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申大鹏的形象的“私人化”，事实上不仅是他一个人有这种趋向，实际上有一批他的同龄人正在出现“私人化”的潮流。从上一代近二十年为之奋斗的“个人性”，到 申大鹏这一代的“私人化”，如何定义这个取向的意义？
申大鹏的绘画具有80一代的新艺术特征，他这一代人成长于中国崛起的社会背景，但他的艺术深入描绘一种少年的私人记忆，从他的父亲、妹妹、时尚到超现实的梦。
这一代的绘画也许称不上伟大，但回归到一种绝对的自我真实。申大鹏的绘画类似一种少年的私人笔记，他只画跟他直接体验的私人记忆有关的一切，他的父亲、妹妹以及他自己，再也没有别的题材了。
他画得最多的是他的父亲，是那种东北的劳动者，有时候看起来像个下岗工人，脸朝天惊诧的表情，毛发竖起，眼睛向上瞪大着近乎变形地泛出眼白。有时候看上去甚至像个身体壮实满身赘肉的屠夫，上身裸露躺在铁架床上。
申 大鹏创作了一个新的“父亲”，这个父亲不再是上一代人眼中的代表很多中国人的集体父亲，而只是他一个人的父亲。“父亲”形象的私人化，也使他选择了一种更无微不至的显微镜的绘画方式：超级写实主义。申大鹏的每一张画都画得很慢，因为他要细描每一个身体乃至皮肤的细节，很多细节比照片还要细，甚至具有照片没 有的细节。
但他不认为自己是在画照片，他认为他的绘画中的父亲有不少变形，甚至将皮肤斑痕的想象性放大，这是照片不可能做到的。他的写实主义的父亲形象具有一种东北社会主义工业时代衰退期的底层特征，不仅呈现出身体劳累的真实感，而且充满“体温”甚至现场的灵魂状态。
有意思的是，申大鹏的“父 亲”形象，不是指向一种社会关怀以及集体意义，而是转向一种极其私人的观看。他自己也画了一张“自画像”，把自己描绘成一个小屠夫，非常呆滞荒诞的青春表情，但他的自我特征就像许多80一代，表现得生活比上一代人优越了很多的新气质。他还画过他妹妹，一个比他看起来更新世代的酷女孩，穿着性感时装，时髦抽烟的手举在半肩，一脸不知人世疾苦的茫然神情。
父亲、妹妹以及他自己，申大鹏完成了一个家族的私人谱系的塑造。在某种意义上，绘画的方式对申大鹏而言就像是一种图像的手段，通过这种精细入微的刻画手段创造一个私人的形象史。形象 的“私人化”，这似乎是他追随他那一代人及其中国的社会变迁的必然结果，在他的私人记忆中，似乎不再敢信任他没有直接亲历过的任何事情，甚至连对私人经验、记忆和想象之外的任何东西都没有兴趣。
这在申大鹏的绘画中几乎变为一种本能反应。他在一个时期的人物绘画的水平有时候简直相差很大，如果涉及到他的父亲、妹妹，他就画得栩栩如生，充满形象的力量；如果涉及他私人圈以外的人，人物就像一个没有内在精神的时尚躯壳。
他近期的绘画转向一些超现实的装饰性很强的想象性图像，比如一个孩子与一对苹果，一个婴儿在荆棘丛中，或者一个卡通儿童高举着一条巨大的鱼。似乎在自我想象的领域，他也不愿意越出自己没有经历的界限，只限于少年的私人记忆。对公共性、上代史、观念意识形态以及非亲身的领域，申大鹏觉得私人领域是最自由、安全 以及可靠的。为此，超级写实主义成为放大这一私人性笔记的最佳手段。
申大鹏的形象的“私人化”，事实上不仅是他一个人有这种趋向，实际上有一批他的同龄人正在出现“私人化”的潮流。从上一代近二十年为之奋斗的“个人性”，到 申大鹏这一代的“私人化”，如何定义这个取向的意义？也许“私人化”本身就是一种意义，他不需要在参照什么，这使得申大鹏的艺术的表达在人性和语言上比上 一代人更细腻，但是画面的格局却大为缩小，甚至只有少年的私人记忆。但在一个高速变动的时代，还有什么能让年轻一代觉得更可靠呢！
2009年11月24日写于望京
Youthful and Private Recollections—The Paintings of Shen Dapeng
Zhu Qi
The paintings by Shen Dapeng demonstrate the new artistic tendency of the 80s' generation. His age group grew up in the social backdrop of the rising of China, and yet his paintings, on the contrary, offer us an in-depth description of the private memories of a youngster—from the illustration of his father and sister, to fashion and to dreams of a surreal nature.
Perhaps the paintings produced by this generation of artists may not be consider great works of art, but they do present a kind of absolute self-reflexive authenticity. The paintings by Shen are similar to the private notes written by a juvenile; he paints only those he can relate to from his own private recollections, such as his father, his sister, and himself, and nothing else.
The subject matter that he has painted the most is his father. In one instance, his father is shown as a laborer from the northeast of China. And in another instance, his father appears to be a laid-off worker. Goggle-eyed, hair-raised, his father is depicted as someone staring up at the sky in pure astonishment. In yet another instance, his father is portrayed as a chubby yet strong-looking topless butcher lying on a steel frame bed.
Shen fabricates a new type of "father"; this father is not the collective fatherly figure as imagined in the eyes of the older generation. This father figure is his and no one else's. In this case, the "father" figure is privatized, and this has led Shen to utilize a meticulous, microscopic way of painting: super-realism. Shen paints his pictures very slowly because he feels the need to illustrate all the details of the body and of the skin; a lot of areas are more detailed than what it appears in a photo—this include details that are not even included on the photograph itself.
Yet he does not think that he is copying from a photograph. He believes that his father, as painted in his pictures, is distorted; areas such as the skin and scars are imaginatively enlarged—such cannot be made with a photograph. Through realism, the image of his father is captured with a kind of Northeastern-socialism-cum-industrial-age-recession-lower-class characteristic. The work not only presents a realistic aspect of the ragged body, it also imbues a kind of "body warmth" and a site-specific mentality.
What is interesting is that Shen's "father" image does not point to a kind of social concern or a kind of collectivism, but a turn to an extreme form of privatized viewing. He has also painted a "self-portrait," depicting himself as a small butcher with a youthful expression of sluggishness and absurdity. But the way he characterizes himself is similar to many of those of his 80s generation; such is produced by a better way of living in comparison to the past generation and thus produces a new kind of temperament in their artistic practice. Shen has also painted his sister: a cool young lady wearing a sexy outfit, holding a cigarette fashionably with an inexperienced, vacant-looking expression.
Father, sister, and himself, Shen has completed the fabrication of a private genealogy of his family. On one level, painting is a means of making images for Shen. Through a meticulous painterly method, he has produced a private history of images. The “privatization” of images seems to be the inevitable result coming from his generation, since they have all experienced the social transformation in China. In Shen’s private recollections, it almost seems as if he no longer trusts anything that he has no direct contact with; he has simply lost interest in anything outside of his own experience, memories, and imagination.
Such has turned Shen’s paintings intoan act of instinctual response. There is a drastic difference in the way he paints his figures in one period. If the subject is his father or sister, then he paints it in a very realistic, life-like manner. But if the figures are outside of his private circle, then they are depicted as hollow husks, emptied of human essence.
His recent paintings has turned towards a very realistic, strongly decorative, and imaginative approach, such asa boy with a pair of apples; a baby in thorn bushes, or a cartoon child bearing a gigantic fish. It seems like he is working within his own imagination without trespassing beyond his own boundary of experience. He is limited to his own private recollections. Shen is not interested in anything that is public, historical, conceptual, and experiences that are indirect. He feels safe, free, and with a sense of dependence while working within his own private territory. Thus super-realism, perhaps, is the best means to express his privatized narratives.
Shen’s “privatization” of images is not a singular tendency; there is a group of people of his age who are involved in the illustration of such a style. From a strive towards “individualization” in the last generation of the past 20 years, to Shen’s own generation interested in “privatization”; how do we define the meaning of such an orientation? Perhaps “privatization” itself is the meaning itself; it does not need reference points. This makes Shen’s art practice—on the level of expressing human nature and language—more refined and delicate. But that also makes the arrangement of his pictorial greatly reduced to the expression of just youthful and private recollections. In an age of high-speed fluctuation, what else is there for the younger generation to depend upon but their own private recollections!
Written in Wangjing on November 24th, 2009