张新权是个优秀的风景画家，众多表现乡村主题的作品曾经是他的专长，明媚的阳光、幽雅的树木、古老的村屋和恬静的小桥流水是多年前他笔下的常见题材，而洒脱爽利的笔触和明快鲜亮的色彩则成为他的标志性风格。

2002年，一个偶然的机遇使他对民国时期的老上海产生了最初的兴趣，并促使他完成了第一件表现“十里洋场”——外滩建筑群的作品，以此为契机，他开始把大量的精力投注在对城市历史图像的研究之中。他发现，在工业文明开始萌动于中国的那个特殊年代，上海的楼房、街道、港口、船舶以及有轨电车等形象，构成了一组组非常入画的视觉符号群，他擅长的用笔和用色方式也非常适合表现这样的都市景色。

从那时起，张新权找到了他在风景画创作上的全新语言。在他潇洒、迅疾而充满快感的笔触下，外滩、苏州河及其周边的大量历史建筑都开始成为他描绘的对象。从稀薄的涂刷到厚重的堆砌，他对画面形象的塑造充满了节奏感和音乐感。从单纯的忠实记录到自由的意向表现，他其实并不拘泥于真实的历史风貌，画面也越来越主观。那些上世纪三、四十年代经典的上海旧貌在他的作品中甚至开始变得有些抽象，有些概念化，从中可以看出，他已经在以一种个人化的历史观对昨日进行随意性很强的组合与重新解读。

在这些时而虚构、时而真实的风景中，熟悉的今天正渐渐被淡化，而陌生的昨日却被强烈地凸显出来。事实上，国内许多城市正在为营造与恢复历史特色而进行着全新规划，在大量殖民地时期的建筑被列为重点文物保护单位后，众多带有欧美新古典主义风格的建筑物正拔地而起，许多被拆除多年的有轨电车线路也正被推上复建的议程。在这样一轮又一轮的怀旧风潮中，张新权的作品显得生逢其时，怀旧，正是这个高速发展的时代所必然引发的文化乡愁。

现在，张新权的描绘对象已经不仅仅是老上海，他把上世纪初工业化时代欧美都市风景的许多视觉符号都引入了画面，我们可以把他的作品看成是一个当今的艺术家对都市历史的感喟和怀恋。从《横街》到《十字街头》，从《河道》到《海滩》，从《苏州河》到《码头》，他的作品正走向一个更加宽广的视野，他所描绘的对象，是一种概念化了的风景，因而，我称之为“历史的风景”。这些风景，在张新权的画面里正被重新组合着，早期殖民时代上海曾经拥有的繁华，在他的笔下逐渐超越了历史时空，而那些被概念化了的都市风貌，正在他全新的系列作品中被梦想幻化、融合，进而成为一种颇为异样的视觉奇观。

李旭 2007年7月8日

Zhang Xinquan, as an outstanding landscape painter, used to specialize in depicting rural life, such as brilliant sunshine, elegant trees, ancient village houses, tranquil bridges and streams, with the free strokes and bright color as his signature style.

In 2002, Zhang happened to develop an interest in old Shanghai of the Republic of China period, which drove him to his first painting, “The Metropolis Old Shanghai”, portraying the architectural complex in the Bund. Thereafter, he devoted himself to probing into the historical images of the city, to find that in that very age when industrial civilization budded in China, the images of buildings, streets, ports, vessels, and trams in Shanghai made up the picturesque visual symbols of the city, and his painting and coloring style was just designed for that.

Since then, Zhang has already found his brand new language in painting landscapes. His unrestrained, swift and pleasant brushwork touched the Bund, the Suzhou River and other surrounding architectures. His painting is always rhythmic and musical no matter he does it with watery coating or massive pileup. He is not confined to the historical scene itself, but turns from loyal recording to free expressing, more subjective way. The images of classic old Shanghai of the last 30s and 40s is abstract or even conceptualized, where we can see that he is randomly assembling and unscrambling the past with a personal historical view.

In those sceneries, some imaginary while others the opposite, the present we are familiar with is fading and the unacquainted past becomes the foreground. Actually, many cities in China are making urban planning to restore their historical characteristics. Neoclassical occidental buildings are rising abruptly and trams that were removed years ago are put on the agenda to be rebuilt, after the structures of the colonial time were preserved as cultural relics. In the trend of nostalgia, Zhang’s works come out at the right time, as nostalgia is just the cultural necessity of the fast developing society.

Currently, Zhang is not confined to the images of old Shanghai. Instead, he brings many visual symbols of the occidental cityscape of the last century into his works, to exclaim over and look back nostalgically on the city history. From “The Bystreet” to “The Crossroad”, from “The Watercourse” to “The Beach”, from “The Suzhou River” to “The Wharf”, his paintings are being produced in a gradually broadened horizon. What he is depicting is the conceptualized landscape, to be reset in his paintings. Therefore, it’s defined as “historical landscape”. The prosperity of old Shanghai in the colonial period, transcending time and space, together with the conceptualized cityscape, is miraculously transformed and fused in his works, as a peculiar visual spectacle.

-- By Li Xu, July 8th, 2007