熵变—朵夫的新绘画/Momo Zhang 2025

“熵变”并非单纯的物理概念，而是一种存在的隐喻。它标示着秩序的松动与意义的坠落，也揭示着世界自我消耗的内在节律。在朵夫的绘画中，熵不再是终结的指向，而是一种精神的动态——一种从神性流失的时代中，重新探寻光的努力。

自本世纪初起，朵夫持续地在画布上书写十字的形态。那是信仰的几何，也是宇宙的原点。它被不断重复、拆解、稀释，最终褪为无声的结构。十字架的隐退，不是信仰的消散，而是其进入更深层次的潜行：从显形走向本体，从形象的纪念转为灵魂的律动。

在这一阶段的作品中，《关联》的秩序如同初生的平衡，是结构的呼吸；《未定》在倾斜与漂移间暗示着世界的摇摆；《在世存在》让能量的交叠转化为灵魂的流徙；《端常》于极度克制中复现神性的宁静；而《一二三四》与《一二零四七》则将这一精神线索推至极限，在崩解的临界点上召唤新的秩序。它们构成一条隐形的向度——由形入无形，由秩序趋混沌，再由混沌返向光。

这些作品的背后，潜藏着对当下文明的冷冽洞察。科技的扩张使人类愈加便利，却也愈加空虚；知识的累积并未带来真理，反而让灵性在光亮的表面之下悄然凋零。艺术在自我表现的洪流中失去了神学的核心——表达越多，内涵越浅。朵夫拒绝这种喧嚣，以沉默为抵抗；他用极简的形式保存神性的余温，让绘画重新成为祈祷的场所。

艺术的源头本在宗教——那是人类最初向天所作的视觉祈祷。经历漫长的形态演化之后，艺术远离了祭坛，投向人自身。形式愈繁，精神愈薄。朵夫的作品，正是对此漂移的回返：他让抽象重获神性，让几何成为灵魂的经文。

“熵变”在他那里，不仅是物理的象征，更是神学的现象学：秩序的衰减与灵性的更新同时发生。绘画在此不再是造形的行动，而是存在的见证——一种在时间与光之间的呼吸。

在朵夫的画布中，

光不属于视觉，而属于信仰；

形式不诉诸语言，而召唤沉默。

当世界在熵变，

神性，依然在场。

文 / Momo Zhang

（中国美术学院艺术设计理论学士）

2025年10月4日

Entropy: The New Paintings of Dove

“Entropy” is not merely a concept from thermodynamics—it is a metaphor of being.

It signifies the loosening of order, the exhaustion of meaning, the slow dissolution of structure into flux.

In Dove’s painting, entropy becomes spiritual rather than physical: a dynamic of faith within decay, an act of seeking light in an age estranged from the divine.

Since the early 2000s, Dove has persistently inscribed the form of the Cross upon his canvases. It is both a geometry of belief and the axis of his pictorial order. Over time, this Cross has been fragmented, thinned, and dissolved, until it survives only as intersecting bands of color and space. Yet its disappearance is not loss—it is transcendence. The sacred form migrates from the visible to the essential, from figure to pulse, from symbol to breath.

In this recent body of work, Aboutc (2023) suggests the subtle equilibrium of relations; Earlym (2024) vibrates between stability and drift; Pworlds (2024) transforms dense color strata into the migration of the soul; Dax (2024) restores the stillness of divine balance; while One Two Three Four (2025) and 120.47 (2025) drive structure and energy to their threshold, where disintegration becomes creation. Together, these works trace a metaphysical trajectory—from form into formlessness, from order into chaos, from chaos back toward light.

Beneath their formal clarity lies a meditation on the entropy of spirit in the contemporary age.

Technology extends human reach yet impoverishes the soul; knowledge multiplies, yet wisdom recedes.

Art, once born of worship, has become an instrument of self-expression—its noise drowning the silence of transcendence. Dove resists this dissipation through austerity and restraint. His minimalism is not reduction but devotion; it restores painting as a site of prayer, where silence becomes the language of faith.

Art was born from religion. The earliest image was not expression, but invocation. Across millennia, as art drifted from the altar to the marketplace, its forms grew complex while its spirit thinned. In Dove’s practice, art returns to its origin—not through imitation of the sacred, but through the recovery of its metaphysical ground. His abstraction reclaims the theological dimension of painting: it is not the construction of image, but the witnessing of existence.

For Dove, entropy is not an end but a passage. In the decay of form, new order breathes.

In the fading of visibility, the unseen grows radiant.

His canvases are not depictions, but acts of being—oscillations between time and eternity, between structure and grace.

In his paintings,

light no longer belongs to vision, but to faith;

form no longer speaks in language, but in silence.

Even as the world dissolves in entropy,

the Divine remains.

Text by Momo Zhang

(Bachelor of Art & Design Theory, China Academy of Art)

October 4, 2025