By Glen R. Brown, Ph.D. Art Critic, Art Historian (U.S.A)
2011
At nightfall, obscurity can lead to revelation. As dusk descends, objects that appeared so clear and determined in the light of day disintegrate into the folds of a gathering gloom, causing convictions about the nature of reality to waver, perhaps even dissolve along with the contours of a physical world immersed in night. As darkness creeps over forests and meadows, suburbs and skyscrapers, our little Earth merges with the velvety blackness of a vast and mysterious universe, rendering what seemed finite suddenly infinite. As objects yield themselves up to the dark lamp of revelation that is the night, a thousand small epiphanies prompt Socratic wisdom – a knowing that we do not know – and plunge our world of experience into a realm of shadows.
When Night Falls is the latest of Xuhong Shang’s exhibitions to conjure the elusiveness of absolutes and the ultimate ambiguity of definitions. Small paintings of the Random series hang haphazardly on two sides of the gallery, like wet, wind-blown leaves adhering momentarily to a garden wall. Their images – black forms against monochrome gradients – defy the mind’s grasp, even as they suggest objects that one ought to recognize. Elusive, too, are the cryptic texts scrawled across the irregularly shaped canvases of the Moonbeam series, which suspends suggestions of the night sky tenuously from pushpins.
Night in the guise of a black butterfly, its sheer wings as impalpable as the surrounding air, floats on an unseen current, while a layer of darkness encases the buildings of a silent city, removing them from the compass of the inquisitive eye and mind. On the gallery floor, eight works from the Virtual series, created by squeezing black acrylic paint through the threads of blank canvases, suggest the surface of the earth photographed in black and white from a satellite or an outpost on the moon. Darkness, distance, indistinctness and ambiguity are devices more fundamental than forms in Shang’s When Night Falls, and the results are meanings as elusive and infinite as the night itself.
格伦.布郎 博士
美国堪莎斯州立大学美术史学终身教授, 艺术评论家
2011
当 夜幕降临时，模糊不清的黑夜有着意想不到的启示。黃昏之时，所有在白天光天化日之下所呈现的及所界定的如此清晰的一切，将脫变并被聚集在艨胧的黑暗之中。 因此而相信现实的自然己被夜幕所取消，或许尽管现实世界的轮廓还未能在夜色中完全溶解在一起。当夜幕悄悄地盖住了树林，草地，郊外及城市的高楼大厦。 我们微小的大地似乎穿上了一层来自神秘宇宙的巨大黑色， 演示出了从有限越至无限之中。 当事物在夜色之中放弃了原本的状态，那些无数个在夜色中闪动的物体及灵智，那是我们所不能获知的。 但是把我们对世界的体验推向了阴影的王国。
“夜幕降临”是商徐宏最新的实验装置个展，它施展着绝对魔幻般的最终无法明确的意义及界定。小型的“无由”系列绘画作品在展厅中无秩序地挂在墙上， 就象是那些潮湿的被风吹动的树叶瞬息粘符于花园的墙上，它们黑色的图像呈现在简单的色调之上，违背于思维的正常捕捉，尽管似乎在建议图像应被确认。同样难以确认的是那用晦涩的英文字潦草地划在不规则形状并被剪破的黑色画布之上的“月光” 系列作品，它们被悬而未决地用几个小图钉悬挂在墙上，以此暗示着夜晚的天空如此的薄弱及不确定性。
有一个黑色的物体在黑暗的笼罩下漂浮着，它几乎透明的双翼就象它周围的空气难以捉摸，漂浮于不可见的现在瞬间时空之中。同时夜色己将城市及大地套入其中，并把它们拖离于好奇的目光及思维的规范之外。在展厅的地面上一组“几乎”系列绘画作品被并列成一张大型作品，作品运用了颜料挤压与画布的纹理产生的抽象视觉效应。似乎在提醒近似卫星或遥远的月球上所拍摄的地球表面黑白图像。比较商徐宏的“夜幕降临”的形式，其中的夜色，距离，非距离感，模棱两可及意义的不明确性是一种更为重要的策略及手段。其结果产生的意义是难以被确认的及无限的。就象是晚上的夜色。
格伦. 勃郎博士，艺术评论家，美国堪莎斯州立大学艺术史终身教授
