要了解陈文令的作品，我们就必须清醒当代中国社会在过去20－30年间的转型。随着新中国的建立，提倡优雅的文人传统被主流意识形态视为对立物，而逐渐被清除出日常生活的话语范畴。与此同时，民间的通俗文化，成为主流意识形态标榜文化特性的武器，对视觉文化的生产形成新的冲击。无论的是解放后期的油画民族化讨论，还是水墨画中的新年画运动，抑或是中国雕塑向民间泥塑学习产生的“收租院”这样的雕塑，在不同媒介的艺术创作中，追求带有民间通俗文化意味的语言和形态迅速成为主流。80年代开始的中国当代艺术运动，事实上是中国艺术学习西方现当代艺术的语言复兴。但是当中国当代艺术在90年代开始进入国际当代艺术的意义生产时，作为边缘的中国当代艺术很快发现，对于西方的了解和模仿，并不能带来国际艺术对于中国当代艺术的认同。在这种背景下，曾经被当代艺术否决的民俗与民族语言因素开始进入到当代艺术的语言创造中来。
同样，我们也必须注意到，在日常生活层面中，中国当代生活的财富是在过去20－30年代间建立起来的。一方面是文化层面中的精英意识被主流意识形态的清除，另一方面是物质财富和欲望在中国以前所未有的速度的叠加，二者之间无法弥补的鸿沟，造成了当代中国视觉文化的特性。诞生于90年代中期的艳俗艺术虽然脱胎于政治波普，但是相比后者在视觉趣味上却更宣扬中国的民俗符号。但是艳俗艺术产生于中国当代艺术于国际艺术市场之间边缘与中心的不平衡状态，从某种意义上说，它更多是迎合西方对于中国的“暴发户”文化想像而自我建构，充满异国情调的视觉样式，是后殖民文化的产物。
然而，中国当代艺术语言的丰富性并不是艳俗艺术所能“简单化”的。更多的试验在那些富有责任感的艺术家的语言创造中以不同的方式试验着。如前所述，财富的叠加与文化趣味的丧失是中国当代社会的根本矛盾，对于社会文化趣味的反省、嘲讽和比拟也成了很多艺术家试验的方向。如果说脱胎于85新潮的隋建国用观念艺术来重新阐释社会现实主义的语言的话，那么新一代的雕塑家则开始有意识的彻底摒弃了观念艺术的有效性，用本土民俗化的语言符号同时向社会主流意识形态和西方文化偏见开战。展望用流行而廉价的不锈钢批量复制代表高雅文化的“假山石”，刘建华则是套用陶瓷中彩塑的概念，反讽地贩卖着“异国情调的旗袍”。
陈文令的作品就是在这样的文化和艺术的上下文中展开的。在福建学习工艺美术的陈文令并没有太多文化符号和理论的负担，所以相比上述隋建国，他对于西方当代艺术的先进性完全没有依恋，相比展望和刘建华，他也不留观念艺术的尾巴。相比艳俗艺术，民俗艺术并非是一个符号，相反是他创作的主题。陈文令并非像艳俗艺术那样，在用鄙夷的眼光审视故作清高的审视着当下的日常生活。相反，他是用民间符号和语言来重新诠释那些故作高雅的“幸福生活”。
从某种层面上说，陈文令创造的是真正“视觉艺术”而不是观念艺术。在他的作品中，饱满的造型总是充满特殊的力量感，无数形体的非理性组合，使得面对他作品陷入到莫名奇妙的狂喜之中。同样，也可能与他对中国民间文化的了解有关，在他的作品中，符号系统往往是简单而明确的。猪必然象征着财富和衣食无忧和生活的快乐，而对于性感的呈现，则是胸大屁股大；美丽和品味则体现为血红的嘴唇和硕大的珍珠项链。在最新的创作中，陈文令试图发展出一种与民间神话相关的寓言风格，创造出各种奇怪的动物形象，以比拟当代生活。相比中国当代艺术体系的观念艺术试验，陈文令是个十足的草根：他并非关注观念的理性推演，相反对现实的非理性化有着浓厚的兴趣；相比那些后殖民激发的艳俗艺术，陈文令则是真诚得近乎透明：从气质上说，他从不居高临下地嘲讽，拙劣的模仿，往往，他要表现比现实更加疯狂。
从视觉上看，陈文令的作品的绝妙之处在于他的疯狂和力量感。他的作品中所有的造型都是圆形趣味，体量丰硕，充满肉欲而毫无优雅可言。从趣味上说，这种简单直接的造型脱胎于耕种文明的民间文化，相比当代社会而言，他们多少有点不堪如目，过于粗鄙而不登当代都市生活的大雅之堂。但是，草根出生的陈文令的文化目的恰恰是要用这种粗鄙的“农民趣味”来呈现当代都市文化被高雅所遮蔽的原始冲动。安徒生童话中，象征着对爱情忠贞的美人鱼，被陈文令用肥硕的形体呈现，用珠光宝气打扮，并编排到充满粗鄙的胖男人的床上。在这里，艺术家所试图传达的是一种“下层”的眼光，他同庸俗来消解高雅，用原始冲动来消解当代的情感与趣味。
被艳丽的色彩和肉欲的造型所包裹着的这些作品，其实是民间眼光对于当代生活的一次有力剖析。它们是对一个在短期内积聚巨大财富的社会的生活趣味的极端体验，但是从另一个角度看，陈文令作品的真正指向是反讽地反应出在追求财富与欲望实现过程某些重要文化环节的缺失。就像16世纪尼德兰画派中的博鲁盖尔用民间寓言反讽基督教文化的虚伪一样，相比那些高雅的当代艺术而言，陈文令难以置信的将庸俗作为一种力量发挥到及至，让我们赤裸裸的面对我们在当代生活中试图掩盖的东西。
On the Gaudy and the Tawdry: A Double Exposure
Pi Li
In order to understand the work of Chen Wenling, one must first investigate the past 20 to 30 years of change in China's social structure. During the establishment of the "New China," the cultural elegance advocated by the humanistic tradition was taken as the antithesis of mainstream ideology, and was slowly eliminated as a mode of everyday discourse. At the same time, folk culture became a weapon of this same mass ideology, attacking visual culture in general. Styles, languages, and forms borrowed from folk culture were quickly absorbed into mainstream culture across multiple media: the development of oil painting after liberation, political movements in ink painting, and the clay statue-influenced Rent Collection Yard all reflect these trends. The movement known as Chinese contemporary art that began in the 1980s was, in reality, a restoration of the language of modern Western art. But as Chinese artists quickly discovered when they began to participate in the international production of semiotic meaning in the 1990s, understanding and imitation of the West would not be enough to achieve the recognition of the international art world. Under this background, the semiotic elements of folk arts and crafts once rejected by contemporary art slowly began to re-enter the visual language of contemporary art production.
In the same way, we cannot ignore the fact that, on the level of daily life, the material wealth of contemporary life in China began to be established only 20 to 30 years ago. Whereas on the one hand elite ideologies were wiped out of China's cultural sphere by the mainstream, on the other hand material desires were inflated at an unprecedented rate; the irreconcilable gaps between these two levels of social construction have created the characteristics of China's contemporary visual culture. Gaudy Art, born in the middle of the 1990s, was born out of Political Pop, but in retrospect much more heavily emphasizes symbols and images from Chinese folk art. It was also created under the unequal conditions of the periphery-center relationship between China and the international art metropoles, so perhaps it may be possible to call it a synthesis between the West and the culture of China's new rich—something simultaneously imagined and constructed. A visual form full of exoticism and sentimentality, it was certainly a product of post-colonialism.
On the other hand, the rich language of Chinese contemporary art cannot be so easily flattened and simplified by Gaudy Art. Generally speaking, the semiotic production of responsible artists manifests itself in experiments of widely ranging styles. If the past serves as any example, the expansion of material wealth and forfeit of cultural modes may be the fundamental contradiction of contemporary Chinese society; many artists have taken this very loss of modes of cultural production as a direction for meditation, analogy, or satire. For example, it could be said that Sui Jianguo, who emerged from the 85 New Wave, uses conceptual art to illuminate the language of social expressionism; it must naturally follow that the new generation of sculptors, who have closed the door on conceptual art, use the linguistic symbols of native folk art to begin a perverse war with both mainstream ideologies and Western culture. Zhan Wang uses the popular (and moderately priced) medium of stainless style to reproduce en masse the scholar's rocks that have come to represent refined culture. Liu Jianhua uses the concept of painted porcelain to sarcastically sell his exoticized Qipaos.
Chen Wenling's work belongs to this category, unfolding in the contextual space of art and culture. Studying craftwork and fine arts in Fujian, his work carried very few cultural symbols, and bore no theoretical burden—so unlike Sui Jianguo he holds no attachment to the Western avant-garde, and unlike Zhan Wang and Liu Jianhua he does not linger on the tail of conceptual art. Unlike Gaudy Art in general, folk art does not appear as a symbol in his work; on the contrary, it takes on thematic importance. Chen Wenling rejects the tactics of Gaudy Art, refusing to inspect the pretensions of everyday life with a condescending gaze. Instead, he uses the images and language of folk art to reinterrogate the false elegance of "the Good Life."
On any level, Chen Wenling works in visual art, not conceptual art. In his works, fullness of form takes on a special kind of strength. Countless shapes come together irrationally, forcing the viewer to fall into an unaccountable rapture. Perhaps due to his understanding of Chinese folk culture, his systems of signification are often simple and clear. A pig inevitably symbolizes wealth, comfortable living, and happiness; sex is invariably manifested in large breasts and large buttocks; beauty and taste are demonstrated by red lips and large pearl necklaces. In his latest work, Chen Wenling attempts to develop a system of fairy tales or folk mythology through a series of images of strange animals—a metaphor for contemporary life. Compared with the experiments of China's contemporary conceptual art circle, Chen drifts without roots—he ignored the rationalist implications of conceptualism, but expressed interest in the irrational tendencies of expressionism. Compared with the Gaudy Art aroused by post-colonialism, Chen Wenling is honest and transparent; he never mockingly looks down upon his subject matter and puts forth poor imitations of life; often, what he wants to express is even more insane than real life.
Visually, the strong points of Chen Wenling's work lie in their insanity and feeling of strength. His images feel rounded, heavy, fleshy, and inelegant. Conceptually, this type of simplicity and directness is born out of the folk culture of an agricultural civilization; these subjects are almost difficult to look art, overly vulgar and unrefined. And this is precisely the artist's goal—to use this vulgar "peasant flavor" to expose the primal impulses of urban China, despite their veneer of elegance. The fish that represents love, beauty, and innocence in Anderson's fairy tales is appropriated by Chen Wenling and turned into a fat and formless shape dressed out in jewels and finery and placed on a fat, vulgar, and tacky man's bed. Here, the artist attempts to express a sort of "low level" point of view, using filth and vulgarity to undermine elegance, or using primitive human impulses to resist contemporary affect and aesthetics.
These works, covered in flamboyant colors and fleshy forms, should be considered a dissection and analysis of contemporary life from the perspective of folk culture. They certainly reflect the extreme experience of a lifestyle that has undergone a massive accumulation of wealth in a very short period of time; from another perspective, Chen Wenling engages in an ironic response to the lack of cultural life in the space between the pursuit of wealth and the realization of material desires. Just as 16th century Dutch painter Peter Bruegel used folk mythology to satirically reveal the emptiness of Christian culture, Chen Wenling brings out and takes full advantage of the power of aesthetic vulgarity, forcing the viewer to gaze nakedly upon that which his contemporary life tries to conceal.