艺术是精神之光。它启迪心灵的尘埃。Art is the light of the spirit. It enlightens the dust of the mind.

—贾蔼力

-Jia Aili

贾蔼力是中国新一代艺术家中的开拓者，他以作品同时体现艺术历史知识和挑战绘画现有形式和界限的动力而闻名。贾早期作品的目的是反映个人的脆弱性与社会整体变化之间的对应关系。他通过广泛的实践追求和发展了这一理念，将抽象、肖像、奇幻意象、日常生活场景和文化主题融合在一起，巧妙地融合了过去、现在和未来。

Jia Aili, a pioneering member of a new generation of Chinese artists, is best known for works embodying at once art historical knowledge and a drive to challenge painting’s existing forms and boundaries. Jia’s aim in his early work was to reflect a correspondence between the vulnerability of individuals and shifts in society as a whole. He has pursued and developed this idea through a wide-ranging practice variously incorporating abstraction, portraiture, fantastic imagery, scenes from daily life, and cultural motifs, skillfully blending past, present, and future.

贾蔼力在1979年生于中国东北丹东。他的童年和青少年时代见证了这个国家的彻底变革。2004年毕业于沈阳市铁西区鲁迅美术学院第二画室（新具象），2005年至2007年任教。教学任务结束后，贾搬到了北京的黑桥村，同年，他的突破性个展《荒原》开幕，将他推向了国际舞台。

Jia was born in Dandong in Northeast China in 1979. His childhood and teenage years witnessed the radical transformation of the country. He graduated from the Second Studio (New Representationalism) of the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang Tiexi District in 2004, and subsequently taught there from 2005 to 2007. After the teaching engagement, Jia moved to Black Bridge Village in Beijing, and his breakout solo exhibitionThe Wasteland opened in the same year, launching him onto the international scene.

2008年，也就是北京举办奥运会的那一年，贾开始创作《我们来自世纪》（2008-2011）。这幅史诗般的画作展示了他对社会主义现实主义技术的精通和对老大师的深刻了解，包括使用薄薄的半透明颜色在光影、形状和空间之间产生积极的对话。贾笔下较松散的部分借鉴了中国古代道教绘画中的符意象，有助于他在共同的人类条件下探索自我分析。在随后的作品中，贾运用了一种流动的自然主义，描绘了令人难以置信的地点，唤起了情感的氛围。贾将自己的过程描述为从根本上直观的，他将形式逻辑应用于超验视觉的召唤。

In 2008, the year in which Beijing hosted the Olympic Games, Jia began to work onWe Are from the Century (2008–11). This epic painting demonstrates his mastery of Socialist Realist technique and deep knowledge of the old masters, including the use of layers of thin, translucent color to generate an active dialogue between light and shadow, shape and space. The looser aspects of Jia’s brushwork make reference to the talismanic imagery of ancient Chinese Taoist drawings, serving his aim of exploring self-analysis in the context of the shared human condition. In subsequent works, Jia brings a fluid naturalism to bear, depicting sites of uncanny believability and evoking atmospheres of emotional heft. Characterizing his process as fundamentally intuitive, Jia applies formal logic to the summoning of a transcendent vision.

在过去的十年里，贾继续以巨大的规模进行创作，通过更微妙、更复杂的色彩和结构，扩大了他早期画布的黑暗、戏剧化外观。他的实践演变可以追溯到新加坡美术馆（2012）等一系列展览；格拉西宫（Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi），威尼斯（2015）；西班牙马拉加当代艺术中心（2017）；和Gagosian，纽约（2019）。在最后一幅作品中，有二十九幅作品是四幅油画《奏鸣曲》（2019），其中硬边多面体在以解体为主题的超然场景中漂移，反映了艺术家作为画家的最新突破。自2018年以来，贾一直在纽约开设工作室。

Over the past decade, Jia has continued to work at monumental scale, expanding on the dark, theatrical look of his earlier canvases through subtler and more complex coloration and structure. The evolution of his practice can be traced through a sequence of exhibitions at venues including the Singapore Art Museum (2012); Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2015); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2017); and Gagosian, New York (2019). Among the twenty-nine paintings featured in the last of these was the four-panelSonatine (2019), in which hard-edge polyhedrons drift across transcendent scenes connected by themes of disintegration, reflecting the artist’s latest breakthrough as a painter. Since 2018, Jia has maintained a studio in New York.

在过去的几年里，贾访问了中国与朝鲜、俄罗斯和蒙古的边界，沿着乌苏里河和阿穆尔河的部分地区，以及大兴安岭地区后，开始了一系列的山区绘画。这些作品增加了他对历史和文学主题的探索，并具有真实地点的特性，同时承认卡斯帕·大卫·弗里德里希（1774-1840）的浪漫主义风景。有些画布是传统装帧的；还有一些展示在刻有即兴线性设计的玻璃下。这些可以被解读为山的模糊性的精神表现，以及现实主义和抽象主义的交叉。第三组包括更大的独立金属和玻璃框架，将工程变成特定地点的装置。这个系列与贾以前的风格有所不同，但保留并扩展了它的转变感和遐想感，再次将人类的体验与大自然联系起来。

During the past few years, after having visited China’s borders with North Korea, Russia, and Mongolia, along parts of the Ussuri and Amur Rivers, and within the Greater Khingan Range, Jia began a series of mountain paintings. These works augment his inquiries into historical and literary themes with the properties of real locations, while acknowledging the Romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840). Some of the canvases are conventionally framed; still others are shown under glass inscribed with improvised linear designs. These could be read as spiritual manifestations of the mountain’s ambiguity, and of the intersection of realism and abstraction. A third group incorporates larger, freestanding metal-and-glass frames that turn the works into site-specific installations. This series represents a departure from Jia’s previous style, but retains and expands its sense of transformation and reverie, again connecting the human experience to nature at large.

©贾蔼力