周围艺术很荣幸地在五月呈现刘鹏在上海的首次个展：像素的景观，带给观众18件如春光一般明媚斑斓的作品。

一个半世纪之前印象派艺术家致力于室外写生，用惊人的天赋捕捉大自然瞬息万变的光线与景色。当代的艺术家面临的则是后工业时代被污染的环境与城市，印象派艺术家曾经热情歌颂过的自然田园风光已经不复存在。今天的自然存在于虚拟的网络中，由像素构成的图像，既将艺术家与真实的风景隔绝，但也让艺术家足不出户就得以接触到世界各地、乃至太空中的景观。

刘鹏的不少作品素材来自网络上的图片，这些像素化了的景观在他的笔下被重新归纳与提炼，恣意地赋予色彩，也加入了自己的情绪和视觉记忆。与印象派艺术家一样，刘鹏试图摆脱古典绘画的情节性和叙事功能，在作品中追求最本质的绘画元素——色彩、结构和笔触。他对造型的概括能力已经臻于成熟，对色彩的把握和运用也十分大胆。在2017年的新作品中，刘鹏用深浅冷暖不同的绿色营造出一片纯粹又梦幻、如同蒂姆·伯顿（Tim Burton ）电影布景一样的森林。

他的《此间的风景》系列表现的是游泳池、民居、篮球场等似曾相识的风景，又因为对空间的分割、重组和对色彩的处理造成亦真亦幻的疏离感，其中《此间的风景-1》曾入围2016约翰·莫尔新绘画大赛。在《若水》系列中，刘鹏仿佛在画布上放大了电脑屏幕上的像素，并以明暗关系来诠释色彩和造型的意义。

瑞士艺术家皮皮洛蒂·瑞斯特（Pipilotti Rist）曾说，“今天，随着电脑、电视和移动电话的普及，任何东西都被扁平化并置于玻璃（屏幕）之后——不论是我们的情感、历史，还是欲望。。。只有在艺术中，我们才得以跳出自己的孤独。”年逾古稀的英国艺术家大卫·霍克尼（David Hockney）选择直接在平板电脑上创作，借屏幕的照明提亮作品的色调。而80后中国艺术家刘鹏则将触摸屏背后、虚拟空间中的、像素化的景观转移到画布上，凭借高饱和度的色彩与简练的构图吸引观众的视线、唤起人们对真正的自然风景的记忆；只有在他的笔下，我们才真正地与像素化的景观坦诚相对。

《此间的风景-54》 200*130cm 布面油画 2017

AroundSpace is honored to present artist Liu Peng's first solo show in Shanghai, The Spectacle of Pixels showcases 18 paintings with colors as bright as aspring day. 

More than 150 years ago,talented Impressionist artists dedicated themselves to capturing the everchanging natural lights and landscapes. Contemporary artists are no longer facingthe pastoral sceneries celebrated by the Impressionist artists, but apost-industrial and polluted urban environment. Today's nature exists invirtual cyber space, and pixelated images cut artists off from the real landscapes, but they also provide artists images from other parts of the world,even outer space, saving them the trouble of travel. 

Liu Peng often draws inspiration from online pictures. He re-uses and refines these pixelated images, applies arbitrary colors, and incorporates his personal emotions and visual memories. Following the suit of the Impressionist artists' innovative ideas, Liu attempts to free his works from classical paintings' renditions of literature and narration, with the hope of pursuing the intrinsic nature of painting, colors, structures, and brush works. Liu has successfully achieved maturity in his draftsmanship, and is comfortable with bold colors on canvas. In his 2017 new works, Liu employs various shades and tones of green paints to createa pure yet dramatic, Tim Burton-movie-setting-like forest. 

His Landscape of This Moment series captures familiar landscapes such as swimming pools, residences, and basketball courts, yet somehow evokes in viewers an alienated feeling with segmented and redefined spaces, and deliberately altered tones. Among the series' works, Landscape of This Moment-1 was included in the final list of the 2016 John Moores Painting Prize (China). In his As If Water series, Liu inter pretscolors and shapes through chiaroscuro contrasts, seeming like enlarged pixels from computer screens.

Swiss artist Pipilotti Ristonce said, "Today, with computer, TVs, and mobile phones, everything is flatand put behind glass—our feelings, histories, longings... But with art, we can jump out of our loneliness." In his late 70s, English artist David Hockney chose to draw directly on iPad, achieving a brighter tone with the help ofscreen lights; while the millennial Chinese artist Liu Peng transferred the pixelated spectacle behind touch screen onto canvas, with high-saturated colorsand parsimony compositions, evoking the viewers' memory of real landscapes. Only in Liu's works can we confront the unadulterated spectacle of pixels. 

开幕 I 2017年5月6日 下午三时

展期 I 持续至2017年6月5日

地址 I 上海 四川中路33号703室

Opening I 2017 May. 6th 3pm

Dates I Through June.5th, 2017

Address I Suite 703, No. 33 Si Chuan M. Rd. close to Yan An E. Rd.