目擊的光影－談林葆靈的夜曲敘景 | Witness of the Light and Shadow: Discussion of Lin Bao Ling’s Nocturne Series

目擊的光影－談林葆靈的夜曲敘景[1] 

（English version below↓）

文／游原一

一座城市有一片風景，一段人生有一種風情。出沒於城市繁華美景的林葆靈和領會人情漠然的他，正透過繪畫描繪著這些曾身歷其境的都會景象。在他略顯疲憊的眼神裡，這些都市美的有些不切實際。整個城市是流動的，光影也是流動的。這樣令人眩暈於剎那的美，頗貼切法國詩人波特萊爾（Charles Baudelaire，1821-1867）所以為的那種稍縱即逝的「現代性」－一種過渡、短暫、偶然的表現。抓住那抓不住的光線，則成為林葆靈自許的藝術目標。林葆靈以都市景觀、人群形象以及光影媒質作為表現平台，並以逐步意象感發的藝術策略和方式來隱語其個人情思。具體而言，他利用模糊化和流動感的技巧渲染出，在燈火絢麗的城市表象裡的疏離感，進而標顯作品內在精神世界的創作核心。[2]

關於他的煉光之術

觀看林葆靈的作品，其視線很容易留意到畫面光影之間的明暗效果，以及它們彼此的平衡感和相互性。「光影」可謂係林葆靈這近十年（2003-2013）的創作重心。視察他的創作脈絡，發覺這些「光影」面貌係隨著他人生歷練的累積、心境的轉變以及畫面形式與技法等諸多因素的更動，而展現出不同層次的語彙表現。對於光影有特殊感情的林葆靈，不斷嘗試關於光影表現的可能性，特別是在人造光源的探究，他更是樂此不疲。

林葆靈作品光線的表現，大體可分為在自然中以及在城市中的人造光源。就表現「自然中的人造光源」的作品而言，其作品的光源多屬烘托、陪襯風景主體的一種要素，而稍難分辨他所欲表現的重點，易將此類作品歸為一種刻畫自然之美的寫生作品，如《夜曲》（2007）、《雪夜曲》（2011）。相形之下，林葆靈對於「城市中的人造光源」顯然有較深切的領略。從視覺效果來談，這些城市中的人造光源，大致可分為幾種調性。第一種是類攝影炫光的表現，此類作品畫面多再現某個光點，作品形象多形似動態攝影中常見的失焦與晃動的手法。如《夜景》（2004）、《褐色夜曲》（2005）等作，作品富有實驗性質與摸索意味。第二種是霓虹燈光的效果。林葆靈應用一種刻意營造的光線（通常都是黃∕橙光系），使畫面映現出熾熱的光影對照和銳利的色彩對比。這類光源又以《夜曲》（2007）為例，畫面充斥著強烈霓虹光線的形貌，狀似訴說著這浮華世界裡的孤獨狀。

隨同林葆靈創作思考的開展以及創作媒材的改變，光影的質地顯得更加微妙與豐富。除前述效果外，他又轉向實驗第三種光，一種近似劇場探照燈光的表現。作品轉以黑白色調處理以彰顯畫面光源所在，如2008年至2009年的《夜曲》系列。他採取清亮而鮮明的白色光線，加深光線在畫面的形式感受，並將都會景觀的細節隱藏在光亮和陰影裡，因此，這些受到強光照射的城市景致，會被光線分解成一種辨識不清的空氣粒子。踏著光影前進的林葆靈，面對實際存在的城市風景，越來越能自在的削融許多城市街景可辨認的細節，且逐步拉高光影對比的反差，著手探尋光源的白與白、白中白的層次體現，並在畫面中摻和些許的藍與紫，構擬出第四種－掇青拾紫的光。於是，自2011年左右，他的作品開始瀰漫著一股冷清迷離、夢幻閃耀的調性，如同《藍紫色碎夜》（2012）、《藍與紫的夜曲 》（2012）。這些作品除有上述所提的光源特徵外，略有差異之處在於構圖，林葆靈以隨機的手法將畫作四周進行虛化與留白的處裡，讓光源好似從四面八方的角度照耀著這座虛擬城市。

光影的盡頭有記憶

在明亮夢幻的光線盡頭，浮現著一座城市的輪廓……，這樣的城市印象似乎一語道盡他作品的全部，美的無以言對卻浮顯問題所在。勾勒都會風光僅是林葆靈的手段，以此引出一種光影交錯的主體氛圍，才是其創作目標。因此，林葆靈的繪畫表現，並不是透過形狀或結構來進行辨認都市景觀的一種過程，而比較傾向創作者如何在這些光影瞬息變化與穿越時空的都會景色中，獲得一種心靈聯繫的經驗。林葆靈通過這些變動多端的光影，誘發觀者回想關於這些城市意象的點點滴滴，而也因這些光線變化的效果，讓這個被加工而成的城市景觀，得以孕育出無限的哲學意涵，此刻，「光影」便成為他作為情感與思想的載體。為了完成這樣的作品概念，他需要以某種方式去擺脫那些可預期的都會景觀，以及某種既定的街道結構，方能在作品中製造出他所期望的感官事件。於是他分析光線的品質、虛化城市場域與配置光線在不同位置或移動時，對觀者視線所形成的效果。

因此，林葆靈經常是描繪那些圍繞在城市物體周圍不斷浮動變化的光源粒子，以削弱原場域空間和都市建築在實體結構上的感應，如《藍與紫的五號夜曲》（2012）所展現的空間效果，觀者可以明顯感受到視覺因畫面光線所引起的膨脹感，而這樣的效果很容易喚起觀者在感官經驗和視覺心理上的記憶點。但實際上吾人所感受到的，其實僅是一片難以限定的光影容積，一種無法實際丈量測定的內在空間。誠如，正當觀者因受其作品片刻明亮的感招而接近作品時，卻發現畫中的人物缺乏細節、事物的形狀亦不完整，甚至透視空間也顯得不精準，乃至有些扭曲[3]。或許，這些略顯隨性的筆觸、走樣的物體型態或不精確的空間安排等視覺要件，確實係他作品表現的「瑕疵」，但這些缺失並無損其作品整體的表現，筆者以為這些「意外的幸運」反能深刻的記載著其個人難以忘懷的經歷。

夜，照亮了夜

無可名狀的城市風景，使人有著身在何方的迷失感。勉強辨識他畫作裡的場景，可發覺林葆靈藝術創作的資產，多來自他個人與環境之間的感受。流動游移的生活經驗，促使他巧妙地將事實與想像交織在一起，而歷經熱帶到寒帶的身體感受，造就他作品表現的溫度。換言之，林葆靈既在描寫城市，亦在書寫自己。

他的都市光影並不是單純的寫生紀錄，而傾向於挪用一些象徵性的地點，來描述一種看世界的視覺經驗，而非直白具體化的注視。他交錯地運用著散點、單點等不同的視野角度，建構出多元視角的都會場域，並利用集合式的空間，將部分景色並列、錯置，打造出屬於他個人的系統間架。林葆靈的視點不斷在改變、在游移，而這樣不按牌理出牌的構圖措施，反讓畫面全體保持一種調和性。他不斷試驗在各種場景的人工光源，有自然的、街角的、速度的[4]和黑暗的等各式各樣的光，令作品發展出一種光線與色彩遠勝過於造型描寫的風格。讓觀者不由自主的望向明亮之處，即使係不甚瞭解其作品象徵涵義的觀者，也能很單純地感受其作品畫面的光亮氛圍，這便是他的作品魅力。

林葆靈對於這些城市光影的註記，讓這些作品不再只是純粹美的體驗呈現，它更是林葆靈具體規劃、整理反思後的結果，這些都市景象成為他表達他和世界、和他人情感連結的依據所在，甚至也反映出它和我們之間的聯系。城市景觀經由林葆靈的安排與編碼後，「光影」從風景空間的表現手法中被過濾出來，而被擴大成為一種被觀看的光影事件。但，它並不是一種永恆不變的紀錄，而是一種隨時在更迭的當下的存在。「葆光曜都邑，衿懷擁虛景」，林葆靈作品光線的意義，才正要開展……

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[1] 音樂上的夜曲（Nocturne），意指引人聯想到夜晚情景的作品，被冠上此名的作品，大多是在夜間所演奏的音樂作品，所以音樂表現通常具有柔和、夢幻、優美、浪漫、多情的感覺。希望自己的作品有著夜曲特質的林葆靈，便將此概念衍用於自身的藝術創作。

[2]  關於林葆靈作品光影表現所涉及二律背反（antinomies）的討論，可參閱林葆靈，《黑夜城市中的流動光影：林葆靈繪畫創作之意涵試探》該碩士論文。

[3]  如《黑白夜曲》（2010），部分畫作空間會產生一種類凸透鏡成像時因焦距不對，而造成空間視野變形的感覺。

[4] 如2008年，林葆靈接受新加坡電信公司委託製作的作品《飛車》(Speeding)。

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感謝游原一編輯費心撰文。從初稿八千多字刪減到兩千七百字, 我想, 他追求的是一種精練

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Witness of the Light and Shadow: Discussion of Lin Bao Ling’s Nocturne Series

Written by Yu Yuani

Translated by Lin Bao Jia

Edited by Ralph Hammann

Every city has a landscape, and every life has a type of custom. Lin Bao Ling, who lives in the busy city with beautiful scenery and experienced the indifference of human nature, is depicting the cityscapes which he has experienced through his paintings. In his slightly weary eyes, the beauty of the scenery is a little unrealistic. The whole city and the lights and shadows move constantly. This instant beauty which makes us dizzy is consistent with French poet Charles Baudelaire's(1821-1867) view of the transience of Modernism -- a type of transitory, temporary, coincidental means of expression. His artistic goal is to grasp the light that cannot be grasped. He uses the cityscape, the image of the crowd and light and shadow, as platforms for expression and then he uses the artistic approach and method of expressing images step-by-step to suggest undertones of his feelings and thoughts. In a concrete way, he uses blurring and flowing techniques to express the sense of alienation beneath the brightly-lit city, and then continues to highlight his inner spiritual world in the paintings.2

Regarding his technique of dealing with the lights

Viewing his work, our attention is easily drawn to notice the contrast between the lights and shadows on the painting and the balance and correlation between them. Light and shadow has been the main focus of his painting for the last decade（2003-2013. Taking a closer look at the context of his works, we realize that the light and shadow are formed due to the changes in many factors, such as the build-up of his life experiences, the change of his mental state, changes in techniques and formal elements, etc., showcasing different expressions and meanings. He, who has special feelings for the light and shadow, tried the possibilities of expressing the lights and shadows continuously and especially concentrates on the exploration of the man-made light source.

His interpretations of lights in the artwork could be divided into two categories -- the man-made light sources in nature and the cities. In the artworks that portray man-made light sources in nature, the lights in the artwork are mostly elements that are foils to the landscapes, and it is kind of difficult to tell what his main focus is; whereas, it is easy to classify this type of work when it depicts the beauty of the natural scenery, in works such as Nocturne（2007）and Snowy Nocturne （2011. By comparison, he has a deeper grasp on the man-made light sources in the city. In terms of visual effects, his depictions of man-made light sources in the city can be divided into several types. The first type is similar to the glaring light of photography. This type of work mostly represents certain light spots, and the visual effect is like taking pictures of moving objects or shaking the camera, causing a blurred, out-of-focus effect. Works such as Nightscape（2004）and Brown Nocturne（2005）are two examples, and they are also very experimental and explorational. The second type is the effect of neon lights. He uses a special light (usually yellow or orange), to create the contrast of blazing light and shadow and the sharp contrast of colors. An example of this is Nocturne（2007, where the image is full of the shapes of strong neon light, which seems to describe our loneliness in the ostentations world.

With the development of his thoughts and the change of media he uses to paint, the quality of light and shadow in his paintings become richer and subtler. Other than the above mentioned two types, he turned to experiment with a third type of light, a type of expression similar to the searchlights in theatres. The artworks use black and white to highlight the light source, such as the Nocturne series created from 2008 to 2009. He uses limpid and bright white lights to deepen the feeling of the existence of lights in the artworks, and hides the details of the landscapes in the light and shadow. So the cityscapes that are shorn by strong lights decompose into air particles that are difficult to differentiate. Moving forward with his exploration on light and shadow, he finds it easier to get rid of and blend the distinguishable details of cityscapes that really exist, and then increase the contrast of light and shadow, exploring the differences of the white and white, and the white in white light source and how to represent them. Roughly since 2011, he has blended in some blue and purple on the artwork and created the fourth type of light that contains blue and purple. His artworks have started to contain a lonely and vague, glittering dreamy quality, such as in Fragments of Night in Blue and Purple series（2012, Nocturne in Blue and Purple series（2012. These artworks also have slight differences in compositions, as he uses random methods to leave the perimeter of the painting blank to let the light source seem to shine on the virtual city from all the angles.

There are memories at the end of the lights and shadows

At the end of the bright and dreamy light, the outline of a city emerges. This impression of the city may explain everything about his artworks in a nutshell: it is extremely beautiful, yet problems surface. Painting the cityscapes is only his means. His objective is to create an atmosphere of interweaving of light and shadow. Therefore, for him, painting is not the process of reconstructing or identifying the cityscapes by using shapes or structures. It is more prone to how the painter gains an experience of spiritual connection in these transient light and shadow and the cityscapes that pass through space and time. Through the transient lights and shadows, he triggers the viewers’ memories regarding the city. The effects of these changing lights allow the artificial cityscapes to give rise to infinite philosophical meanings. He needs to use some kind of method to get rid of the predictable cityscapes and certain fixed street structures; only then can he create the sense of events he expects to see in his works. So he analyzes and studies the quality of the lights, blurs the cities and arranges the lights in different locations, or, when the lights move; what kind of visual effects will be generated in the viewers.

Therefore, Bao Ling usually portrays the floating and changing light particles that surround the objects in the city, so the viewers do not easily identify with the actual sites, spaces and buildings structures in the city. An example is 5F Nocturne in blue and purple（2012), which showcases the effects of space; here, the viewers can obviously feel their vision expand due to the lights in the paintings. This effect could easily trigger the viewers’ memories of their sensual experiences and the visual and mental memories. But in fact, what I feel is actually just a volume of light and shadow which is hard to confine, and an inner space that is immeasurable. Similarly, when the viewer approaches the artwork because (s)he is attracted by the bright light, one finds that the figures in the painting lack of details, and that the shapes of the objects are incomplete -- even the perspective is inaccurate, a little distorted.3 Perhaps these seemingly slightly random strokes, distorted objects or inaccurate perspectives, are actually the “flaws” in his works. But these “flaws” do not affect the work’s overall quality. I think the “flaws” are “unexpected fortunes,” and actually do a good job in recording his personal unforgettable experience.

The Night Illuminated the Night

The indescribable cityscapes make one feel lost. Barely being able to distinguish the scene in his artwork makes us realize that the inspirations of his paintings mostly come from his feelings about the environment. Shifting life experiences makes him able to masterfully intertwine facts and imaginations together. His experiences in tropical areas and cold areas results in the temperatures expressed in his works. In other words, he is not only portraying the city, he is also writing about himself. His city’s lights and shadows are not sketches from nature; he is prone to using some symbolic locations to portray a visual experience about how he views the world, instead of utilizing a normal gaze. He crisscrosses the use of different angles of viewpoints, such as cavalier perspective and one point perspective, to construct a multi-angled city, and uses collective pictorial space to juxtapose or displaces certain parts of the landscapes to create his own systematic structure. His viewpoint changes constantly, and this unconventional composition allows the artwork to maintain harmony on the whole instead. He constantly experiments with different artistic expressions of light in different locations, such as artificial light in natural environments, in the street corners, in motion4 and in the dark. He has developed a style in which lights and colors are more emphasized and more important than modeling cityscapes. This forces the viewers to look at the brightly lit parts, and even those who do not understand the symbolic meaning behind the works can simply enjoy the bright atmosphere of the artwork. This is the charm of his works.

Bao Ling’s personal interpretations about the city’s light and shadow, make his works more than just a representation of aesthetic experience. They are the results of his concrete planning, organization and reflections. The cityscapes are the symbols he uses to express his feelings towards the world and the emotional connection between him and us. Through his arrangements and encoding, the light and shadow in the cities are picked up and expand to a visual issue, instead of just a means to portray the landscapes. However, it is not a record that will stay that way forever; it is an existence that changes constantly. “Bao Ling’s light shines upon the fictional city in his heart.” The meaning of light in his artwork is only beginning to expand.

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1. A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or associated with the night. It has soft,

dreamy, graceful, romantic characteristics; Bao Ling hopes his works have these characteristics, so his works were often entitled “nocturne”.

2. Regarding the discussion of the expression of lights and shadows in his artworks and antinomies, refer to the master thesis: The Flowing City Light and Darkness at Night: the Exploration of the Meanings Behind the Paintings by Lin Bao Ling.

3.For example, in Nocturne in Black and white (2010), part of the spaces in the painting is like the out-of-focus photograph formed on convex lens, causing space and perspective to distort.

4. For example, his artwork "Speeding" (commissioned by Singapore Telecommunications in 2008).