Li Dafang

08/01 2008, 02:24 | 作者 Carol Yinghua Lu ( 评论文章 )

- Abandoned factories and sad, silent machinery; fantasy, reality, ambiguity.


Li Dafang is as cognisant of and dedicated to the medium of oil painting as he is to the scenery of northern China. Li was born and grew up in Liaoning, one of the three major provinces in the northeast of China, where the high altitude and long, harsh winters have created a rough, grey landscape. Liaoning was established as a major centre of heavy industry in the 1950s to produce the country’s first steel, machine tools, locomotives and planes following the founding of People’s Republic of China in 1949. The switch to a market economy in the late 1970s, however, drove most of the area’s large-scale, state-owned manufacturers to bankruptcy. As a result, many factories and workshops were abandoned and became dilapidated, stacked with sad, silent machinery: a sight well-known to the artist, who was born in 1971, and a visual motif to which he would continue to return in later years.
The son of a writer, Li had ample access to books at home, which led him to develop a fixation with the illustrations they frequently contained and to study painting in his teens with private tutors. However, he never received any systematic academic training in oil painting, since he studied fine art at a regular state university, where the teachers offered courses that focussed on improving all-round ability, rather than a particular genre of art making. Today Li considers this background has liberated his practice, since he doesn’t feel as bound by the formalities of painting as those who come from the more traditional schools of the art academies, which tend to prioritize technique over content and concept.
Obsessive, sensitive and fastidious depictions of details – unkempt and overgrown grass, cluttered wires, mosaics on the façades of building – are a distinctive feature of Li’s enormous canvases. Since 2004, however, his work has taken a significant step forwards. In his earlier paintings, from the late 1990s, he juxtaposed narrative scenes with texts, written prominently across the centre of the canvas or on one half of it, which bore no apparent relation to the painted images. The often dramatic and intense scenarios he depicted – for example, two self-portraists of the artist engaged in an intense dialogue, depicted on a paper bag, in turn carried by a man in dressed in black (Paper Bag, 2001) - are probably excerpts from real life, yet both remain indecipherable to the viewer. The deliberate gap Li placed between these almost cryptic paintings and reality seemed to be too wide to bridge. Fortunately, in his current works, the artist has confidently and successfully made the stride himself. The changes are remarkable and their results are breathtaking.

Li’s vast canvases offer panoramas of the most filthy, wild, ruined, uninhabited, forgotten and forlorn wastelands and non-places; those commonly found on the outskirts and in the hidden corners of the city: demolition and construction sites, rubbish dumps, woods, abandoned factories and deserted housing blocks. In Threaten (2007), a man sits on top of a towering, square concrete column; his shoulders drooped, he looks down on a beast – it looks a bit like a lion but not quite - prowling about an unkempt yard in front of an abandoned building. An Evil Man in Armour (2006) features a man with feathered wings squatting on a large pile of rubble between two buildings that are under construction; two blotches of black smoke ominously cloud the lower corners of the canvas. These calculated displacements conspire to underscore the ambiguity of what is real, although the setting itself appears to be bizarre enough on its own.

Even the most trivial elements are painted with such precision that the works appear to be genuinely photorealist; in fact, the scenery, objects and tiny human figures in his paintings are collages of impressions formed from personal experiences as much as from fabrication. Here realism is less a worldview than a conscious choice of form and the subject of his artistic exploration. Li has made a determined and strategic break from the traditions of Revolutionary Realism and Socialist Realism, which dominated mainstream Chinese painting for decades, and with which he grew up. While still appropriating a realist painting style – Li takes pains to incorporate all manner of visual motifs from the world around him, especially from his native northern China– the artist freely projects his own fantasies onto his lifelike portraits of reality.

The scenes depicted in his paintings are always overcast and bleak (with occasional traces of abrupt purple or red emphasizing disproportionately small objects or figures) as though obscured by a delicate layer of mist. This grey tone and ambience creates a distinctive aesthetic that doesn’t aspire to make the environments appear any less desolate or uninviting than they actually are. Indeed, it is precisely this drab quality that draws the painter to these undesirable sites (and anyone who has been to northern China can testify to their existence): painting such places – as much as Li’s monumental and surreal treatment is awe-inspiring – counteracts our popular fixation on the upbeat, the refined and the attractive in the pursuit of better living conditions; a perspective that, all too often, we wish to see reflected in art.

Published in Focus (column), Frieze, Issue 115 May 2008, Page 146 - 147

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“有什么不可以成为艺术的呢？”——和颜磊的访谈

07/21 2008, 06:19 | 作者 Carol Yinghua Lu ( 访谈 )

卢迎华（以下简称卢）：你在哪上的学？在美院里学的是什么？

颜磊（以下简称颜）：浙江美院也就是现在的中国美术学院，在学校里我学的是版画。

卢：你的创作似乎可以分两条线索来讨论，其中一条是以绘画为媒介的创作，从早期用色块分割现有图像以便在画布上进行机械复制，到《彩轮》系列，到近期的也是以现成图像为基础的并以固定的式样呈现的《追光》系列，请你以这三个阶段为例子谈谈你对绘画的观点？对重复的看法？对大批量生产艺术品的看法？

颜：关于绘画，这种媒介就是为了被收藏，所以我会直接把它理解成商品。有名的绘画之所以有名就是因为符合了市场和资本运作规律。
我的工作室可以按我的想法制作出一些绘画作品，我会尽量根据现有的条件去试着多做一些不同的作品。我做过的具像绘画作品有：《上升空间（Climbing Space)）》／《特醇（Super Lights）》／《追光（Sparkling）》，都是我自己想到的一些景观或者人物的图像，《上升空间》是和我自己身份相关的东西，《特醇》的图像来自于对我有影响的艺术家或作品，《追光》是和我的回忆有关。

抽象作品是依靠在工作室的特殊条件产生的，我希望我的抽象绘画作品能体现出自动性的一方面，比如说《彩轮》，它就像是工作室里的寄生物，有着无限繁殖的可能性。

大批量的制作，是我理想的工作方式，这种方式不仅让我经常保持兴奋状态，还带来了人们对艺术、艺术家、作品、价格等问题的讨论，这是我感兴趣的。

卢：在这三个阶段的创作中，艺术家开创了一种样式和生产模式，之后便将生产的过程转移给绘画的工人，你甚至不遗余力地设计一套生产流程，尽力地消解绘画的特殊性和个性，让不会做画的人也能替你做画。这种创作方式是针对艺术史而生发的吗？它的针对性是什么？

颜：为了不去碰画布，我真的花了很多的功夫工作，为替我画画的助手服务，因为绘画证明不了我对艺术的纯洁与独特追求。同时，对待绘画，我更像一个为市场提供产品的人，我希望把事情做得更准确，我认为做事的准确性要比确认是不是艺术家更重要，这也是我对艺术的态度。

卢：请具体谈谈《追光（Sparkling）》的概念，你是怎么开始创作《追光》这个系列的？

颜：《追光》是我去年开始想到的一个绘画的主题，主要是因为回忆所呈现出的一些画面，我喜欢对光的夸张处理，使得那些图像看上去既象是被歌颂又象是被讽刺。

卢：你创作的另一个重要线索是涉及多媒介的，甚至是跨领域的，你在绘画以外的创作也似乎多在各种公共空间中发生。比如说你在2004年深圳双年展中与本地房地产开发商角力的作品，让大块面积的土地在两年内保持不被开发的状态，到近期的“中南海特供”项目中，邀请“脑浊”乐队在各个重要的艺术场合进行表演。请你谈谈这一条线索在你的艺术实践中的重要性。你是怎么开始摸索这个方向的创作的？

颜：对于作为传统媒介的绘画雕塑，我是按照艺术市场的商业规则进行经营的，同时这也是我很重要的一个艺术项目。但并不是所有作品都是为市场而做， 我有很多项目是为了和更多的人在空间和时间上进行交流与沟通，以及对艺术概念展开具体的讨论。
当代艺术的概念本身就是一个问题，在任何作品面前人们的反应总是矛盾的：这是艺术吗？有什么不可以成为艺术的呢？

卢：和“脑浊”的合作是你最近的创作中的一个重要的发展。你是怎么开始和“脑浊”合作的？和“脑浊”合作的动机是什么？为什么在这个合作的过程中你是“艺术家”而不是一个普通的“经纪人”？“脑浊”乐队的特殊性在哪，还是是什么乐队也不是很重要？它具备了什么成为作品的条件？

颜：和“脑浊”的合作的确是一个叫人兴奋的想法，我利用展览机会所给我提供的条件，以艺术的名义把我的朋友们请到国外，也就是把我生活的一部分搬到了那里。在那里，由于“脑浊”的演出使人兴奋，并成为当地城市生活经验的一部分，发生的一切，包括人们对评判艺术概念的讨论，被我看成是艺术。我本来就不在乎艺术家和普通人的区别，有很多自称艺术家的人，做的东西还不如垃圾。

卢：你怎么用和“脑浊”合作的创作来演绎艺术家“指鹿为马”的能力和权力？

颜：我和“脑浊”的关系是我生活的一部分，我向别人提供的是我的生活经验。艺术家的能力和权力还要取决于策划人的理解和兴趣。

卢：艺术家的意志一直是艺术家自己在不断地重新认识和界定的对象。你觉得艺术家的意志到底有多强大？

颜：你可以用各种智慧来解释艺术，但当代艺术无法体现艺术家真正的意志力。

卢：你是怎么看待Andy Warhol和他的艺术王国的？你觉得今天延续他的思考和创作方式还有意义吗？或者是在中国这个特殊的土壤上，Andy Warhol的艺术实践可以给我们提供什么样的借鉴和启发？

颜：每个艺术家都会羡慕Andy Warhol，他的作品提醒我应该如何表达自己的欲望。

卢：你还虚拟了一个年轻艺术家并为她进行各种包装宣传，这是你的作品吗？它的概念是什么？作为艺术家的你和虚拟的她有什么差别？

颜：我有一个朋友，她喜欢用一个虚拟的身份来考虑艺术问题。

出版于《当代艺术与投资》2008年7月刊Issue 19 

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没有要讲的故事

05/25 2008, 04:33 | 作者 Carol Yinghua Lu ( 策划文章 )

文：刘鼎、卢迎华

关于“没有要讲的故事”的故事始于我们在2006年到2007年间的旅行。因为参加各种展览、研讨会和驻村计划的契机，我们频繁地访问欧洲和美国的数个城市，也借助这些机会参观当地的美术馆、艺术机构、画廊和艺术家工作室。在积极地对当地的艺术生态进行全面了解的同时，我们也发现了一些我们非常感兴趣的艺术家的创作，而且令我们惊讶的是在欧洲和美国正处于活跃和上升期的这些艺术家不仅年龄相仿——大都出生于60年代末和70年代，也是我们的年龄段——而且尽管存在着地域、语言、教育、历史文化背景的差异——这些艺术家在创作状态上呈现出一种出乎意外的一致性——那就是作品流露着一种平淡感，风格和形式上有意地呈现出一种随意性，从直觉和自我的感受出发，不说教，不依赖于意义和阐释而生效， 既简单、轻松、甚至透明、直白又充斥着浪漫色彩和机智的诙谐幽默，呈现出一种与世界、社会、时间、空间等游离的状态，对体制和权威，对未来和信仰的不信任和无所谓的心态。这些创作往往以生活中普遍可见的东西为材料，汲取了哲学、经济学、政治、艺术史、流行文化以及日常生活等多种元素，却没有过多的负担和责任感。观看这些作品的时候往往是愉悦的，贴近自我感受的，并常常能引起观众的会心一笑。而这种状态我们也在对一些亚洲包括来自中国、韩国、日本等地的艺术家的研究之中捕捉到平行的轨迹。

这种对作品毫无障碍的感知和欣赏引起了我们的思考。是什么架起了这座沟通的桥梁？是什么创造了这种艺术语言的同一性？是什么让我们在毫无准备的情况下轻松地进入艺术家的构想？这难道也是全球化景观的一个缩影？随着全球市场的开放和经济的交融，各种文化、政治意义上的边界日益被打开，时空秩序和时空经验正在经历一种全面的、根本性的改变。特别是上个世纪80年代在以美国为中心的西方世界开始全面实施新自由主义经济战略并从经济全球化时期起向全世界推行该经济理论和以该经济理论为基础的意识形态以来，我们所处的世界也在这种全球化经济和政治力量的相互渗透中变得越来越扁平和一致化，创造性领域的成就也因此呈现出越来越多的平行性。

新自由主义是作为古典经济自由主义（提倡市场机制）的现代变种和凯恩斯主义国家干预论的对立面发展起来的经济和政治理念。新自由主义经济思潮极力宣扬自由市场经济制度的魔力，将自由经营和自由贸易等思想推向极端，宣扬“自由化”、私有化和市场化，主张一切经济现象由市场价格这只“看不见的手”来调节，而在政治理论上将国家干预限制在有限的范围内。它强调市场机制的功能和作用，鼓吹国有企业私有化、贸易自由化、金融自由化、利率市场化、放松对外资的监管、放松政府管制等，极力推行以超级大国为主导的全球经济、政治、文化一体化，即全球资本主义化。是为国际垄断资本推行扩张政策服务的，是在全球特别是广大发展中国家构建资本扩张和金融控制平台的工具。

新自由主义经济的一个总体的特征是通过增加贸易的次数、频率和可能性而不断地加强和拓展市场的欲望，而其最终的目标是使每个人的行为都成为一种市场交易的行为，彼此竞争，彼此牵制，在无限短的时间内以无限快的速度重复进行。最极端的新自由主义几乎等同于对宇宙之间的相互联系深信不疑的宗教信仰。因此新自由主义不仅仅是一种经济政策，它也是一种政治哲学，其影响深刻地体现在对社会、个人和就业的态度上。新自由主义的追捧者热衷于以市场的唯度来看待世界，比如把国家比喻成企业和公司，把城市和地区产品化，并崇尚竞争，以及在竞争中优胜劣汰的信仰，使从个人到政府到国家都必须想尽一切办法提供和强化其“可雇佣性”、“可交易性”和“竞争优势”，这些手段包括了从个人接受整容手术到城市和国家竞争成为奥运会和世博会的主办方等途径和方式，这些途径都因为是追求最大利益化的手段而成为个人或国家行动的主旨。而国家的职能日渐向企业化和市场化靠拢，最终为市场服务。国家的政治策略和经济干预也最终以国家的经济利益为核心和目标。国家为了取得最大化的经济利益而使一切言论、政策和举措隶从于经济自由的要求，以保护主义和保守主义为主导思想，为维护“国家的竞争优势”而激发一种经济上的民族主义，沙文主义和对外国异己的排斥。在新自由主义的信仰中，人人都是企业家，除了市场以外别无他物。

在新自由主义经济的旗帜下，市场经济和市场社会之间是没有区分的。只有一个市场，市场化的社会，市场化的文化，市场化的价值观，市场化的个人，文化、价值和道德观念都和经济挂上钩。这种极端化和无所不在的市场观替代了传统的社会形式和文化生产，也重新塑造着新的道德秩序和界定着个人的生活理念。商品化的人类关系和社会准则，竞争和功利主义的心态，物质化的世界观，和利益先行成为一切行为的准则，造就了一种“今天到处是不稳定”的集体心态和时代的气息，不安定的形势和个人危机四伏的处境，以及对其的恐惧“带来一种真正的所有人对所有人的战争，摧毁所有人性和团结的价值，有时是一种赤裸裸的暴力。” 也同时加剧了个人誓死捍卫私利和国家借助一切民族主义情绪而保护自我利益的坚定决心。

著名的法国社会学家皮埃尔•布迪厄是这样描述实施新自由主义所带来的立即可见的后果的：“不仅仅是经济最发达国家越来越多的人遭受贫困和痛苦，收入差距惊人地扩大，文化生产（电影、出版等）的独立世界逐步消失（由于商业扩大介入，最终是文化产品本身的消失），而且是所有能够抵制这部恶魔机器的集体性组织（首当其冲是国家，这个与‘公共’观念相联的普遍性价值的托保者）都受损毁。在国家和经济的上层，甚或在企业内部，到处都强加一种达尔文主义心态，崇拜“赢者”，这是高等数学和蹦极训练出来的人。这种心态把所有人对所有人的战争和‘无耻’奉为一切实践的准则。这种新的道德秩序，推翻了所有的价值标准。”

对市场和利益的信仰将一切人类行为商品化，而同时也取消了这些行为和秩序原来所具有的多重意义、象征和价值。以时间计价的服务行业盛行，各种传统和节日被简化成消费和促销的契机，等价交换、交易和出售的互动关系和形式占据了各种实体和虚拟的空间，从市场到社会政策到观念价值和思想道德。这种力量用金钱和市场体系瓦解了那个古老的、有机的群体社会。“这种具有腐蚀和消解作用的力量的毒性，消解了那个古老的神话世界的经验，但并没有就此罢手。” 台湾中央研究院院士林毓生曾经在与文学评论家王元化关于文明的物质化、庸俗化与异化的通信中这样来讨论目前塑造年轻人“无意识”与“无品位”的最大力量，“资本主义所主导的社会，其最大的特征是，它赖以发展的‘工具理性’有自我推展至极致的内在动力。这种内在动力排斥一切阻挡、抑制其推展的思想、文化、道德、社会素质，使它们无法产生效用。换言之，在资本主义的社会之中，大家为了赚钱，会绞尽脑汁，想方设法，以达到目的，至于这个目的是否是理性的，是否应该有所节制，由于资本主义本身自我喂养的特性，是无所顾及的。因此，‘工具理性’愈发达，‘价值理性’愈萎缩。结果是，用韦伯常常征引德国诗人Friedrich Schiller的名句来说，‘世界不再令人着迷’（‘the disenchantment of the world’）。一切均可用‘工具理性’来处理，人间的活动自然均将物质化、动物化。”

物质化和工具化的世界观以及无孔不入的商业力量赋予了艺术创作一个新的使命和契机——那就是用同样简单化和游戏的态度来反思和对峙一种过于功利主义和实用主义的社会形势和人们的思维定势和价值取向，以片断式的情节、单纯的情感和有意的浅薄来应对精神的空洞和单调的同质。这样的世界被德路兹和瓜塔里描绘成为一个不断向外延伸的灰色世界，一个规范体的、被剥光了的宇宙。因此，人们已越来越无法忍受，并“开始寻求一种新的、补偿的途径，但他们只能从个人的角度去努力，这就仿佛是规范解体的宇宙中一个小小的飞地或岛屿：他们力图使那个宇宙家庭化，在其中建造可以家居的庭院，恢复那一小片神奇的、圣洁的，具有鲜明个人性质和主观色彩的领地。” 而创作领域的这些特质所遵循的恰恰是后现代主义的艺术逻辑，它是一种符合失去了中心的世界资本主义的形势，它“只是在浅表玩弄指符、对立、文本的力和材料等概念，它不再要求关于稳定的真理的老观念，只是玩弄文学表面的游戏。” 在当代人们的心目中，不仅对现在失去了幻想，历史上的过去消失了，历史上的未来和任何重大的历史变革的可能性也不存在。历史只存在纯粹的形象和幻影，“过去变成了一个纯粹死亡的仓库，里面储满了你可以随便借用或者拆卸装配的风格零件，” 而艺术家是不需要对这种任意的借用和拆卸承担任何道德的责任的。和苏珊•桑塔格在《反对阐释》一文中所提出的免除艺术的内容性和功能性的号召不同的是，在新自由主义经济状态下的后现代主义作品本身就失去了深度和责任感，因此不再提供任何现代主义经典作品以不同方式在人们心中激起的意义和经验，而是拒绝任何解释，也无法在解释的意义上被分析。随着意义的消解，现代主义经典作品中的重要主题之一——强烈的异化和焦虑的经验和感情正在减弱、消失：“后现代主义的经验不再是一种焦虑，而是一种心理上的分裂。后现代主义的独特的感情调子最好用吸毒者的语言来说明，那是一种幻觉，一种异常的欣快的恐惧。”

幻觉式的情感、富于个人性和趣味性的语调，不动生色地刻意雕琢却以最平淡随意的形式出现，对材料的选择作为一种态度，风格和形式也成为态度的载体，不需要被阐释只需要被感知、体验、欣赏和使用，不做任何道德判断，不发表任何声明，或对某个问题做出一个答案，肆意地、主观地、不忠实地去复制世界，艺术前所未有地不需要去证明自己的正当性，也不要求人们去探问艺术作品在说什么，甚至有意地回归到一种天真的状态，作品似乎是被分泌出来的，而不是被构造出来的，这些都是在以新自由主义为主流意识形态的社会形势中后现代主义作品的最显著的特点。新自由主义经济中的个人和国家因为作为经济实体的存在而缺失了其他的多重维度——文化的、思想的、精神的。这种单调的、苍白的、缺乏幻想的环境驱使艺术家在艺术的国度中重新雕琢一个个人的诗意的世界，它与我们所处的“同质的、秩序化的、可以被衡量的”现实世界背道而驰。它生气盎然，充满魔力和滋养，使我们以某种更从容、更开阔和更丰富的方式重返世界。

这种艺术创作的真正价值在于意义的失败，和物质摆脱实用的枷锁的胜利。曾经在英国受教育并往返居住和工作于伦敦与首尔之间的女艺术家Youngmi Chun将裸露的木条和精致的霓虹灯管组合起来制作星形的装置，但这个形态本身并不确定，因为从侧面观看，它仅仅是几根装饰着霓虹灯管的悬挂着的木条。简陋的木条和闪亮的霓虹灯的并置让我们超越对物的等级制度的幻想，而装置的形态的欺骗性和不确定性更击败着我们寻找隐喻和参照的一厢情愿的惯性。而居住在柏林的艺术家Michael Sailstorfer则用玻璃钢制成一片充满褶皱、毫不诱人的“我们所看不到的月亮的表面”，但这种痴人说梦似的幻想又令人着迷，充满着魔术师的魅力和浪漫。Chun还将她自己的大便层层包裹起来，直至形成一个大圆球。在北京生活和工作的艺术家刘窗也肆意甚至恶作剧般地挥霍着艺术“化腐朽为神奇”的魔力，他曾经收集自己的阴毛，费劲地将他们在纸上粘贴出各种日常的小图案。在另一个作品中，Chun在画廊的地面铺上地毯，在地毯上浇铸一层薄薄的水泥层，为画廊建造了一个“二层”（地面和层在英语中是同一个单词），观众可以直接踩踏在这个加建的水泥地面上。而刘窗也曾经将普通空调的出水系统安装在空调的室内机身上，让原本应该流淌在美术馆或画廊空间之外的废水重新以理所当然的姿态在展厅中骄傲地摆尾巴。这些艺术家的创作无不闪烁着平民主义的奇思妙想、智慧和胆魄。这种自由让瑞士女艺术家Mai-Thu Perret在她的创作中毫无束缚地编造着一个充满猜测的欲望和任意挪用历史文化片断和情节，并交织着对个人世界的重新想像所建立起来的一个“水晶的前沿”。在艺术家的构想中，事实和虚幻的边界被抹杀，被不断地重新界定，个人的意志超越客观的经济和政治的现实而显得前所未有的强大，这个一个人的意志的王国极具渗透性，令人陶醉，如顾客潮水般涌向商品的陶醉。任意地放大个人的意志成为主宰着这些不具备主题性的创作的最显著特征，西班牙艺术家Jorge Peris就毫不犹豫地将个人的意志转化为对空间的细节或构造进行侵犯性改造的武器，彻底地撼动人们体验空间的记忆和情绪，艺术家曾花数月的时间往意大利都灵中心的一个阿拉伯市场的四面墙壁泼水，并把500公斤的面包堆放在墙壁的四周，在市场的屋顶安装一个灌溉系统保持墙面的潮湿度，直至最后墙壁全部发酵，长霉。幽默是个人意志的又一个强大的武器，而艺术家往往用幽默和娱乐性来巧妙地回避对事物做出道德上的评判。在挪威艺术家Martin Skauen的动画世界中，性、杀戮、暴力成为连接人与人的纽带，没有正确性，更没有批判性，只是将这些场景转化成为娱乐的材料，仅此而已。而我们的救赎很可能就在这无意义的虚无之中。

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There Is No Story to Tell

05/21 2008, 08:10 | 作者 Carol Yinghua Lu ( Curatorial Essays )

By LIU Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu

The exhibition of “There Is No Story to Tell” starts from a number of trips we made from 2006 to 2007. During that time we travelled frequently to many cities in Europe and the U.S. for exhibitions, workshops and residencies. On these trips, we visited local art museums, art institutions, galleries and artist’s studios. While we were exploring the local art scene, we saw works by artists that attracted our interests. What surprised us was not only that these active and emerging artists from Europe and the U.S. were about the same age as us—most of them were born around the late 1960s to the 1970s —but they also showed an unexpected consistency in their state of artistic practice. Though they had differences in region, language, education, historical and cultural background, their works showed a sense of flatness and lightness, and spontaneity that was intentionally presented in their styles and forms. Their works were born out of intuition and emotion. They did not preach or rely on meanings or interpretations to be effective. They were simple, relaxed and even lucent; straightforward but full of romance and witty humor. They revealed a dissociated status from the world, society, time and space. They also posed a wry and care-free feeling towards the future and towards belief systems. These works were often made out of materials that were common objects in our life. These works infused multiple elements from philosophy, economics, politics, art history, pop culture and day-to-day life, but without too much burden or responsibility. The feeling when looking at these works could be described as pleasant. Viewers related to the work and it elicited honest smiles. Similar traces of this kind of work can be found in our research on Asian artists from China, Korea, Japan, and other countries.

This kind of unhindered feeling and appreciation for the work set us thinking. What builds this bridge of communication? What leads to this unity of their artistic languages? What makes us able to easily slip into the artists’ concepts without extensive preparation? Is it also globalization in miniature? Along with the opening of global markets and the merging of the world’s economies, boundaries of different cultures and politics have been traversed. The order and experience of time and space is undergoing a complete radical alternation. In particular, the 1980s saw a U.S.-centered western world initiating neo-liberal economic strategies that promoted a globalized economic theory. Since that time, our world has become flatter and more similar with this kind of mutual penetration among ideological, economic and political forces. Achievements in the creative fields have developed parallel patterns.

Neoliberalism is an economic and political theory derived from classical economic liberalism (advocating market forces). It is in opposition to Keynesian state intervention theory. Neoliberalist economic concepts advocate the organic qualities of a free market economic system, pushing free management and free trade to extremes. It promotes “liberalization”, privatization and commercialization, claiming that the invisible hand of market prices should leverage all economic phenomena. In theory, neoliberalism pares down government intervention to a minimum. It emphasizes the functions and roles of market mechanisms, preaching the privatization of state-owned enterprises, liberalization of trade and finance, commercialization of interest rates and the loosening of supervision on foreign capital and government restrictions. It sells, to the utmost, the idea of an integrated global economy, politic and culture as a globalized capitalism. It serves the expansion of international monopolistic capital. It’s an especially effective tool for international monopolistic capital to establish the platform for expanding capital and controlling finance in most developing countries.

A general feature of the neoliberal economy is to continuously reinforce and explore the desire of the market by increasing the time, frequency and possibility of trade. The ultimate goal is to make consumption behaviors a conduit of market exchange, through competition and limitation, constantly repeating the process in a short amount of time and at high speeds. The most extreme forms of neoliberalism overlap with semi-religious beliefs in the interconnectedness of the cosmos. Therefore, neoliberalism is not only an economic policy, but also a political philosophy. Its influence is deeply infused in the attitudes toward society, individuals and labor. The followers of neoliberalism view the world from the point of view of the market. They, for example, compare countries to enterprises and companies. Cities and regions vie as competitors, as government offices use extreme measures to provide for and increase their “employability”, “exchangeability” and “competitive advantage”. These measures include everything from individuals undertaking cosmetic surgery to cities and countries bidding to hosts Olympics Games and World Expos. These approaches have all become the principle methods for individuals and countries because they are tried techniques in the pursuit for maximum profit. Eventually the functions of a nation gradually move closer to those of enterprises and corporations until they finally cater purely to the needs of the market. The ultimate core and goal of a neoliberal political and economic strategy is ultimately a nation’s economic benefit. A nation will, in order to obtain the maximum economic benefits, justify all policies and methods as a requirement of economic liberty. It holds protectionism and conservatism as a guiding theory, spurring an economic nationalism, chauvinism and rejection of foreign intervention in order to maintain the “competitive advantages of the nation”. In the neo-liberalist belief system everybody is an entrepreneur. There is only the market, and nothing else matters.  

Under the flag of the neoliberalism, there is no different between market economy and market society. Society, culture, value and individuals are all commodified. Culture, value and moral concepts all become related to the economy. This extreme concept of the marketplace has replaced traditional social relationships and cultural production. It remolds the moral order and redefines principles for individuals. Commodification of interpersonal relationships and social standards, a competitive and utilitarian mental state, a materialistic and profit-oriented worldview and have become by-products of these times. It gives rise to the collective thoughts and the feeling of the times, which is “there’s instability everywhere today”. It generates feelings of instability and crisis, bringing fear that a “war of all against all, destroying all the values of humanity and unity, which sometimes is a kind of naked violence” will occur.  It also emboldens the determination of individuals who would take advantage of nationalist sentiments as a guise to protect their own benefits and private profiteering.

Renowned French sociologist Perre Bourdieu described the immediate outcome of implementing neoliberalism as: “not only more and more people in the most developed countries will suffer from poverty and pain, astonishing enlargement of income difference, the loss of the independent world of cultural production (film, publishing, etc.) (due to the expanded intervention of commerce, the final result will be the disappearance of cultural products themselves), but also all the collective organizations that can resist this evil machine (the foremost would be the country, which is the nurser of the universal value connected to the concept of ‘public’) will be destroyed. On the upper level of the country and the economy, or even inside the enterprises, a Darwinist mentality is imposed everywhere, worshipping the ‘winners’. This is the mentality of the people trained with advanced mathematics and bungee jumping. This kind of mentality beholds the war of all against all and ‘impudicity’ as the principle of all practices. This new moral order has overthrown all the value standards.”

The belief in the market and profits commodifies all human behaviors and demolishes multiple meanings, symbols and values that these behaviors and orders originally possessed. Service industries that charge by the hour will prevail. Traditions and festivals are simplified to opportunities of consumption and promotion. The interactive relations and forms of equivalent exchange, trade and consumption have occupied various real and virtual spaces, from the market to the social policies to value concepts and moral standards. This kind of power uses money and the market system to break down traditional, organic collective societies. “The toxicity of the power that has erosive and dissolving effects overthrew the experience of that ancient fairy world, and it didn’t stop there.”  Academician Lin Yusheng from the Central Academy of Taiwan discusses this overwhelming power of the market over young people as “unawareness” and “tastelessness”. In his letters to literature critics Wang Yuanhua on the materialization, philistinism and dissimilation of civilization, he notes, “the biggest feature of the society dominated by capitalism is that the ‘instrumental sense’ on which it depends to develop has the inner power for pushing itself to the ultimate. This inner power fights off all thoughts, cultures, ethos and social standards that block off or prevent it from expanding and disable them. To put it, in the capitalist society, people will do their utmost to make money. They will go out of their way to reach their goal. They don’t care about whether the goal is rational or should be restricted due to the nature of capitalism of self feeding. Therefore, the most developed the ‘instrumental sense’, the weaker the ‘value sense’. And the result is, like the famous saying of German poet Friedrich Schiller that Webb often quoted, ‘the disenchantment of the world’. Everything can be treated with ‘instrumental sense’. Human activities will inevitably be materialized and animalized.”

A materialistic and instrumental world view and an all-pervasive commercial power endow artistic creation with a new assignment and a new opportunity. This assignment is to reflect and confront extreme utilitarian and pragmatic social situations, thinking trends and people’s value systems with simple game-like attitudes that respond to spiritual hollowness and monotonous homogeneity with plot snippets, pure emotion and intentional hollowness. This has been described by Deleuze and Guattari as a continuously expanding world, a regulated, unclothed world where people are more and more intolerable and “started to seek a new, compensative way, but they can only try from their personal angle, which is a similar to an exclave or island in the universe: they try to make the universe like a family, building livable courtyards, recovering the small piece of magical, holy territory that possesses obvious personal feature and subjective colors.”  Thus, what these characters in the creative fields follow is just the artistic logic of postmodernism; a situation of world capitalism that has lost its center. It is as Deleuze and Guattari say, “only playing with the concepts of characters, contradictions, text power and materials on the surface and doesn’t any longer call for the traditional concept of stable truth, but only play the word game on the surface.”  The people today not only lose the fantasy for the present, but also for the past, future and for history. The possibility for any phenomenal historic renovation doesn’t exist. History has only pure image and illusion. “The past has become a death warehouse… full of stylish parts that you can borrow or assemble at your wish.”  But artists don’t need to shoulder any moral responsibility for this kind of borrowing or re-assembling. As opposed to an avoidance of content and function in art that was brought forward by Susan Sontag in her “Against Interpretation”, the postmodernist works themselves in the neoliberal economy have already lost their depth and responsibility. There are no meanings or experiences that modernist work can bring its audience. Instead, the works refuse any attempt of interpretation, and are not possible to be analyzed through interpretation. As meanings dissolve, an important subject of modernism—strong dissimilative and anxious experience and emotions—weakens and disappears. “Postmodernism experience is not any longer a kind of anxiety, but a kind of schizophrenia. The unique tone of emotion of postmodernism can be best interpreted with the language of addicts. It’s a sort of illusion, an extraordinary pleasing fear”

In these artworks, illusive emotions with personal and interesting tones appear natural and casual. The selection of materials has become an attitude. Styles and forms have become the carrier of attitudes. Feelings and experiences are expressed without interpretation. It appropriates and uses, without any moral judge, any claim or any answer for any question. Willfully, subjectively and unfaithfully copying the world, art has an unprecedented lack of need to claim its rightfulness, or to force its audience to understand that the work is about. It even intentionally returns to a kind of naivety. The works seem to be excreted rather than constructed. These are all prominent features of postmodernist creations in a social situation that beholds neoliberalism as the mainstream ideology. Individuals and nations in a neoliberalist economy, due to their existence as economic units, lose their multiple dimensions, including their cultural, mental and spiritual characteristics. This monotone, pale, limited imagination environment drives the artists to re-sculpt a personal poetic world in the realm of the arts. The work creates an opposition to the real world that we live in which is “homogenous, ordered and quantifiable”. It’s full of energy, magic and sustenance. It allows us to return to the world in a more relaxed, open and abundant way.   

The true meaning of this kind of art creation lies in the failure of meanings and the victory of substances shaking off the chains of narrow practices. Female artist Youngmi Chun, educated in the UK and who lives and works between London and Seoul, uses plain wood bars and fine neon lights to create a star-shaped installation. But the form itself is not fixed, because when viewed from the side, it appears to be a number of hanging wood bars decorated by several neon lights. The combination of shabby wood bars and shining neon lights makes us think beyond the normal hierarchy of the statuses of objects. The fraudulence and uncertainty of the shape of the installation even defeats our habits of seeking metaphors and references in the work. Berlin-based artist Michael Sailstorfer used fiberglass to cast a wrinkled, unattractive “the dark side of the moon”. But the almost insane fantasy is also attractive, filled with magician-style charm and romance. Chun wrapped her own shit with layers and layers of plastic until it formed a big round ball. Like Chun, Liu Chuang, an artist who lives and works in Beijing, has also wantonly abused the magic of arts that can “turn decay into miracle.” He once collected his own pubic hair to stick onto paper to create patterns of day-to-day objects. In another work, Chun covered the ground of a gallery with a carpet and then covered the carpet with a thin layer of concrete, building a “Second Floor” for the gallery. The audience could walk directly on the concrete floor addition. In another of Liu Chuan’s previous works he re-routed a common air conditioner to drain indoors, allowing the waste water that should have dripping outside the art museum or gallery be featured inside the exhibition hall. These works of these artists all demonstrate wittiness, intelligence and a brash creativity of ordinary people. The same kind of freedom allows Swiss female artist Mai-Thu Perret to freely create a “crystal frontier”, which is full of desires to speculate and freely appropriated historical and cultural fragments and plots that reflect on the individual and their relationship to the world. In Perret’s work, the border between reality and illusion is erased and redefined. Personal willpower can overcome economic and political realities to become even more powerful. This is a kingdom of willingness. It’s extremely pervasive and charming. This is the kind of charm that seduces consumers to commodities. An enlarged personal will has become the most obvious feature that dominates these themeless creations. Spanish artist Jorge Peris, unhesitatingly transformed his personal will into weapons for an aggressive alteration of the details and structures of a space, radically shaking people’s memories and emotions of a spatial experience. Peris’ previous work featured water pouring onto the walls of an Arabic market in the center of Turin, Italy for months while he piled 500kg of bread along the walls. He installed a misting system to keep the walls humid until all the walls were full of mildew. Humor is another great weapon for personal will. Artists can often use humor and entertainment to subtly avoid giving moral judgments. In the animated world of Norwegian artist Martin Skauen, sex, death and violence are the links between people. Nothing is correct, and there are no judgments. Skauen turns these brutal scenes into material for entertainment and that is where they end. Our ultimate salvation is probably found in this void of meaningless nothingness.

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没有要讲的故事 THERE IS NO STORY TO TELL

05/14 2008, 22:50 | 作者 Carol Yinghua Lu ( 策划文章 )

没有要讲的故事
——国际年轻艺术家群展

展览日期：5月17号——6月14号
展览地点：北京唐人画廊
策划人：刘鼎、卢迎华、魏星
参展艺术家：Youngmi Chun（韩国，装置艺术家）、刘窗（中国，装置艺术家）、 Jorge Peris（西班牙，装置艺术家）、Mai-Thu Perret（瑞士，装置艺术家）、Michael Sailstorfer（德国，装置艺术家）、 Toshinari Sato (日本，装置艺术家) 、Martin Skauen（挪威、动画艺术家）、WAZA小组（中国，新媒体）

圆桌讨论会
5月18号早上11点至下午2点
讨论会由唐人画廊和中央美术学院雕塑系联合主办 

展览简介
“没有要讲的故事”关注的是在欧洲、美国和亚洲地区正处于活跃和上升期的一些艺术家的创作。尽管存在着地域、语言、教育、历史文化背景的差异——这些艺术家在创作状态上呈现出一种出乎意外的一致性——那就是作品流露着一种平淡感，风格和形式上有意地呈现出一种随意性，从直觉和自我的感受出发，不说教，不依赖于意义和阐释而生效， 既简单、轻松、甚至透明、直白又充斥着浪漫色彩和机智的诙谐幽默，呈现出一种与世界、社会、时间、空间等游离的状态，对体制和权威，对未来和信仰的不信任和无所谓的心态。这些创作往往以生活中普遍可见的东西为材料，汲取了哲学、经济学、政治、艺术史、流行文化以及日常生活等多种元素，却没有过多的负担和责任感。观看这些作品的时候往往是愉悦的，贴近自我感受的，并常常能引起观众的会心一笑。
 
这种对作品毫无障碍的感知和欣赏引起了我们的思考。是什么架起了这座沟通的桥梁？是什么创造了这种艺术语言的同一性？是什么让我们在毫无准备的情况下轻松地进入艺术家的构想？这难道也是全球化景观的一个缩影？随着全球市场的开放和经济的交融，各种文化、政治意义上的边界日益被打开，时空秩序和时空经验正在经历一种全面的、根本性的改变。特别是上个世纪80年代在以美国为中心的西方世界开始全面实施新自由主义经济战略并从经济全球化时期起向全世界推行该经济理论和以该经济理论为基础的意识形态以来，我们所处的世界也在这种全球化经济和政治力量的相互渗透中变得越来越扁平和一致化，创造性领域的成就也因此呈现出越来越多的平行性。

幻觉式的情感、富于个人性和趣味性的语调，不动生色地刻意雕琢却以最平淡随意的形式出现，对材料的选择作为一种态度，风格和形式也成为态度的载体，不需要被阐释只需要被感知、体验、欣赏和使用，不做任何道德判断，不发表任何声明，或对某个问题做出一个答案，肆意地、主观地、不忠实地去复制世界，艺术前所未有地不需要去证明自己的正当性，也不要求人们去探问艺术作品在说什么，甚至有意地回归到一种天真的状态，作品似乎是被分泌出来的，而不是被构造出来的，这些都是在以新自由主义为主流意识形态的社会形势中后现代主义作品的最显著的特点。新自由主义经济中的个人和国家因为作为经济实体的存在而缺失了其他的多重维度——文化的、思想的、精神的。这种单调的、苍白的、缺乏幻想的环境驱使艺术家在艺术的国度中重新雕琢一个个人的诗意的世界，它与我们所处的“同质的、秩序化的、可以被衡量的”现实世界背道而驰。它生气盎然，充满魔力和滋养，使我们以某种更从容、更开阔和更丰富的方式重返世界。

THERE IS NO STORY TO TELL
An International Exhibition of Young Artists

Exhibition Dates: May 17 – June 14
Exhibition Venue: Beijing Tang Contemporary
Curators: Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu, Wei Xing

Participating Artists: Youngmi Chun (Installation, Korea), Liu Chuang (Installation, China), Jorge Peris (Installation, Spanish), Mai-Thu Perret (Installation, Switzerland), Michael Sailstorfer (Installation, Germany), Toshinari Sato (Installation, Japan), Martin Skauen (Animation, Norway), WAZA (New media, China)

Roundtable Discussion
Time: 11am – 2pm, Sunday, May 18, 2008
Co-organized by Tang Contemporary, Beijing and the Sculptural Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts
Venue: Conference Room, Central Academy of Fine Arts

Exhibition Concept
The exhibition of “There Is No Story to Tell” features the works of a number of active and upcoming artists from Europe and Asia, who demonstrated an unexpected consistency in their state of artistic practice. Though they had differences in region, language, education, historical and cultural background, their works showed a sense of flatness and lightness, and spontaneity that was intentionally presented in their styles and forms. Their works were born out of intuition and emotion. They did not preach or rely on meanings or interpretations to be effective. They were simple, relaxed and even lucent; straightforward but full of romance and witty humor. They revealed a dissociated status from the world, society, time and space. They also posed a wry and care-free feeling towards the future and towards belief systems. These works were often made out of materials that were common objects in our life. These works infused multiple elements from philosophy, economics, politics, art history, pop culture and day-to-day life, but without too much burden or responsibility. The feeling when looking at these works could be described as pleasant. Viewers related to the work and it elicited honest smiles.

This kind of unhindered feeling and appreciation for the work set us thinking. What builds this bridge of communication? What leads to this unity of their artistic languages? What makes us able to easily slip into the artists’ concepts without extensive preparation? Is it also globalization in miniature? Along with the opening of global markets and the merging of the world’s economies, boundaries of different cultures and politics have been traversed. The order and experience of time and space is undergoing a complete radical alternation. In particular, the 1980s saw a U.S.-centered western world initiating neo-liberal economic strategies that promoted a globalized economic theory. Since that time, our world has become flatter and more similar with this kind of mutual penetration among ideological, economic and political forces. Achievements in the creative fields have developed parallel patterns.

In these artworks, illusive emotions with personal and interesting tones appear natural and casual. The selection of materials has become an attitude. Styles and forms have become the carrier of attitudes. Feelings and experiences are expressed without interpretation. It appropriates and uses, without any moral judge, any claim or any answer for any question. Willfully, subjectively and unfaithfully copying the world, art has an unprecedented lack of need to claim its rightfulness, or to force its audience to understand that the work is about. It even intentionally returns to a kind of naivety. The works seem to be excreted rather than constructed. These are all prominent features of postmodernist creations in a social situation that beholds neoliberalism as the mainstream ideology. Individuals and nations in a neoliberalist economy, due to their existence as economic units, lose their multiple dimensions, including their cultural, mental and spiritual characteristics. This monotone, pale, limited imagination environment drives the artists to re-sculpt a personal poetic world in the realm of the arts. The work creates an opposition to the real world that we live in which is “homogenous, ordered and quantifiable”. It’s full of energy, magic and sustenance. It allows us to return to the world in a more relaxed, open and abundant way.   

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