空间站将于2011年10月08日举办 “现·场”——吕山川个展。这是参加过2009年上海双年展的吕山川的第三次个展，展出艺术家近2年创作的“广场系列”的大型绘画作品。曾任威尼斯建筑双年展国家馆策展人的唐克扬先生担任此次展览的策展人，从建筑历史的角度对艺术家的作品做出阐释。三周的展期内，将每周更换一张艺术家作品，展示此一系列中的不同作品，同时还将展示一些相关建筑文献图像的背景资料。

初次面对吕山川的《广场》有一种"自动"的心理应激。海涛般的人浪席卷过巨大的广场，为我们带来了更强的视觉震撼，并将我们的眼光导向深入的细节。这些建筑的周遭在各个历史时期有着全然不同的面貌，它们构成了二十世纪逐渐被稀释的空间的演化史。吕山川创作这样的画或许基于一种自我矛盾的现象：一方面所有的“输入”都来自现实，另一方面，这些“现实”却有着自我取消的倾向。

吕山川过去生涯中对于新闻"事件"的兴趣，以相似的手法和"广场"系列不谋而合。对他而言，报纸上那些日常生活中的语词一方面自然组成一种"意义的拼图"，同时它们的形态和涵义之间又是种彼此竞争的关系──具体地说来，就是构成意义的元素越多，它们表面的多样性越纷繁，当它们被转置于一个中性的情境中时，这些元素向反面转化的可能也就越大。2005年他在德国的一段生活更戏剧化地凸显了这种矛盾，也构成了一个中国人对于欧洲政治历史的独特视角：在海外艺术家不得不依赖于报纸获得新闻资讯，而且在那里只有有限的一些中文报纸。对他而言，类似于"超女"这样使人眼花缭乱的新词汇兼具陌生感和亲切感，他不理解它们的意义，但是亲切的是它们独立成立而合在一起又缺乏意义的形象。油画语言的表现性和物质性，使它产生出了一种不真实的确凿，"某种属于视觉（其实还有心理）上的现场感"。

他的"广场"系列以同样的方式重复了"事件"的悖谬。在其中艺术家意识到了一种结构与个体，表达与表现之间深层的矛盾。就像贡布里希在《艺术与幻觉》里多次提到过的那样，把事物的“高光“和它的物理“本性”一笔绘出的粗放笔法，不仅仅是令人信服地描绘了“真实”，也同时遮没了它，因为在总体的印象里，你实际上辨别不出构成意义基础的真正的个体。

REPRESENTING THE SQUARE— Space Station will present Square Series, Lv Shanchuan’s recent oil paintings, on October 8th, 2011. This is going to be the third solo show of the artist, who has participated in the 2009 Shanghai Biennale. Tang Keyang, the curator of 2010 Venice Architectural Biennale, collaborates with the artist for an in-depth interpretation of his works. In the three-week exhibition, content of the show will be weekly rotated with different works in the same series and Space Station will also exhibit some contextual materials including relevant documents and images.

People will respond to Lv's Berlin Square with immediate amaze. The crowd roll over a large square, covering the attraction of numerous buildings which bring our eyes a stronger shock and lead us into further visual details. Scenarios emerged around these buildings made different faces for the Square over a long history. This history is about an evolution of the public space with their dilute meaning in the 20th century. Interestingly, Lv might be self-contradictory while painting works like these: on one hand, all inputs come directly from reality. On the other hand, the reality as depicted tends to be self-defying.

The artist's passion for visualizing "events" in his earlier works corresponds with his "Square" series in many aspects. For him, the daily words on newspapers compose some kind of "Puzzles of Senses" because there is a competition between its form and norm. In details, the more blocks one “Puzzle of Senses” has, the more diversity it gets. When they are transplanted into a neutral yet alien context, the original implication will be readily turned upside down. In 2005, the artist had lived in Germany for some while. And this foreign experience gave a vivid presentation of “Puzzle of Senses.” It also enables the Chinese artist to cut an unique slice into the Western history and politics. During his German days Lv had to rely on a few local Chinese newspapers for updates. For him, fresh new-generation jargons like "Super Girls' Voice" were both strange and tangible. These self-containing words could register to an equally self-containing image that was immediately recognizable, though they  also felt distanced for their lack of precise meanings. While there are no legible faces and signs, the strong materiality that oil paint embodies endows Lv's work with a surrealist feel as if you were "at the scene." (In Chinese the phrase "at the scene" also literally means "representing the Square" ) 

In a similar way, his “square” series repeat the "event" series, visualizing an “event” simultaneously in its visual and semiotic context. By doing so, the artist is fully aware of a deep contradiction between structure and individual, representation and presentation. As repeatedly mentioned by E. H. Gombrich, a seemingly cursive stroke is composed of both the physical “nature” of a thing and its highlight. With the masterpiece of Renaissance artists, the deliberate optical illusion both convincingly depicts the “truth” and places it under shadows. That is because you can only come to the "truth" in a general yet total impression but could never not tell which is the real “individual” – as the acclaimed basis for the “whole” meaning.