—— 泉 国 际 ART ——
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HE HAD NO CHOICE
泉国际七年之痒
（ 文 / 畅泉 ）
2015-2022，泉国际已在艺术的泥潭里磕磕碰碰了七个年头，在这七个年头里我们与所有的艺术家一样经历了时代的无声变迁，从中有喜悦、有悲痛、有无奈、有真实、也有伪装，这些年来，正是因为这些乱七八糟的情绪与我们的艺术理想搅合为一体，伴随我们一起跌跌撞撞了无数个孤独与艰难的岁月，这七年来真的一言难尽；在追求艺术的路上，很多话不需要言说，很多苦难更需要自我用孤独把它吞咽，只有坚持自己的念想所创作的精神痕迹才能证明自我的真实存在，本质上艺术家都是与平凡人一样，各自都即将有着自我的真实宿命，每一个人在自我的艺术精神国度里，只有自己才能拯救自己，自己才能铸造自己的艺术梦想。
2015-2022, springs international has ripped in the art of seven years, we in the seven years and all artists, has experienced the changes of the silent era to have joy, sorrow, helpless, there are real, camouflage, over the years, precisely because of these at sixes and sevens emotion and our art ideal stirred up into an organic whole, Along with us stumbled together countless lonely and difficult years, these seven years really a long story; The way in the pursuit of art, a lot of words don't need to speak, a lot of suffering more need to swallow it self with the loneliness, only by insisting on the spirit of creation by his own mind trace to prove the real existence of self, artists are essentially just like an ordinary person, each will have real destiny of self, in the spiritual realm of art, only oneself can save yourself, You can create your own artistic dream. 总策划：多多（谭念一）
Chief Planner: Duo Duo (Tan Nianyi)
On the 7th anniversary of the Spring International Art Festival
pure artists series will be launched：Zhao Yinou
泉国际七周年 / 推出纯粹艺术家系列
本期艺术家：马轲
我自己注定是一个寻找的人，找回做人的道德与根源，找回我的判断、良知和爱心，找回我的出路和我本来的面目，然后成为我自己。（文：马轲）
马轲：人应该更勇敢地活在情感里
Ma Ke: People should be more brave to live in the emotions© Sanyuan Contemporary Art Center杯弓蛇影 --- 马轲的绘画
文：凯伦·史密斯
[艺术] 最深层次的驱策力就是要捕获转瞬即逝的视觉对象并传递知觉感受：即兴高采烈、恐惧战栗、沉思平静、强烈欲求、哀婉悲怆等等，就是我们在生活中频繁经历的各式情感，是当我们受到打击而震惊的神经被常规惯例、时间和距离所麻木并进而遮蔽所有记忆前的诸多体验。这种对攫取瞬间体验的渴望是一种不易获得的渴望。。。马轲，1970年生于山东淄博。同样作为学院派的“产物”，他的艺术之路也是沿着中国大多数油画家所走过的路成长起来的。他有着像孩子一样的绘画天赋，但是，他是克服了来自家庭的反对意见才最终得以进入大学学习美术的。1990年，马轲进入天津美术学院油画系学习，在那里获得了学士学位和硕士学位，并在毕业后留校任教。如果不是1998年去非洲做义务教师的经历，他可能还会继续留在天津当老师。因此，当他1999年回到中国，便决定继续他的求学之路，并师从北京中央美术学院著名抽象表现主义画家袁运生。结合他在非洲的经历，他重新开始的学习便平添了一种“复兴”的感觉，包括明确地把重点放在了中国的古典绘画和文化上，也因此为他在绘画上确立了一个新的方向、新的抱负。“杯弓蛇影”是马轲第一个主要个展，对那些视绘画为欣赏对象的人来说，这将是一个非常值得期待的展览。第一次接触马轲绘画的人会觉得有些惴惴不安，却又无法不沉醉其中。他的作品探索的是现实与人性的一个侧面，是丑陋、间或也让人反感的一面，但他却以一种深具说服力的方式呈现出来。他的绘画是他情感的可视化表现，是他“频繁经历的各式情感，是被常规惯例、时间和距离所麻木并进而遮蔽所有记忆前的诸多体验。”2001line50x70cm,drawing on paper，
ma Ke's paintings
2002pain75x105cm,drawing on paper，
ma Ke's paintings
2001 dance oil on canvas,143x200cm,
ma Ke's paintings
在我最早看到的马轲作品中，《拥抱》是其中之一。在2011年初夏的热浪中，我去到马轲工作室，在那里，我看到了第一幅他的作品，也是他众多作品中的一幅。不是因为季节性的热意让他的工作室显得沉闷，而是眼前这个单独放置的作品，是画面中意欲覆盖在作品左边两个人物身上的无尽黑暗，以及与虚空的暗黑空间并置的像上衣一样着在每个人物身上的一片引人注目的血红色光泽。如此的对照是另一个现代主义艺术家希阿姆·苏丁（Chiam Soutine）所喜爱的。红色的朱砂看上去栩栩如生、充满活力，体积庞大却又毫无凹凸，让人条件反射地向后退去，以便眼睛能够适应画面中所描绘的一切。2002 gril 50x70cm,drawing on paper，2002 nine suns 55x75cm,drawing on paper，2002 pain 50x70cm,drawing on paper，
ma Ke's paintings
在《拥抱》画面空间的两个部分之间，黑暗只不过是一个令人稍觉费解的综合因素的一部分，没有它，画面便会缺乏张力，缺乏干扰力，更会缺乏相互对立的关系，而这一切，都在马轲的掌控下完美地契合在一起。那种微妙的平衡在很大程度上依赖于左边两个人物，以及这“一对儿”的身体特征和围绕着他们的空间之间的张力。他们是谁？身材高大略显古板的男子威风凛凛地站在那里，手臂环抱着一个头部微微靠在他肩膀上的女人。尽管这个女人的眼睛望着下方，她略低的目光刚好表现出她模棱两可的姿势，这从她的脸上便能看出。至关重要的是，我们全然领会了她的表情：固执地向下看着的双眼，完全挡住了来自外部的任何审读——事实上，它们是闭着的。因此，人们直觉地会以为她只是在享受这个拥抱，当然，人们应当满足于寂寞黑暗中来自爱人的拥抱。黑暗，加上所造成的被打扰了的感觉，让我们误以为闯进了一个私密空间，也因此发现两个充满渴望的人窃取的秘而不宣的拥吻。然而，也就在同一瞬间，却有什么地方让我们觉得不对劲。越仔细看，就越是觉得这似乎违背了女人的意愿，她只是在听任顺从而已，因为，除了憎恶当下这个被迫而为的亲近，她别无它法。由此，正如沙马导言中所说的那样，越是盯着画面看，就越能从这个充满了画意的作品中感受到它对个人世界所构成的威胁和恫吓。2005 hero oil on canvas,200x254cm，2005,《蛛》（《Spider》）ma Ke's paintings如果将这种感觉简单地归因于观者的个人经历（在本文中，是我的个人感受），而不是一个普遍的反应，亦没什么不妥。事实上，随着时间的推移，观看这张画或其他任何马轲的作品，都确然会得到答案。但是，如果把《拥抱》与马轲其他众多作品放在一起，一个简单的解释是相当站不住脚的。所以，马轲在一张接一张的作品中采用的构成方法，令他最终的目的看上去不仅仅是尚未确定，更是处于摇摆不定当中。《拥抱》就是其中最好的例子。 一般说来，马轲作品中最让人觉得相互对立的就是对那些众多人物漫不经心的表达方式，以及其他一些并置物，即那些似乎存在危险或引发痛苦的物体。这在他2006-2008年间早期创作的作品中有着大量的表现，但是，总体上看，与近几年的作品相比，那时的作品在环境氛围的处理上有着更多的文学意境。构造上的密集纷乱，有着浓厚戏剧性情趣的场景，从那些参与者摆放的姿势，我们或许可以将它们当成是一场闹剧，一个由贝尔托·布莱希特（Bertol Brecht）或让·热内（Jean Genet）演出的黑色戏剧。与《拥抱》不同的是，许多这些画面组成成分看起来像是被我们观者打断了，被我们直视的明察秋毫的双眼捕捉到了，这些场景以及它们所描绘的令人不安的活动，都是毫无掩饰的现实瞬间。在这样的构成中，定名为《室内》的作品表现的是靠近画面左侧中景中一位坐在安乐椅上的女人，正对她右后方的——从动势看上去像是在她前面——是另一个女人，而她头上向空中伸出的五把刀则形成了一个弧形光环。至于刀具扮演的是一个欺瞒角色中的一部分，还是一个暗杀者之刃的进攻，没人能说清。她看上去正在靠近画面中间最下方那个脸朝下躺着的背运的男人——他的眼睛凝视着前方，但并不正对着观者的角度。谁也不知道他在干嘛，事实上，他显然一点都没意识到来自背后那个女人和那些渐渐逼近的刀具的威胁，并且，压在他后背上的众多黑球仿佛也没让他觉得特别痛苦。所以，他的这个动势让人以为是某种虐待形式，或即将进行的复仇行动，也许仅仅是一个马戏节目，它情节剧似的剧情只是为了娱乐观众。 2006 lightnin oil on canvas,200x150cm,2006 'Female' paper comprehensive materials2006 reading 105x75cm,drawing on paper，
ma Ke's paintings
马轲作品中的紧张感大多源于这种略带距离的亲近感和一个光环式的中心人物，以及来自二号参与者的矛盾情绪，正如作品《审椅子》表现的那样。这是画家一而再再而三使用的一个道具，随着时间的推移，当说明性或文字性的东西大都被简化了的符号所代替时，这个绘画元素使用的频率会越来越低。这也是常有的事，当艺术家渐渐对他们的风格感到自在和自信时，就会进入一个归纳总结、去粗取精的过程，从而将他们早期过剩的东西去除掉，再采用一个更为精确明晰、更为适用的形象化语汇来作为表现手段。作为绘制过程的一部分，画面中的每一个边缘，每一个线条和笔触，每一个痕迹，都被当作是精心策划和单独精心制作的结果。在马轲的作品中，这些元素通常会有几种表现形式。首先是技法应用范围，即在创作实际空间和拓展空间时，从一个点到另一个点的转换，通过它可以使人物倾侧。这也是为什么马轲作品中的人物头部和身体有着怪异的透视的原因，即那种一反常态的矮胖和粗厚。其次，就是显著强调对黑色的运用——从普通的背景到一个构成成分。当用于背景时，它并不是要与其它任何对比色一起达成一个表面的视觉情节，相反地，它代表了无限蔓延的空间和时间，一个远离了画面中压扁了的空间，从而营造出一个庞大笨拙的虚空，正如《拥抱》中看见的那个亘古不变的永恒一样。在马轲将黑色作为颜色使用的地方，无论是画面中的实体还是与之相对应的开放空间，他都为它们注入了一种可怕的力量。这在“黑色”的女性人物的形象上表现的最为明显，这也让反复出现的形象与场景相符，更是一种重现。这个再现不仅仅是画面构筑中反复使用的一个元素，也带有一种威胁氛围。这些，都是马轲赋予给它们的生命。色彩强化。马轲作品的色调总是与冷色相伴。即便马轲《在人间》和《肖像》中偏爱采用的粉红色和淡紫色，也都透着一种冷冷的寒意，还包括常用的酸黄色、中国红以及一种冷调的深红色，也都如此。其中一些颜色通常被用来制造惊人的视觉对比，也许，这和马轲1997-1998年间在新成立的单一民族国家厄立特里亚的经历有关，当时，为了中非友谊，他以援教老师身份在当地一个单一民族大学里培训美术教师。除了是日常文化生活的一部分，这也是一种情感经历。2007 fale9 oil on canvas,180x290cm,2007 a shout oil on canvas,60x80cm,2007 indoor oil on canvas,180x360cm，
ma Ke's paintings
《女孩儿》是马轲尤为令人不安的作品之一。画面中女孩儿的动势可以理解成惊恐万状、挫折痛苦。向前缩成一团，双手被裹了起来——让我们假设一下，她是被不知道什么材料做的上下与围巾连在一起的黑色带状物绑了起来——她几乎被捆的动弹不得，就好像是用自动收紧的套索绑着一样，只要一动就会越来越紧。。。越来越紧。。。这里的不协调性是通过反差表现出来的，即女孩子在自然状态下散发出的人性本质，以及她身穿的酒会礼服所暗示的老练或性意识。背景是苍白暗淡的色调，好似乳蛋白石，或像半干的冬天泥土一样的洋灰色，布满了画面空间，仿佛在找寻它最终的落处，因而从上到下都留下了它的痕迹。这个隐喻式的混沌状态或有着原始困扰之意的场景，意味着这个女人曾看见了什么，而最终为了保持体力，她将焦点放在了她的手上。我们必须将此视为是一个逃跑意图，至于她目睹了什么，或到底是怎样的一股力量包围着她，我们将永远不会知道。看着马轲站在一幅画前解释着他的作品，事情变得越来越清楚：他画面中的每一个人物是多么的意味深长，无论女人还是男人，都是他自己的象征，也是人性面貌的体现。一般而言，他的作品涉及的是集体主义的统一社会中的个体异化，但是，这些观察总合却转变成一个人类经验的精华所在，且并未受到文化或特殊事件的限制。然而，个人问题通常都被看成是微不足道的事。马轲作品中的问题清楚地指向了超出一般人经历的极端不同的事物，但那也不代表我们不认同它们。例如，在戏剧性场面中，背叛是唯一一个最能支配人们情感的东西。在马轲的世界中没有盟友：每个人都不可信，也不能相信那些不得已与之分享这个虚构世界的人。2009 embrace oil on canvas,254x200cm,
ma Ke's paintings
2009 lover oil on canvas,200x254cm,
2009 beingoil on canvas,200x150cm.
“ 我有时候觉得我画画很费劲，就是我没有固定的方法。我必须要有个故事，否则，作品就会成为一个游戏。”——马轲。读了这段话，可以假定马轲所有的作品都与一个这样或那样的故事有关。无论是常见的文学故事，还是尽人皆知的谚语，即那些通常有着道德寓意的故事，也是马轲阐明，甚或，颠覆的东西。然而，在最终的作品中，任何方面的故事情节都是毫不相干的。故事是作为画面气氛的依据才存在的，毫无疑问，如此气氛下串起的故事张力给画面构图提供了了一个框架，同样地，也是为了抵抗他上面所说的游戏天性。它是颜料适度的理由所在，是清晰的线条位置和形状所在，除此之外，任何一根线条或滴落的颜色就好像一条正在绘制的蛇脚。然而，最为重要的是，马轲的作品依然有着绘画特点，这从第一笔落在画布上时便确立了，加上如何在创作过程中慢慢展开的场景，以及如何形成空间感，并且，画面中的每一样东西又是如何满足视觉关系转换需要的，而这些改变或许会如戏剧一样出现在人们眼前。“有时候，我的绘画相对来讲是比较散漫的或者是很自由的一个状态，”马轲说道，“我没有集中说解决什么问题。”然而，证据显示，那些随处可见的变化多端的痕迹就是考虑画面走向的一个过程，在逐渐构造它们的过程中，它们的影子投在了半透明的颜料涂层上，并在最终的作品中与之相呼应。这些都是由来已久的关注点和价值观，在当代艺术中，它们起着支撑作用，却不是主导作用，在马轲的画中，它是主角。“我慢慢地、直观地画画。我并不只关注一个问题。我经常跳一下，因为绘画我认为在我这拨人里边也是一个支离破碎的概念，什么是绘画？什么是你的绘画？”在他的绘画方法中，一个创意总是翻来覆去地推敲，我们可能会认为马轲有西绪福斯情结，为现实所伤，却又在追寻现实。德拉克罗瓦（Delacroix）曾经说“推动那些天才前进以及激发他们工作的，不是各种新想法，而是他们一直觉得说出来的想法依旧美中不足。”马轲承认，在他看来，他所探求的主题还有太多值得挖掘的地方。而在他的手中，人的潜能可能会转化为一个需要解决的难题和困境，但对马轲本人来说，这在绘画中也能成为一种有益的方法，即通过那种“比物质实质更为有力的”假象，为“不易获得的需求攫取瞬变现象”。2010 fale6 oil on canvas,200x200cm,2010 gril3 oil on canvas,200x150cm，2010, In the World 200x150cm, oil on canvas,
ma Ke's paintings
The Shadow of the Snake: The Paintings of Ma Ke
[Art’s] deepest urge is to trap fugitive vision and passing sensation – elation, horror, meditative calm, desire, pathos—the feelings we have when we experience life most intensely, before routine, time and distance dull the shock and veil the memory. This craving to nail down transient experience is an unassuageable craving…
Ma Ke was born in Shandong [Zibo] in 1970. He followed the route typical to most oil painters in China who are the products of its art academies: he displayed a talent for drawing as a child, overcame some familial opposition to his desire to study art before triumphing at an academy. Ma Ke was accepted into the oil painting department of Tianjin Art Academy in DATE, where he completed a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s. He was retained by the academy as a teacher, and he would likely have remained there in Tianjin were it not for an opportunity presented to him in 1997 that took him abroad to Africa as a volunteer teacher. When Ma Ke returned to China in 1999, he chose to pursue a second period of study under the revered abstract expressionist painter Yuan Yunsheng, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Compounded with his experiences in Africa, this renewed experience of learning—which was one that included a specific focus on classical Chinese painting and culture—shaped a new direction and ambition in Ma Ke’s painting. Shadow of the Snake is Ma Ke’s first major solo exhibition and for anyone who owns a particular appreciation of painting, the exhibition will have been well worth the wait.2011 Smoking 55X75CM Watercolor on paper, 2011 consciousness oil on canvas,200x150cm，2011 dusk oil on canvas,110x90cm，2011 fale10 oil on canvas,200x254cm,201025
ma Ke's paintings
A first encounter can be a disquieting experience but Ma Ke’s style of painting is strangely addictive. His paintings explore the ugly, occasionally distasteful, side of reality and human nature, but he presents it in a way that is compelling. The paintings are visualisations of the feelings he has when experiencing 'life most intensely, before routine, time and distance dull the shock and veil the memory.’One of the first of Ma Ke’s paintings I saw was Embrace. This was in his studio in the heat of early summer in 2011. It was not seasonal warmth that made his studio seem so stifling; it was the presence of this painting alone, and was prompted by the fathomless expanse of blackness that appears to be draped over the two figures on the left side of the painting. Juxtaposed with the blackness of that spatial void is a dramatic slab of sanguine brilliance that each of the figures wears as a piece of upper body clothing. It is a contrast with which another Modernist, Chiam Soutine, would well have been satisfied. The red is a vermillion so living and vital, bulky and yet so flat, that the first impulse was to recoil, to allow the eyes to adjust.In Embrace that blackness is but half of a puzzling equation between the two sections of the pictorial space, without which either one might be less intense, less disturbing and rather less irreconcilable than Ma Ke has brilliantly managed to make them. That delicate balance depends as much upon the tension between the two figures on the left themselves as between the physicality of this “couple” and the void that surrounds them. Who are they? A large stolid male figure stands inviolable with his arms wrapped around a woman whose head is ever so slightly inclined to his shoulder. Even though she looks down, her gaze lowered just enough to render her posture ambiguous, her face is revealed to us. It is imperative that we fully grasp her expression: in looking stubbornly downwards, her eyes shield themselves from a full external scrutiny. They are actually closed and, for that reason, it is first instinct perhaps to assume that she is enjoying the embrace: surely, a human being ought to be contented to be thus in the arms of a lover in the solitude of the dark. The darkness, coupled with the sense of intrusion that is fostered on to us, suggests that we have stumbled into a private space and, in so doing, uncovered a stolen, secret clinch between two willing individuals. Yet, at the very same instant, something tells us that this assumption is wrong. The more you look the more the woman seems to be trapped against her will: submitting, because there is no option not to, but hating every single moment of this enforced contact. Thus, the more you look at this painting the more it threatens to destabilise your world through the workings of the very pictorial means that Schama cites.2012, fale3 oil on canvas,438x390cm，2012 acrobat oil on canvas,254x200cm，2012 alone oil on canvas,133x236CM，
ma Ke's paintings
You would not be wrong to ask if that feeling is simply determined by the viewers personal experience alone, in this case mine, rather than being a universal response. Time spent with this or, indeed, with any one of Ma Ke’s paintings definitely provides the answer to that question. But when Embrace is placed in the context of Ma Ke’s broader body of work, softer interpretations become rather untenable. Then, in the approach Ma Ke takes to composing painting after painting, his aim appears solely to unsettle and to destabilise. Embrace is simply one of his finest examples.In general, what feels most irreconcilable in Ma Ke’s works are the casual expressions of so many of the figures in their juxtaposition with others nearby who seem to be in positions of danger or distress. This is abundantly exampled in earlier paintings dating around 2006-8 and which are, on the whole, much more literary in ambience than those produced in recent years. The scenes are underpinned by a dense drama that has been tightly, intricately constructed. From the positioning of the players, we might be looking at scenes from a farce—a dark play by Bertol Brecht or Jean Genet. Unlike Embrace, many of these compositions appear as if we, as viewers, have interrupted the action. Caught in the headlights of our gaze, these scenes and the disturbing activities they seem to portray are as moments of naked reality. In one such composition, entitled Interior, a woman sits in an easy chair in the pictorial mid-ground, on the left side of the painting. Directly to her right—behind her for now but poised to overtake her—is a woman whose head is haloed by an arc of five knives suspended mid-air. Whether in wielding the knives that action is part of a juggling-act or the advance of an assassin’s blade, we cannot say. She appears to be closing in on a hapless man who lies face down across the width of the pictorial space in the centre at the bottom—the very front—of the composition. He gazes out towards but not quite at us. It is not at all clear what he is doing, and the fact that he is apparently unaware of the woman and the knives looming so threateningly at his back. He also does not seem particularly distressed by the fact that he is weighed down by the enormous black ball that nests in the small of his back. So whilst his being thus pinned down suggests some form of torture or vengeance about to be unleashed, it might simply be a circus act put on with full melodrama for our entertainment. 2012 oil on canvas, 350x420cm,
2012 drama oil on canvas,200x200cm,Much of the tension in Ma Ke’s paintings derives from the distance-proximity and aura of one central figure-actor and the ambivalence of the secondary players that is conveyed in Trial Chair. It is a tool he uses again and again. Increasingly through the years this has been achieved through a reduction in pictorial elements as the illustrative or literal devices are replaced by shorthand notations. It is often the case that as an artist becomes increasingly comfortable and confident of their style they set in motion a process of reduction and distillation through which early excess gives way to an ever more precise clarity in pictorial preference and vocabulary appropriate to expressing it. As part of the process, every edge, every line and stroke, every mark, is considered, plotted and individually crafted. The elements consistent in Ma Ke’s paintings come in several forms. First is the range of techniques applied to creating physical spaces and to stretching space such that the figures appear to bend through it if caught in transit from one spot to the next. That is the reason why the heads and bodies of Ma Ke’s figures are weirdly foreshortened to appear abnormally squat and thick. Next, is the dramatic, emphatic use of black, both as a general backdrop to a composition and as a colour. Where used in the background, it is not intended to achieve a superficial visual drama with any other contrasting colour. Instead, it represents the infinite spread of space and time, so far from flattening the space of the picture plane, it creates a hulking void; a changeless eternity as seen in Embrace. Where Ma Ke uses black as a colour—as a solid as opposed to open space—he manages to imbue it with a frightening power. This is most obvious in the shape of the “black” female figure that makes recurrent appearances in scenes that also recur. This recurrence is not merely a repeat of the elements of which a painting is constructed but of the aura of menace with which Ma Ke suffuses them.
2012 embrace oil on canvas,318x212cm，2012 fale4 oil on canvas-254x400CM,2012 game oil on canvas,200x150cm，
Colour ii Ma Ke’s paintings is inalienably cool in tone; even where a bright hue such as the pink and lilac Ma Ke has a fondness for [as in Mortal World and Portrait] is used it is icy cold. There is a recurrent acid yellow, a China red, and a very cold crimson. Some of these colours, the way they are used to produce striking visual contrasts, maybe well result from a period that Ma Ke spent in the newly created nation-state of Eritrea in 1997-8, as a volunteer teacher, there to train art teachers the name of Sino-African friendship at the nation-state’s one university. It is also tied to the emotions that were experienced there as part of that culture’s daily life.2012 sand storm oil on canvas,219x290cm,2012 shout oil on canvas,200x254cm，Girl is one of Ma Ke’s more disturbing paintings. The girl’s posture could be read as shock or horror, frustration or anguish. Hunched forward, her hands muffled—and, we presume, further united by the lengths of taut black strips of some unnameable material that is attached top and bottom to the muffler—she can it seems turn neither left nor right for she is caught in bind like a self-tightening noose that responds to the slightest motion; tightening, tightening… Incongruous here is the contrast between the raw human essence she exudes and the implied sophistication or sexuality of the cocktail dress she wears. The background is pale in tonality, a milky opal, cement grey like semi-dried winter mud. It has been whipped around the pictorial space to find its place, and traces of its passage from top to bottom remain. Out of this implied chaos or place of elemental disturbance, this woman emerges with only what she has witnessed to sustain the energy she now focuses in her hands. We must surely interpret this as a will to escape; what it was that she witnessed, or what force has laid siege to her being, we will never know.Watching Ma Ke explaining his work standing before a painting, it becomes clear how profoundly every single one of the figures in his compositions, female as much as male, is himself as much as being aspects of human nature. Generally speaking, his paintings deal with the alienation of the individual in a collective, unified society, but the summation of these observations is transformed into an essence of human experience not limited by culture or by specific events. Individual human problems, however, are often petty. The issues in Ma Ke’s works clearly point to extremes beyond anything the average person might experience, but that does not mean we cannot identify with them. For example, betrayal is the single most dominant emotion in these dramas. There are no allies in Ma Ke’s world. Everyone is to be distrusted, and is distrusting of those with whom they are forced to share the painted stage.2012, stand strom oil on canvas,219x390cm，2012 The Artist 105X75CM，Watercolor on paperAt times, it is not easy for me to create as I have no fixed method or process in my work. I have to have a story or the painting becomes a game.Reading this statement we assume that Ma Ke’s paintings must all relate to a story of one kind or another. Whether familiar cultural tale or proverb, the stories often have a moral purpose, which Ma Ke unravels and, occasionally, subverts. In the final paintings, however, any aspect of plot is irrelevant. The stories function as atmosphere; it is without doubt this atmosphere across which the tension is strung for the story provides the framework for mapping out a composition and, equally, for resisting the nature of the game he references. It is the logic that impels the sobriety of the palette, the precise placing and form of the lines. It explains why the entire dynamic of a painting is just so, and marks the end point of the process, beyond which any single line or drip of paint would be like painting feet on a snake.Yet, beyond all else Ma Ke’s works are still about painting: about what happens on a canvas from the action that imprints the first mark, how the process of creating a scene unfolds, how space takes shape, and how everything within the picture plane is subject to the shifting needs of visual relations such that changes may occur that are as dramatic as the drama they describe. 'My paintings can seem relatively careless and sloppy at times,’ he says 'without any consideration of formal pictorial problems.’ And yet, evidence of the process of considering what goes where is everywhere in evidence in the traces of multiple changes which echo in the final work, their shadows trapped in layers of semi-opaque paint as they are built up. These are age-old concerns and values, which are accorded supporting rather than leading roles in contemporary art, here take a starring role. 'I paint slowly and intuitively. I am not focused on one problem. I frequently jump from one point to another. For my generation, the concept of painting has yet to crystallise. I am always asking myself what is painting? What is my painting?’2015 Holding Weight 153X138CM, oil on canvas,2015 Riverside 254X200CM, oil on canvas,2015 Carving the Boat and Seeking the Sword 297X243CM，Oil on canvas,In his approach to painting an idea by returning to it again and again, we might decide Ma Ke has something of an underlying Sisyphus complex. Delacroix is quoted as saying 'What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.’ Ma Ke agrees that in his eyes there is so much more to be mined from the subjects he has begun to explore. In Ma Ke’s hands, Man’s potential is transformed into a conundrum, a dilemma to be resolved, and which, for Ma Ke, can be achieved in a meaningful way in painting, which alone feeds that 'unassuageable craving to nail down transient experience’, through illusions that are 'more compelling than the material reality.’ 2014 Ceremony 200X200CM, oil on canvas,2014, The Other Shore 2 200x254cm, oil on canvas,2014, Artist, 55X75CM, watercolor on paper,The King's Game (II), 2020, oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm,
ma Ke's paintings
Aimo Machine, 2020, Oil on canvas, 239 x 173 cm,
ma Ke's paintings
Lamp, 2020, oil on canvas, 229 x 179 cm,
ma Ke's paintings
Sky, 2017, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm,
WO ART
马轲，1970年生于山东淄博。1994年毕业于天津美术学院绘画系油画专业，后留校任教。1998年去到非洲援教一年，2005年获硕士研究生学位，毕业于中央美术学院油画系四画室。非洲的经历，使他对过往的生活和文化有了重新的解读，作品中平添了一种“生命的意识”，包括明确地把重点放在了绘画语言与个人生存感受的呼应之上，也因此为他在绘画上确立了一个新的方向和新的抱负。批评家、策展人凯伦·史密斯说，“甚至可以将马轲描述成中国第一个真正意义上的“现代主义画家”。（凯伦·史密斯，“杯弓蛇影—谈马轲的绘画”站台中国出版，2012年）
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