Shi Haitao, who graduated from the Department of Stage Designat the Central Academy of Drama and once worked in a theater troupe, seems to have a special interest in anything related with the stage and theater. His paintings are relatively concentrated and can be roughly divided into two perspectives, one is portrait research; the other is collective research. We might as well follow this classification to get a glimpse of his creative themes.
毕业于中央戏剧学院舞台美术系，又曾从事过剧团工作的石海涛，似乎对于带有舞台和剧场性的事物有着特别的兴趣。他的作品较为集中的大致有两大内容，一个是肖像研究；一个群体研究。我们不妨依循着这样的分类来一窥他的创作主旨。
Almost all of Shi Haitao′s portrait paintings are around famous figures in history or current celebrities. They are no longer isolated individuals, but they constitute a trace of history and epoch, and they even become symbols for us to enter a specific situation. No specific and clear details are required, as the corresponding figure can be quickly identified by the shadowy images. For example, the screamer in Munch’s The Scream, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, famous political figures such as Sun Yat-sen, Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek, Soong Ching Ling, Donald J. Trump, Comrade Lei Feng, international film star Marilyn Monroe, confronting these images, Shi Haitao′s portrayal method is to reinforce the snowflakes and spotted areas of the old images, allowing the figures to retreat to the layers of the abyss of “fog”, but this does not hinder or even deepen their firm control of people’s memory. Among these well-known images, the artist has also mixed some well-known or unknown images that he has come into contact with. Through such a unified treatment, they jointly form a certain portrait landscape. Here, the portrait is no longer about the existence of an individual, but it is about a spectacle image matrix, and an illusion construction that transcends the entity itself.
石海涛笔下的肖像几乎都是历史或当下声名卓著的人物的形象，他们已经不只是孤立的一个个人物，而是构成了某种历史和时代的印迹，成为我们走进特定情境的符号，我们并不需要具体清晰的细节，仅凭影影绰绰的图像就能迅速辨识出那个对应的人物。比如蒙克《呐喊》中的呼号者，达·芬奇的《蒙娜丽萨》，维米尔的《戴珍珠耳环的少女》，著名政治人物孙中山、毛泽东、蒋介石、宋庆龄、特朗普、金正恩，英雄模范雷锋，国际明星玛丽莲·梦露等，面对这些形象，石海涛的描绘方式是强化旧影像的那种雪花点和有如漫漶斑迹的区块，让人物形象隐退到层层萦绕的“迷雾”的深渊，但是这并不妨碍甚至加深了他们对于人们记忆的牢牢把控。在这些大家所熟知的形象之中，艺术家也掺杂了一些身边所接触的或知名或无名的形象，经由这样的统一化处理，他们一起构成了某种肖像的景观。在这里，肖像已经不是关乎个体的存在，而是一种奇观化的图像矩阵，一种超越实体本身的幻觉建构。
In the research on groups, Shi Haitao deals with several different ways of group aggregation: watching dramas, military conflicts, cheering, military parades, armed gatherings, national conventions, square gatherings, biennales… these seem to have nothing to do with each other, what on earth does it mean to be a group? There are two pieces on the “Modern Drama,” from the title of the work, we know that the drama is My Poor Marat, which is a drama about how young people made their life choices during the gunfire of World War II. The people wearing masks in the auditorium indicate that they were under the envelope of the pandemic, and people could not help but ask, in front of such a “disaster,” how should we choose? In the theater, from the individual to the group, the characters in the drama should be the objects to be watched, but Shi Haitao′s work precisely focuses on the audience, watching and being watched become inseparable, or both are in the play. As for the “faces” in the group exposed to the light, what are they looking at? From the surprised and blank eyes, it is clear that they are also the objects being watched, and the spectators do not know where they are, or is it an unpredictable invisible power?
而在关于群体的研究中，石海涛处理了几种不同方式的群体聚合：看话剧、军事冲突、欢呼、阅兵、武装集结、国民大会、广场集会、双年展……这些看上去没有什么关系的群体，到底意味着什么？《话剧》有两幅，从作品标题我们得知，所看的话剧是《我可怜的马拉特》，这是一部关于在二战的炮火中青年人如何进行人生选择的话剧。观众席上戴着口罩的人们表明正处于疫情的笼罩底下，不禁让人追问，在这另一种“灾难”面前，我们又该如何选择？在剧院中，从个体到群体，话剧里的人物应是被看的对象，但石海涛的作品恰恰聚焦的是观众，看与被看变得不可分，又或者双方都处于剧目中。还有那曝露在光照下的群体的“面孔”，他们在看什么？从惊诧和茫然的眼神分明让人觉得他们也是被观看的对象，而观看者不知在何方，抑或是某种不可预知的隐形的力量？
The waiting army in The Light Gradually Rises and the panicked crowds running on the streets in The Rehearsal are like the scenes we usually see in films and on television, which is undoubtedly worrying, but these dramatic scenes have become the accustomed landscapes that lack physical pain. Cheers, military parades, national conventions, and square gatherings are all important political ceremonies. People′s emotions are agitated in a group gathering, creating an overwhelming aura, forming an unstoppable collective force. So many great or terrifying “feats” are produced by groups. In these paintings, Shi Haitao rarely portrays an individual, but with the help of the neat and uniform color blocks and the inductive arrangement of dots and lines to form that spectacular overall effect. However, there are also differences among them. For example, the group of soldiers immersed in the water with their hands raised and the fins emerging from the waves in A Performance in Water constitute an incredible magical picture. In the two works The Protagonist Was About to Perform and The End, some individuals have different expressions. They mix with the crowd and do convergent actions, but their facial expressions are a little“discordant with the play.” There are also things closely related to art in the group pictures, such as watching the Venice Biennale, Florence Biennale and fashion shows in Paris. Dramas, political rallies, exhibitions and fashion shows are so different in nature, but if we look at them together, we will find that everything is actually a landscape. Participating, or being participated; watching or being watched, various characters appear on the stage, and they are divided and torn apart due to different role-plays and positions in the huge waves of the group. The relationship between the group and the individual is so intriguing that the artist guides us into the whirlpool of that topic through different scenes that are both realistic and fictional. These dramatic expressions are in harmony with our unprecedentedly complex and divergent society. The global dimension of information dissemination has increased in parallel with physical isolation and online survival. The undercurrents of the minority and majority, conservative and radical, and various ideologies have resulted in various states of ideologies, which generate blind, silent and hopeless struggles and degradation. These prompt us to think again about group issues.
《灯光渐起》中严阵以待的军队、《彩排》中街道上奔跑的惊慌失措的人群，像是我们在影视中所看到的场景，无疑让人揪心，但是这戏剧化的场景却成了习以为常而缺乏肉身痛感的景观。欢呼、阅兵、国民大会，广场集会，皆是重要的政治仪式。在群体性的集合中人的情绪被鼓动，造成排山倒海的气势，形成势不可挡的集体力量，多少伟大或者骇人的“壮举”都借由群体的方式产生。在这些画面中，石海涛少有个体的刻画，而是借助整齐划一的色块和点线的归纳排列，形成那壮观的整体效应。然而，这当中也会有所不同，比如《水中演出》中浸泡在水中的举起双手的军人群体和波涛中浮现的鱼鳍就构成了令人匪夷所思的魔幻画面。而在《主角要入场》、《散场》这两幅作品中，有的个体出现了差异化的表达，他们混迹于人群做着趋同的动作，面部表情却有点“出戏”。群体画面中也有与艺术紧密相关的事物，比如看威尼斯双年展、佛罗伦萨双年展以及巴黎时装秀。话剧、政治集会和展会秀场，其性质是如此不同，但如果我们联系起来看，便会发现其实一切都是景观。参与，被参与；观看，被观看，各色人物粉墨登场，在群体的巨浪之中因为不同的角色扮演和站位被分化和撕裂。群体和个体的关系是如此耐人寻味，艺术家通过不同的亦真亦幻的场景导引着我们进入那议题的漩涡。这些戏剧化表达正与我们当下这个前所未有的复杂多歧的社会相互应和。信息传播的全球维度加剧与肉体隔离及线上生存态势的并行，少数与多数、保守与激进以及各种意识形态的暗流涌动，衍生出盲动、默然、无望的挣扎和沉沦的诸种状态，促使我们再次对群体性问题进行新的思考。
In addition to paintings, Shi Haitao also created a moving image composed of 100 crushed samples, showing the forms of birds, snakes and other animals killed by wheels of cars. All kinds of lives have faded into flat“patterns” with textureshere, which seem to constitute a metaphor of the trampling ravages of life from another perspective. This reminds me of Lu Xun′s short story “The Rabbit and the Cat” that was scarcely read which aroused my attention for a set of illustrations. “I” in the novel associates the murder of a little rabbit with a series of surrounding lives that have disappeared but no one cares, such as pigeons being carried away by eagles, puppies being run over by carriages, flies being bitten by a gecko and the death of these humble lives receive no attention or concern. As a result, he wrote a lament that “if the creation can be blamed, then I think he has really made life too indiscriminately, and they can be ruined too indiscriminately.” Here, Lu Xun clearly uses animals as a metaphor for the human world, conveying the accusation of the jungle world and the “big life” view of caring for all beings.
除了绘画，石海涛还创作了一部由100个碾压样本的图片汇集成的影像，展现了鸟、蛇等各种动物丧生车轮底下的形态，各类生命凋零在此变成了一个个扁平的带有纹理的“图案”，这似乎从另一个角度隐喻了生命的被践踏、被蹂躏。这让我想起，最近因为一组插图而阅读的鲁迅那少人关注的短篇小说《兔和猫》，小说中的“我”由小兔的遇害联想到周边一系列生命消逝却无人在意的现象，如鸽子被鹰叼走，小狗被马车轧死，苍蝇被蝇虎咬死，这些卑微生命的死去，没有人注意和关心。由此他发出了“假使造物也可责备，那么，我以为他实在将生命造得太滥，毁得太滥了”的哀叹。在这里，鲁迅分明是以动物来隐喻人的世界，传达出对于丛林世界的控诉以及关怀众生的“大生命”观。
I cannot help wondering what kind of life outlook Shi Haitao′s work conveys. He has described so many quantified and disciplined individuals, who have become a whole and constructed a landscape to be stared at under the deployment of pervasive power and politics. This kind of entanglement and involvement between individual and collective, life and power reflect his thinking on the proposition of “biopolitics.” In history, it goes without saying that the subordination and dependence of individual life is self-evident, but in the so-called modern society that gives an individual freedom and emancipation, the restraint of people by layered management systems often appears to be “righteous.” This has been revealed by many philosophers and thinkers. In my opinion, one of the essentials of Shi Haitao′s work is to try to gain insight into the code of power in modern society through the special depiction of landscaped portraits and groups, and to provide significant observations on the life forms and free will of all living beings.
我不由得想，石海涛的作品体现的是怎样一种生命观？他描绘了那么多被量化、被规训的个体，这些个体在无孔不入的权力和政治的部署下成了被凝视的整体、被建构的景观。这种个体与集体，生命与权力的纠缠及牵扯正体现出他对于“生命政治”命题的思考。在久远的历史上，个体生命的从属性和依附性自不用说，而在所谓给予个体自由与解放的现代社会，层层叠叠的管理制度对人的束缚却经常显得“义正言辞”，这一点已为众多哲学家、思想家所披露。在我看来，石海涛的作品的要义之一就是力图通过对被景观化的肖像和群体的特殊描绘来洞察现代社会权力的密码，并对芸芸众生的生命形态和自由意志予以意味隽永的观照。