——马尔科·诺卡（Marco Nocca）

罗马美术学院 古代艺术史与博物馆学教授

我非常荣幸地接受了佛罗伦萨艺术研究院及刘佑局个展《有界与无界》（Bounded and Unbounded）策展人安娜·巴尔扎尼（Anna Balzani）的邀请，为这位杰出的中国艺术家写下一些观感与思考。本次展览在罗马国家现代与当代艺术美术馆举行。刘佑局的国际艺术履历十分精彩——他在2024年威尼斯双年展（“外人无处不在”，喀麦隆国家馆，玫瑰宫）上也取得了成功亮相。

马尔科·诺卡教授出席刘佑局在罗马国立现代及当代博物馆个人画展媒体发布会

近年来，来自远东的年轻学子越来越多地选择到意大利的高等美术学院深造。他们往往在本国先接受以写实为基础的艺术训练，带着对我们艺术传统的浓厚兴趣来到这里，通过临摹与钻研深入理解欧洲古典艺术，同时融入当代欧洲文化。这种跨文化交流是全球化最积极的成果之一，它让我们以一种崭新的目光重新审视自身的艺术遗产，为具象绘画注入新的生命力，引领我们超越二十世纪欧洲先锋派解构后出现的表现危机，也超越抽象与具象之间长期的艺术争论，进入一种在“他者”文化滋养下形成的当代艺术视野。

在刘佑局的艺术中，我清晰地感受到这种强烈而独特的“对话”——无论是他空灵而深邃的山水，还是沉浸于饱满色彩中的神秘人物，都是如此。这种对话深植于他对欧洲艺术传统的深刻理解，评论界因此称他为“中国印象派之父”，而展览中的《晨韵》（Morning Rhime）似乎印证了这一定义。

教授马尔科·诺卡教授（左一）、罗马国立现代及当代博物馆馆长雷娜塔·克里斯蒂娜·马赞蒂尼（左二）与刘佑局合影

他的艺术之路始于中国书法训练，植根于千年积淀的符号价值与严谨的形式法则。但他的创作活力与冲动往往通过色彩释放出来。2019年在佛罗伦萨展出的巨幅作品《抽象之后》（Beyond Abstraction）中，色彩在画面中如波洛克式的飞溅与滴洒般爆发，但又保有他独特的个人风格。在走出原生文化语境的同时，他与20世纪西方绘画展开了直接对话。

他常保留着中国传统的媒材——水墨与宣纸——并将之与20世纪才传入的丙烯颜料相结合，形成独特的技法。在本展的《日出》（Sunrise）和双联画《三棵树》（Three Trees）中，我们依然能看到他的书法功力作为构图的核心支点，并成为炫目色彩爆发的起点。

10月22日马尔科·诺卡教授参加刘佑局在罗马国立现代及当代博物馆个人作品研讨会

策展人精选的诸多作品延续了他的艺术根基，从未偏离对东方哲思的探寻。这种思想与《道德经》及老子关于宇宙生成的理论息息相关：万物自“道”而生，正如种子破壳而绽放成花（《绽放》（Burst into Bloom））。这种观念召唤人进入沉思、谦卑与和谐之境，承认并敬畏存在的奥秘。其中最重要的主题，是人与自然的深度共鸣，这种共鸣与东方世界的哲学与诗意感受不谋而合。

展览标题“有界与无界”象征着人类有限的生命与自然、宇宙无限空间之间的关系：一切存在都源于阴（黑暗、静性、女性、月）与阳（光明、动态、男性、日）之间的互动——如《光影交错》（Alternating Light and Shadow）般表现这种关系。这种和谐来自于顺应自然的流转，在这种古老智慧之上，刘佑局加入了现代人对“创造”应有的责任感。如《生态》（Ecology）中，自然被背景的生动色彩所象征，文明则以急促且富有节奏的线条呈现，它们在画面中实现一种和解；《荆丛》（Thorn Thicket）中，密集的枝蔓透出闪亮色彩，仿佛在暗示人类唯有尊重野生与自然，方能实现平衡共处。

作品《荆丛》106x107CM

人与宇宙的关系可以是神秘的——正如古典占星学通过解读星辰与行星的奥秘来理解它们对人类的影响（《无题天书》（Untitled Celestial Script））也可以是面向未来的。在科技推动下，人类正走向对新世界的探索（《火星计划》（Mars Project））。

刘佑局绘画中的这种独特融合——古与今、东西方传统的交汇，他甚至能够以兴趣和好奇心去诠释如圣诞节这样的西方节日（《圣诞印象》（Christmas Impressions），藏于美国加州理查德·尼克松总统图书馆与博物馆）——让他成为当代跨文化交流的重要人物。

古希腊人所说的“Dialogos”意味着“对话”“交流”，在当下全球数字文化时代，我们或许还应加上“图像”。艺术与语言，是唯一能让战争之声沉寂的工具——即便在新千年的首个四分之一行将结束之际，武器的阴影依旧回响，而我们曾在这个时代寄予如此多的希望。

The painting of Liu Youju

A peaceful conversation between East and West

Marco Nocca

Professor of Ancient Art History and Museography

Academy of Fine Arts, Rome

It is with genuine pleasure that I welcomed the invitation from the Academy of the Arts of Drawing in Florence, and from Anna Balzani, curator of Liu Youju’s exhibition Bounded and Unbounded at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, to offer some reflections on the painting of this remarkable Chinese artist, whose international exhibition record includes a successful presence at the most recent Venice Biennale in 2024 (Stranieri ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, Cameroon Pavilion, Palazzo Donà dalle Rose).

Our Italian Academies of Fine Arts are increasingly sought by students from the Far East who, after an initial artistic education (generally naturalistic) in their homeland, arrive in Italy with a keen sense of curiosity for everything pertaining to our artistic tradition – assiduously studied through mimicry – while also immersing themselves in European contemporary culture. This is one of the great, positive outcomes of a globalised world: they allow us to cast a fresh gaze on what has always been ours, to revitalise, for example, the seed of figurative painting through the original and unprecedented interpretations presented in their works, inviting us to move beyond the twentieth-century crisis of representation – dismantled by the European avant-gardes – and beyond the long-standing abstract/figurative debate, towards a contemporary vision made possible by a receptive “other” culture. It is precisely this desire for dialogue, powerful and unmistakable, that I perceive in Liu Youju’s art, whether in his rarefied landscapes or his enigmatic figures immersed in ever-vibrant chromatic fields. A dialogue grounded in a profound knowledge of European artistic tradition, which has led critics to describe him as the “father of Chinese Impressionism” – an intuition seemingly confirmed by works on view here such as Morning Rhime. His painting, which began with calligraphic training rooted in the value and power of the sign, composed within a rigorous formal code inherited from millennia of tradition, is animated by powerful creative impulses that find their force of action in colour. In Beyond Abstraction, a large painting presented in Florence in 2019, chromatic matter exploded – like a Pollock-style dripping – yet with highly original results, in which the artist, freed from the confines of his native context, established a dialogue with Western twentieth-century painting. This synthesis of two cultures is evident in his technique: Liu Youju often preserves the traditional use of Chinese ink and the exquisite support of rice paper, bringing them into relation with acrylic paint, a contribution of our twentieth century. Notable examples in this exhibition include Sunrise and the diptych Three Trees, where Liu Youju’s calligraphic formation underpins the composition, serving as a launchpad for a pyrotechnic chromatic display of remarkable vitality.

Among the works selected by the curator for this exhibition are many that revisit the themes of his formation, never abandoning the philosophical inspiration of the East, linked to the Tao Te Ching and to Laozi’s theory of the creation of the Universe, emerging from the Tao like a flower bursting from its seed (Burst into bloom). This vision invites beings to contemplation, humility, and harmony with the mystery of existence. The theme of deep empathy between humanity and nature, above all, aligns with the profound philosophical and poetic sensibility of the Far East. The title of the exhibition, Bounded and Unbounded, thus alludes to the relationship between the finite world of humankind and the infinite realm of nature and the cosmos: all that exists is the outcome of the interaction between Yin (darkness, passivity, the feminine principle, the moon) and Yang (light, activity, the masculine principle, the sun), as in the striking Alternating light and shadow. Harmony is attained by following the natural flow of things: to this wise and ancient vision Liu Youju seeks to join a modern sense of responsibility before Creation, as in Ecology, whose composition seems to reconcile Nature (evoked by the animated colours of the background) and Civilization (vital in its compulsive, frenetic linework), or Thorn thicket, in which a dense bramble, through which bright, vivid colours shimmer, appears to suggest that only in respecting the wild may humankind find the possibility of a harmonious life. The relationship of the individual with the cosmos may be magical, shaped – as in classical astrological tradition – by the deciphering of the mysteries of stars and planets, of their influence on our earthly life (Untitled. Celestial script), or projected into a near future of imminent discovery of new worlds, to which modern technology carries us (Mars Project).

It is precisely the original synthesis in Liu Youju’s painting – between Ancient and Modern, Eastern and Western traditions, capable even of interpreting so intensely a “holiday season” of ours such as Christmas, with interest and curiosity (Christmas Impressions, Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum, Yorba Linda, California) – that makes this seventy-year-old Chinese artist a leading figure in today’s intercultural dialogue. Dialogos for the Greeks meant “conversation,” “exchange of words” (to which, for the new media of global digital culture, we might add “images”) between two or more people, between two or more civilizations. These are the only instruments capable, through visual art and the word, of silencing weapons, who’s sinister thunder still echoes at the close of the first quarter of this new millennium, in which we had placed so many hopes.