从中国水墨画到表演、装置，似乎王劲松在进行激进的“离题”。然而，除去他的作品中外在的形式、材质和方法根据需要交替出现，这位艺术家追求对表达的根本性关注一直保持不变。人，如果观察到的他作品中的直觉性氛围，一直是他的意象的核心。但是本质上王劲松既不是一个肖像艺术家，也不是热衷于人的形式的写实派成员之一。他绘画中的人，只是展示对于社会现象和日常生活经验的个人性的反映的最佳渠道。
王劲松的作品的基本主题是社会变化，和这种变化对物质世界和居住于其中的人们的精神状态的影响。它同时试图探索那些强调它渴望的新的社会和现代性理想的文化特征。在20世纪90年代初王劲松创作的实验性绘画中，那些成组的形象中某些个体人物被空白所取代，这种创作暗示了一种对历史的重新审视和书写。这当然是一种参照性的擦除，参照物是具有相似形式的20世纪50年代初到70年代末的由政治性动机主导的绘画和摄影。因此，完全明了创作的暗示但不掩饰在群组中的变更，王劲松突出了一个形象的缺席，同时假托了“留白”所起的作用的观念——空——中国水墨画里的空间。在这里，他提供给我们个体曾经站立过的地方的空白轮廓。紧靠着这些空白的地方的人对于他们的同伴的无法解释的消失表现得已然忘却，这种表述指向了人的实用主义的本质。
这些绘画是一种颇有意味的对于时代情绪的描述的尝试。同时，根据一种稍后的认知，它们的形式和内容有着一种率直的氛围，而且暗示了某种基本的阐释，它们保有了20世纪90年代初艺术风格的象征。作为一个刚毕业不久的创造者，王劲松以独立艺术家的身份迈出的第一步，这个时期创作的油画为他的事业奠定了一个重要的基础。其形式和内容都与北京声势愈壮的愤世嫉俗派可以相较。这使得王劲松进入了一个受到尊重推崇的由评论家和艺术家组成的精英圈里。他油画中的范例还被纳入中国两个重要的艺术事件——1991年历史博物馆举办的“新生代”展览，1992年的广州首届双年展－20世纪90年代的油画，它们确立了那个时期的基调，以及影响了首次对海外的新的中国艺术的调查，调查开始于1993年，与德国的中国/先锋一起展开。还有在该年二月在香港开始的长期的世界巡回展的“中国新艺术”，“1989后”。
王劲松会阶段性地回归这一绘画模式。1998年他创作了一部重要的八幅作品，题为《大繁荣》。截至此时，他的绘画尝试已经发展、成熟，虽然依然包括了群像中出现空白断裂的手法，但它们服务于一个更为艺术化的意旨。这里一个值得玩味的要点是，空白暗指了一个政治化的时代，这个时代到90年代末已经在慢慢地退回到过去的历史中：至少，已经开始让人感觉越来越和当下的情形无关，一个空气成长的时代成为了所有注意力的焦点。在《大繁荣》中，全部的创作以形象的密集为核心，王劲松把他们置于一起来展现新社会类型的陈列，并且突出现代性渴求的冲击和正在出现的社会主义的价值。非常重要地，《大繁荣》实现了对90年代末社会氛围的精确的、观察敏锐的并且是幽默的勾勒，而这一时刻是中国社会在为一个新世纪而准备，同时虽然还未实现，但也准备迎接为世界贸易组织接纳后的一个全新的时代。虽然，王劲松在这里在描绘形象中构建的风格可以轻易地归结为讽刺漫画，他用种种微妙的细节保存了整体的现实主义的观感，用于平衡作品中充盈的讽刺的氛围。这些细节保持了他的群像的介于Stanley Spencer 和 Martin Kippenberger之间的人的本质。
虽然王劲松因他的摄影作品而在某些地区开始逐渐闻名，他仍然回归了绘画。2005年，他着手于一个更为宏伟的群体像的创作。这次是在纸上而非在油画画布上，而且最终计数为十幅，包括超过300个人物。这一作品仍在创作过程中。
王劲松使用摄影作为表述的一种媒介开始于1996年的《标准家庭》的创作，它包括200幅独生子女家庭的照片，其构思是，就中国的对于现代家庭生活的有些令人遗憾的态度——家庭规划政策/独生子女政策给出一个简明性的评价。这些孩子都是一个小学里的学生，在约好的一天和他们的父母一起照全家像。《标准家庭》并非试图被解读为对该政策的一个负面性评价；实际上，作品的基调是轻快活泼的。作品的灵感来自于一个平静的哀叹：这些孩子会一起成长，兄弟姐妹越来越少，叔叔阿姨越来越少，没有堂/表兄弟姐妹……完全没有扩展了的大家庭。在兄弟姐妹的陪伴中成长起来的王劲松，敏锐地了解生活在一个大家庭里的快乐和舒适。期望自己的孩子能体验到同样的手足之情是很正常的。根本上，《标准家庭》是一个对事实的简单陈述：关注这种最小化该类社会问题的“别无解决途径的解决方式”，而这种方式可能会伴随着已有的庞大的人口数量的无抑制的膨胀。同时，该作品正如它所描绘的社会一样幽默、欢快、感伤和注重实效。
继续现代中国家庭的主题，1998年王劲松创作了第二个形象系列，题为《双亲》。这一组20张照片聚焦于王劲松父母那一代的夫妻，以他的父母的一张肖像开始。其他19张里的年老退休的夫妻，大都居住在王劲松家的邻近。现代化的进程已经对家庭结构产生了重要的影响。类似于西方社会中的情形，但在中国还未完全普遍，年轻人逐渐倾向于建立自己的家庭。生活标准的提高，尤其是在城市里，伴随着真正的财产增长的新世界的形成。政府的政策鼓励家庭所有制，甚而卖掉国有的房屋居住更提供了进一步的刺激。面对经济发展，这是不可避免而且是必需的。同时家庭依然是中国人的价值观和社会道德的核心，从这个方面说现代社会在挑战传统的实践。独立的、有事业心的都市人，拥有无法向儒家原则主导的传统屈服的时间表、生活方式和个性。正如在照片中看到的，这些夫妻的表情和他们的家里的氛围，娴熟地抓住了对于新现象的多变的、复杂的态度。
王劲松本人清楚地像他这一代同时期的艺术家一样，拥有独立的精神，尽管很少有像王劲松这样个性化的发型的。在创作《标准家庭》和《双亲》之间，他创作了《钟/观察者》，其中的12个镜头里，在每一个镜头里他像一个摇滚明星一样看着某样东西，每一个镜头都是在北京的某一个主要旅游景点拍摄。如题目表明的，这十二个镜头拍摄于一天里的不同的钟点，由每幅照片的上方的钟表的指针指示出来。题目中的观察者就是王劲松本人，根据类推，他可以理解为是城市里展开着的变化的第一目击者，这种变化的速度再次由构成这个作品的12个小时来注明。黑白摄影的运用是一种故意的策略，以迷惑观看者对时刻的解读——背景的景象几乎都是属于前一个十年的——但王劲松的形象，他的与众不同的发型、皮夹克和新潮的太阳镜，绝对是当代的。而且作为一个当代人，我们怀疑王劲松展示自己，有些像敢于质疑别人要我们相信的东西一样的白痴专家。所以似乎这个作品最终暗示的是我们应该学习更多地为了我们自己去看。
王劲松在其后的两个摄影作品里重新审视城市变化再发展的理念。第一个是《百拆图》，创作于1999年，是与首都的一个全市范围的爆破规划细致的同步创作。《百拆图》突出了那些作为推土机们饲料的地域，它们清除那些低效率的低矮建筑，为具有空间效率的高层建筑让路。被认定是不适用的建筑被用“拆”字标明，王劲松选取这个字的多种表现形式来进行拍摄。在首都中进行广泛的游历，他拍摄了这个字在各种不同的墙上、表面上的醒目出现。它的不同的书写形式和出现的多种不同的表面成为一种微妙而简明的象征，象征着北京被再建设再发展的程度。
第二个作品题为《城墙》，创作于2002，由1000幅小照片连接在一起，组成了一个巨大的迷宫似的图像。影像有黑白的，有彩色的，大多数是王劲松穿越城市的时候完全随机拍摄的，经常是在车里拍摄。因此这些镜头经常是在移动中拍摄，常常是模糊的。但是这似乎并不重要，更重要的是纯粹的城市里的建筑工地的数量，由无数的天空下的起重机的轮廓显示出来。
正如前面表明的，在20世纪90年代，王劲松由于油画创作和以摄影为核心的概念艺术而变得广为人知。然而接受了作为一个水墨画创作者的训练，他从未停止用传统的宣纸和墨汁进行创作的毛笔画。王劲松只是在从浙江美术学院水墨画系毕业后，才开始创作油画。他利用毛笔和其他工具勾勒线条进行创作得到的灵敏，实验于油画颜料的粘性和不透明性。他将传统的水墨画作法和创作转换到油画画布上，表现为保留了大片的留白、没有画出的质地和线条的流畅运用，而不借助于西方学院派的经典性透视法和明暗法的绘画技巧。王劲松的观点是，传统存在于他所在的这一代中的个人化表述之中的。他并不属于传统的油画绘画流派，因此他不受限于传统概念对于创作的界定。保留了水墨画技法来呈现形象，他试图用西方的技巧获得色彩的动态和视觉关系。表达他所感受到的现代中国社会的氛围是他的方式。
时至今日，水墨画作品中的主题，很大范围上探索同样的被观察的对于当代文化的新现象的反应，在其他媒介的作品中也有。一个区别是，在王劲松的手中，水墨如何借助其自身去勾画越来越强的对运动事件的兴趣：第一次世界性拳击比赛，全国性的对足球的激情，以及在21世纪里，奥林匹克运动例如跨栏、短跑等。一方面，这些是对艺术家自己的对这一题目的迷恋的颂扬，但他依然具体表现那些将主题根植于社会问题的要素——结伙斗殴、派别活动、流氓行为，以及在某种程度上的在一个猛烈的物质主义的世界里，为保留个人主义而进行的斗争。早期的探索包括了一系列非常现代的形象，被抓拍于一个摄影记者的凝固镜头里，以各种反应呈现。我们看到暗示本土性暴力的影像，小偷们正在逃脱的影像，以及正在变成打架的争执的影像。同等地，他运用他的技巧来表达新的一代年轻人，感受到自由的第一次战栗时愉快和迷惑的姿态。
这些尝试——创作中带有的意识和内容——被在丰富的色彩性的创作中进一步发展，这种创作结合了油画颜料和中国画的颜料，构成了富有魅力的表面肌理的陈列。色彩很明亮，在发光的程度上有时近乎霓虹灯；同时表面精巧的笔触营造了一种令人惊讶的感性的深度和形象化的空间。根本上，正是这些材质的混合和传统与当代技法的结合，使得这些绘画如此特别，而且突出了他作品的全部主干。
Wang Jinsong Introduction
Karen Smith
From Chinese ink paintings to performance and installation works, it may seem that Wang Jinsong makes radical digressions. Yet, although the exterior form, the materials and the methodology in his work are interchanged as required, the fundamental concerns that this artist seeks to express have remained constant. People, as observed in his immediate environs, remain the core of his imagery. But Wang Jinsong is neither a portrait artist, nor a member of the life-class lovers of human form per se. The people in his paintings are simply the optimal conduit for presenting personal reflections of the experience of social phenomena and daily life.
The primary subject of Wang Jinsong's work is social change, and the impact this has upon both the physical world and the mindset of the people who inhabit it. It also seeks to explore the cultural characteristics that underscore this new society and the modern ideals to which it aspires. In the experimental paintings Wang Jinsong created in the early 1990s, the compositions suggest a re-examining and rewriting of history, suggested by the blanks in the groups of figures portrayed where individual people have been cut out. This is, of course, a reference to a similar form of erasure within paintings and photographs that occurred from the early-1950s to the late-1970s, and that was directed by political motives. Thus, fully aware of the implications of creating but not concealing these alterations in the group, Wang Jinsong gives emphasis to the absence of a figure, whilst pretending to the notion of the role played by “white”—empty—space in Chinese ink painting. Here, he gives us blank silhouettes where individuals once stood. That the people immediately next to these blank spaces appear oblivious to their comrade’s unexplained disappearance, points to the pragmatic nature of the people.
The paintings were an interesting approach to describing the mood of the times, and whilst, with hindsight, there is an air of innocence about their form and content, and suggest a somewhat elementary interpretation, they remain emblematic of the artistic styles of the early 1990s. As a recent graduate, taking his first steps as an independent artist, the oil paintings created in this period, laid an important foundation for Wang Jinsong’s career. Both the style and the content encouraged comparisons with the school of Cynical Realism that was gathering momentum in Beijing. This drew Wang Jinsong into the circle of what was even then a respected elite—of critics as well as artists. Examples of his oil paintings would also be included in two major events in China—New Generation, History Museum (1991), and the First Guangzhou Biennial: Oil Painting in the 1990s (1992)—which set the tone for the era, and the first surveys of new Chinese art abroad, beginning in 1993 with China / Avant Garde in Germany, and China’s New Art, Post-1989, that began its long world tour in Hong Kong in February that year.
Wang Jinsong would periodically return to this mode of painting. In 1998, he produced a major eight-panel work titled Modern Crowds. By this time, his approach to painting had evolved—matured—so although pockets of white space punctuate the crowds here too, they serve a more artistic purpose. The point here is interesting: the white space alluded to a politicised era, which, by the late 1990s, was very slowly receding into past history: at least, had begun to feel was less and less relevant to the situation of the present and an era of unprecedented growth that was becoming the focus of all attention. In Modern Crowds, the entire composition pivots on the dense multitude of figures, which Wang Jinsong brings together to represent the array of new social types and highlight the clash of modern aspirations and socialist values that were emerging. Importantly, Modern Crowds achieves an accurate, perceptive and humorous portrayal of the social climate of the moment in the late 1990s, as Chinese society prepared for a new millennium, and though they did not yet realise it, a whole new age courtesy of the nation’s accession to the World Trade Organisation. Although, the style Wang Jinsong employs here in describing the figures could easily have drifted into caricature, he balances the aura of satire that infused the work with myriad subtle details that preserve the overall impression of realism, and that retains the human quality of his crowd that is halfway between Stanley Spencer and Martin Kippenberger.
Again, although Wang Jinsong has since become better known in some quarters for his photographic works, he still comes back to painting. In 2005, he embarked upon an even more ambitious crowd scene. This time on paper not canvas, and comprising ten panels at last count, containing more than three hundred people. It remains a work in progress.
Wang Jinsong’s use of photography as a medium of expression began in 1996 with Standard Family, which comprises two hundred photographs of one child families and was conceived as a succinct comment on a somewhat regrettable attribute of modern family life in China—the family planning policy / one-child policy. The children are all pupils of a primary school, who all brought their parents along on the appointed day to have their portrait taken. Standard Family is not intended to be read as a negative comment on the policy; in fact, the mood is distinctly buoyant. The inspiration for the work was born of a quiet lament that these children will grow up brother- and sister-less, aunt- and uncle-less, without cousins…without any extended family at all. Having grown up in the company of brothers and sisters, Wang Jinsong was keenly aware of the joys and comforts of belonging to a big family. It is normal to hope that one’s own children would share the same experience of sibling relations. Ultimately, Standard Family is a simple statement of fact: a look at what is a "no-other-solution solution" to minimising the kind of social problems that would accompany an unchecked expansion of the already enormous population. The work, meanwhile, is as humorous, as happy, as melancholy, as pragmatic as the society it describes.
Continuing with the theme of the modern Chinese family, in 1998, Wang Jinsong produced a second series of portraits titled Parents. This group of twenty photographs focuses on couples of Wang Jinsong’s parents’ generation, and begins with a portrait of his own mother and father. The other nineteen feature elderly, retired couples, most of whom lived in Wang Jinsong’s neighbourhood. The process of modernisation was already having a significant impact on the structure of family life. Similar to the situation in western societies, but not at all usual in China, young people were increasingly inclined to establish their own home. The rise in standards of living, particularly in the cities, was accompanied by a new world of real estate and property development. The government’s policy of encouraging home ownership, even to the point of selling off State housing provided further impetus. In the face of economic development, this was as inevitable as it was necessary. Whilst the family remains central to the values and social mores of Chinese people, in this respect the modern world sets up a challenge to traditional practices. Independent, career-minded urbanites have schedules, life-styles, and personalities that cannot bow to the conventions dictated by Confucian tenets. As seen in the photographs, the expressions of the couples, as well as the atmosphere of their homes, deftly captures the diverse and complex attitudes towards this new phenomenon.
Wang Jinsong himself clearly possessed a spirit of independence in common with contemporary artists of his generation, although few elected to maintain quite such an individual hairstyle as Wang Jinsong. In between creating Standard Family and Parents he made Clock/Observer, in which he appears, looking something like a rock star, in each of twelve frames, each one taken at one of Beijing’s major tourist sites. As indicated by the title, the twelve shots each represent a different hour of the day, which is shown by the hands of a clock placed on top of each photograph. The observer in the title is Wang Jinsong himself, who, by analogy, is understood to be a firsthand witness to the changes unfolding across the city, the speed of which is again referenced by the twelve hours that make up the work. The use of black and white photography is a deliberate ploy to confuse the viewers’ reading of the moment—the background scenes might almost belong to a previous decade—but the image of Wang Jinsong, his distinctive haircut, leather jacket, and trendy sunglasses, is definitely contemporary. And being a contemporary, we suspect that Wang Jinsong presents himself a little like the idiot savant who dares to question what others would have us believe. So it seems that what this work ultimately advises is that we ought to learn to look more for ourselves.
Wang Jinsong would revisit the idea of urban change and redevelopment in two further photographic works. The first, Chai, was produced in the course of 1999, at the height of a carefully co-ordinated programme of citywide demolition in the capital. Chai highlights the volume of properties that were to be fodder for the bulldozers as they cleared inefficient tracts of low-rise buildings to make way for space-efficient high-rise developments. Condemned buildings were marked by the character chai, and it is the myriad manifestations of this character that Wang Jinsong chose to photograph. Travelling the length and breadth of the capital, he photographed the character as it appeared daubed on an enormous variety of walls and surfaces. The variations of its written form, as well as the multitude of the different surfaces upon which it appeared serve as a subtle but succinct metaphor for the extent to which Beijing has been redeveloped.
The second work, titled City Walls, was produced in 2001, and comprises a thousand small photographs joined together like an enormous puzzle. The images are both black and white and colour and most were taken entirely at random as Wang Jinsong passed through the city, usually by car. These frames therefore are often taken at speed, and are at times blurred. But that seems less important that the reinforcing of the sheer volume of construction sites throughout the city, here evidenced by the countless cranes silhouetted against the sky.
As indicated above, through the 1990s, Wang Jinsong became widely known for oil paintings and conceptual works pivoted on photography, yet trained as an ink painter, he never stopped making brush painting using traditional rice paper and black ink. Wang Jinsong only began working in oils when he graduated from the ink painting department of Zhejiang Academy, bringing his dexterity with a brush and facility with line to compositions to the experiment with the viscosity and opacity of oil pigments. His transposing of traditional ink painting techniques and composition onto canvas meant the retention of large areas of white, unpainted ground, and a fluid use of the line, without recourse to the classical perspective and chiaroscuro of traditional western academic painting. It was Wang Jinsong’s opinion that tradition inhibited individual expression amongst his generation. Not being schooled in the oil painting tradition either, he was free of the confines of conventional concepts towards composition. Retaining the inked approach to rendering the figure, he sought to achieve the dynamics of colour and visual relations found in western approaches. It was his way of expressing what he experienced as the mood of modern Chinese society.
To date, the subject matter brought to the ink works largely explores the same observed reactions to the new phenomena of contemporary culture as found in all works of other media. One difference though is how, in Wang Jinsong’s hands, ink lends itself to depicting the growing interest in sporting events: first world title boxing matches, the nation-wide passion for football, and in the early 2000s, Olympic sports such as hurdles, sprinting etc. On one hand, these are eulogies to the artist’s own fascination with the topic, but he still incorporates elements that root the theme in social issues—gang fighting, factionalism, hooliganism, and, to a certain extent, the struggle to maintain individualism in a fiercely materialist world. Early explorations include a sequence of very modern figures captured with all the resonance of a photojournalist’s freeze-frame. We see images that suggest domestic violence, of thieves making a get-away, and an argument that becomes a brawl. Equally, he uses his skills to express postures of exhilaration and confusion encountered by a new generation of young people experiencing the first thrill of freedom.
These approaches—both the sensibilities brought to the compositions and the content—have been further developed in richly coloured compositions that combine acrylic paint and Chinese mineral pigments, and that result in a seductive array of surface textures. The colour is bright, at times almost neon in its degree of luminescence, whilst the delicate washes across the surface are responsible for a surprising depth of sensation and pictorial space. Ultimately, it is these blends of materials and combinations of conventional and contemporary technique that makes these paintings so unusual, and underscores his entire body of work.