂的笔触之网将风景画活起来，栩栩生动。通过这笔触之网，反复挥洒出的是词不达意的沉闷、伤感书法与被压制的焦虑突然激灵振奋。曾梵志绘画经常同时手握两把或更多的笔刷，他用其中一支来勾勒主体，其他则旋即跟上丰满画布，留露了其潜意识创作流过的痕迹。这种构建与解构的动作将其绘画俨然变身为了近抽象主义。

自2009年起，曾梵志开始了他冥想式的细节绘画，主题往往是简单而兀自存在的静物：一双鞋、一条鱼或一片羊肉，旨在运用其独特的当代艺术语言来重新诠释艺术历史。通过这些单调平凡的主体，曾梵志生气勃勃的绘画能力及其试图将对使人气馁的人类精神表达转移到对自我内在心灵与自然及其周遭一切的调和谐让上的强烈欲望都跃然画布之上。他的画作不再只是映射这个坐立不安、心神不宁的矛盾世界，更是对超越理性理解之外的对真理的漫长艰辛的内省跋涉之探索。

Zeng Fanzhi Exhibits Paintings from His Collection at the National Gallery for Foreign Art

SOFIA.- World-famous Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi on Friday evening opened an exhibition in Sofia’s National Gallery for Foreign Art. Attending the ceremony were Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and Culture Minister Vezhdi Rashidov.

Zeng Fanzhi is here at the invitation of businessman and patron of arts Spas Roussev, who also takes credit for the long list of guests of the Bulgarian and foreign elite.

The group of foreign guests included top model Elle MacPherson and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, Tommy Schiller who took photographs of Marilyn Monroe, famous photographer Annie Leibovitz and Julia Peyton-Jones, Director of the influential Serpentine Gallery in London, UK.

Zeng Fanzhi shows 18 paintings from his collection, including ones of the Mask Series which brought him world fame in the 1990s.

In 2008, the artist set an auction record for China’s modern art with a painting of the Mask Series that fetched 9.7 million US dollars at Christie’s.

Culture Minister Rashidov conferred Golden Century orders to Zeng Fanzhi and Hilfiger for their exceptional contribution to global culture.

Born in Wuhan, Hubei province in 1964, Zeng Fanzhi decided at a very early age to become a painter. He set the bar for himself extremely high, endeavoring to become an artist whose work would one day transcend conventions, borders, fashion and time.

In 1991, Zeng graduated from Hubei Academy of Fine Arts. At that time, the ideological changes in China and the style of German Expressionism deeply influenced him. His early paintings are immediately recognizable by their signature expressionistic strokes, that lend provocative sensations of underlying violence and agony to his lavishly rendered canvases.

Upon moving to Beijing, he began his celebrated Mask series in 1994. In Mask No 13, a man is wearing a white grinning mask and caressing a Dalmatian with his enormous and chiseled hands. The intimacy between the man and the dog suggests the artist’s optimistic view towards the world around him; yet, there is an element of the sinister lurking behind the mask on the man’s face. By using sharp brush strokes, Zeng magnifies psychological tensions between the stylized theatrical mask and the subdued human body.

Anxiety and psychological gravity are also revealed in his portraits, including a self-portrait from 2009, in which the artist, in a long red robe, is sitting on a stool in front of a massive solemn landscape of mountains. He stares intensely out of the painting. His thoroughly apathetic grimace suggests an attempt to create a work that is a raw expression of his psychological condition. The subjects of his portraits are depicted with a set of ridiculously large and bold eyes looking out of the painting, as if to confront the viewer, capturing their inner personalities, with the unflinching honesty that characterizes his work.

Zeng’s landscape paintings mark his departure from his critically renowned Expressionistic style. Rendering thick woods, sometimes including people or animals, Zeng brings his landscape to life with a frenzied network of brush strokes, replicating the inarticulate calligraphy of muffled sentiment and the galvanization of repressed anxiety. Painting with two or more brushes simultaneously, Zeng uses one to describe his subject, while others meander the canvas, leaving traces of his subconscious through processes. This action of construction and deconstruction transforms the pictures into near abstraction.

Since 2009, Zeng has started his meditation with meticulously painting very simple solitary still lifes: a pair of shoes, a fish or a piece of lamb, as an effort to reinterpret the history of art in a contemporary manner. With Trough these seemingly mundane subjects, Zeng demonstrates his vigorous painting ability and his desire to shift from expressing daunting human psychics to reconciling his inner self with nature and his surroundings. The paintings no longer reflect conflicts and restlessness in the world; instead they are parts of an introspective odyssey in searching for truth within that goes beyond rational understanding.