A Visible Overture
The performance is about to begin. Violinist Fan Yan holding the sheet music, imagined her fingering and bowing through the right wrist while reading the notes. It has been a transformation from visible symbols to audible sensations. There is no pretentiousness in the world of musicians, nor is there tangible clinging to reality.
Today painter Fan Yan has turned to interpret visual overtures with the textures of dots, colours, and brushstrokes. The subtleness of dots and the spontaneous spread of strokes meet, becoming a sound encounter between streams and rocks. The streams sometimes divide, sometimes splash. So how does a movement interpret itself with its points and lines and surfaces?
Beats and colours
Music is an art of time, where the beats characterise the rhythms by the repetitions of a sequence of stressed and unstressed – “Bang… Da, Da… Bang, Bang, Bang… Da, Da… Bang, Bang”. They spell the piece's personality and attract the audience to the pulsations who dance with their hands and feet.
Farewell to her music career, Fan Yan has never left the ambience of the music. She creates visual beats that are light or heavy, hidden or visible through folding and dyeing, multi-layered shading, and haloed tinting. The dark blue is the sea waves where white spindrifts burst wave after wave. The colours of spring fade like autumn leaves. The cycles of the rhythms in colours represent the world of phenomena and the order of worldliness filled with joys and sorrows.
Melodies and patterns
In the hustle and bustle world, the buzzing low pitch is irrelevant with the vibrant high pitch, until melody connects them into a piece of harmony. Waving his baton, the conductor transforms the sounds into a piece of music, where the instruments are positioned in the context. The bangs of percussion instruments arrive stronger and stronger from far to near, bringing the piece to its end through all the twists and turns.
Turning what is heard to tangible, Fan Yan’s works of art portray the visual melodies by the twists and turns of lines, the aggregation and scatter of patterns, folds, and spacings. The shading of blue and the tinting of the white accord connect the divide and evolve across the scale of blue from the sky blue to snowflake blue. The works of art tell us the secrets about the sky, or perhaps the story about our city of twinkling lights?
The unfinished coda
Literary critic Walter Pater says: “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”.
The painting is as deep as the darkness of the sky with the time clicking and turning. The bolts, chains and pins are running in their places according to their designated trajectories, maintaining the endless principle of life in the universe. The painting is still, waiting for a lightening up by the encounter with temporality to realise their inner order.
Music is after all temporary, unlike the visual footprints turned by Fan Yan. In turn, these dyes and collages resonate and give the works of art their rhythms and melodies. While the performance comes to the end, the sounds of paintings never vanish, leaving it to the audience to interpret their imagined world of both visible and audible.
看得見的序曲
演奏即將開始…提琴手范欣捧著樂譜，從音符的高竄低伏、弓法的圓轉斷離以至標注的喜怒哀樂，想像手指的遊移按捺與右手手腕拉弓推弓的擺動，將看得見的符號轉化為聽得見的情懷。音樂人的世界既沒有語言的矯飾，也不如圖像緊貼著現實。
今天畫家范欣轉而以跳躍的點、淋漓的色塊與斑駁的畫面肌理演譯出視覺的序曲。散落有致的點與恣意蔓延的筆觸擊撞出溪水與山石相遇之音。細水長流時而淙淙繞道而過，時而飛濺起滴滴答答的水花聲。點、線、面的樂章又譜出什麼想像﹖
節拍與色彩
音樂是時間的藝術，拍子數算著張馳有度的節奏—「蹦—滴滴—蹦—蹦、蹦—滴滴—蹦蹦…」節拍的輕重緩速帶動著樂曲的性情，也牽引著聽眾於音樂脈動一張一弛之間，手之舞之足之蹈之。
告別演奏生涯，范欣卻從未離開音樂的氛圍。透過褶疊與點染，她以層層漬染的濃彩與暈化的淡色，構成時輕而重、或隱或現的視覺節拍。深邃如海的藍一波又一波翻起浪花似的白，又見春花明媚的紅片片飄落褪減似秋葉的衰頽，環迴往複的色彩節奏照見的是萬象繽紛的現象，也是世間悲喜榮枯有時的秩序。
旋律與圖紋
在眾聲喧鬧的世界，低迴的音與激昂的音原是各不相干。唯有旋律將之加以連接組織，音樂得以從混亂創造秩序。當指揮捧飛揚，絲絲縷縷之音徐徐飄落樂曲的想像世間，嘈嘈切切的弘聲與嘟—嘟—的管樂溶溶脈脈…由遠而近，鏗咚咚鏗咚的敲擊樂紛沓而至，聲聲緊接益發激越，呯隆呯隆的完成樂章旋律起承轉合的意志。
將所聽所聞訴之於可見可感，范欣的作品以線條的曲直轉折、圖紋的聚合與散落、堆疊與間距，鋪陳出視覺的旋律。藍的濃重，白的輕清，一唱一和，吐出天藍湛藍碧藍藏藍與雪花藍的旋律。藍與白相遇相交相錯的旋律，連接彼此的斷裂，也調和自身的音調。畫作許是訴說著星際雲圖的密語，抑或是萬家燈火的城市日記﹖
未完的終章
文學批評家 Walter Pater 說﹕「所有形式的藝術一直追求音樂的境界」。
畫作漆黑如冥冥穹蒼，只見時間齒輪咔嚓咔嚓咔嚓的翻動著，螺栓、鏈帶與銷軸按著各自的軌跡運轉。各就其位，不同部件或拖曳或跳彈或靜止或滾動，維繫著宇宙萬物生生不息的規律。黑白分明、黑白混融、白而黑黑而白相輝相映相對稱，又拉扯出平衡、更迭與對峙的秩序。
音樂終究留不住。范欣的作品卻給演奏留下視覺的印記，以漬染與拼貼創造色彩與圖案的共鳴共振，賦予畫作節奏與旋律。縱然演奏即將結束，但畫作的樂聲從未消散，留待觀眾演譯出可聽可見交感而生的想像。