现场｜欧阳文东：走进"香"气的清寂空间
2022 · 雅昌艺术网
艺术家以一种近乎禅修的方式，手工制成成百上千粒香丸，再用材料封存凝固，表层以矿物颜料着色。
「索拉里斯的回眸」欧阳文东个展
A Backward Glance at Solaris
Ouyang Wendong Solo Exhibition
策展人 | Curator
宋涛 Song Tao
展览时间 | Duration
2025年9月25日 - 10月25日
September 25th - October 25th, 2025
艺术家 | Artist
Ouyang Wendong
开放观展时间 | Visiting Time
周二至周六 上午11点至下午5点
(需提前预约观展）
Tues.-Sat. 11:00-17:00
展览地点 | Venue
北京市朝阳区草场地艺术村104号
104 Caochangdi Art Village, Chaoyang, Beijing.
开幕时间 | Opening
2025年9月25日 周四下午3点
September 25th 3:00 pm
Exhibition Preface
欧阳文东的创作是一场以香料为核心媒介的哲学修行，其个展《索拉里斯的回眸》可被理解为一次关于记忆、存在与感知的形而上探索。他借助沉香飘忽而难以捕捉的特性，隐喻人类认知与真理之间那始终存在的间距——正如索拉里斯星上难以穷尽的海洋，香气在感知的边缘生成一道“存在的褶皱”，既显现，又退隐。
在欧阳文东的作品中，香料被用来解构西方雕塑传统中对实体与凝固的依赖。在他的空间里，雕塑不再是被凝视的物，而是通过气息的弥漫与消散，参与到主体与空间的建构之中。这一方式与让-吕克·南希的“触感视觉”理论相呼应，但更进一步地将感知延展至嗅觉维度，开启了一种“气味的现象学”。观众需调动全身感官，在呼吸之间完成对空间的重新勾勒。
这种实践的背后，是艺术家对当代感知机制的批判与修复。他通过复兴合香的仪式性操作，试图打破被工具理性切割的感官分裂，重新唤起整体性的感知经验。香料在时间流转中的变化与消逝，不仅拒绝了永恒性的幻象，也回应了东方“气化哲学”的思想：世间万物皆在呼吸之间生成、转化，没有凝固的存在，只有持续的流变。
在这一逻辑中，作品建构出一个富有禅意的“否定性空间”：香气可感却不可握，可见却不可固，在存在与缺席之间维持着悬置。这种悖论式的经验，正呼应了阿多诺关于“艺术唯有否定自身才成为艺术”的论述。欧阳文东以香气的自我消逝，完成了对艺术物性的超越，也为东方美学中的“空观”思想提供了当代的转译。
最终，这场展览更像是一种去神像化的仪轨。观众在香气的引导下步入内省，在嗅觉的迷宫中寻找精神的归宿。欧阳文东由此提出一种新的艺术范式：艺术不再是关于物的创造，而是一次“哲学的呼吸”，一次对存在本身的诗意探测。
Ouyang Wendong’s artistic practice unfolds as a philosophical cultivation through the medium of incense. His solo exhibition, A Backward Glance at Solaris, can be regarded as a metaphysical exploration of memory, existence, and perception. By harnessing the ethereal and ephemeral qualities of agarwood, he evokes the unbridgeable distance between human cognition and truth. Just as the ocean of Solaris resists complete understanding, scent lingers at the very threshold of perception, forming a “fold of being”—present yet elusive.
In Ouyang’s hands, incense deconstructs the Western sculptural tradition of material worship. Within his spaces, sculpture is no longer an object to be gazed upon, but an unfolding process in which dispersal and vanishing of fragrance participate in the constitution of subjectivity. This gesture resonates with Jean-Luc Nancy’s theory of the haptique—“tactile vision”—while extending perception further into the olfactory realm, opening toward a “phenomenology of scent.” The viewer is summoned to engage with the work through the entirety of the body’s senses, re-mapping space with each breath.
At the core of Ouyang’s concern lies a critique of modern sensory mechanisms. Through the revival of incense-blending rituals, he seeks to restore the integrity of the senses that have been fractured by instrumental rationality. The transformation and decay of incense in time stand as a refusal of permanence, while offering a contemporary response to the Eastern philosophy of qi-hua—the belief that all things emerge and transmute through breath. In this view, there is no fixed being, only eternal becoming.
This body of work constructs a Zen-inflected “negative space”: fragrance is perceptible yet ungraspable, present yet ungrounded, suspended between presence and absence. Such paradoxical experience recalls Theodor Adorno’s assertion that “art becomes art by negating itself.” Through the self-effacement of scent, Ouyang surpasses the materiality of art objects and enacts a contemporary translation of the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā—emptiness as a mode of insight.
Ultimately, the exhibition takes shape as a ritual without idols. Guided by fragrance, the audience enters a path of introspection, navigating a labyrinth of scent in search of a lost spiritual homeland. In this gesture, Ouyang Wendong proposes a new paradigm of art: one that is no longer about the creation of objects, but about the cultivation of a “philosophical breath”—a poetic measure of existence itself.
Selected Works
《花鼼 1#》，168 x 168 x 8 cm，综合香料，2024
《索拉利斯的回眸5#》，145 × 40 x 30 cm，综合材料， 2025
《索拉利斯的回眸6#》，87 × 87 x 8 cm，综合香料，2025
《索拉利斯的回眸7#》，172 × 172 x 13 cm，综合香料， 2025
About Artist
欧阳文东，1967 出生于中国重庆，现工作生活在北京。
1986-1991 中国美术学院雕塑系，1993-1995 比利时安德卫普皇家美术学院高等视觉学院，1995-1996 意大利卡拉拉美术学院石石刻工工作室。
Ouyang Wendong (b. 1967, Chongqing, China) is an artist who currently lives and works in Beijing. He studied sculpture at the China Academy of Art from 1986 to 1991, before continuing his training at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium (1993–1995). From 1995 to 1996, he pursued further studies in the Stone Carving Studio at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, Italy.