D o we see here a rabbit turning into a man, or a man metamorphosing into a rabbit? Hao Liang’s Theology and Evolution poses this paradoxical riddle to the viewer. Created in 2011, this monumental triptych stands as a pivot to Hao Liang’s reinterpretation of classical Chinese ink painting in terms of contemporary art and is a point of origin for his articulation of an ink-based worldview. In the earlier Treatise on Bamboo Skeleton Painting series and in Anatomy from the same year, Hao employs traditional Chinese aesthetic models to confront Western anatomy. In Theology and the Theory of Evolution, he plays up the narrative realism and uses the concrete forms of the rabbit, the man, and the zoomorphic figure to evoke the formless and the endless vicissitudes of life and death. From this point onwards, the zoomorph becomes an essential motif in his work, anticipating the half-skeletal Buddhists and monks who repeatedly appear in the masterful Poison Buddha 2, The Hunter and Transformations of Hell, and An Anecdote from the Grove. Reconciling ancient and contemporary thoughts, Chinese and Western mythologies, Theology and Evolution is a virtuosic expression of Hao Liang’s profound, Zen Buddhism-inspired inquiry into the ultimate meaning of life.

Born in 1983, Hao Liang was featured in the central thematic exhibition of the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Then aged 36, he was already among the most prominent Chinese ink painters. In the same year, his work was included in the group exhibition Streams and Mountains Without End: Landscape Traditions in China at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Musée en oeuvre(s) at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, cementing his status as a global star. The allure of Hao Liang’s paintings lies in his seamless fusion of the classical Chinese gongbi tradition of meticulous polychrome painting and the perspective, anatomy, and observational rationalism of Western painting. In doing so, he has brought classical Chinese ink painting into the 21st century and given it a brand-new visual vocabulary. Although Hao is ever immersed in classical painting subjects and techniques, the contemporaneity of his art originates in his engagement with Western literary modernism, including the works of Kafka, Calvino, and Camus. These have inspired Hao’s celebrated half-human, half-skeletal figures and his ongoing explorations of the metaphysics of human existence in the terms of “bone, flesh, form, and spirit.”

The three panels in Theology and Evolution in variable dimensions depict an ethereal wild rabbit, a half-rabbit half-man zoomorph in translucent gauze robes, and a similarly clothed barefoot recluse with a halo respectively. All three figures are situated in the wilderness amidst roughly identical grass and flowers, suggesting (as does the artwork’s title) that they cohere as a narrative of evolution from one panel to the next. Yet the triptych also poses a riddle about the direction of this narrative: from rabbit to man, or from man to rabbit? With this riddle, Hao raises painting into an embodiment of his “metaphysical” thinking. Hao Liang explains, “In my painting, I deal with certain contradictions — contradictions between past and present, China and the West, national character and the world.” In the present work, he deals with the tensions between “spirit” and “form”, between spirituality and science.

Science is a crucial impetus in Hao Liang’s artistic practice. Consider Anatomy as an example, a painting also completed in 2011. This series of 28 paintings depict human anatomy in ambiguous, translucent images resembling X-ray photography. Undergirded by a Western scientific worldview, the series conducts, as Leonardo da Vinci did, a simultaneous dissection with medical and pictorial means. Having grown up in a family of devout Buddhists, Hao Liang further overlays Buddhist ethics on his rationalist visual investigations, suggesting the connections between the deconstructed human body and the myriad things of nature. In so doing he seeks out the common ground between the metaphysical foundations of Western scientific and Buddhist worldviews. This common ground can also be expressed in Daoist terms according to the notion of the union of Heaven and humanity: humans cannot escape ultimate death, and in shedding bodily form and returning to earth, they perpetuate the cycles of life and death.

Seen in the above light, Theology and Evolution manifests the mutual reflection and interconnectedness between the metaphysical (theology) and the material (the science of evolution). The viewer may interpret the barely visible, almost formless rabbit in the left panel as a symbol of the metaphysical, the flesh-and-blood half-rabbit in the middle as a symbol of the material, and the hermit on the right, with a halo reminiscent of Christian saints, as a symbol of human thought approaching the metaphysical realm. According to Hao Liang, “Reality is sometimes illusory. The invisible (God) is eternal.” Corporeal existence in the human world can vary infinitely. When the viewer seeks to uncover the direction of evolution, they also reflect on the metaphysical origins of life and complete the subjective-objective scenography in the artist’s metaphysical inquiry into human existence. In creating Theology and the Theory of Evolution, Hao plays a role akin to Kakfa’s in his novel Metamorphosis. Through his story, Kafka inquires into who or what has been trapped inside the insect’s body and reflects self-consciously on selfhood. Similarly, Hao points to the spiritual origin and destination of human existence through the three figures in his triptych.

The wild rabbit as a symbol deserves further explication, given its long career and profound significance in the histories of religion, culture, and art. The rabbit is fourth in the periodic sequence of the twelve Chinese zodiac signs, corresponding to the hours between 5 am to 7 am and thus associated with dawn and vitality. Moreover, because the rabbit is a prolific breeder, it symbolises fertility and abundance. In the West, it symbolises rebirth and the cycle of life, particularly the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus, the rabbit is an apt vehicle for Hao Liang’s inquiry into the themes of reality, illusion, and life and death.

The ethereal appearance of the rabbit in the left panel introduces another layer of cultural and religious significance. In one of the Jatakas—stories of the past lives of the Buddha—a rabbit sacrifices its own body to feed a starving elder, who turns out to be a god and honours the rabbit’s compassion by elevating it as a guardian of the moon, hence the rabbit becomes a lunar avatar. This story again suggests that even when spirit and form separate, the body may perish, but it is the spirit that ultimately remains even as it turns into an ephemeral and untraceable shadow. The beauty of existence lies precisely in its incessant vicissitudes. Perhaps in recognition of this, the zoomorph in the middle panel holds a flower and smiles as if responding to the viewer’s questions and reflections, likened to Mahakasyapa in the founding mythology of Zen Buddhism, who smiled upon enlightenment after seeing the Buddha held up a flower to his disciples. As viewers ponder the meaning of this triptych, they perhaps have been brought one step closer to their own awakening.

The Sad Zither, Hao Liang’s first solo show in the United Kingdom, currently on view in Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill Gallery in London, celebrates the enduring themes that animate his art. In his fusion of Renaissance and Song academic painting styles, eerie and alienated landscapes, and signature half-human, half-skeletal figures alike, we sense the painter’s profound meditations on the relationship between the mundane world and the cycles of life and death fully. In 2021, Hao Liang’s work was featured in M+’s inaugural exhibition, The Dream of a Museum. In addition, his new works were included in The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, organised by Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. In addition, Hao’s works are in the collections of major institutions around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco and Paris; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; and M+, Hong Kong.

究竟是兔化身人，還是人變為兔呢？郝量的《神學與進化論》給觀者拋出了這麼一道矛盾且貌似無解的謎題。這個壯觀的三聯幅繪於2011年，是郝量對傳統中國古典水墨的闡釋與當代藝術脈搏接軌的一面轉捩性旗幟，呈現著藝術家水墨世界觀的原軌。 本作已從較再早年完成的《竹骨譜》，及同年繪製的《移用解剖學》等以中國傳統審美典範對照西方解剖學形的畫作系列演變，透過越加寫實具體的敘述方式，以兔、半獸人、人等器形寫無形，詮釋人之生死與萬物盛衰如出一轍的循環。而從本作開始引入人畜等具象的跡象可見，郝量離煉成其別樹一幟、及後在《毒浮屠2》、《獵人與地獄變》、《林間記》等絕倫傑作中反復出現的骨偶香客僧士不遠了。故此，《神學與進化論》在郝量藉由汲取古今中外的思想和寓言，集腋成裘成墨，揮筆探討饒富禪學的「人生觀」大哉問的旅程中可謂標誌性的存在。

郝量1983年生，在2017年榮獲參與第五十七屆威尼斯雙年展的主題展。當時年僅三十六歲的他，乃中國當代水墨藝術家中最年輕亦是最重要的一位。同年，他也參加了紐約大都會的群展「山川無盡：中國的風景傳統」和巴黎蓬皮杜國家藝術和文化中心的「蓬皮杜四十週年收藏展」，可謂揚名四海，聲名大噪。郝量筆下的非凡魅力，來自他三礬九染的古代傳統工筆手法，糅合西方理學對透視、解剖、格物的思維，將古代水墨畫技法帶進二十一世紀，賦予其嶄新的視覺語彙。儘管郝量醉心於歷史題材及傳統技法，其水墨創作的當代性探索其實源於西方現代主義文學的啟發，其中包括卡夫卡、卡爾維諾、加謬等名家作品，更是催生了郝量筆下為之見稱的皮殼骨骼人物形象，開展藝術家以「骨、肉、形、神」為單位探討如何體現人「形之上」命題的旅程。

2011年作的《神學與進化論》三聯幅尺寸皆異，分別呈現了一隻若隱若現的白描野兔，一個身穿錦服紗袍的半人半兔，和一個頭頂光環的赤腳隱士。他們均身處荒野，周邊的花草路岩近乎一致，無疑有序地述說著同一個蛻變過程，亦即標題所提的進化論。然而讓觀者疑惑的是，這個變化過程究竟是兔化身人，還是人變為兔呢？這一道疑題，正標誌了畫作在郝量透過繪畫體現「形而上」思考方式的一個分水嶺。正如郝量所言：「我在通過繪畫處理一些矛盾，這些矛盾是古今的、中西間的、民族性與世界的矛盾。」而藝術家在本作中探究的，正是「神」與「形」、精神與科學之間的矛盾拉扯。

科學在郝量的創作實踐上有著極為關要的推動性。以他在與本作同年完成的《移用解剖學》為例，該一組共二十八幅的系列作品以西方科學世界觀，透過近乎於X光底片的迷濛透明圖像方式呈現並解析人的結構，展現了一種形同達文西般醫學解剖與藝術解剖的形式重疊。而自幼受篤信佛教的家庭氛圍薰陶的郝量，在這理學式的視覺探究上加以引入佛學倫理，將人體解構與自然萬物相對映照，並與試圖探求兩方「根本」的聯繫，亦即道家所論天人合一，人總歸死亡，超脫形體，皆反於土，生滅流轉，輪迴不息。

若將以上思維套用在本作裡，《神學與進化論》便體現了形而上（神學）與形而下（科學進化論）意義的相互映照和密不可分。觀者可把左幅透視得難以辨識、象徵「無形」的野兔解讀為生命虛無的「形而上」，對比之下中幅的半人獸則象徵「形而下」的血肉之軀，而右幅頭冠酷似西方宗教藝術裡聖人光圈的蒙面隱士便可比擬為人類思維更貼近精神層面上的「形而上」。郝量曾道：「現實有時是虛幻的，看不見的（神）才是恆定的。」塵世間所謂的肉身軀殼千變萬化，若觀者意圖追究畫中進化論的人兔順序，正是折射了對「形而上」那生命的「根本」– 那個無可替代的靈神 – 的關注與重視，也正是藝術家著重挖掘形而上式的「人的存在感」的主客觀情景。創作《神學與進化論》的郝量，就像撰寫《變形記》的卡夫卡。卡夫卡透過文字提問到底是誰或什麼困在蟲子的身體裡，思考著自身，擁有著意識；同樣，郝量透過兔、半獸及人提問那個精神根本的源頭和歸宿。

而郝量所選的野兔象徵，也值得觀者再三玩味。兔子在人類文明發展中有著深遠的宗教、文化及藝術踪跡。在中國十二生肖中，兔子排行第四。它與十二地支中的卯對應，「卯」時是指早晨五至七時，因此， 代表黎明，充滿著無限生機。而因為兔子生育力旺盛，除了是豐饒多產的代表，在西方文化中亦常見用以象徵生命的輪迴，特別是代表耶穌死而復生的奇蹟暗喻。因此，要完美詮釋郝量筆下對實有與虛無的生死要題深究，兔子顯得尤為合適。

再者，兔子一角的運用，為本作中「神學」的部分多添了一層文化及信仰的底蘊。在佛教《本身經》裡記載著一則神話：從前有隻兔子為替一位飢餓的老人解困，犧牲己軀為老人果腹，而老人的真實身份是一位神明，為嘉許兔子捨身救人的慈悲之心，將牠升上了月亮，成為月亮的象徵。從這則典故再一認證，縱使神形分離，軀殼可滅，但精神長留，生命之淒美，莫過於其無常的生滅，人之神化為虛影而去從不明。或許因此，中幅的半人半兔才拈花展顏，回應著觀者因本作所延伸的一連串疑問和反思，就如迦葉尊者見佛陀拈華（花）示眾從而悟道而破顏微笑般，對距離「頓悟」又邁進一步的觀者們，投以會心的微笑。

高古軒倫敦畫廊空間現正進行的郝量首個英國個展「錦瑟」，回顧着郝量的那片從一而終的創作初心。那西方文藝復興式宋代院體畫風、幽邃的異化山水、標誌性的皮殼骨骼人物形象，無一不滲透著藝術家對於凡塵對世界以及生死輪迴的認知及浸淫。藝術家於2021年參加了香港M+博物館的開幕展「博物館之夢」，新作更入選於澳洲布里斯本昆士蘭美術館與現代術館舉行的第十屆亞太當代藝術三年展。他的作品獲全球多家機構收藏，包括紐約大都會藝術博物館、三藩市和巴黎的卡蒂 斯特藝術基金會、巴黎蓬皮杜國家藝術和文化中心、荷蘭馬斯特里赫特伯尼范登博物館、澳大利亞布里斯班昆士蘭現代美術館、香港M+博物館等。