剪是一种破坏吗？

剪纸是陈粉丸的艺术实践，而剪指甲、剪头发则是她日常生活中反复发生的动作。这种看似随意、搞怪的并置并非玩笑，它揭示了“剪”如何从一种技法转化为贯穿陈粉丸创作与生活的共同经验。

无论是剪纸，还是修剪指甲和头发，所面对的都是一种持续的取舍：去除冗余，保留必要。剪纸剪下的是“创作废料”，通过舍弃来创造；而剪指甲和剪头发则是摒弃“身体废料”，重新塑造自己身体的边缘。

对于陈粉丸而言，“剪”这一动作固然与失去、消失与告别相连，但同样与拥有、更新和初见密不可分。我们通过失去，获得新的形态。

Is cutting a form of destruction?

For Chen Fenwan, papercutting is an artistic practice, while cutting her nails and hair are repetitive gestures in daily life. This seemingly casual—even playful—juxtaposition is not a joke; it reveals how “cutting” shifts from a technique into a shared experience that runs through both her artistic practice and everyday life.

Whether in papercutting or in trimming nails and hair, what is at stake is an ongoing process of selection: removing the superfluous and retaining what is necessary. In papercutting, what is cut away becomes “creative residue”—creation emerges through acts of subtraction. In contrast, cutting nails and hair discards “bodily residue,” reshaping the edges of one’s own body.

For Chen Fenwan, the act of cutting is indeed tied to loss, disappearance, and farewell—but it is equally inseparable from possession, renewal, and first encounters. Through losing, we arrive at new forms.

01 手的练习

剪的练习，从手开启。

手是人类最原始的媒介，承载着本能、情绪与无声的表达。从童年的手影游戏，到成长中的肢体触碰；从挥手、拥抱间的相聚别离，到使用工具时的裁剪取舍，我们的双手始终在与世界产生联结。

手是陈粉丸常用的创作符号，手影、挥手、手印、手语、掌纹，她以丰富的手部动作和意象为创作锚点，将私人的成长记忆、不言自明的情感启蒙，凝练为可视化的艺术语言，引起观众的共鸣。

01 The Hand

The cutting exercise begins with the hand.

The hand is humanity’s most primal medium, carrying instinct, emotion, and silent expression. From childhood hand shadow puppetry to the bodily touch of growing up; from meetings and farewells conveyed through waving and embracing, to the acts of cutting and choosing involved in using tools, our hands have always served as a means of connecting with the world.

It is also one of Chen Fenwan’s creation signs. Hand shadows, waving gestures, handprints, sign language, palm lines—through a rich vocabulary of gestures and hand imagery, she uses the body as an anchor for creation, distilling personal memories of growth and unspoken emotional awakenings into a visual language that arouses emotional resonance with viewers.

01 起稿

“起稿”是剪纸的基础，图样的构思决定了下刀的方向与节奏，没有形，便无从剪刻。传统民间剪纸往往依托图腾、祖先或生殖崇拜等母题展开，承载祈福功能。陈粉丸则不执着于传统吉祥纹样，她的灵感源自个人的生活经验与日常观察，从更直接的创作冲动出发，发展出鲜活荧光的、独具一格的视觉语法。

她同时使用两种方式起稿：一是手起刀落、直觉先行的手工剪纸；二是使用iPad手绘矢量图形，再结合数控雕刻机械完成切割。新技术的引入拓宽了剪纸的边界，这既是对传统技艺的回应，也是对其在当代文化中延展性的实验。这种游离于传统风格之外的探索，也让她得以她得以触及更广泛的艺术议题。

“起稿”板块呈现的正是以上两种方式创作的习作与原稿。它们并非完成意义上的作品，却构成了后续正式作品与空间装置的视觉基础。剪纸的“起稿”也呼应着陈粉丸早期创作手工书时，需先制作结构性的“样书”的创作逻辑。这种跨媒介的共性指向了同一种工作方法：在正式完成脑海中构思的作品面貌之前，创作者需要经历的起稿、推敲与试验。

01 Drafting

Drafting is the foundation of papercutting. The appearance of the motif determines the direction and rhythm of the blade; without form, there is nothing to cut. Traditional papercutting often draws upon totems, ancestral symbols, or fertility motifs, carrying auspicious meanings. Chen Fenwan, however, does not adhere to established decorative symbolism. Her cutouts grow from personal experience and everyday observation, propelled by direct creative impulse, developing into a vivid, fluorescent visual language uniquely her own.

She works through two methods: intuitive freehand cutting, where the blade follows instinct, and vector graphics created on an iPad, later cut using a laser cutting machine. The introduction of new technologies expands the boundaries of papercutting — both a response to tradition and an experiment in its contemporary elasticity. The exploration beyond conventional stylistic expectations allows her to engage broader artistic discussions.

The “Drafting” section presents cutout drafts and scripts through the two methods mentioned above. They are not finished works in the full sense, yet they form the visual foundation for the subsequent completed pieces and spatial installations. The drafting process in papercutting also echoes Chen Fenwan’s early practice of making artists’ books, which required the prior production of structural “dummy books.” The shared logic across different media points to a consistent working method: before realizing the envisioned form of a work, the artist must pass through stages of drafting, refinement, and experimentation.

02 上色

不同于直接剪裁彩色纸张，陈粉丸的绝大多数作品，都以颜料层层刷涂于白纸之上，待其干透再进行剪刻。工业荧光颜料与手工调色的介入，让纸面上的色彩既具有高度饱和的视觉张力，又保留着刷痕、厚薄不均的肌理质感，成为可被触摸与感知的物质存在。

鲜亮高对比的色彩，是陈粉丸剪纸艺术最直观的个人风格，也与大众印象里的红色窗花形成区分。她希望作品先以抓人眼球的霓虹色调给予观众感官愉悦，建立浅层联结，再通过叙事内核激发深层共鸣。在她眼中，色彩是一种沟通语言，它会随着作品材质、空间光线与具体语境产生变化，并在重复使用与迭代中，不断丰富这门语言的词汇与语法。

粉丸曾因粉色承载的乖顺意味与固化的性别期待，刻意回避这种颜色。直至2016年创作手工书《平面》时，她拆分、重组大量人脸面孔的照片并提取色彩，才意识到粉色本是人类皮肤透出来的底色。这个发现让她重新认识粉色，并开始“报复性”地运用它。随着创作的推进，粉色也跳出了最初柔和的皮肤粉，逐渐转向荧光的质感、变得锋利又尖锐。起初，她用粉色修正偏见；如今，她在更广阔的色谱里剪纸，将粉色与其他高饱和色彩并列。这份不可忽视、近乎“入侵”的存在感，恰似艺术之于日常生活的那份突兀与错位。

此次展览展示了陈粉丸工作室逐步建立的色卡系统。墙面陈列的一百种颜色，共同组合成一份完备的色彩档案，每一种颜色都有其独特的命名与编号。这套色彩标准的形成，不仅记录了她从单一颜色出发、持续拓展配色系统的创作轨迹，也指向其工作方式的转型：从美院毕业初期单打独斗的个体实践，逐步走向工作室团队协作与规模化产出的成熟阶段。

02 Coloring

Compared to cutting directly from colored paper, Chen Fenwan typically paints layers of pigment onto white sheets before cutting. Industrial fluorescent paints and hand-mixed tones create visual tension through high saturation while preserving visible brushstrokes and uneven textures, turning color into a tangible material presence.

Bright, high-saturated color is one of the most unique features of her pieces, distinguishing them from the red palette commonly associated with traditional Chinese window papercuts. She aims to capture the viewer’s eye with striking neon tones, offering sensory pleasure and establishing an initial connection, before its narrative core evokes a deeper resonance. In her view, color is a language of communication. It shifts in response to material, spatial lighting, and specific contexts, and through repetition and iteration, continuously expands its own vocabulary and grammar.

Fenwan once deliberately avoided pink because of its connotations of docility and the fixed gender expectations attached to it. It was not until 2016, while creating the artist’s book Flat Surface, that she deconstructed and recomposed numerous photographic portraits, extracting their colors, and realized that pink is the undertone of human skin. The discovery reshaped her understanding of the pink color and led her to apply it in retaliation. As her art practice evolved, pink moved beyond its initial soft, flesh-like hue toward fluorescent intensities—becoming sharper, more acute. In the beginning, she used pink to correct prejudice; now, she works across a broader spectrum, placing pink alongside other highly saturated colors. Its undeniable, nearly invasive presence mirrors the way art interrupts and unsettles the routines of everyday life.

03 对折

对称是剪纸中最直观的形式特征之一。纸张经对折剪裁，展开后便能得到一个左右均等的完整的形。在陈粉丸的创作中，源于对人际关系与自我剖析的深层思考，她逐渐意识到，对称不只是视觉层面的构成方式，更延伸出诸多深层结构——情感关系里付出与回应的平衡、时间长河中过去与未来的相互映照、生命进程里诞生与消亡的彼此呼应。这些维度共同构成了一种一体两面、彼此牵引的镜像关系。

在书籍装帧的流程中，纸张对折是极为关键的步骤。通过对折形成多页叠加的结构，既能让书籍制作更高效、结构更稳定，也能有效减少纸材浪费。

墙面还展示了部分粉丸创作手工书和剪纸的常用工具，趁手的它们是粉丸手工创作中最默契的搭档。

03 Folding

Symmetry is among papercutting’s most direct visual traits. A folded paper, once cut and reopened, reveals a balanced shape. In Fenwan’s practice, symmetry extends beyond composition into deeper structural reflections — the balance of giving and receiving in relationships, the mirroring of past and future, and the echo between birth and disappearance in the cycle of life. Together, these form a reflected, interdependent structure.

By folding the paper to create layered signatures, the structure becomes more efficient to produce, more stable in form, and more with less wasted paper materials.

Displayed along the wall are several of the tools Fenwan frequently uses in making an artist’s book and papercuts. Well-worn and familiar in her hands, they are her most trusted companions in the act of creating.

04 剪刻

在正式开始剪刻前，对图形的正负形的想象至关重要。剪纸是镂空间的取舍，是一种媒介哲学——它需要创作者在“剪去”和“留下”之间，做出关于形的构思与权衡。手起刀落，既是创造，也有舍弃。剪纸中的“阴阳正负形”超越了镂空这一单纯的形式感，其背后蕴含的古老东方阴阳观念，不仅是陈粉丸创作的核心思考，更贯穿了《剪纸宇宙》系列作品的理念与实践。

在陈粉丸的创作中，剪纸的正负形关系早已跳出了形式层面的装饰性。被剪除的冗余与留存的图形彼此依存、如同阴与阳般相互嵌套。这种关系不仅存在于图形之中，更延伸至她对人、环境与世界的理解：人类与宇宙的关系恰似剪纸的正负形，我们能感知到的“呼吸“”体温“”身体的边界“是”正形“；而空气、温度、他人的存在，便是常被忽略却实际塑造着我们的“负形”。人类并非封闭、孤立的存在，而是始终嵌于环境、他者与不可见的结构之中。

传统剪纸通常被理解为一种具象的视觉符号，有着固定的形态与意义。陈粉丸的创作更注重剪纸技艺背后的哲学思考，而非追求符号化的再现。她结合现代技术和当代观念，力图打破这些对符号的固化认知，让剪纸成为一种轻盈、简洁、能自由表达的媒介。“剪刻”的动作并不局限于剪刀这一具体工具，也不局限于二维平面纸张。其余能够制造空缺、形成对比与留白的方式，都是剪刻的延伸，如刀刻、激光雕刻、烧蚀、模切，或是通过透明与网状结构呈现可见的“空”。陈粉丸真正关注的，是剪纸所蕴含的减法逻辑与结构思维。当这一方法被带入更广阔的材料与语境中，剪纸不再只是传统技艺，更成为一种可以持续被探索与转译的艺术语言。

04 Cutting

Before cutting begins, the visualization of the relationship between positive and negative shapes is essential. Papercutting is a philosophy of subtraction — a negotiation between keep and throw away. Each motion of the blade creates while it discards. The yin-yang dynamics embedded in positive and negative shapes transcend mere hollowing; they carry an ancient cosmological view that underpins Chen Fenwan’s long-term thinking and the conceptual framework of The Universe of Paper Cutting series.

In her works, the relationship between positive and negative shapes has long moved beyond decorative formalism. What is lost and what remains exist in mutual dependence, interlocking like yin and yang. The dynamic extends beyond the figure itself into her broader understanding of human existence and the world: the relationship between humanity and the universe resembles the positive and negative shapes of a papercut. What we perceive—our breath, body temperature, the boundaries of our skin—constitutes the “positive shapes”; air, ambient warmth, and the presence of others are the often-overlooked “negative shapes” that nonetheless form us. Human beings are not closed, isolated entities, but are always embedded within the environment, others, and invisible structures.

The traditional papercutting is often regarded as an idiographic visual symbol with fixed form and meanings. Chen Fenwan, however, is less concerned with symbolic representation than with the philosophical thinking embedded within the technique itself. By integrating digital technologies and contemporary concepts, she seeks to unsettle rigid perceptions of such symbols and to reposition papercutting as a light, concise, and freely expressive medium. The act of “cutting” is not confined to scissors, nor to the two-dimensional plane of paper. Any means that creates absence, contrast, or spatial openness extends the logic of cutting—whether through carving, laser engraving, burning, die-cutting, or the use of transparency and mesh structures to render visible voids. What ultimately interests her is the subtractive logic and structural thinking inherent in papercutting. When applied across diverse materials and contexts, papercutting ceases to be merely a traditional craft and becomes an artistic language capable of continuous exploration and translation.

05 展开

剪刻工序完成后，将对折的纸张展开，预想中的完整图形便清晰显现。“展开”在这一篇章中，指代的不只是纸张维度的状态变化。当折叠的图形被铺展，在空间中获得全然舒展，这种从局促走向舒阔的过程，既呼应着艺术家观念的无声表达，也承载着身体感知在材料中的延伸。

剪纸创作可被视作一种全身心投入的“劳作”。身体并非执行指令的客体，而是主动构建世界的知觉结构。从呼吸的起伏、目光的聚焦到躯干的支撑，身体作为一个整体，参与到与纸张的博弈之中。这种全神贯注的创作，让主体与世界通过材料建立深刻联结；刀尖划过的阻力与纸张翻动的质感，皆转化为身体经验的一部分。与此同时，陈粉丸将情绪视作创作的养料，借由作品表达本能的冲动与感受，并尝试将高度个性化的经验，提炼为能够引发集体共鸣的情绪。

因此，这一篇章的“展开”，同样象征着观念的释放、身体的舒展与自我的打开。从向内聚拢、精细入微的剪刻劳作，转向向外生发、开阔包容的呈现状态，纸张的伸展与艺术家对自我的觉察与探索在此达成共振。它搭建起从私人历史通往公共场域的桥梁，让纸张从一种静止的媒介，转化为一个充满生命力、兼具包裹感的叙事空间。

展厅的角落处，搭建了一间“播客厅”，呼应“展开”的主题。粉丸曾两次参与播客录制，分享作品的创作灵感，也讲述创作之外的个人故事。粉色格子间搭配粉丸手作的剪纸门帘，为观众营造出专属的私密感，大家可以静坐聆听播客内容，也能随手翻动、展开桌面特制的对谈文字折页。

05 Unfolding

When the folded sheet is opened, the cut-paper form comes clearly into view. In this chapter, “unfolding” refers to more than a change in the paper’s physical state. When the compressed form is spread out and allowed to fully extend, the movement from constraint to openness echoes the quiet articulation of the artist’s ideas, while also carrying the extension of bodily perception into material form.

Papercutting can be understood as a form of fully embodied labor. The body is not a passive executor of instruction, but an active structure through which the world is perceived and constructed. From the rhythm of breathing and the focus of the gaze to the support of the torso, the body as a whole participates in a negotiation with the paper. This concentrated act of making allows the subject to forge a profound connection with the world through material. The resistance felt at the blade’s edge and the texture of the turning sheet become part of lived bodily experience. At the same time, Chen Fenwan treats emotion as creative fuel, expressing instinctive impulses and sensations through her work, and seeking to distill highly personal experiences into affects capable of collective resonance.

Thus, “unfolding” in the section also symbolizes the reveal of ideas, the extension of the body, and the opening of the mind. Moving from the inward, meticulous labor of cutting toward an outward, expansive mode of presentation, the stretching of paper resonates with the artist’s ongoing self-awareness and exploration. It constructs a bridge from private history to the public sphere, transforming paper from a static medium into a vital narrative space—one that both contains and envelops.

In a corner of the space, a small “podcast room” has been set up, echoing the theme of “unfolding.” Fenwan has recorded podcast episodes as a guest twice, sharing the inspirations behind her works as well as personal stories beyond her artistic practice. A pink cubicle, paired with a handmade curtain by the artist herself, creates a sense of intimacy for visitors. Here, one may sit quietly to listen to the podcast or casually leaf through and unfold printed leaflets placed on the table.

06 拼组

在经历了一系列关于“形”的推敲与“剪”的取舍后，创作进入最后的阶段：拼组。这一过程将不同尺寸、颜色与密度的纸张碎片重新整合并锚定在木板或布面之上，标志着作品从局部走向整体的最终完成。

展墙上的《剪纸宇宙拼贴系列》新作品与展桌内的过程资料，构成了一组动态的参照关系。拼贴系列涉及复杂的协同合作与精准的定位工序，这些相关资料，既记录了作品从平滑电子图像到现实协作生产的全过程，也成为理解“拼组”这一繁复手工劳动过程的窗口。

与此同时，剪纸拼贴作品与展桌里的手工书，形成了一次跨越十年的对话。书籍是“不断翻页的空间”，这种对折叠与层叠的敏感感知，启发陈粉丸尝试以纸为媒介构建更广阔维度的艺术可能。在将纸张从书本形态中抽离、视其为独立创作载体的过程中，她与剪纸相遇，并逐步确立了如今独树一帜的个人风格语言。

从书页的物理边界到拼贴的开放秩序，这一板块不仅展示了作品的最终面貌，更呈现了艺术家跨媒介工作逻辑的延续与闭环。拼组阶段的秩序建构，也让整场展览的叙事在此收拢。

06 Collaging and Reassembling

After a series of deliberations over “fshapes” and decisions of subtraction in “cutting,” the creative process enters its final stage: collaging and assembling. Paper fragments of varying sizes, colors, and densities are recomposed and anchored onto wooden panels or canvas, marking the work’s transition from part to whole.

New works from The Universe of Paper Cutting Collage Series displayed on the walls enter into a dynamic dialogue with process materials presented in the display caves. The collage series involves complex collaboration and precise positioning; these archival materials document the full trajectory from smooth digital images to collective physical production, offering insight into the intricate labor behind assembly.

At the same time, the papercut collages converse with the artists’ books presented in the caves—a dialogue spanning a decade. Books are “spaces of continuous turning,” and the sensitivity to folding and layering inspired Chen Fenwan to explore paper as a medium capable of broader spatial dimensions. In the process of extracting paper from the book's bound structure and treating it as an independent art medium, she encountered papercutting. She gradually established the distinctive visual language that defines her practice today.

From the physical boundaries of the page to the open order of collage, the section not only presents the final appearance of the works but also reveals the continuity and closure of the artist’s cross-media methodology. The structuring of order in the collaging and assembling stage draws the narrative arc of the exhibition to a composed and coherent conclusion.

粉丸祝你有天真和野心💗

Fenwan wishes you both innocence and ambition 💗

* 仲 有 花 絮 *

Hidden Scenes & Bloopers