藝術家許東榮（1947年生於屏東）在橫跨長達六十年的創作生涯中，逐步錘鍊出一套獨特且豐富的抽象語彙，這種語彙深深地滲透到他的繪畫及雕塑作品裡。許東榮的藝術創作，透過對動態與靜態進行深入且嚴謹的研究，探討風景和人物內在固有的動靜二元性。無論是具象的刻畫、或是抽象的意象，他的作品都將動與靜視為賦予對象和作品生命活力的核心。

許東榮的作品著眼於重新定位我們與物質世界的關係，以及形塑這種關係的無形精神力量。他的作品引導我們重新審視與物質之間，具有無限變動可能的共同記憶，不僅思考事物的本質，更要思考事物可能呈現的面貌——透過這種方式，許東榮觸發了物質世界的潛在可能，進而促成作品與觀者、主體與客體之間充滿活力的相遇。

在本次與展覽同名的系列作品「記憶中的風景」，乍看彷彿是無序的場域，但細究後卻能發現其中顯露的秩序與精準。如書法運筆般的巨大筆觸，幾乎佔據了整個畫面，並在畫作平面上彼此交織著。部分作品中，成簇的短筆觸暗示著漩渦狀的造型輪廓，彷彿召喚了從漩渦中湧現、或正遁入其中的幻影；在其他的作品裡，參差錯落的碎形，以近乎神聖幾何的姿態相互連結。豐富多樣的筆觸與形體遍佈於此系列作品，許東榮運用飽滿濃郁的色彩，以其源自內在的熱烈情感，創造出充滿戲劇張力的構圖。

「記憶中的風景」系列作品以連續編號命名，似乎記錄了記憶的瞬間，同時也引發了兩種看似迥異、實則相互構成的創作途徑：力求表達主體精髓的中國水墨畫及其豐富的筆墨傳統，以及日本具體派運動，該運動主張既不「改變」也不「扭曲」物質，而是「賦予其生命」。顯而易見地，兩者皆體現了核心邏輯：致力於捕捉內在的本質——對中國水墨畫而言是主體，就具體派而言則是媒介本身。

雕塑系列作品「鯤」呼應了此一追求本質的精神，但採取了反向的邏輯來進行創作。許東榮運用減法和刪除的技巧，展現他在玉雕專業裡磨練數十年的精湛技藝，挖鑿並釋放了蘊藏於玉石中的靈魂，使其呈現出彷彿違抗某些物理定律的人形和絲帶形態——英雄般的輪廓造形，細膩雕琢的外袍，以及繚繞起伏的線條，彷彿正以一種寧靜的莊嚴，抵抗著地心引力的牽引。

「許東榮：記憶中的風景」展現了這位低調的臺灣現代主義大師及其嚴謹細膩的創作，凝視且讚揚藝術中的物質邏輯和對藝術的超然承諾——不僅是對觀眾，更是對圍繞於我們集體心靈與文化周遭的本質事物。

Over the course of his six-decade-long career, artist Hsu Tung-Lung (b. 1947, Pingtung) has steadily honed a rich gestural vocabulary of abstraction that runs through much of his painting and sculpting practice. Grounded in the rigorous study of motion and stillness, a duality inherent to both landscapes and bodies, Hsu's practice identifies how movement, whether real or imagined, can serve as the locus of animacy that grants objects and surfaces their vibrance and vitality.

Acting as a portal that re-positions our relationship to the material world and the immaterial forces that shape it, Hsu's works channels the infinite mutability of our collective memory to invite new readings of not just what things are, but how things can be—by doing so, he negotiates the activation of radical potentials embedded within matter to instigate dynamic encounters between the view and the viewer, the subject and the object.

Throughout the exhibition's namesake series Memory of a Landscape, order and precision becomes apparent on closer examination of what may first appear as bounded fields of chaos. Broad brushstrokes occupy the canvas in large, swooping mesh-like forms, tracing the contours of intersecting planes with an almost calligraphic certainty. In some pieces, clusters of short strokes suggest silhouettes and evoke the phantasmal bodies of apparitions emerging from or entering a primordial vortex; in others, jagged shards interlock in almost sacral studies of geometry; amongst a broad array of gestures and forms that populate Hsu's dramatic compositions of rich, saturated colours that are intensely visceral and viscerally intense.

Titled in a running serial sequence that appears to mark instances of remembrance, works in this series evoke two seemingly disparate but actually mutually constitutive approaches. Chinese ink painting, and its rich traditions of virtuosic brushworks that sought to express the essence of its subject; and the Japanese Gutai movement, which sought to neither ‘alter’ nor ‘distort’ but ‘impart life’ to matter. In both cases, the core logic is evident: a commitment to capturing an intrinsic nature within, in the case of Chinese ink painting, the subject, and, in the case of Gutai, the media itself.

Echoing this sentiment in the pursuit of an elemental materiality, the sculpture series Kun works with an inverse logic to the same end. Utilising the techniques of reduction and deletion, Hsu demonstrates his expert craftsmanship in stone work, trained on decades of experience as a master jade carver, to excavate and release the spirit of marble in humanoid and ribbon-like forms that appear to defy some laws of physics—heroic profiles clad in delicately carved robes and undulating loops that seem to resist the pull of gravity with a remarkably serene dignity.

A timely introduction to the meticulous oeuvre of an understated Taiwanese modernist master, Hsu Tung-Lung: Memory of a Landscape contemplates and celebrates the material logics of art and its transcendental promises—not just for the audience but also the elemental matters that surround our collective psyche and culture.

許東榮 Hsu Tung-Lung

許雲清 Hsu Yun-Chin
邱上源 Alfonse Chiu