作者：Charles A. Riley II 博士
做一个艺术神童，本身就具有双重性。正如熟悉莫扎特、毕加索、门德尔松，或那些在十岁出头便声名大噪的童星传记的人所了解的——天赋被早早发现，固然令人兴奋，也为深造打开了大门。然而，起步过早的另一面，是如何管理外界期待、如何完成从纯真到历练的过渡，以及如何避免重复与停滞的陷阱。对于何可人来说——她中学时期的肖像画曾在我担任馆长的那家郡立博物馆展出——这些年间，她的成长不仅体现在技术上（从她处理透视的方式、以及令人信服的素描功底可以看出，对我而言，真正的考验是她如何在画布上画出手），更体现在一种智识上的成熟，这种成熟在她作品的主题与图像内涵中清晰可见。
这种成长在她的”行动绘画”和自画像系列中最为突出。这两类作品汲取了她在另一项严肃艺术追求——舞蹈——中培养出的戏剧张力。在这次展览中，两种媒介之间的交汇处处可见，而最具爆发力的，莫过于《Hairography》：艺术家将一头乌黑长发浸入墨水，将自己化作一支会跳舞的画笔，伴随嘻哈音乐，挥洒出杰克逊·波洛克式的笔触之网。这件作品的身体性，不仅令人联想到波洛克行动绘画的全部自由，也令人想起伊夫·克莱因那以舞者与模特为”活画笔”创作的蓝色《人体测量》系列。
是什么将舞蹈与肖像画联结在这些作品之中？手势，成为了核心语言。在我看来，这次展览最打动人心之处，正是那些赋予自画像生命力的动态手部动作。在《AI Versus Naked Eye》中，何可人以兼具舞者能量与画家精准的大胆笔触，从画面空间中迸发而出，穿越由青春符号、流行文化与个人图像构成的词汇库，以一种真诚而略带对抗性的凝视直面观者。这令我想起文艺复兴时期我最喜爱的画作之一——帕尔米贾尼诺的《凸镜中的自画像》。那是一件高超之作，画家将其绘制在一块与镜子等大的木质半球上，精确再现了右手——那只握着画笔的手——向外伸出的姿态。这幅画也启发了我最喜爱的”诗意回应艺术”（ekphrasis）之一：约翰·阿什伯里以同名创作的诗歌。阿什伯里既是出色的艺术评论家，也是艺术家，他在诗中写道，这幅画”主要是他的倒影，而肖像本身，则是那倒影的再次折射”。正如诗人所知，外在现实与内在现实的对照，使一幅如此忠实写实的肖像，变成了一场关于”所见”与”未见”的辩论。这种对镜子所提供的心理与哲学探索，本就内嵌于自画像的传统之中。而当何可人以化妆刷取代画笔时，她为作品添入了一丝俏皮的自我审视，与背景中的化妆品和珍珠奶茶图像相互呼应。
在另一幅自画像《The Calamity of Modern Legacy》中，镜像的叠加通过古典媒介的并置——景德镇瓷瓶，中国瓷器工艺的极致象征——与当代符号形成强烈张力，那些若隐若现的裂纹与瑕疵，映照出何可人在作品中所捕捉的那个脆弱而不断演变的身份。我也欣赏嵌入瓷瓶画面中对中国污染问题的隐晦评注——那袅袅升腾的浓烟，取代了田园诗意中惯常出现的柳树或竹子。最复杂、也略令人不安的一幅自画像，从另一个角度诠释了一个重要主题：一位年轻的华裔美国艺术家，如何与一个伟大传统共处——那个传统甚至包含她自己的家族（她的叔父是苏州备受尊崇的书画家）。画中，艺术家再次穿透古典大师画作的平面，从中破茧而出。这远不是对传统与个人才华的宁静沉思，它同时也触及了许多在美国求学的中国学生，在学校与”家乡”之间所感受到的那种不适与撕裂。这份乡愁在《Neglected Ramen Hangout》中以更为细腻的方式被唤起——这幅错视画描绘的是一块手机屏幕：宿舍里的她，正与远在苏州的朋友视频通话，而那位朋友正打趣她，说她更沉浸在面前的拉面里，而不是屏幕中的自己。
何可人的作品展现了技术、概念深度与表演能量三者罕见的综合。她将舞蹈与绘画融为一种连贯艺术语言的能力，不仅彰显出对多种媒介的驾驭，更体现出对身份、表达与手势的成熟理解。她的展览与我策划的另一场展览同期举行——那场展览献给梅兰芳，这位传奇京剧演员曾于1930年巡演百老汇并征服全场。两者之间有诸多共鸣：梅兰芳与何可人在她的编舞中，都深知意义如何在语言与戏剧之外，借由舞蹈传递。我也注意到，何可人在其编舞中大力推崇”水袖”的运用——那正是梅兰芳用以彻底革新沉滞的男性戏曲传统的标志性动作。艺术，应当以神秘的方式打动我们。这次展览中的自画像与表演性作品，远不止是视觉练习；它们是对个人与艺术成长的鲜活探索。何可人融合舞蹈的即时性与绘画的永恒性的创新路径，使她成为一位前途无量的艺术家，其作品将在挑战、启迪与感召观众的同时，持续生长与发展。
Reflections on the Paintings of Bonnie He
There is a dual nature to being a child prodigy in the arts. As anyone familiar with the biographies of Mozart, Picasso, Mendelssohn, or the many child actors who become celebrated before they are teenagers knows, early recognition of unexpected talent brings excitement and opens doors to advanced training opportunities. The flip side of a fast start, however, is the challenge of managing expectations, navigating the transition from innocence to experience, and avoiding the perils of repetition and stagnation. For Bonnie Keren He, whose childhood portraits from her middle school years were on view at the local county museum where I was director, the intervening years have brought not just technical development—you can see it in her handling of perspective and the convincing draftsmanship (for me, the test is the way she puts hands on the canvas)—but also a certain intellectual growth that manifests itself in the thematic and iconographical content of her works.
This development is most notable in her “action paintings” and her self-portraits, which tap a certain flair for drama that the artist has nurtured in her other serious artistic pursuit, dance. The points of intersection between the two media are frequently seen in this exhibition, nowhere more dynamically than in Hairography, a Jackson Pollock–style web of whipping gestures created when the artist soaked her long black hair in ink and turned herself into a dancing paintbrush, accompanied by a hip-hop soundtrack. The physicality of the work reminds us not just of the action painting of Pollock in all its freedom but also of Yves Klein’s blue Anthropometries, created with “living brushes” who were dancers and models.
What unites dance and portraiture in these works? Gesture becomes the central language, and the core of the exhibition for me is the kinetic hand movements that animate the self-portraits. With bold, thrashing strokes that combine the energy of a dancer and the precision of a painter, Bonnie He in AI Versus Naked Eye bursts from the space of the painting, coming out of a vocabulary of symbolic motifs—reminiscent of teendom, pop culture, and personal iconography—to confront viewers with an earnest, slightly confrontational stare. It reminds me of one of my favorite paintings from the Renaissance, Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, a virtuoso piece that the artist painted on a wooden hemisphere exactly the size of a mirror, exactly replicating the outward thrust of his right hand, his painting hand. The work is the inspiration for one of my favorite examples of ekphrasis, the poetic response to works of art: John Ashbery’s poem of the same title. As Ashbery, who was a superb art critic and an artist, observes in the poem, the paining is “chiefly his reflection, of which the portrait/Is the reflection once removed.” As the poet knew, the contrast between external and internal realities makes a portrait as faithfully realistic as this into a debate between what is seen and what remains unseen. This kind of psychological and philosophical exploration of what a mirror offers is inherent in self-portraiture, and when Bonnie He replaces a paint brush with a cosmetic brush, she adds a dash of comic introspection that goes with the background images of cosmetics and bubble tea.
In another self-portrait, The Calamity of Modern Legacy, the doubling of the mirror uses the juxtaposition of classical media—a Jingdezhen vase, the epitome of Chinese mastery in the medium of porcelain—against contemporary symbols creates a striking tension, the subtle cracks and imperfections echoing the fragile, evolving identity that Bonnie He captures so vividly in her work. I also admire the sly commentary on China’s pollution problem that is embedded in the image on the vase, thick wolf smoke rising in the air instead of the customary willow tree or bamboo in a pastoral scene. The most complex, and slightly troubling, self-portrait offers another interpretive take on this important theme of how a young Chinese-American artist copes with a great tradition that includes members of her own family (her uncle is an esteemed artist and calligrapher in Suzhou), as the artist once again launches herself through the plane of the Old Master painting, essentially rupturing it as she emerges. This is far from a peaceful meditation on tradition and the individual talent, and it addresses as well the discomfort that many Chinese students in the United States feel both in school and “back home.” This nostalgia is more poignantly invoked in Neglected Ramen Hangout, the trompe l’oeil depiction of a phone screen during a zoom call between her dorm room and a friend back in Suzhou who is razzing the artist for being more absorbed in her ramen than in her.
Bonnie Keren He’s work demonstrates a rare synthesis of technical skill, conceptual depth, and performative energy. Her ability to unite dance and painting in a coherent artistic language shows not only mastery over multiple media but also a mature understanding of identity, expression, and gesture. Her exhibition coincides with my own show dedicated to Mei Lanfang, the legendary Peking opera star who conquered Broadway on tour in 1930. There are many points of contact. Both Mei and Bonnie He in her choreography knew how meaning is conveyed beyond language and drama in the dance, and I note that Bonnie is a great proponent of the use of “water sleeves” in her choreography, a hallmark of the movement that Mei used to completely transform the stodgy male tradition of opera. Art should always move us in mysterious ways. The self-portraits and performative works in this exhibition are more than visual exercises; they are living explorations of personal and artistic growth. Bonnie He’s innovative approach, combining the immediacy of dance with the permanence of painting, marks her as an artist of exceptional promise, whose work will continue to develop even as it challenges, inspires, and engages audiences for years to come.
Charles A. Riley II, PhD
The author is the director of the China Institute Gallery in New York and the former director of the Nassau County Museum of Art. He is the author of 49 books on art, including the recently published Picasso in a New Light, and has curated exhibitions in Asia, Europe and the United States. He is a professor at Clarkson University and a frequent commentator on the arts for such media sources as the BBC, CGTN, CCTV, CNN, CBS and other outlets.
