Gracefully, powerfully arresting, Blue Crate with Still Life is striking and superlative specimen from Jonas Wood’s acclaimed oeuvre featuring his best-known subject matter. The two potted plants, rendered in Wood’s trademark skewed and flattened perspective, situates on one of Wood’s iconic blue crates, whose exquisitely rendered reliefs resemble intricate lacework. The carefully, precariously balanced disposition of the larger pot is juxtaposed against the elegantly dangling red branch reminiscent of Calder’s abstract hanging mobile. Employing artistic tropes of flattened colors and spatial distortion, Wood lends this quiet still life an element of the uncanny. Through the striking stems and exaggerated leaves, expertly layered upon one another as if teetering on the very edge of the canvas, Wood orchestrates a singular visual experience and illusion of depth that runs counterintuitive to the decided flatness of the composition: the viewer’s eye is drawn into the canvas, creating a paradoxical sense of visual movement and dynamism.

Wood grew up in Boston and graduated with a BA in Psychology in upstate New York with a minor in studio art. He then moved to Seattle to pursue his MFA in painting and drawing. Over the past decade and a half Wood has carved out his own distinctive and critically lauded aesthetic that is embedded in a rich network of art-historical reference. His painterly style is a playful yet rigorous interrogation of the traditional representational challenge of capturing three-dimensional forms on the flat picture plane; by flattening shapes and exaggerating forms, he achieves gently unsettling yet highly stimulating canvases. The influence of Cubism is palpable in his work’s conflation of multiple perspectives, while his focus on the quotidian as well as the cheerful gaiety of his palette invokes the language of Pop Art, recalling in particular David Hockney’s domesticated landscapes and gardens. Wood has said: “Hockney was a big, big influence on me. He has that Renaissance ability to paint from life but he’s also an inventor,” says Wood. “But I love Picasso and Braque and Matisse and Vuillard. . . . And the thing about Hockney or Alex Katz or Lucian Freud or any of those people that I’m super into, they were into those modern painters, too. So I get to look at Matisse or Picasso through their work” (cited in Meredith Mendelsohn, “Jonas Wood--Mural”, Gagosian, 22 May 2017, n.p.).

The present work nods to Van Gogh’s still lifes, Hockney’s vibrant interiors, Calder’s hanging mobiles, as well as Matisse’s cut-outs, not only in motif but in its inducing of a ruptured sensory experience. In the last decade of Matisse’s life, the artist began cutting up gouache-painted paper into a wide range of shapes and re-arranging them into new compositions. Wood’s approach is similar: working from a personal archive of photographs and found imagery, he makes preliminary sketches and studies of his subjects and creates initial collages by cutting and pasting. The images are then filtered through various layers of drawing until he arrives at his final composition. Wood explains: “I’ll take a picture of the painting and print it out on drawing paper, get the coloured pencils and try to figure [it] out. I’m less of a de Kooning and more like Lichtenstein so it’s a compositional decision” (cited in Bill Powers, “A Talk With Jonas Wood”, ArtNews, January 2015). The fragmentary method is in essence a synthesized perception of t.mes and space; as a result, the final works throb with a vibrant rhythm and whimsical harmony.

As Roberta Smith asserts: “More than ever his works negotiate an uneasy truce among the abstract, the representational, the photographic […] Each painting presents a highly personal but impersonally observed reality” (Ibid.). Oscillating between representational still-life and abstraction, balancing at the nuanced threshold at which representation disintegrates into sheer pattern of form and colour, the present work is in line with the very best of Wood’s oeuvre.

「馬蒂斯、畢加索、考爾德、莫內、維亞爾、博納爾、梵谷、斯圖爾特・戴維斯以及霍克尼，他們均為我帶來切實的影響。在我兒時，我的家人會談論起這些藝術家，視他們為偉大繪畫的代表人物。他們更是我在工作室藝術訓練的仿效對象，我一直非常重視他們。」

喬納斯・伍德

《藍板箱與靜物》以喬納斯・伍德最擅長的靜物為題，作品細膩優雅，靜謐動人，實乃其眾多傑作中的優秀典例。藝術家以獨特的傾斜及扁平角度描繪兩棵盆栽，再用浮凸有致的筆觸刻畫植物底下的藍色板箱，板箱的網格縱橫交錯，堪比精緻的蕾絲。箱上小心翼翼擺放著的大陶盆看起來搖搖欲墜，優美晃蕩著的紅色枝幹仿似考爾德的懸掛式動態雕塑「漆樹」，兩者隔空呼應，維繫著微妙的平衡。攤平的色塊和扭曲的空間為寧靜的畫面帶來一股不可思議的玄妙氛圍。醒目的枝幹和誇張的葉子層層重疊，觸及畫布邊緣，搖曳生姿。伍德藉此指揮了一場無與倫比的視覺饗宴，當中的透視深度假象違背了人們對扁平構圖的直觀體驗——觀者的目光被畫面牽引，生出一種與直覺相悖的視覺動勢和動態。

伍德成長於波士頓，於紐約北部取得心理學學士學位，並輔修工作室藝術。他其後遷至西雅圖攻讀油畫及素描美術碩士課程。過去十五年來，伍德塑造出獨一無二、備受稱譽的美學，注入借鑑藝術歷史的豐富脈絡。他的繪畫風格盎然有趣，又不失縝密細緻，對於傳統以來在平面捕捉立體形態的具象挑戰提出疑問。透過扁平形狀及誇大形態，他創造出蜿蜒不定卻又激動人心的畫作。伍德的作品匯合不同的透視角度，從中可見立體主義對他的啟發。與此同時，他又視日常事物為創作焦點，明亮活躍的色彩亦與普普藝術呼應，令人聯想到大衛・霍克尼的生活化風景及園林畫作。伍德曾表示，「霍克尼對我的影響非常深遠。他擁有如文藝復興時代的創作才能，充分演繹生活的真髓，同時亦善於開發創新。我也喜愛畢加索、布拉克、馬蒂斯與維亞爾……而一些我非常喜歡的藝術家，例如霍克尼、亞歷克斯・卡茨或盧西安・弗洛伊德等，他們本身也對這些現代大師深感興趣。我開始從他們的作品看出馬蒂斯或畢加索的元素」（引述自梅雷迪思・門德爾松，〈喬納斯・伍德──壁畫〉，高古軒，2017年5月22日，無頁數）。

本作向梵谷的靜物畫、霍克尼絢麗的室內畫、考爾德的懸掛式動態雕塑、以及馬蒂斯的剪紙作品點頭致敬，不論是素材還是從畫中喚起的零散破碎的感官體驗，均可見相似之處。馬蒂斯在最後十年的創作中，開始將水粉畫紙裁剪成各式各樣的形狀，並將它們重新組合成新的構圖。伍德的創作模式亦非常相似，他運用個人相集以及現成圖片，為作品描畫初稿，並作為主題研習，以剪貼方式製作出拼貼原模。這些圖像其後在多層素描下逐漸篩選，直至他完成最終的構圖。他曾釋述，「我會為畫作拍攝照片，用繪圖紙打印出來，然後以彩色鉛筆勾勒圖像。我的創作少一點德庫寧的風格，多一點傾向於李奇登斯坦，這是組合而成的創作決定」（引述自比爾・鮑爾斯，〈與喬納斯・伍德對談〉，《ArtNews》，2015年1月）。零碎的創作手法充分體現融合為一的時間與空間感知，最終作品洋溢生動節奏，帶來異想天開的諧協之美。如羅伯塔・史密斯所言，「他的作品比以往更能協調抽象、具象以及逼真寫實之間的膠著狀態……每幅畫作均展現切身關聯，卻又抽離觀察的現實」（同上）。本作遊走於具象靜物寫生與抽象之間，平衡於微妙細緻的變化界限，圖像表現分裂成純粹的形態及色彩，充分彰顯伍德的創作精髓。