魏立刚的名字首先是和20世纪最后20年间中国书法的现代探索趋势联系在一起的。作为中国书法本质精神的守护者，同时又作为中国传统书法规则的叛逆者，魏立刚和一批年轻的书法家开始了从书法内部展开的革命。在中国书法强大的传统和维护传统的强大势力面前，他们的革命性探索不仅经常遭受各种阻碍而得不到正常的条件，也面临着自身如何在学术上明确目标、建立“新书法”自为境界的困惑，来自外部和内部的压力都在考量着探险者的胆识与能力。
魏立刚最终确立了自己的艺术世界。在我看来，这不是追求形式或表达技巧所获得的浅层次的个性风格—在中国书法的评判标准中，“风格”往往被视为成就的象征；在现代艺术的评价尺度中，“风格”也经常被认为是艺术的最高水平；但与此同时，“风格”也容易成为探索上浅尝辄止的自慰剂。魏立刚在艺术上所做的追求，不是风格的确立，而是对书法观念的崭新阐释，特别是建立书法与自我、书法与文化认知和书法与视觉文化形态新的关系。
在魏立刚的作品中，我们可以看到他对汉字的迷恋。重新认识汉字这个视觉符号的结构，将汉字的形态和字义同时作为关照的对象，纳入自己的感性轨道，是他书法创造的出发点。看上去他是采取了“解构主义”的方式，但在“解构”的同时，他做了“再结构”的工作，由此产生出属于他自己的“魏氏魔块”。在传统的书法中，文字是现成的堆积，是顺手拈来的“历史积淀”，其具体的社会意义只有在他们特定和具体的上下文中才得以存在，而魏立刚的作品中，文字内容是不见经传的、个性化的生命碎片，作品破坏了传统的结构机制，但创造了一个松散朦胧的平行结构，汉字个体的单向信息在这个空间里与其他个体交融和扩展，构成了关于字义的新的寓言或神话。在这个过程中，魏立刚施展了他极为优秀的艺术禀赋，包括对色彩、色调、肌理、层次等方面的感觉，同时也包括他在习书经历中积累起来的书写能力，于是，在我们面前，魏立刚呈示了一个既富观念价值又富视觉价值的新书写文本。
情系汉字并努力在汉字的视觉营构过程中表现自我性情、探索书法本真、通融主客世界，是魏立刚的学术理想。在视觉图像拥堵的今日文化景观中，从书法观念和书法方式的变革入手，开拓出书法和汉字关系的多种艺术潜能，是建立书法当代性和多样性的机枢，也是营建“中国本色抽象”的一条重要通道。
2004年4月于北京
Wei Ligang: Venturing between Boundaries
Fan Di’an
The name of Wei Ligang is first of all linked with the exploration of Chinese modern calligraphy during the last 20 years of 20th century. Wei, as a guardian of the essential spirit of Chinese calligraphy, as well as a rebel against traditional rules, has plunged himself into a revolution of this art form. The revolution by Wei and his fellow artists, however, has encountered much obstruction before the strongness of orthodox rules and of orthodox power. Meanwhile they themselves are also feeling confused on how to define their academic goals, setting up a realm of “new calligraphic arts”. All these pressure has been challenging their courage and insight plus their abilities.
But Wei Ligang has finally built up an art world of his own. In my view, his style is not a shallow one that is just focused on forms or techniques. (Style is usually acknowledged as a symbol of attainments in the criteria of Chinese traditional calligraphy, while it is also regarded as the peak in modern arts. However, it still turns easy to cause self-satisfaction which could pull back the artist from his art adventure.) Instead of a style only, what Wei Ligang pursues is to give a new paraphrase on calligraphic concepts and, especially, to set up new relations between calligraphy and personality, cultural acknowledgement as well as visual arts.
In Wei’s works, we may see a passion for Chinese characters. He tries to re-define the structure of these visual symbols, incorporating both forms and meanings of Chinese characters into his creation. He not only deconstructs, but also reconstructs Chinese characters, thus forming his artistic system-Wei’s Magic Square. In Chinese traditional calligraphic works, characters are just an accumulation of ready-made products or, we may say, an accretion of history that could be adopted with facility. Their social meaning only exists in the certain and specific context. But in Wei’s modern calligraphic works, the content of those characters are like fragments of life, unknown in the classics, but full of personal experience. In his works, traditional structural systems are destroyed and taken over by a parallel one which appears relaxed and hazy. Each character’s information gets extended through the space and melt with the others, which creates a new fable about the meanings of characters. Through this process, Wei Ligang displays his gifted art talent including his sense in color, hues, texture and gradation, as well as his attainments in calligraphy. Then we can see a new writing text with values on concept and vision.
Wei Ligang’s art perfection is to explore the essence of calligraphy and to express his disposition on the basis of a thorough and comprehensive understanding of both the subjective and the objective worlds while creating his visual art of Chinese characters with passion.
Today our culture is experiencing a congestion of various visual images. Therefore, to develop varying artistic potentials of calligraphy and characters, which is started from the reform of calligraphic concepts and modes, becomes a pivot in the way of contemporization and variety of Chinese calligraphy, as well as an important channel to create Chinese-born abstract arts.
Beijing, April 2004