戴陈连：一只麻雀的自我解剖
顾振清
在当代艺术实验中，艺术家究竟是实验者，还是被实验者？
欧美现代、当代艺术的习得和操练，是中国年轻艺术家一种具有普遍性的自我实践。欧美文化一砖一瓦量化分析事物间不同特点的逻辑力量，将现代艺术建立为一种严密的学术体系，却把当代艺术编织为一种有始无终、有头无尾而又无边无际的社交网络。一百年前欧美文化中心主义掌控的话语权，一百年后却被无数后起国家和地区不断分解、分享。时过境迁，互联网络和全球化条件下，人类开放、多元、共享、自治的精神，让世界变得更为平坦，让国际文化交流模式变得更为平等。戴陈连有路借路、有桥借桥，以其谨严的技术理性历练各种方法论和形式主义。他在欧美文化系统的每个梯度、环节中耐心地抚摸、探求自己可以连通的精神支点。哪怕有一个缺口、一个空挡，可以让自己充塞其中，他都想借此建构起一个可以根植在历史中、体系中的自我创新的世界。戴陈连在画面上的反复实验、来回拼杀，所验证绝不是一个精神重建的文化借口，而是一个真正的文化出口。
戴陈连的勇气，常常是用来对付自己的，在当代艺术语境中，遇佛杀佛，遇我杀我，不断追逐更换跑道、跳出三界的机缘。在作品中、在表演现场，戴陈连所清理的不仅是客观的常识和规则，更是主观的观念和价值判断。他不断打开自己的内在，晾晒自己吞噬或反刍过的所有路桥，检视自己消化或未消化的所有精神架构。戴陈连不仅善于解剖麻雀，也善于把自己当做麻雀来自我解剖。他在艺术上这种独具特色的系统化推进，其实是艺术家在自我认知、自我评估进程中一种公开的自我解蔽、自我剖析。戴陈连的自我解剖却不是彻底的精神自戕。他的锋芒能洞穿所有的自我化身，却无法贯穿那个自由自在的自我真身。他冷酷的自我批判无法逾越一条根深蒂固的软肋：即他骨子里幸存的中国文人画趣味和萨满精神。也许，这条软肋是他艺术生命得以延续、演进的真正所在。
Dai Chenlian: the Self-Dissection of a Sparrow
Gu Zhenqing
In contemporary art practice, is the artist the experimenter, or the subject of the experiment?
Acquisition and training in Western modern and contemporary art are universal self-practices among young Chinese artists. The logical power of rigid quantitative analysis in Western culture has established modern art as a rigorous academic system and woven contemporary art into a vast, boundless social network. One hundred years ago, the discourse was ruled by Western ethnocentrism, and one hundred years later, it has been split up and shared by countless latecomer countries. Now things have really changed. With the internet and globalization, mankind has grown more open, diverse, connected and autonomous, and the world has grown flatter, ushering in more equal forms of international cultural exchange. Dai Chenlian uses every path available to explore and practice variations in methodology and formalism with his rigorous technical rationalism. He patiently feels his way through every gradient of the Western cultural system in search of spiritual fulcrums he can connect to. Wherever there is the slightest gap or space, he wants to squeeze through and erect a world of self-innovation that can be rooted in history and the system. What his repeated experiments and eliminations verify is not a pathway for the spiritual reconstruction of culture, but a true export passage for culture.
Dai Chenlian’s bravery is often put to use to conquer his own self, engaging, in the contemporary art context, in killing the Buddha when you meet the Buddha, killing the self when you meet the self, pursuing a new runway for escape from the three realms of the universe. In his artworks and on the site of his performances, what Dai clears up is not objective common sense and norms but subjective concepts and value judgments. He constantly opens up his own interiority, exposing all of the paths and bridges that he has swallowed up or ruminated on, and examining all of the spiritual structures that he has digested or has yet to digest. Dai Chenlian is not only skilled at dissecting sparrows, he is also skilled at turning himself into a sparrow for self-dissection. His progression along this unique system that is art is actually the artist’s progression of self-knowledge and self-examination through self-dissection and analysis. Dai Chenlian’s self-dissection, however, is not total spiritual suicide. His scalpel can penetrate all of his own avatars, but it cannot cut into his true, free self. There is one deep-rooted membrane through which his cold self-criticism cannot pass, and it consists of the literati sensibility and shaman’s spirit that survive in his bones. Perhaps this membrane is the true driver of the extension and progression of his artistic life.
