“艺术家?算了吧。那不过是个说法而已。艺术只是我做的一些‘东西’罢了。”张卫用他那特有的低沉，平和的声音说道。他慵懒的语气让人感到这世界上似乎没有什么是值得去较真儿的。至少，没那个必要。

　　对张卫而言，哪怕是他自己做的“东西”也不例外。他如此轻描淡写的归纳可谓一语双关。“东西”，这同他的创作套路不谋而合：将“东”与“西”融为一体。他的“齐白石 VS 梦露”系列撷取著名国画大师齐白石先生笔下素雅灵动的水墨人物为基本元素。齐白石素以“说通俗易懂之话，画常人所见之物”为其艺术箴言。秉承着同样的精神，在简括质拙的笔触所勾勒出的悠然恬淡的文人身旁，张卫让梦露的性感肖像跃然纸上：艳丽，浮华，媚态撩人。

　　“选择这两种符号的并置其实没有什么特别的理由。齐白石和梦露是我们生活中非常熟悉的文化图景，因此也就自然而然的浮现在我的创作中，”张卫回忆道。

　　出生于长沙一个文化干部家庭的张卫从小热爱美术，1978年进入广州美术学院研习国画。入学不久，他就发现在课堂上传授的技法自己早已熟稔。于是，张卫开始了对自己多方面艺术才能的不懈探寻。他从事平面设计，写长篇小说和电影剧本，做图书编辑，也曾游学欧洲，研究当代文化。1997年当他受邀为一本纯文学杂志的改版做封面设计时，张卫自然而然的从生活与图像中信手拈来各色元素，从中汲取灵感：国画传统，大众娱乐，以及数字影像。

　　究竟从哪里可以发掘出语不惊人死不休的原创张力?怀着这个问题，通过电子镶嵌的技法，张卫随心所欲地游走于交错的时空，乐此不疲。梦露大众娱乐消费文化的经典符号，被不容分说地植入齐白石清雅恬淡的水墨画境中，正襟危坐的文人与活色生香的艳星相映成趣。然而，对张卫而言，这些都不过是开放的可能性所凝聚而成的文本符号，任由人们把玩阐释。他驾轻就熟，成竹在胸地将一系列风格迥异的图像符号化为在视觉上令人忍俊不禁，却同时引人入胜，发人深省的绝妙组合。他进而采用油画的形式，引领观者从齐白石的传统水墨画境和梦露的亮丽影像空间中另辟蹊径，充分展现了这种媒介戏剧化的独特力量。

　　与政治波普或者玩世现实主义艺术家所不同的是，指点江山，针砭时弊，感旧伤怀，借古讽今，这些主题表面上似乎都不是张卫所关心的，而其实都在他的转述之内。换言之，他的“齐白石VS梦露”系列，并非一场刀光剑影，鹿死谁手的对弈，而更近乎双手互搏的自娱自乐。究竟谁能一统江湖?张卫无意盖棺定论。“我压根儿就没想要厚此薄彼，针锋相对。何必呢?好雪片片，不落别处，都落在该落的地方。”张卫微笑着引用了禅宗里深得他心的一句偈语。

　　也许对张卫的作品最恰当的描述莫过于詹姆逊所说的后现代主义拼贴，“戴着语义的面具，用已故的语言娓娓道来。”张卫使用的是与我们的当代生活已全然丧失关联的文本符号，由此免于落入批判现实，老生常谈的俗套。他向我们揭示了自己略带玩世不恭意味的对于所谓原创的重新定义：幽默调侃之下漫不经心的反叛，同时掺杂着审慎的暧昧态度。这其实是一位艺术家发自内心的愿望：在当今这个媒体席卷一切，将人异化为沉溺于文化奇观消费的沉默的大多数的时代，另辟蹊径，构造一个难以指认，清新纯粹的空间。在这个空间里，没有震聋发匮的冠冕堂皇，没有意味深长的理论说教，只有对于我们的当代文化百无禁忌，心平气和的真诚反思。

　　如何去尽可能的拓展这个空间，也许是唯一值得张卫去较真儿的问题。“齐白石 VS 梦露”的游戏仍然在继续。现在的他正在构思下一个系列，以人与自然的关系和以动物和昆虫为主题的作品。最后，当被问及自己所希望拥有的头衔时，张卫沉吟片刻，语气里透出几分不寻常的严肃和热忱，“我只想做一个自由的人”。

　　— 周 为  二零零七年
^_^
　　The Game is Not Over

　　Don t call me an artist. It is just a title that doesn t mean anything to me. Art is simply some stuff that I do, Zhang Wei tells me with his typical low, placid voice. His casual tone leaves the impression that nothing in this world really deserves to be taken seriously. Or at least doesn t have to be.

　　According to Zhang Wei, this may even apply to the stuff that he does. Yet there is a coincidental pun in his perfunctory sum-up. The word stuff in Chinese is Dong Xi , literarily meaning East and West : a wonderful epitome of his artistic approach. His print and Oil on Canvas Qi Baishi vs Marilyn Monroe series are based on the simple, whimsical watercolor figures of Qi Baishi, the renowned Chinese painter of the late 19th century whose artistic motto was in speech, use words that people can understand. In painting, depict things that people have seen. In the same spirit, Zhang Wei s artworks juxtapose Qi Baishi s elegant, reserved scholars painted with refined, lucid brushstrokes, with gaudy portraits of Marilyn Monroe: gleeful, voluptuous, and seductive.

　　I didn t have any particular reason to choose these symbols on top of others. I guess Qi Baishi and Marilyn Monroe got picked because they just came naturally as a part of my life experiences, recalls Zhang Wei.

　　Growing up in an intellectual family in Changsha and always passionate about art, Zhang Wei enrolled at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1978 to learn traditional water and ink painting, only to find out there were no techniques being taught in the classroom that he had not already mastered. So where could truly original creativity be unearthed? With this question in mind, Zhang Wei set out to explore his multi-faceted artistic potentials. He took on graphic design, wrote fictions and screenplays, edited books, and traveled across Europe and the States. When he was later invited to design the cover for the relaunch issue of a literary magazine, he naturally drew inspirations from the resources that were most readily at his disposal: Chinese traditional painting, entertainment industry, and his computer.

　　With a technique called digital collage, Zhang Wei engages himself in a playfully, nomadic meander traversing space and time. Monroe, the quintessential icon of pop entertainment culture, is ruthlessly inserted into backdrops of self-contained landscape of Qi Baishi s delicate watercolor personages, who seem to be tantalized yet inevitably frustrated in their quests. Yet for Zhang Wei they are nothing more than semiotic clusters of possibility, objects to be freely appropriated and manipulated. He seems to possess a knack for transforming a repository of disparate genres, styles, and emblems into a light-hearted marriage that is both visually amusing and thought provoking. He even takes one step further by using Oil on Canvas, a medium that detaches the observer from both the water and ink world of Qi Baishi and the photographic universe of Monroe, at the same time allowing him to display his medium s dramatic material strength.

　　Unlike the Political Pop or Cynical Realism genres of his contemporaries, Zhang Wei adopts a nonchalant stance when faced with issues of social reality, political agenda and criticism. For him Qi Baishi vs Marilyn Monroe is not a fight. It is merely a game. Who is the winner? Zhang Wei is not at all concerned to attempt an answer. I don t intend to invoke, mock or attack. Why should I? Each snow flake is falling exactly where it is supposed to be, smiles Zhang Wei, quoting his favorite aphorism from Zen, an introspective Buddhist philosophy he has been embracing for years.

　　Hence Zhang Wei s artworks may be best translated as what Fredric Jameson calls a postmodern pastiche, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. By using re-envisioned symbols that are no longer relevant and therefore freed from clich s of social critique or nostalgic sentiments, Zhang Wei offers us instead his ironic redefinition of originality: a perfunctory rebelliousness tinted with decided ambiguity and detached humor. What s underneath is simply an artist s heartfelt desire to create an anonymous, lucid space in a media saturated world where people are merely the quiescent observers of commercial spectacles. This is a space where significant rhetoric is silenced, all connotations lost, and unbounded, honest investigations into our contemporary culture be ceaselessly evoked.

　　For Zhang Wei, to extend this space could well be the only thing that s worth taken seriously. Qi Baishi vs Marilyn Monroe is a game that s not yet over. He is now contemplating his next series of works, examining the relationship between men and nature. And when finally asked what label he would like to create for himself, Zhang Wei ponders for a few seconds and replies with an unusual earnestness, I just want to be a free man.

　　— Zhou Wei   October 2007