Studio(工作室/工作坊)这一现象及概念梳理近年来受到不少学者、策展人、评论家和艺术家的关注。众多学术研究、展览、会议、杂志和期刊专题、以及艺术品等就此出现，佐证着studio作为一个既培育又制约艺术作品之空间的迷人之处。
按芝加哥艺术学院玛丽·雅可比教授和米歇尔·格拉布尼尔教授的解读, studio可“作为资源”,“作为设置”,“作为舞台”,“作为居住空间”,和“作为空间和非空间”。但这种功能划分,并不能消除当前对studio的对立态度，一方面是极简艺术家丹尼尔·布伦把其视为“框架，轮廓，及限制”，而该种限制令人窒息，从而studio已沦为“僵化的习俗”;另一方面是巴尔扎克式的“未完成的杰作”中所弥漫的studio的神秘气氛。这实在是一个仁者见仁、智者见智的问题。加州大学斯维特拉娜·阿尔珀斯教授认为对studio艺术实践的梳理可产生一系列认识论模型，包括studio作为实验室，作为高级现象学经验空间，以及作为艺术的实验性设施。
的确，studio意味着艺术创作在进行中，艺术家的创造力、知识、思想和表达得以产生和完善。尤其对未出或初出校门的年轻艺术家而言，studio还见证着他(她)们的审美和智力日倾成熟，伦理、知识、艺术感受力的丰满和深化，以及对“Who am I" 等问题的本质主义追问。
为此，我们这次国际青年绘画展特别以“工作室”为主题。在这个画展里面，可以看到东西方的青年艺术家们借绘画表达各种主题，表达在全球文化发展所伴随的文化解构中，年轻艺术家如何通过艺术构建新的文化和社会空间，如何表达对当今重大题材，诸如全球化、气候变化、民族与民粹主义以及人工智能等等的认知与关注。同时可感受到，20世纪后半叶以降，“真实”、“自然”等概念被分析建构成社会话语后，如何深刻影响着视觉文化等学科。青年艺术家们的作品，从个体经验到生活日常，从过去到当下社会，从绘画历史到流行文化都有所涉及。这些作品跨越了技巧和风格，具象与非形象、极简倾向与拼贴的现实主义，布面油画与综合媒介的作品，甚至介入身体、介入空间的作品都有所呈现。
这次参展的作品来自于全球四大洲十几个高等艺术院校在校和毕业的青年人之手，为大家提供了一个以东西比较的方式来深入了解青年一代艺术家描述个人和群体的平台。从亲密的肖像到复杂的叙事场景,都出自艺术家个体或者艺术院校工作室的劳作。走过这个场地，我们可以发现这些绘画是怎样以一个工作室为单位来梳理和流动地联系此在与虚构、过去与当下，可以感受到通过较好的艺术教育，青年艺术家们熟悉并运用多种艺术和文化的语言和话语，来表达他们对当今时代的文化洞察。同时，作为一个国际展览，放眼全球良好的多元文化，可帮助青年艺术家们通过他方之眼来观看世界，通过分析解读复杂的审美、社会和历史文化背景条件，来理解别的文化中艺术作品的意义。
回到studio这一主题，我们并不打算介入对其概念内涵及外延的各种争论，而是结合本次展览的主旨和内容，借耶鲁大学艺术学院罗伯特·斯托教授的话来说,“工作室”是关于：
“A Room of One's Own,
a Mind of One's Own”
2016年12月
Visible and Invisible---A Report on Young Artists' Studio
Yan Chen
The very phenomenon and concept of studio have drawn attentions from scholars, curators, critics and artists of concern. The related numerous academic studies, exhibitions, conferences, magazines and periodicals with themed sections, as well as artworks, all point to the appeal of studio as a space both to nurture and constrain art works.
According to the interpretations of Mary Jacob and Michelle Grabner , the studio can be "as a resource", "as a setting", "as a stage", "as a lived-in space" and “as space and non-space". Yet this functional categorization does not help eliminate the current contrasting attitudes towards studio: on the one hand, Daniel Buren sees it as "frames, envelops, and limits", limits that are so suffocating that studio has become an "ossifying custom "; and on the other hand is the illusion of myth as typified in Balzac’s "The unfinished masterpiece". The division of opinions sees no near point of reconciliation. According to Svetlana Alpers,, artistic practice of studio contributes to a series of epistemology models. The studio, for instance, can be taken as a laboratory, an empirical space of senior phenomenology and an experimental facility of art.
Indeed, the studio is an ongoing signature and thus artistic creativity, knowledge, ideas and expressions can be generated and improved. For young artists who are at or just came out of school, the studio witnesses the increasing maturity of their aesthetics and intelligence, richness and deepening of ethics, knowledge and artistic sensibility , and essentialist query to the very question of “Who am I”.
In view of this, for the international youth painting exhibition we choose "studio" as the theme. In the exhibition, Eastern and Western young artists elaborate their themes by means of painting, through which they demonstrate how to construct artistically new form of cultural amidst the cultural deconstruction in global culture development, and how to voice their concerns over topics of current importance, such as globalization, climate change, nationalism and populism, artificial intelligence, and the like. In the meantime, it can be perceived that how the inclusion of concepts such as “reality” and “nature” to social discourses after the second half of the 20th century has profound impact on disciplines like visual culture. The works of young artists reflect a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from individual experience to general daily life, from past to present societies, and from painting history to popular culture. All these works transcend art skills and styles, where figurative and nonfigurative, minimalist trend and collage realism, oil on canvas and comprehensive materials, and even works with the intervention of body and space are available.
The works in the exhibition come from young artists at over 10 art institutes of higher learning on four continents, as well as those graduates. In this way, it is hoped that a platform is provided for the audience to gain more familiarity with individuals and art groups of young artists by comparison of the East and the West. From the intimate portrait to the complex narration, they are the works from artists or art academies. Walking past this place, we will make a discovery how a studio try to sort out and connect the works with fiction, past and present in a mobile way. Moreover, we can also perceive that young artists familiarize themselves with and draw on many artistic and cultural languages and words to express their insights into today’s culture by favorable art education. Meanwhile, the international exhibition orients them to the excellent multi-culture on a global scale and help young artists view the world from a different perspective. The ideal to be aimed at is to appreciate the meaning of art works in the culture by analyzing and interpreting complex aesthetic, social, historical and cultural background conditions.
Back to the theme of studio, we have no intention of getting into any kinds of disputes regarding its connotations and extensions. Instead, in view of the purport and contents of the exhibition, we feel it is appropriate to adopt the words of Robert Storr on “studio”:
“A Room of One's Own,
a Mind of One's Own”
December, 2016