INTERVIEWS – PAN LIN 潘琳

Pan Lin x Guo Xiaohui conversation

The Triumph of Color

Guo Xiaohui: When did you start painting?

Pan Lin: I started when I was quite young, I think, probably after the fourth grade, when I took the initiative to learn painting at the Children’s Palace. I didn’t receive any formal training in painting until middle school. I attended the Xu Beihong Middle School to study the plastic arts, drawing, and color theory. Later, I was admitted to the High School Affiliated with the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), and after graduating from high school, I was admitted to CAFA. Then, I entered the Third Studio of the Oil Painting Department. After I obtained my bachelor’s degree, I took up graduate studies also at the Third Studio. Then, I went to the United States and obtained another master’s degree from Boston University.

Guo: Did your parents influence your decision to study painting?

Pan: Neither of them is in the art field, but my father likes to paint, so they are both quite supportive of my endeavors.

Guo: When did you decide to become a painter?

Pan: That was actually quite late, as it was after I moved to the U.S. I didn’t encounter many difficulties with my studies in China. Even after I graduated with a master’s degree from CAFA, I didn’t firmly believe that I could depend on painting for my livelihood. My memory of this transformative experience is rather clear: after the spring of 2015, I realized that no matter what would happen in the future, I would always paint. By then, I had come to the U.S. for barely a year—I moved there in August 2014—and I had been feeling somewhat depressed for a while. I felt that painting was a great company to me, as it could help cure my depression, so I decided to always paint no matter what.

Guo: You used to study painting in Boston. Did the change of environment after coming back to China make an impact on your work?

Pan: The biggest difference was that there were fewer discussions around me. Of course, this was partly because of the particular U.S. environment I experienced thanks to my cohort; everyone would talk about art every day. Some courses I took even invited visiting artists to join for panel discussions. As a result, I think I had more opportunities and time to discuss my work and art in general back then. After coming back to China, I have been working as an independent artist, so it has been necessary to experience more solitude.

Guo: Where do you usually draw your inspirations from? How do you determine the themes of your works?

Pan: Most of my works are inspired by existing images. This is because I often stay alone at home or work at the studio, not maintaining many social contacts. I like to browse online or flip through books and magazines for images, and I also like to take some photographs here and there. Actually, I have always been like this, although back then I didn’t think why I was saving those images; as time passes by, I have saved an incredible amount of images, which is quite a handful to deal with. Later, when I returned to China, I decided to finally do some organizing work on these images. It was like committing to a big spring cleaning: I started to have some thoughts about the images, beginning to categorize them and collage them—that was how the paintings came into beings.

Guo: But there are so many images on Instagram. Do you give any preference to a particular group of images or look out for those images?

Pan: I will choose to follow some accounts, and Instagram recommends me some as well. I don’t think I have any specific preference, but I did notice some commonalities during the categorizing process. Those images are relatable not by any thematic keywords but by the formal qualities they share.

To me, looking at images on Instagram is the same as finding images in magazines, as both are very enjoyable endeavors. If I see something that lights me up or touches me, I will take a screenshot of it right away. Only when I start to collage and categorize the images, I would look deeper into what makes me interested in them at the first place. But for the most part, I rely more on my gut feeling.

Guo: What’s your painting process like? Do you start with a theme, or do you start by looking for inspirations first?

Pan: I don’t usually start with having themes, but with collaging, having a structure first is important. The structure could consist of, for instance, diagonal lines or a checkered pattern; the images will then be filled inside the structure like a filling material. After the collage is done, I will start painting it.

Guo: How do you fill the images inside the structure?

Pan: The original images are different every time when I collage. Some of them are printed screenshots of Instagram images, while some others are cut out from magazines. Sometimes, I use a receipt printer to print out images. I also collect wrapping paper. In general, I collect any image made of any material that I find intriguing. I give myself a rule when I collage. For example, I might cut or fold an image a few times horizontally, and I will write out my steps as if I were designing and playing a game. Then, it’s the time to piece together the images—occasionally, I would turn my back to the images during the process. Of course, those images have been separated into groups beforehand—probably into a dozen or so piles—and each group represents a category determined by me. When images from these groups are linked to one another, a line on someone’s body could be continued into a crack on a wall. In short, I always set up something first, but I still hope for coincidences to take place.

Guo: So it’s fair to say that there is a kind of randomness at play?

Pan: Yes, I enjoy this randomness. I cut up and piece together images a lot, so much that almost all of my collages experience more than five rounds of cutting up and piecing together. Certainly, not every trial is successful, as sometimes the resulting images are so broken that they look like nothing. But there are also times when the resulting images appear fantastic. That would make me overjoyed. I feel that it’s both me and not me who make it happen this way.

Guo: What prompted you to adopt this technique that’s based on randomness?

Pan: I remember that when I was in the U.S., I made a series of works related to memorizing vocabularies. I made a painting for the sake of memorizing words, and the following paintings also had the same structure: they were similar to houses in the sense that their brushstrokes, colors, and ways of depicting things all corresponded to the impressions that the words had made on me, eventually helping me memorize those words. Although this series seems to be not determined by randomness, it gives rise to an idea that the content of my painting is inconsequential—what’s important is how I paint. All I want is to make what I paint more arbitrary, more unimportant. At the same time, the urge and desire to paint remain in me.

Guo: Since when have you developed your painting styles?

Pan: I don’t think I have ever consolidated my painting styles. Other people’s comments are usually that I paint with bright hues and saturated colors, including what my U.S. audience told me. My advisor in Boston once remarked that he thought walking into my studio was like seeing at one time four or five artists’ works—they all looked quite nice, but it seemed that I couldn’t decide on a style that I preferred. Later, my friend told me that this might just be my style. My way of working is my style. Once I participated in an exhibition organized by CAFA, showing my thesis works finished at CAFA and collected by the Academy, the paintings I brought back from the U.S., and the newly created pieces. Initially, I imagined that conflicts would arise from this juxtaposition, but afterward, I discovered that both my fragmented way of thinking and infatuation with images were already in the paintings. Figurative or not, I guess I had different ways of expression at different times.

Guo: Which art historical period or artist has influenced you the most? How is that influence revealed in your work?

Pan: Actually, I don’t know if there is anyone who has had any influence so direct that one could tell immediately from my work. But I still have different artists who I like at various times. Their influence on me is likely reflected in how I consider my practice.

My all-time favorite has been Munch. Despite the fact that he paints figuratively, his composition, the way he manipulates color… All of that makes me consider him a genius. I also appreciate the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I like his taste for the beautiful in his photographs, which I find to be particularly unadulterated by external factors. I also enjoy Bacon; his ways of dealing with the horizon and lines as well as his triptych format have all affected me. So have Matisse and Agnes Martin. I also quite enjoy minimalism. When I veered toward making more abstract paintings, I really liked the work of Robert Ryman. The modernist paintings that I saw in the U.S. have impacted me the most, I think.

Guo: In your work, color is a crucial component. How do you deal with the relationship between colors and images? From my point of view, your relationship with colors is similar to playing chess against someone.

Pan: Painting to me is probably more of a process to entertain myself, and creating imagery is a goal I set forth. I use color to achieve that goal and lay bare the process. When the imagery reaches the certain milestone that I have preset, and when I have sufficiently pleased myself, then the painting is finished.

In my view, changes have taken place while I was in the U.S. Before that, I was deeply impacted by the pedagogical system of the Academy. Naturalism, modeling, and the grayscale all have a lot to do with space, and their rendering has become my muscle memory; a certain pattern of using colors has as well. During the semester right before I left the U.S. for China, I had a lot of unused paints that I felt bad about just throwing away, but since I definitely couldn’t bring them to China, I wanted to use them all up. My rule was that I would paint a huge canvas, and I would utilize the remaining paints as much as possible. Then I assigned numbers to the paints according to their relative quantities. I gave up choosing colors based on my preferences. That was the first time I selected paints with a random draw; the only thing I could modify was the technique with which the selected paint was applied, as I could alter its relation to nearby colors by altering its brushstroke and impasto thickness. This was to me a great experiment, as before then, I had clear preferences for colors (e.g. I used to use very little yellow compared to blue). From that time onward, I realized that there are no ugly colors—it all depends on how I use them.

Guo: Have you experienced any major creative shifts? If you did, why did you experience the shifts?

Pan: My greatest shift was from figurative painting to the present abstraction that only shows vestiges of figuration. Since I graduated from the undergraduate program, and since the start of my graduate program, I have been painting relatively abstractly. My training received at the Academy allowed me to spend considerable time learning others’ working patterns and methods. At a certain point later, I transformed them to form my own.

Guo: When did you begin to want to give up figuration?

Pan: Actually, I have never given up figuration. Although all my current work appears abstract, in reality, they are very figurative, only that they have been cut into pieces. This process actually takes a big load off my mind. My years of learning the fundamentals have made naturalistic figuration my second nature. When an image is cut up or reversed in its orientation, it loses the figurative form that I would have normally imitated. Thus, to some extent, I have managed to relax. The alternative intuition that I have for the image can thereby flow out in a relaxed state.

Guo: How would you describe your current practice?

Pan: In these past couple of years, I have been concentrating on making grid-style collages. My collage work is not as arbitrary as it used to be, as it now has a certain sense of purpose. Since 2016, when I returned to China from the U.S., I have noticed that my collage work is becoming more and more complex. Subsequently, I have been trying to simplify it. There are two ways of simplification: with the first method, I would lay out a format first, and then the grid would be scaled according to that format, for example, the ratio of the stretcher’s height to its width. This grid does not necessarily correspond 1:1 to the stretcher; as a result, it can give an effect of expanding outward or closing inward. The second method involves the simplification of the image, which entails more work for me. I used to make a collage in the size of roughly D1 (532 x 760 mm) for a painting that was two-meter long. Now, I would make a collage that’s roughly the same size as the painting and then adjust the print size of the finished collage to fit the painting. When the collaged image is very complex, and when I scale down the image to a fairly small size, certain forms in the image would be automatically simplified.

Guo: I noticed that you have a very rational way of working, and it’s used in working with colors, which people normally consider to be very much up to one’s own perception. How do you perceive the respective influence of sensitivity and reason on your work?

Pan: I spent three years between 2011 and 2014 experimenting with abstraction, and that experimentation was completely arbitrary and following my instincts. When I look back at my works from then, especially those that appear similar to works by past artists, I can sense that some of those works are very interesting. At that time, I might be painting a dozen paintings simultaneously; if I lost my touch on one painting, I would simply move on to another. I didn’t quite know when the right feeling would come and how to make it stay, but I was rather drawn to that state of mind, even though I knew that it wouldn’t last very long. My theory of my sensitivity is that, when I am in a good place, I can finish a great piece very quickly, but I still require rational thinking to make good judgments. Casting appropriate judgments on your own work needs practice. Back in the day, I would unknowingly destroy some of my great paintings just because my gut reaction told me that this sort of atypical works could not possibly be good. I then got to paint things that my cognition could easily accept, but I turned out to have destroyed something great. Compared to sensitivity, reason brings me more sense of security, allowing me to think if something can be incorporated into my work.

Guo: Painting is obviously your only medium of artmaking. A lot of people would consider easel painting to be relatively traditional and classical, as many new mediums have appeared recently. Why did you choose painting to be your sole artistic medium? What does it mean to you?

Pan: I have no anxiety about it, and it feels right at hand to me. I mean, I also take photographs, make collages… I haven’t really thought this through yet: when I was organizing my collages, it became evident to me that they were not just some preparatory collages but complete works in themselves.

When I paint, I feel more myself and more relaxed. Painting reduces my worries and eases my anxiety. What appeals to me the most about painting might not only be the medium itself—the act of painting, which is like a sport, also attracts me a lot.

Guo: If you were to choose your career again, would you still want to be an artist? Why or why not?

Pan: Yes, I would still choose to be an artist because that’s how I could feel at ease with myself. When I don’t feel normal, my mind would be racing to try to figure out a lot of things, and my mood swings could alter in an unfamiliar way. Painting gives me a sense of security. When I don’t paint, I feel lost, even non-existent.

Guo: What’s your ideal studio like?

Pan: Glass on all sides. I like sunlight a lot. It doesn’t have to be big; two to three hundred square meters would suffice.

Guo: What do you want to do next?

Pan: I want to experiment more with my current grid series in terms of its ratios and methods of simplification, so I can conclude it. I have been wanting to do so since last year. I also want to paint and draw more on paper, as I would like to transfer images to canvases through the folding of paper.

Guo: What’s your view on the relationship between artists and the art market?

Pan: I don’t have much right to say anything on this issue, as I am not very good at dealing with the market and so on. However, I still think one should work with the market. When I came back to China, I brought with me all my painted works in such a protective way, which was not easy. So when galleries were doing exhibitions of those works and selling them, I naturally didn’t want to let them go. My teachers and friends suggested I give those paintings to people who appreciated me the most, like some sort of reward. The paintings have little use to me when I keep them around, but if they were given to those who genuinely like them, I could be more motivated to create new works. The supply and demand in the art market can stimulate artists to create, as long as the pressure to create does not get too great; I am relatively weak in my defense against stress.

(Translation: Jacob Zhicheng Zhang 张至晟)

潘琳 x 郭小晖对谈

色彩的胜利

郭小晖：

你是从什么时候开始画画的？

潘琳：

挺小的吧，我印象中应该是小学四年级以后，我就自己要求去少年宫学画画了。我正式学画画是初中，我上的是徐悲鸿中学初中部，系统地开始学造型啊，素描、色彩。后来考上央美附中，附中毕业考上了中央美术学院，然后进入油画系第三工作室，毕业之后上了研究生，还是第三工作室。再之后又到了美国波士顿大学又读了一个研究生。

郭小晖：

那你从小学画，父母是否对你有影响呢？

潘琳：

他们都没有从事艺术行业，不过我父亲比较喜欢画画，他们都比较支持我。

郭小晖：

你从什么时候开始决定当一名画家？

潘琳：

这个其实特别晚了，是我到美国以后。我学画画、升学可能都还挺好的，但我内心里即使到了研究生毕业都没有很坚定地认为我以后可以靠画画来维生。我印象非常深刻，直到2015的春天，我坚定地意识到以后无论发生什么，我都会画画。那个时候距离我去美国不到一年，我是14年8月去的，有一段时间比较低落，情绪也不太好，然后我觉得画画它能陪伴我，而且能治愈我，所以就决定要一直画下去。

郭小晖：

你曾经在波士顿学画，回国之后环境的变化对你的创作是否产生了影响？

潘琳：

我感觉最不一样的就是我和周围的讨论变少了。当然在美国上学的时候有一个特定的环境，同学全都是学这个专业的，然后大家聊的都是这些。我们一些课程上也有请来访的艺术家和我们聊，所以我觉得那个时候谈创作和作品的机会和时间会更多。毕业回国之后，是以一

个独立艺术家的状态在工作室里创作，个人面对的时间更多。

郭小晖：

你的创作灵感大多来源于哪里？你如何选择你的绘画主题？

潘琳：

我的灵感大部分都来自于图像。因为我经常是一个人在家宅着的状态，在工作室工作，和外界接触不太多。我喜欢在网上或者书籍杂志上看图片，也喜欢自己随手拍一些照片。其实我以前也是这样，只是当时没有想过为什么要把它们存起来，时间长了积累了特别多的图片，对我来说也是很麻烦的事，后来刚回国我就下决心要像大扫除一样把这些照片整理出来，然后我就从图片里面产生了一些想法，开始把它们归类，然后做拼贴，慢慢就开始画起来了。

郭小晖：

但是在ins上的图片是很广瀚的，你有没有对某一类图像特别感兴趣，或者有意识地专门去找那样的图看？

潘琳：

我会关注一些人，然后ins也会根据我的喜好给我推荐一些相关的。我自己觉得好像没有对某一类特别感兴趣的，不过后面分类的时候发现还是出现了一定的共性，但是它不是说搜索词汇能搜索出来的东西，而是图形上的共性。其实我看ins上的图片和看杂志上的图片一样，都是特别享受的事。如果说看到一些让我眼前一亮，或者莫名触动我的图片，我就马上截屏下来。后来做拼贴和分类的时候我才会去深究是什么让我感兴趣。但比较多的还是凭直觉吧。

郭小晖：

你的绘画过程是什么样的？是先想一个主题还是受到一些启发再去开始创作？

潘琳：

我一般不会先想主题出来，但做拼贴这个事情我会先想结构，它可能是斜线，也可能是格子，然后图像再像材料一样填进这个结构里面。拼贴做完了我再去画。

郭小晖：

你是怎么把图像填进结构里的？

潘琳：

因为每一次做拼贴它们的原始图像都不太一样，它们有些是我从ins上截屏再打印下来的，有的是我从杂志上剪下来的，我还会用那种打小票的机器打印一些图像，有时候还收集包装纸，所有这些有图像的只要是我觉得有意思的不同材料的东西我就会收集起来。我做拼贴时会先设定一个规则，比方说我可能会横着剪几刀或者折几下，就像玩一个游戏之前我会将步骤1234列出来，然后我就把这些图像拼起来——有的时候我会背过去，并不看它们。当然这些图像都是事先分好组的，可能分成十几堆，每一堆的素材都是我认为的一个类型，然后我再把它们连在一起。某个人身上的线可能和墙体上的裂纹连起来。等于说我是先设定了一些东西，但又希望它们能很巧合地相遇。

郭小晖：

所以它也是有一种随机性在作用的？

潘琳：

对，我喜欢这种随机性。我在很努力地不停地剪，不停地拼，基本上都要经过五轮以上的剪拼。当然不是每一回都成功的，有的就是碎得什么都不是了。但是也有好的时候，它会让我非常欣喜，我觉得它又是我，但又不是我做的。

郭小晖：

那这种随机性的创作手法是基于什么契机开始的？

潘琳：

我记得在美国的时候，有一组跟背单词相关的一系列创作。我当时为了记单词就画一张画，然后那些画都是同样的结构，它们都像房子一样，它里面的笔触、颜色，包括描绘的方式可能是这个单词给我留下的一个印象，帮助我来记忆单词的。我觉得这组作品它看似是一个不

随机的状态，但它让我产生了一个想法，那就是我画的东西其实不重要，重要的是我怎么画它。我其实只是想把我画的东西弄得更随机，更不重要，但同时我又有想画它的冲动和欲望。

郭小晖：

你觉得你的绘画从何时开始有你自己的风格？

潘琳：

我好像到现在都没有一个明确的我自己的风格，别人评论我的画好像都是颜色比较明亮之类的。包括我曾经在美国的时候，导师也说他一进我的工作室就感觉看到了四五个人的画，都挺好的，但我都没有太能选择我到底喜欢哪种。后来我的朋友和我聊天说，其实也许这就是

我的一种风格，我的这种工作方式就是我的风格。我曾经参加过美院的一个展览，展出了本科毕业创作学校收藏的作品，美国毕业带回来的和新画的，我以为它们放在一起会有冲突，但是后来发现我的碎片式的思考方式、对图像的迷恋，都在画里。它通过具象的方式和非具象的方式表现出来的，可能只是我每个时期不同的表现方式吧。

郭小晖：

哪个时期的艺术或者艺术家对你影响最大？在你的作品中有哪些体现？

潘琳：

其实好像没有直接影响到我的，或者说能从我作品里体现的。但是我在不同时期还是有我自己特别喜欢的艺术家，他们对我的影响可能是对作品的态度和想法。我到现在都一直特别喜欢的艺术家是蒙克(Edvard Munch)，虽然他是画具象的，但是他作品里的构图、色彩的运用方式，我觉得他是一个特别天才的人。还有摄影师梅普尔索普（Robert Mapplethorpe）我喜欢他摄影里面对美的品味，特别极致。我还喜欢培根 (Francis Bacon)，他处理平面、线，还有三联画的想法都对我有影响。还有马蒂斯(Henri Matisse)、艾格尼丝·马丁(Agnes Martin)。其实我也挺喜欢极简艺术的。包括我刚开始画偏抽象的时候，我特别喜欢罗伯特·雷曼(Robert Ryman)。在美国看到的现代主义的画我觉得对我影响最大。

郭小晖：

在你的创作中，色彩是很重要的部分，你如何处理色彩和图像之间的关系？我可以看到你跟色彩之间的关系好像下棋，像是在对弈。

潘琳：

画画对我来说可能更多的是娱乐自己的过程，图像就像是我设定一个目的，然后我用色彩去达到这个目的，来展现出这个过程。当画面达到某一个我预设的点，我自己被愉悦到了，就可以停止了。我觉得还是因为我在美国发生了改变。在那之前，美院的教育系统对我影响很大。写实、塑造、灰色调，很多是跟空间有关系的，已经形成了手和脑的强烈记忆，同时也形成了某种使用颜色的模式。后来是在我临回国的一个学期，当时有很多颜料还没用完，舍不得扔，又带不回国，就想把它们都用了。那个时候我就设定了一个规则，我要画一张很大的画，将这些剩下来的颜料尽可能多地用上去。然后我就根据它们剩下来的比例，去分配编号，也不根据自己的喜好去选择颜色了。那是第一次尝试抽号随机的形式，我自己可以改变的就是怎么把颜色应用到画面上，通过笔触和薄厚来改变它与旁边的颜色关系。这是我改变

很大的一次尝试，在那之前我对颜色是有喜好的，比如我其实很少用黄色，偏爱蓝色。然后从那个时候我的认知里面就意识到本身没有丑的颜色，只是看我怎么去用它。

郭小晖：

你在创作上发生过大的转变吗？为什么？

潘琳：

大的转变应该就是从具象到现在这种没太有形象的抽象。我本科毕业以后，从研究生一年级开始就画的比较抽象了。美院的训练就像是我花了很长时间去学了别人的规律和工作方法，到某一个点上我把它转化了，变成了自己的方式。

郭小晖：

那你是什么时候开始想要放弃具象的？

潘琳：

其实一直也没有放弃具象，现在所有的画都是看似很抽象，但实际上特别具象，只不过它们是被剪成了碎片。它其实是从我的心理层面上减轻了压力，因为我有很长时间的基础训练，把这个东西画像已经成为了我特别天然的东西了。当东西被剪碎了，或者调转方向以后，它

失去了我原本会自然模仿的形象，从某种程度上讲我是放松了的。我对这个东西的另外一种直觉性的反应，比较放松的状态就引出来了。

郭小晖：

你如何描述你当前的艺术实践？

潘琳：

我现在这一两年主要集中在格状的拼贴，包括图像的拼贴也不像以前那么随机，现在会有一定的目的性。从16年回国到现在，我意识到我的拼贴越来越繁杂，于是我试图去简化它。简化的方式有两种，第一种就是我列出格式，然后格子再根据比例，比如说长方形的画框是几比几的，然后这个格子是不是完全和画框对应的，它能产生出扩张的还是向内收的效果。还有一种是图像的简化，我会做得更多，以前我会做半开的拼贴然后画一张两米的画，然后现在我会直接做一个差不多大小的拼贴，然后缩小拼贴的打印尺寸，调整拼贴和画面的本身的大小。因为当图像特别复杂，而我又把它收缩得很小的的时候，一些形它自然会简化。

郭小晖：

我发现你的工作方法还是比较理性的，而色彩运用在多数人看来还是挺感性的，你怎么看待感性和理性在创作上对你的影响？

潘琳：

因为我2011-2014其实有三年的抽象实验，是一种完全随机的，跟随直觉的。其实那个时候再看有一些和过去艺术家很像的作品，当然也有一些非常有意思的作品出来。那段时间可能会同时画十几张画，这个没有感觉了就画画另一张，也不太懂感觉什么时候来，怎么抓住它继续。那种状态其实挺吸引我的，但同时它在过程中持续性不强。我对感性的体会就是它状态好的时候一气呵成，很快就画完了一幅非常棒的作品，但同时需要理性去判断，这个需要经验。我那个时候无意中就会毁掉一些非常好的画，因为在我的认知和经验上我没有看到过这样的画面，所以第一反应，我的视觉可能不接受那个东西，我就把它否定了，画回一种我认知能接受的东西，但其实我可能毁掉了很好的画面。理性一点更给我带来安全感，让我觉得这个东西是可以塑造进去的。

郭小晖：

绘画对你来讲显然是你目前的唯一媒介，现在也出现了很多新的媒介，你为什么唯独选择了绘画？它对你来说意味着什么？

潘琳：

没压力，唾手可得。当然我其实也会拍照片，包括其实我做拼贴……我现在可能没有完全想好，但是我在整理自己的拼贴的时候发现它不只是拼贴了，它本身也是很完整的作品。我一画起画来整个人就比较正常，不会焦虑紧张，绘画对我来说是一种放松。它可能最吸引我的不仅是媒介本身，还有绘画的动作，像是某一种运动。

郭小晖：

如果重新选择，您的理想还是做艺术家吗？

潘琳：

对，还是会做艺术家，因为只有这样我才比较正常。我不正常的时候是大脑飞速运转，会在那里想很多，情绪起伏也比较微妙。画画是让我有安全感，不画画时我就挺空落落的，没有存在感。

郭小晖：

你理想的工作室是怎样的?

潘琳：

就是全玻璃的，我特别喜欢阳光。不用太大，两三百平就够了。

郭小晖：

你下一步想做的？

潘琳：

我现在是在做格子系列，想在比例和简化上再多尝试一些，把这个系列完成。这是我从去年开始比较想画的。然后还想多画一些纸上的，因为想通过纸的折叠来转移到画面上。

郭小晖：

艺术家和市场之间的关系你是怎么看的？

潘琳：

这个问题我不太有发言权，我不太擅长市场这方面的事情。但是我觉得还是应该和市场合作。当年我回国的时候把我画的画都带了回来，特别宝贝地抱回来，特别不容易。然后有画廊做展览销售的时候我其实不太舍得。但是老师和朋友们就建议我把这些画给最欣赏自己的人，就像是某种奖励。我自己留着可能没什么用，但是如果给了那些真正喜欢它的人，我就能更急切地创造新的作品，艺术市场的供需关系能刺激艺术家创作。只要压力不太大，我是抗压能力比较弱的。

When did you start painting?

Pan Lin: I started when I was quite young, I think, probably after the fourth grade, when I took the initiative to learn painting at the Children’s Palace. I didn’t receive any formal training in painting until middle school. I attended the Xu Beihong Middle School to study the plastic arts, drawing, and color theory. Later, I was admitted to the High School Affiliated with the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), and after graduating from high school, I was admitted to CAFA. Then, I entered the Third Studio of the Oil Painting Department. After I obtained my bachelor’s degree, I took up graduate studies also at the Third Studio. Then, I went to the United States and obtained another master’s degree from Boston University.

Did your parents influence your decision to study painting?

Pan: Neither of them is in the art field, but my father likes to paint, so they are both quite supportive of my endeavors.

When did you decide to become a painter?

Pan: That was actually quite late, as it was after I moved to the U.S. I didn’t encounter many difficulties with my studies in China. Even after I graduated with a master’s degree from CAFA, I didn’t firmly believe that I could depend on painting for my livelihood. My memory of this transformative experience is rather clear: after the spring of 2015, I realized that no matter what would happen in the future, I would always paint. By then, I had come to the U.S. for barely a year—I moved there in August 2014—and I had been feeling somewhat depressed for a while. I felt that painting was a great company to me, as it could help cure my depression, so I decided to always paint no matter what.

You used to study painting in Boston. Did the change of environment after coming back to China make an impact on your work?

Pan: The biggest difference was that there were fewer discussions around me. Of course, this was partly because of the particular U.S. environment I experienced thanks to my cohort; everyone would talk about art every day. Some courses I took even invited visiting artists to join for panel discussions. As a result, I think I had more opportunities and time to discuss my work and art in general back then. After coming back to China, I have been working as an independent artist, so it has been necessary to experience more solitude.

Where do you usually draw your inspirations from? How do you determine the themes of your works?

Pan: Most of my works are inspired by existing images. This is because I often stay alone at home or work at the studio, not maintaining many social contacts. I like to browse online or flip through books and magazines for images, and I also like to take some photographs here and there. Actually, I have always been like this, although back then I didn’t think why I was saving those images; as time passes by, I have saved an incredible amount of images, which is quite a handful to deal with. Later, when I returned to China, I decided to finally do some organizing work on these images. It was like committing to a big spring cleaning: I started to have some thoughts about the images, beginning to categorize them and collage them—that was how the paintings came into beings.

But there are so many images on Instagram. Do you give any preference to a particular group of images or look out for those images?

Pan: I will choose to follow some accounts, and Instagram recommends me some as well. I don’t think I have any specific preference, but I did notice some commonalities during the categorizing process. Those images are relatable not by any thematic keywords but by the formal qualities they share.

What’s your painting process like? Do you start with a theme, or do you start by looking for inspirations first?

Pan: I don’t usually start with having themes, but with collaging, having a structure first is important. The structure could consist of, for instance, diagonal lines or a checkered pattern; the images will then be filled inside the structure like a filling material. After the collage is done, I will start painting it.

How do you fill the images inside the structure?

Pan: The original images are different every time when I collage. Some of them are printed screenshots of Instagram images, while some others are cut out from magazines. Sometimes, I use a receipt printer to print out images. I also collect wrapping paper. In general, I collect any image made of any material that I find intriguing. I give myself a rule when I collage. For example, I might cut or fold an image a few times horizontally, and I will write out my steps as if I were designing and playing a game. Then, it’s the time to piece together the images—occasionally, I would turn my back to the images during the process. Of course, those images have been separated into groups beforehand—probably into a dozen or so piles—and each group represents a category determined by me. When images from these groups are linked to one another, a line on someone’s body could be continued into a crack on a wall. In short, I always set up something first, but I still hope for coincidences to take place.

So it’s fair to say that there is a kind of randomness at play?

Pan: Yes, I enjoy this randomness. I cut up and piece together images a lot, so much that almost all of my collages experience more than five rounds of cutting up and piecing together. Certainly, not every trial is successful, as sometimes the resulting images are so broken that they look like nothing. But there are also times when the resulting images appear fantastic. That would make me overjoyed. I feel that it’s both me and not me who make it happen this way.

What prompted you to adopt this technique that’s based on randomness?

Pan: I remember that when I was in the U.S., I made a series of works related to memorizing vocabularies. I made a painting for the sake of memorizing words, and the following paintings also had the same structure: they were similar to houses in the sense that their brushstrokes, colors, and ways of depicting things all corresponded to the impressions that the words had made on me, eventually helping me memorize those words. Although this series seems to be not determined by randomness, it gives rise to an idea that the content of my painting is inconsequential—what’s important is how I paint. All I want is to make what I paint more arbitrary, more unimportant. At the same time, the urge and desire to paint remain in me.

Since when have you developed your painting styles?

Pan: I don’t think I have ever consolidated my painting styles. Other people’s comments are usually that I paint with bright hues and saturated colors, including what my U.S. audience told me. My advisor in Boston once remarked that he thought walking into my studio was like seeing at one time four or five artists’ works—they all looked quite nice, but it seemed that I couldn’t decide on a style that I preferred. Later, my friend told me that this might just be my style. My way of working is my style. Once I participated in an exhibition organized by CAFA, showing my thesis works finished at CAFA and collected by the Academy, the paintings I brought back from the U.S., and the newly created pieces. Initially, I imagined that conflicts would arise from this juxtaposition, but afterward, I discovered that both my fragmented way of thinking and infatuation with images were already in the paintings. Figurative or not, I guess I had different ways of expression at different times.

Which art historical period or artist has influenced you the most? How is that influence revealed in your work?

In your work, color is a crucial component. How do you deal with the relationship between colors and images? From my point of view, your relationship with colors is similar to playing chess against someone.

Pan: Painting to me is probably more of a process to entertain myself, and creating imagery is a goal I set forth. I use color to achieve that goal and lay bare the process. When the imagery reaches the certain milestone that I have preset, and when I have sufficiently pleased myself, then the painting is finished.

Have you experienced any major creative shifts? If you did, why did you experience the shifts?

Pan: My greatest shift was from figurative painting to the present abstraction that only shows vestiges of figuration. Since I graduated from the undergraduate program, and since the start of my graduate program, I have been painting relatively abstractly. My training received at the Academy allowed me to spend considerable time learning others’ working patterns and methods. At a certain point later, I transformed them to form my own.

When did you begin to want to give up figuration?

Pan: Actually, I have never given up figuration. Although all my current work appears abstract, in reality, they are very figurative, only that they have been cut into pieces. This process actually takes a big load off my mind. My years of learning the fundamentals have made naturalistic figuration my second nature. When an image is cut up or reversed in its orientation, it loses the figurative form that I would have normally imitated. Thus, to some extent, I have managed to relax. The alternative intuition that I have for the image can thereby flow out in a relaxed state.

How would you describe your current practice?

Pan: In these past couple of years, I have been concentrating on making grid-style collages. My collage work is not as arbitrary as it used to be, as it now has a certain sense of purpose. Since 2016, when I returned to China from the U.S., I have noticed that my collage work is becoming more and more complex. Subsequently, I have been trying to simplify it. There are two ways of simplification: with the first method, I would lay out a format first, and then the grid would be scaled according to that format, for example, the ratio of the stretcher’s height to its width. This grid does not necessarily correspond 1:1 to the stretcher; as a result, it can give an effect of expanding outward or closing inward. The second method involves the simplification of the image, which entails more work for me. I used to make a collage in the size of roughly D1 (532 x 760 mm) for a painting that was two-meter long. Now, I would make a collage that’s roughly the same size as the painting and then adjust the print size of the finished collage to fit the painting. When the collaged image is very complex, and when I scale down the image to a fairly small size, certain forms in the image would be automatically simplified.[JZZ1]

I noticed that you have a very rational way of working, and it’s used in working with colors, which people normally consider to be very much up to one’s own perception. How do you perceive the respective influence of sensitivity and reason on your work?

Pan: I spent three years between 2011 and 2014 experimenting with abstraction, and that experimentation was completely arbitrary and following my instincts. When I look back at my works from then, especially those that appear similar to works by past artists, I can sense that some of those works are very interesting. At that time, I might be painting a dozen paintings simultaneously; if I lost my touch on one painting, I would simply move on to another. I didn’t quite know when the right feeling would come and how to make it stay, but I was rather drawn to that state of mind, even though I knew that it wouldn’t last very long. My theory of my sensitivity is that, when I am in a good place, I can finish a great piece very quickly, but I still require rational thinking to make good judgments. Casting appropriate judgments on your own work needs practice. Back in the day, I would unknowingly destroy some of my great paintings just because my gut reaction told me that this sort of atypical works could not possibly be good. I then got to paint things that my cognition could easily accept, but I turned out to have destroyed something great. Compared to sensitivity, reason brings me more sense of security, allowing me to think if something can be incorporated into my work.

Painting is obviously your only medium of artmaking. A lot of people would consider easel painting to be relatively traditional and classical, as many new mediums have appeared recently. Why did you choose painting to be your sole artistic medium? What does it mean to you?

Pan: I have no anxiety about it, and it feels right at hand to me. I mean, I also take photographs, make collages… I haven’t really thought this through yet: when I was organizing my collages, it became evident to me that they were not just some preparatory collages but complete works in themselves.

If you were to choose your career again, would you still want to be an artist? Why or why not?

Pan: Yes, I would still choose to be an artist because that’s how I could feel at ease with myself. When I don’t feel normal, my mind would be racing to try to figure out a lot of things, and my mood swings could alter in an unfamiliar way. Painting gives me a sense of security. When I don’t paint, I feel lost, even non-existent.

What’s your ideal studio like?

Pan: Glass on all sides. I like sunlight a lot. It doesn’t have to be big; two to three hundred square meters would suffice.

What do you want to do next?

Pan: I want to experiment more with my current grid series in terms of its ratios and methods of simplification, so I can conclude it. I have been wanting to do so since last year. I also want to paint and draw more on paper, as I would like to transfer images to canvases through the folding of paper.

What’s your view on the relationship between artists and the art market?

Pan: I don’t have much right to say anything on this issue, as I am not very good at dealing with the market and so on. However, I still think one should work with the market. When I came back to China, I brought with me all my painted works in such a protective way, which was not easy. So when galleries were doing exhibitions of those works and selling them, I naturally didn’t want to let them go. My teachers and friends suggested I give those paintings to people who appreciated me the most, like some sort of reward. The paintings have little use to me when I keep them around, but if they were given to those who genuinely like them, I could be more motivated to create new works. The supply and demand in the art market can stimulate artists to create, as long as the pressure to create does not get too great; I am relatively weak in my defense against stress.

(Translation: Jacob Zhicheng Zhang 张至晟)