​文/查常平 个人的生命线，同时也是人类生命伦理的上线！ 无论下线还是上线，人的生命其实就是要在其不确定性中寻求确定性、在突破确定性中进入不确定性，进而实现生命的自我升华。当代艺术家朵夫的近作，为艺术爱者敞现了人的这种生命存在之动荡两极。在作品《未定（Earlym）》（2024）中，左右倾斜延展的黑色线块，漂移在空中，犹豫不决地寻找着自己的归属。它既可以理解为正在向下靠近绿色与红色粘连的“兄弟”，也可以理解为正从它们远离、向上升起的线块，甚至还可以诠释为从它们分身而出的“子孙”。或许，这就是艺术家本人心目中“未定”之意涵，更是我们当代人清晨有时“生无所向”的表征。 在媒介语言的更新方面，当代艺术家无非面临三种可能性的选择：作为开创一种新媒介的开端者，作为延续一种媒介的推进者，作为融合几种媒介的跨媒介创作者。梁绍基的“蚕丝艺术”，使其成为第一种可能性的代表人物。华人艺术界中的大部分艺术家，更多在第二、第三种可能性中实验探索。延续巴尼特·纽曼、马克·罗斯科、李禹焕的绘画路径，朵夫近二十年来主要致力于延续这种媒介语言在生命抽象表现上更新的可能性。他有別于那些以人的生命理智为主题关怀的抽象艺术家。其早期的“十字”系列（2006—2010），《创世记》系列、《农历十二月》系列（2013），以及“十”系列（2014—2023），无不是基于他对人的生命情感与其相关世界的确定性感知。至少，在他的画笔下，不管是藉着单色的重复还是多色的错落有致，一切的不确定性似乎都能够有意或无意地还原为人类某种原初确定的十字符号。他的新作《在世存在（Pworlds）》（2024）、《一二三四》（2025），其横竖色块粗细不一，在十字般的相交中竭力追求一种超稳定的静态或动态结构；其色彩分明的构形，仿佛在言说着人人关系中的社会底色生命伦理，一种共在于画面现实的、彼此怜悯的关怀伦理。人的生活事件从中涌现出来，涌现在他的《一二零四七》（2025）的交织线中。这些隐喻人的生命情感线，由少而多，或聚集或离散，诉说着人的爱恨缠绵。 ​ 现代性如果说一方面是人对确定性的塑造，那么，另一方面还有人对不确定性的祈望。就个体生命的经验而言，人的生命理智偏向对自己及其生活世界的确定性理解，而人的生命情感却注重对它们的不确定性感知。两者共同融汇在人的生命意志中，尤其在今天这个混现代的时代彼此纠缠、抗争更加剧烈，东奔西突，进而使人的个体生命获得更为饱满丰盛之“我性”。朵夫的《端常（Dax）》（2024），自上而下并排的十条色块线，如同人的个体生命中隐藏着的无数之“我（I）”；中间那道浅黄色光带似的“我”，仿佛成为了稳固、净化左右两端那些黯淡不一、正在沉沦的的“我”之“哥林多柱石”，使人在古罗马似的人生废墟上熠熠生辉。 事实上，在真实的生活世界，人往往是在确定中经历不确定、在不确定中又需要冒险地决断。人生成于两者之间。人的自我之开放性由此得以奠基，人的生命趋向无序之熵因而被否定。这就是朵夫在其作品《关联（Aboutc）》（2023）中所昭示的艺术真理：人的个体生命应该向什么开放？向着断裂的本真十字架还是连续垒建的通天塔？向着某种内在隐秘的秩序还是人为富丽的规则？ （2025年10月4日，本文作者为批评家、圣经学者、《人文艺术》论丛主编） ​ ​ An individual’s life line is also the upper bound of human life-ethics!  Whether as a lower or upper bound, human life is essentially about seeking certainty within uncertainty, breaking through certainty to enter some uncertainty, and thereby achieving self-transcendence.The recent works of contemporary artist Dove reveal to art-lovers these two turbulent poles of human existence.In the work Earlym (which means undecided, 2024), the black linear block stretches diagonally left and right, tilted at an angle, suspended in the air, hesitantly searching for its belonging. It can be interpreted as a “brother” descending ever closer towards the green and red, or as a linear block moving away from them and rising up, or even as an “offspring” splitting from them.Perhaps, this is the meaning of “Earlym” in the mind of the artist, and more so, for us contemporaries, a representation of that early-morning feeling of directionless (vita sine ratione) sometimes.  In terms of renewing the language of media, contemporary artists are essentially faced with three possible choices: being a pioneer that invents a new medium, a promoter that further develops an existing medium, or a cross-media creator that fuses several media. Liang Shaoji’s “Silk Art” makes him a representative of the first possibility. Most artists in the Chinese art world experiment and explore the second and third possibilities. Following the pictorial approaches of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Lee Ufan, Dove has devoted himself over the past two decades primarily to expanding the language of an existing medium and renewing its possibility for the abstract expression of life. He differs from those abstract artists whose thematic concern is about the intellectual experience of living. His earlier “Cross” series (2006-2010), the Genesis series, the Twelve Lunar Months series (2013), and the “Ten” series (2014-2023) are all based on his perception of the certainty of the emotional experience of living and its related worlds. At least, under his brush, whether through monochromatic repetition or polychromatic harmony, all uncertainties seem to be consciously or unconsciously reduced to humankind’s primordial, determined symbol of the cross. His new works, Pworlds (that is to say,Being-in-the-World, 2024) and One Two Three Four (2025), feature horizontal and vertical colourful blocks of varying thickness, which, intersecting to form cruciforms, strive for a super-stable static or dynamic structure. These distinctly coloured configurations seem to articulate the underlying life-ethics of human-human relationships in society, an ethics of care that entails mutual compassion and appears in the pictorial tableau. Human events of life emerge from these paintings, surfacing in the interlaced lines of his One Two Zero Four Seven (2025). These lines, as a metaphor for human emotional experience of living, seem to accumulate in number, converging or dispersing, narrating the human entanglements of love and hate.   If modernity is humankind’s shaping of certainty, it is, inversely, humankind’s yearning for uncertainty. In terms of the experience of individual lives, human intellectual experience of living leans towards the understanding of the certainty of oneself and one’s life world, while his emotional experience of living focuses on the perception of their uncertainty. Both of them merge in the human volitional experience of living, especially in this mixed-modern era, where they entangle and struggle ever more intensely, rushing and colliding, thereby allowing the individual life to attain a fuller and richer “selfhood.” In Dove’s Dax (2024), the ten parallel linear colourful blocks from top to bottom resemble the numerous“I” hidden in an individual life. The “I” being similar to a pale yellow band of light in the middle seems to become the “Corinthian pillar” that fixes and purifies the dim, varied, and sinking “I”s on its left and right, making the individual glow brilliantly amidst the ruins of life that is reminiscent of ancient Rome relics.   In fact, in the life world of reality, humans often experience uncertainty within certainty, and they need to make risky decisions in uncertainty. Life comes into being between the two.The openness of the self is thus founded, and the entropy of human life towards disorder is thereby negated. This is the artistic truth revealed by Dove in his work Aboutc (2023): To what should an individual life open himself ?To the broken authentic cross or the endlessly built Tower of Babel? To some inner hidden order or some artificial, ornate rules? (The author is a critic, biblical scholar, and editor-in-chief of Humanities & Art. Translated by Yuantao Liu)