This large scale of portraits belongs to a monumental domain. Collecting close-up portraits taken during the Cultural Revolution, Xu Weixin enlarges them into immense figurative paintings. Apparently, the source of these photographs has its origins in an extraordinary and turbulent period of history. Xu transforms the monumentality in photographs and creates a new one in paintings. The portraits thus have dual monumentality implications: it is both individual autobiography and collective memory; private as well as national macro political domain; general preservation and also critical reflection. We must ask “how do the dual monumentality implications come to appear in Xu’s works?”

这一规模庞大的肖像画系列属于纪念的范畴。徐唯辛将搜集来的文革时期的头像照片，进行放大写生。这些作为原型的照片，以及照片中的人物，来自“文革”这样一个非凡而动荡的历史时刻。这些照片本身是作为纪念物而存在的―它们有些长久地被私人保存，有些则来自那个时代的公开出版物。徐唯辛找到这些照片，借助于照片的纪念性，来重新创造出一种新的绘画纪念性。这个绘画肖像系列因而具有双重的纪念性：它既是个人自传性的，也是集体记忆式的；既是私生活性质的，也是国家的宏大政治性的；既是一般性的留存式的，也是具有批判意味的反思性的。我们要问一问，这双重的纪念性怎样在徐唯辛的作品中交织出现？