終點之前，眾覽群景之後的內視之眼

緣起：

2017年三月，美國波士頓ＣＡＩ創辦人謝茵女士〈Yin Peet〉與藝術總監艾樂弗（Viktor Lois）來台，參觀戴明德工作室，看到一系列描繪藝術家長兄的大型繪畫，深受感動，因此力邀戴明德於2018年七月在波士頓舉辦個展，並且訂定展覽主題為「終點之前」（BEFORE THE END OF THE JOURNEY）。

當知道他於2018年要前往筆者曾駐村的藝術村（ＣＡＩ）舉辦個展。我就深覺有義務要為此做點什麼，因為我發自內心覺得戴明德是一位真誠，且具有強大實踐力的臺灣藝術家，因此斗膽為之寫介紹文，真心期盼戴明德在波士頓的個展，能讓美國的觀眾看到臺灣藝術家所帶來的充沛創造力。

首先，先介紹一下擁有瘋狂實踐力的戴明德，如何在有限的生命裡展開他的無限探索。他在嘉義地區設置三個創作空間，一個位於嘉義市長榮街的住家，是他最早的工作室，另一個則是在嘉義鐵道藝術村的一個鐵路局大倉庫，以及近期（2015）於民雄所設置的一個大型鐵皮工作室。三個大型的工作空間裡，堆滿了無數的手稿、物件、以及滿滿的大型畫作。這三個地點令他可以隨時處在創作的ing狀態。令人感到不可思議的是，他怎麼會有這麼強大且持續的實踐力？一般藝術家通常都是在有展覽預定或是作品審查時，才會有的「挑燈夜戰」密集衝刺創作，但這樣密集創作竟然是他的日常。

認識戴老師是在一個滂沱大雨的夏日午後，在嘉義鐵道藝術村與戴老師在屋簷下躲雨聊了一個多小時。閒聊中他像可敬的長輩鼓舞後輩，並溫暖提醒該如何面對當前的藝術世界。但隨後好像有一陣風催促著他，要他趕快回工作室繼續作畫。他突然急促的對我說：「我要趕快回工作室畫圖了，要利用一點時間。」隨即從摩托車行李箱裡拿出雨衣，穿上，發動引擎，然後像風一樣消失在滂沱大雨裡。

做為一個藝術家，他保有如同稚童般純真的眼睛，對新的事物好奇。他專注創作於工作室裡，思考著非常純粹的藝術問題。當然生活中也遇到了許多難解的事情，而這些困頓，也會轉化為他面對作品時思考的藝術問題。藝術家身份之外他亦需解決生活上的瑣事，如訂購畫布、建置工作室、修繕、甚至教學工作等大大小小的瑣事，當他一旦進入工作室，這些瑣事不再困擾他，因為他的時間已經切換為藝術時間，而且幾乎不需熱身，隨時準備開機創作。在嘉義這個步調一點都不算快的地方，他把自己搞得很忙碌，一直在跟時間賽跑，瘋狂畫圖、停不下手，不讓悠閒的時光麻痺了自己的雙眼。雖然他已近花甲之年但仍舊像頑童般的純真、精力旺盛，他的精力幾乎都花在藝術創作上。然而那個漁村長大的藝術家，知道時間將抹去我們存在的痕跡，如同兒時記憶中海浪復返沖刷沙灘上的圖案。但無論如何，作為藝術家的戴明德總是選擇做些什麼，選擇不斷的作為時間的見證者。如薛希佛斯般努力不懈、愚憨地留下存在的痕跡，意圖成為這茫茫大海中，不輕易化解的一顆結晶。

再一次的藍色時期

「長兄圖」這系列作品，可以說是戴明德最溫柔且不具批判性的系列作品。對於社會的觀察及批判嘲諷，他早已掌握了獨到的觀察角度，也因為歷經了完整的學院訓練對於點、線、面、形色及材質運用，他更是早已臻於熟稔，且具備強烈的個人風格。但面對兄長罹癌及直視死亡這件事情，他溫柔的眼神顯得既沈重又充滿了愛，成為面對自己最為純粹的視角。

通常在青年時期，敏感騷動的藝術家會經歷對於生命的荒謬感到憂鬱，戴明德在自己的創作的歷程中曾發生過一次，那一次是在29歲到33歲時的藍色時期（1989-1993），他大量使用藍色與藍紫色作為作品的基調，藉由作品將自己青春善感的一面展現出來。再一次的藍色時期則是52歲時，側寫兄長罹癌時的系列繪畫（長兄圖系列），雖然色彩轉為更灰暗的色階，但那種藍色憂鬱已經轉化成另一種關懷，是一種在心理層次更深層的灰藍色憂鬱。青春的藍色心情有一種騷動，而壯年之際面臨兄長的病痛時，有一種靜思，少了對生命荒謬的控訴，多了對生命無常的思索關懷。

由外顯轉向「內視」的顯影，修復靈光的儀式

藝術家透過作品反映時代及社會這件事情，在過往他的許多作品中，他已著力極深並取的豐碩成果，但面對親情關係或是自我時，一個藝術家的視線會產生什麼樣的改變？他將視線由外向內投射，移向自己敬愛的手足，凝視兄長坐在輪椅上被癌症凌遲的形象，思索著生老病死。

戴明德在多年前曾拍攝了一組被遺棄的土地公雕像攝影（現存於波士頓ＣＡＩ），為數不少的雕像被棄置於路橋下，意味著走下神壇的聖像（物件）已經頓失了靈光，所以他為雕像清洗塵埃。然而眼中曾是英姿煥發的大哥，竟被病痛折磨的如此憔悴，他投以關懷的祈願。而落難的土地公雕像與被病痛纏身的兄長，這兩件事看在藝術家的眼中，都被他高度關懷與重新詮釋。雖然這些關懷與祈禱並無法阻止死亡的降臨，但在其影像與圖像背後，我們可以窺見藝術家心思與真誠的溫柔，注視虛弱且有限的肉身，並藉由繪畫注入了靈光於這個聖像，形成背後潛在的靈光。他天真的想藉由圖像儀式祈願，試圖挽回一些逝去的靈光。雖然兄長的肉身已逝去，但其形象卻也因此被保留在戴明德的符號系統裡，時至今日，兄長圖符號（坐輪椅的人）不時的顯現在他的速寫或是畫面裡，陪他繼續遊歷世界闖蕩藝界。

在他家中的工作室裡，畫架的背後，放有一張灰階的父親肖像畫。他對我說：「這張畫我都畫不完，所以就一直放在那裡。」其實，我認為，他希望那張圖一直放在那裡陪伴他，看他創作成長，而不是盡快完成收納於庫房。然而這張肖像畫同時亦是一個父親形象的祭台。這裡存在著藝術家的個人情感與特殊儀式，與他深談之後將會更能體會。

拒絕使用相機的慈悲之眼：放下相機，拾起畫筆

據我所知戴明德是一個攝影記錄狂，以往他幾乎相機不離身，甚至出版過幾本厚厚的攝影集（2001生活.藝術.家、2006旅程、2010光影旅行…），要說他是一個攝影家，一點也不為過。但面對兄長癌末這個沈重的議題時，他選擇放下相機，以圖繪來記錄這個「終點之前」的過程。為何會選擇非科學、不客觀的「繪畫」來記錄這個悲痛的歷程呢？在他過往出版三本個人攝影集中，敏感的攝影之眼留下的大量紀錄影像，但唯獨不見令人不忍觀看的殘酷影像。因此可知，藝術家強烈的同理情感與慈悲心，拒絕藉由冰冷的機器之眼來記錄他與兄長之間的最後時刻，選擇不用機器之眼侵越兄長的血肉之軀，以顏料及線條顯現逐漸逝去的身影。以不忍直視的「側寫」替代高度寫實「特寫」的逼視，無非是出於溫暖的關懷。透過連續的圖繪記錄（比攝影更有溫度的深刻詮釋）也寓示現代人面對病痛與臨終之前的過程，隱喻著你我終將步上此途。

為無言者賦予新語

戴明德曾自述：「在創作生涯中經歷寫實、假藉、比喻、虛構、誇張、象徵、透過顛覆和編造的意義結構，以敏銳的觀察選擇身邊週遭的事物作為結構的符號圖騰。」因為熟悉這樣創作的結構，他總是能夠將周遭被當成冷的、被遺忘的材料、無言說能力者（藝術史名畫、手稿、宣傳文宣、被棄置的物件、被遺忘的人…），再度使它們擁有話語。與其簡單的說是「挪用」，不如說是在「冷材料」中重新注入一股新語與靈光。以兄長圖系列為例，大量的速寫與關注的眼神，透過速寫與記憶在畫布上完成繪圖的「賦語儀式」。這一系列戴式的「加溫儀式」，使冰冷的輪椅成為具有溫度的符號，甚至成為蘊含靈光的聖像。

近期戴明德在繪畫的視覺呈現，以卡典西德的特殊技法，形成強烈的個人表現風格，更賦予了作品新意。此特殊技法近似於版畫的製版過程，產生了類似版畫般的奇特風格。相較於直繪圖像於畫布上，增添了形版作為中介，剪影般的俐落形體因爲邊界滲透的痕跡，讓原本是隨機不易控制滲流現象，成了縫合圖層的特殊手法。滲流溢出的顏料，巧妙的使圖層關係變得複雜、模糊。理性的控制非理性的意外痕跡，游移縫合於形體邊界。或許是他在大學時受過嚴謹的印刷製版訓練，令他對於圖層、版型、形象的邊緣控制有著不同於一般藝術家的高度理解。因此繪畫作品雖然呈現了版畫般的平面性，但卻又透露著圖層間的歷時性關係，看似形色簡單的平面，卻隱含著時間的切片。

逐步消弱攝影的紀實性，漸入內在造化的真實感

如前述「攝影」乃是戴明德藝術專業的關鍵載體。但最終他還是選擇逐步地將攝影的影像給抹除，如（分離化境系列,1999）曾經使用甲苯消去影像的圖層表面，留下繪畫性的擦拭肌理。攝影對於戴明德而言是「私生子」、是「旅程」是「自由」。而繪畫對於戴明德而言是「家人」、是「歸途」是「責任」，甚至可以說是出發的原點（童年海灘上的繪圖）。攝影是一個關鍵的旅程，就如同大量的速寫對於他大型作品的意義一般。在大量速寫與大型繪畫之間的兩種顯影，在「紙」與「布」之間、反覆遊走，因而留下大量足跡。無論使用攝影或是繪圖，都是他面對人生與藝術的載體，無論紀實抑或是主觀詮釋，他都有滿滿的體驗與故事，要與觀者分享他的旅程。

除了在創作上留下相當可觀的作品數量，他的展覽也遍及國際，留下許多的足跡（個展：日本神戶、法國巴黎，國際聯展：洛杉磯、香港、墨西哥、東京、匈牙利、米蘭、濟州島、上海…等地）。因為離家的旅程，看遍了萬物造化，成為滿載而歸的心靈豐收。不斷地離家，但也從未忘記回家的路。在日益疏離分化的時代、在充滿快速影像與擬像的環境中，藝術家藉由繪畫的製圖儀式，慢慢的走回一條回家的路。

不安於室又渴望歸途

他總處在「旅途中」或在「回家」的邊界，不斷的出走、回歸、出走再回歸。他的創作脈絡亦是不斷游移於邊界之中，時而是一個異鄉人，時而處在急於歸鄉的企盼。這是一種矛盾，但也是因為這種不斷出走與回歸，讓他不斷走向蹊徑開啟新契機。也是正因為回歸與回顧，讓我們對他的繪畫作品或旅程產生共感。

漁村長大的藝術家，靈魂裡總有著隨時出走的冒險精神，但同時又持有對家的眷戀。戀家的旅行者，離家與回家對他來說或許是視野切換的同一件事。攝影與速寫的過程，是他旅程中的記憶體，而最後成為史詩般雋永的大型繪畫作品，是他永久「家」的記憶。他總是反覆的在這個循環中，不間斷的實踐。

如果從來沒有離開過家，家就只是一個「生活場所」而不具備「歸宿」的意義。因為看不到家的地方，才是引領回家之路，在終點之前，才能意識終點的意義。

Tai Ming Te Solo Exhibition Recommendation Prefix

The Eye that Looks Inward After Having Seen Everything Before the End of the Journey

Origin:

In March 2017, Yin Peet, the founder of Contemporary Arts International (CAI), Boston, United States, and Viktor Lois, the art director, came to Taiwan and visited Tai Ming Te’s studio. Moved by a series of large paintings depicting Tai’s older brother, they invited Tai to hold a solo exhibition in Boston in July 2018, and they named the theme of the exhibition “Before the End of the Journey.”

When I learned that Tai was going to hold a solo exhibition at CAI, where I had been an artist-in-residence, I strongly felt that I had an obligation to do something. I honestly felt that Tai was a sincere Taiwanese artist who was tireless in his achievements, so I mustered my courage and wrote an introduction for him. I sincerely hope that Tai’s solo exhibition in Boston can demonstrate to the American audience the ample creativity of this Taiwanese artist.

First, I’d like to introduce Tai as someone with a crazy ability to get things done, and the way he started his infinite exploration in his limited life span. He established three creative studios in the Chiayi area. One is at his place on Changrong Street, Chiayi City, which was his earliest studio. Another one is a large warehouse of the Taiwan Rail Administration at the Art Site of the Chiayi Railway Warehouse. The most recent one, established in 2015, is a large studio with an iron roof in Minxiong. His three large studios are filled with countless manuscripts, objects, and large paintings. These places enable him to constantly be creating. What is amazing is how he can have such a powerful and continuous ability to keep working industriously. Generally speaking, artists only pull all-nighters to intensively create artworks when they have scheduled exhibitions or work reviews, yet this kind of intensive creation is his daily life.

I met Tai on a summer’s afternoon, during a torrential rainstorm. We chatted for an hour under the roof of the Art Site of the Chiayi Railway Warehouse, waiting for the rain to stop. During our chat, he was like a reverent senior encouraging a junior, warmly cautioning me on how to face the current art world. Later, as if a gust of wind urged him to return to his studio to keep on working, he suddenly said to me, “I must hurry up and get back to my studio to paint. I must make use of my time.” He then pulled a raincoat out of the storage compartment in his motorcycle, donned it, fired up the engine, and disappeared like the wind in the pouring rain.

As an artist, he has eyes of childlike innocence that are filled with curiosity about new things. He focuses on making his creations in studios, thinking about purely artistic questions. Of course he encounters difficulties in life, and those predicaments are transformed into art questions that he ponders when facing his creations. In addition to being an artist, Tai also needs to handle trivial matters in life, such as ordering canvases, constructing studios, doing repairs, and even teaching. But once he enters his studio, these daily matters no longer trouble him because his sense of time has been shifted to art time. He almost does not need to warm up but immediately begins creating. In Chiayi, a place where the pace of life is far from fast, he makes his life busy, always racing against time, painting crazily, hands never stopping, not letting the leisure time numb his eyes. Although he is nearly 60 years old, he is still innocent and energetic like an urchin. His energy is almost entirely spent on art creations. The artist who grew up in a fishing village knows that time will erase the traces of our existence, just as patterns on the beach are washed away by the recurring waves in his childhood memory. That is why, as an artist, he always chooses to do something, to continuously be a witness of time. Just as Sisyphus diligently and stupidly leaves traces of his existence, so Tai attempts to become a crystal that will not easily be dissolved in this wide sea.

Blue Period Once More

Paintings of My Older Brother is Tai’s gentlest, most non-judgmental series. His observations on, criticism of, and sarcasm about society had given him a unique angle to observe, and his thorough academy training familiarized him with the use of dots, lines, planes, shapes, colors, and materials and equipped him with a strong personal style. When facing his brother’s cancer and looking death in the eye, his gentle gaze seems both heavy and loving, a purest viewpoint from which he faces himself.

Often in their youth, sensitive and disturbed artists experience melancholy on the absurdity of life, and that happened to Tai during his creative career. That blue period happened when he was between 29 and 33 (from 1989 to 1933), during which he applied blue and blueish purple colors in abundance as the base tones of his works to demonstrate the youthful and sentimental side of him. The blue period came to him again when he was 52, when he painted a series about his older brother’s battle with cancer (Paintings of My Older Brother series). Although the colors became darker and grayer shades, that kind of blue melancholy was transformed into another kind of concern, a depression of the deeper bluish gray in the psychology. The blue in youth had a disquietude, whereas when the artist, while still in his prime, faced his brother’s illness, the color conveyed quiet thought, without accusation of the absurdity of life, and with more thought and care about the impermanence of life.

Shifting from Looking Outward to Inspecting Images Manifested Inward; the Ritual to Remediate the aura

In many of Tai’s past works, he has dug deeply and achieved rich results in reflecting the period and the society, but how will an artist’s gaze change when it comes to family relationships or oneself? Tai changed his gaze from searching outward to inspecting inward, moving to his loved and respected sibling, gazing at the image of his older brother, sitting on a wheelchair and tormented by cancer, pondering about sickness and aging, life and death.

Many years ago, Tai took a set of photographs (now collected at CAI in Boston) of the statues of abandoned Tudigong, or local deities of the land. Several statues were abandoned under a bridge, indicating that the holy statue of the altar had become an object and lost its aura. Tai washed away the dust from the statues. To the older brother, who used to be a hero in his mind but was so tortured by illness, Tai projected a caring wish. Both the distressed Tudigong and the suffering brother are deeply cared about and reinterpreted by the artist. Although caring and praying cannot stop death from coming, behind the images and paintings, the viewer can glimpse the artist’s thoughts and his sincere tenderness. He looks at the weak and limited physical body, adding a aura to this holy statue in his painting to become the latent aura behind. He innocently wanted to obtain good luck from this painting ritual, attempting to retrieve some past aura. Although the body of the brother is gone, his image is preserved in Tai’s symbol system. To date, the symbol of the Paintings of My Older Brother, a man in a wheelchair, still constantly appears in his sketches or pictures, accompanying him in his travels around the world and his ventures in the realm of art.

In Tai’s home studio, behind his easel, is an image of his father painted in grayscale. He told me, “I cannot finish this painting, so it’s always been placed there.” In fact, I think he wants to always have that painting there to keep him company, to watch his creative growth, instead of finishing it in a hurry and storing it in the storeroom. After talking with Tai in depth, I further realized that this painting is also the altar of the father image, where exist the artist’s personal affection and special ritual.

The Merciful Eye that Refuses to Use the Camera: Putting down the Camera and Picking up the Pen Brush

From what I understand, Tai is a serious shutterbug. In the past, he carried a camera wherever he went and even published several thick photography albums (Life.Art.Home (2001), Journey (2006), and Traveling with Light and Shadows (2010)). It would not be an overstatement to call him a photographer. However, when facing the heavy issue of his brother’s terminal cancer, he chose to put down the camera and use painting to record the process of Before the End of the Journey. Why would he choose this unscientific, unobjective method of painting to record this painful process? In the three solo photography albums he published, the sensitive camera eye recorded a huge number of images, but none of them were too cruel to be seen. This absence of cruelty reflects the artist’s strong empathy and compassion. He refused to use a cool machine eye to record the last moments between him and his brother, choosing not to use the eye of a machine to violate his brother’s body and instead employing paints and lines to depict this gradually fading figure. His use of painting in profile, which reflected his inability to stare directly to replace the highly realistic close-up with an intense look, no doubt arose from his warm care. A continual painting record, which is an interpretation warmer and more profound than that of photography, also symbolizes the process of modern people facing illness and their deaths, implying that all of us will one day go this route.

Giving New Words to the Wordless

Tai once said that he “experienced realistic portrayal, synecdoche, metaphor, fiction, exaggeration, and symbolism in [his] creative life. Through overturning and making up meaning structures, he used acute observation to choose objects around him as the totem symbols in structures.” Because he is familiar with this creative structure, he can also speak for the cold, forgotten materials around that do not have the ability to speak—such as famous painting in art history, manuscripts, promotional pamphlets, abandoned objects, and forgotten people—to give them words again. Instead of simply calling it appropriation, it would be more appropriate to say that Tai gives cold material a new language and aura. In Paintings of My Older Brother, for example, he used a huge number of sketches and his caring eyes, implementing sketch and memory to complete the voice-giving ritual of painting on canvas. In this series, the Tai style of a “heating ritual” made a cold wheelchair into a symbol with warmth, one that even became a holy image full of aura.

Recently, Tai adopted the special technique of vinyl cutting in the visual representation of his painting, forming a strong personal representation style that gives his works a sense of newness. This special technique is similar to that of the printmaking of prints and created a unique style. Unlike painting figures on the canvas directly, he uses shaped plates as the medium. Due to the penetration marks at the boundaries, the object’s tidy shape is like a silhouette that originally was a leak, random and hard to control, becoming a unique method, like layers of figures sewn together. The paint seeps from the boundary, skillfully complicated and blurring the layers of figures. The accidental marks from the rational control of the irrational marks shift and are sewn at the boundaries of the objects. Perhaps because Tai received vigorous training in printing and printmaking in college, unlike most artists, he has a deep understanding of figure layers, shaped plates, and the boundary control of images. Although the painting presents the flatness of print, it also reveals the chronological relationships between each layer. The plant, seemingly plain in shape and color, contains the slices of time.

Gradually Weakening the Documentaryness of Photography and Gradually Entering the Internalized Realistic Feeling

As aforementioned, photography is a critical vehicle for Tai’s professional art. However, he eventually decided to gradually erase the photographic images. For example, in the Separation and Transformation series (1999), he used toluene to erase the surface layer of the image, leaving a painting-esque wiped texture. For Tai, photography is a bastard, a journey, and freedom, whereas painting is family, the way home, responsibility, and even the point of departure, like the painting on the childhood beach. Photography is a critical journey, what the huge number of sketches is to his large-scale works. He traveled between the huge number of sketches and large-scale paintings, the two kinds of image representation, lingering between paper and cloth, and leaving a huge amount of traces. Be it photography or painting, both are vehicles Tai employs to face life and art. Be it a documentary or subjective interpretation, he is full of experiences and stories to share with the viewer of his journey.

In addition to leaving the impressive amount of creative works he leaves, his exhibitions have left traces in many places in the world, including solo exhibitions in Kobe, Japan, and Paris, France; and international joined exhibitions in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Mexico, Tokyo, Hungary, Milan, Jeju Island, and Shanghai. Because of his journeys away from home, he has seen things happening and brought back a rich harvest for the mind. He keeps leaving home, but he never forgets the way home. In this era of gradual isolation and an environment filled with fast images and simulacra, the artist employs the ritual of producing paintings to gradually make his way home.

Dissatisfied about Staying and yet Eager to Return Home

He has always been at the boundary of a journey or on the way home. He keeps leaving and returning, leaving again and returning home again. The traces of his work also keep wavering between boundaries, sometimes a stranger in a strange place, sometimes an eager desire to return home. This is a kind of ambiguity, and yet because of this continuous going out and returning, he is able to keep exploring new roads and opening up new possibilities. Exactly because of his returning and retrospection, the viewer feels resonance with his paintings or journeys.

The soul of an artist growing up in a fishing village always has an adventurous spirit that can leave at any moment but at the same time longs for home. A home-loving traveler, Tai perhaps finds leaving home and going home the same thing, with only a shift in perspective. Photography and sketches are the storage media of his journeys, and the final large-scale paintings, profound like epic poems, are the memory of his eternal home. He repeatedly, continuously actualizes in this cycle.

For people who have never left home, home is only a place to live, one lacking the meaning of a place for one to return. A place from where one cannot see home is the starting point that leads one to the road home. Only before one approaches the destination can one comprehend its meaning.