以下文字摘自PHAIDON出版社
《VITAMIN P3 – NEW PERSPECTIVES IN PAINTING》
文 | 巴里·史瓦伯斯基
迈克尔·辛普森的绘画艺术是一场精心策划的漫长行为。他以缓慢而坚定的节奏创作，同时怀揣着一种近乎执迷的热情。只有那些愿意付出同样专注与思考的观者，才能品味到他作品的丰盈回报。或许正因如此，尽管他早已赢得评论家和同仁们的赞誉，其中包括他的前学生，但是他的作品却需花费漫长的岁月才能引起更广泛的关注。这不仅仅是因为他的作品渴望培养一种缓慢而深思的、累积的回应，更是因为这些作品自身在岁月中悄然酝酿着一股无法忽视的力量。
Michael Simpson's art of painting plays the long game. He works slowly, and with determination, even a kind of obsessiveness – and his paintings reward the viewer who is willing to look, and think, with a similar dedication. Presumably this is the reason that – although he has long had admirers among critics as well as fellow artists (some of them his former students) – it has taken a long time for his work to draw wider notice; not only because it is in the nature of his work to cultivate a slow, considered, one might almost say cumulative response, but also because the work itself has been building up steam over the decades.
迈克尔·辛普森个展“绘画虚空 Paintings” 展览现场, 2023 @ 阿拉里奥画廊上海
与许多艺术家不同，他们早期或许以毫不费力的爆发展现最辉煌的创意和重大突破，而余生则用于捡拾碎片和探索其所做之举的意涵。而辛普森则始终不懈地向前推进自己的作品，通过不断自我反思、发展和澄清他内心的本质直觉，随着时间的推移，这种直觉被更加有力地彰显出来。
Unlike so many artists who arrive at their most brilliant inventions and most significant breakthroughs early on, with an almost thoughtless burst of energy, then spend the rest of their lives picking up the pieces and working out the implications of what they have done, Simpson has consistently pushed forward, self-critically developing and clarifying his essential intuition, which therefore emerges more and more forcefully as he goes on.
迈克尔·辛普森个展“绘画虚空 Paintings” 展览现场, 2023 @ 阿拉里奥画廊上海
那么，这种根本性的直觉是什么？这种直觉在辛普森在其英国布里斯托尔斯派克岛举办的展览标题中巧妙地显露出来，这也是他至今最为宏大的呈现：平面绘画。
What is that essential intuition? It is intimated in the title of Simpson's exhibition at Spike Island in Bristol (UK), the largest presentation of his work to date: Flat Surface Paintings.
迈克尔·辛普森个展“绘画虚空 Paintings” 展览现场, 2023 @ 阿拉里奥画廊上海
这一标题表明了辛普森对抽象艺术相关的理念而非使用图像的绘画方式的拥护，而辛普森一直以来都秉持这一理念：绘画并非是置于墙壁上的想象入口，透过它我们获得了另一个世界的虚幻景观，绘画是一种物质实体，用其平坦的表面直接面对观者，唤起强烈的存在感，将观者置于一种必须亲身参与的存在之中。辛普森的绘画呈现出平面性和简约的直线几何，与卡齐米尔·马列维奇（1879-1935）或皮埃特·蒙德里安（1872-1944）早期的抽象主义有相似之处，而辛普森的作品尺寸则与巴尼特·纽曼（1905-1970）或马克·罗斯科（1903-1970）等抽象表现主义作品相当。正如后者说过：“我创作非常宏大的画作……因为我希望表达出非常亲密和非常人性的内涵。”
That title declares his allegiance to a conception more readily associated with abstraction than with painting that employs images, as Simpson's has always done: the idea that painting is not a kind of imaginary opening in the wall through which we get an illusory view of another world, but rather a physical thing that is made, whose flat surface confronts the viewer with a presence that demands engagement. This flatness, and the austere rectilinear geometry of Simpson's paintings, show an affinity with the early abstraction of Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) or Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), while their scale is that of the abstract expressionism of, say, Barnett Newman (1905-70) or Mark Rothko (1903-70). As the latter famously said, 'I paint very large pictures … because I want to be very intimate and very human.
迈克尔·辛普森个展“绘画虚空 Paintings” 展览现场, 2023 @ 阿拉里奥画廊上海
然而，辛普森的绘画作品并非纯抽象。他的作品中从未包含人物形象，而是通过采用少量重复出现的图像，以寓言的方式呈现人类的参与。
Yet Simpson's paintings are far from abstract. They use a small number of recurrent images – but never that of the human figure – to allegorize the human engagement they materially embody.
迈克尔·辛普森个展“绘画虚空 Paintings” 展览现场, 2023 @ 阿拉里奥画廊上海
自1989年开始的三十年间，他致力于创作名为“长椅”的一系列作品，这些作品旨在纪念十六世纪的异端哲学家乔尔达诺·布鲁诺。其中有四十件作品幸存至今。长凳象征着一个人可以无休止地等待最终的审判，无论公正与否。值得一提的是，辛普森认为还有近似数量的作品并不尽如人意。在“长椅”系列结束后的一段时间，辛普森反思自我，即开始了名为“一瞥”的新系列作品。这个系列基于中世纪的一种习俗，该习俗将麻风病人排除在教堂之外，仅允许他们通过一个窥视孔来观察仪式的进行。
For thirty years, starting in 1989, he was engaged with a series of 'Bench Paintings' – dedicated to the memory of the heretical sixteenth-century philosopher Giordano Bruno – of which forty survive (nearly as many having been deemed by the artist unsatisfactory), the bench being the empty place where one might wait endlessly for ultimate judgment, just or otherwise. After a period of reflection following the end of the 'Bench' series, Simpson has commenced a new series called 'The Leper Squint', based on the medieval custom of excluding lepers from entering the church but allowing them a peephole through which to observe the proceedings.
迈克尔·辛普森个展“绘画虚空 Paintings” 展览现场, 2023 @ 阿拉里奥画廊上海
在这些绘画作品中，凳子和梯子似乎提供了至少从远处加入社群的可能性，然而窥视孔并没有提供真正的视野，我们被抛回到自身的赤裸存在中。
In these paintings, stools and ladders seem to offer the possibility of joining a community at least from a distance, but there is no view through the aperture, and we are thrown back on our own bare existence.
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