我觉得谭平注重自己内心一个宇宙的表现。
他在德国抽象的作品，是他一贯的气质的体现，也是他自己追求线索上的发展。他把物象的结构、节奏、明暗等变成方块，线条，色彩作为他的情感的符号来表现内心的东西。
气质是永恒的。我看着自己现在的画，会突然发现这些作品和我十几岁的时候的作品很像。我觉得，人—开始建立起自己的东西，就基本上改变不了，改变的只是一些表面的东西。
如果你仔细看谭平美院的毕业作品，与现在的作品比较，内在的结构与气质其实是很像的，只是我觉得他走的越来越远，可能他在刚开始时没有特别意识到自己的这种东西，随着时间演进，他越走越清晰，把这些东西慢，慢慢从他的画面里抽离出来了，更极端了。
其实抽象和具象本身没有本质的区别。莫兰迪说过一句话：没有比现实更抽象的了。就是说世界是抽象的，大自然其实就是无数抽象元素组成的。这句话对我印象特别深。我认为好的艺术都是抽象因素在起作用，而不是他的具象元素。很简单，画蒙娜丽莎还是爱丽丝并不重要，重要的是那张画，光影、构成，表现的那个人的结构，是这些东西感动了你。你不会在意这个人是一个纺织女工还是一个贵族妇女，内容并不打动你。内容你会随着时间忽略掉了，但是所组成这张画抽象的东西，今天还在起作用。
实际上没有抽象画家或者具象画家，我觉得这只是形式上简单的分法。比如说蒙德里安是抽象大师，但是实际上他过去是从具象一点点演变过来的，你说他完全是抽象大师是不准确的，他的具象作品也起了很大作用。谭平也是如此。
I feel that Tan Ping pays attention to the expression of the universe of the personal inner heart.
The abstract works he created in Germany are the consistent embodiment of his personal temperament as well as representing the development of the thread he pursues. He transforms the structures, rhythms and shading of objects into squares, lines and colors which are the emotional signifiers expressing his inner being.
The temperament is eternity. I look at my present paintings, and suddenly discover that these pictures are similar to works I completed when I was in my teens. I feel that once a person has begun to establish their own things, he or she cannot basically change, and the things that do change are only superficial.
If you carefully observe the graduation works which Tan Ping completed at the Central Academy of Fine Art and compare them with his present works, their inherent structure and temperament are actually very similar, and I feel that the further he travels the things which perhaps he did not especially realize at the outset become, over time, increasingly clear, so that these things slowly detach from the surface of his work and move closer to their extreme.
There is in fact no essential difference between what is abstract and what is figurative. Giorgio Morandi once said: "Nothing is more abstract than reality. In other words, the world is abstract and nature is actually made up of countless abstract elements". This statement impressed me deeply. I think that in good art these abstract elements, not the concrete elements, are functional. Put simply, it is unimportant whether one is painting the Mona Lisa or Alice, the important things are the structure of the person constructed and expressed through the painting, the shading, and the structure; it is these things that move you. You are not mindful of whether the person depicted works in a spinning mill or is an aristocrat because it is not the content that moves you. You can for the moment overlook the content,because the abstract elements that form the picture are what now play their role.
In fact there are no abstract or figurative painters, because I feel this is only a simplistic and formal method of categorization. For example, we might say that Mondrian was an abstract master, but we overlook the fact that he evolved from being figurative and so it is inaccurate to describe him totally as an abstract master because his figurative works also play amajor role. This is also the case with Tan Ping.