Inside the Labyrinth of Krossos 在克诺索斯的迷宫中

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Lianzhou Foto Festival

2018.12.1—2019.1.3

Group Exhibition

Inside the Ladyrinth of Knossos

Curator: He Yining

Artists: Cheng Xinhao, He Bo, Jiang Yuxin, Li Junnan, Zhu Lanqing, Zhu Taole

Address: The Barn, 1st Floor, Lianzhou

2018连州国际摄影年展

2018.12.1—2019.1.3

群展

在克诺索斯迷宫中

策展人:何伊宁

艺术家:程新皓、何博、姜宇欣、李俊男、朱岚清、朱陶乐

展览地址:粮仓一楼右一展厅

As we face the dilemma of globalization, social, economical, technological, cultural and other everyday issues and conflicts have brought us into the “Labyrinth of Knossos”, where Minotaur, the monster, is adept at exploiting human desires and devouring the only justice and wisdom we have left. Imagine the Theseus of our time stepping into the labyrinth, witnessing the disaster that we are experiencing on every inch of the wall as he passes by, whose pain is amplified by the overlapping images, compelling the hero to reflect on himself with his soul.

在进退两难的全球化时代,社会、经济、科技、文化和日常等领域的矛盾和冲突将人类带入一座“克诺索斯的迷宫”,怪物米诺陶洛斯擅长利用人类的欲望,不断地吞噬着我们残存的正义和智慧。想象当代的忒修斯走进迷宫,在经过的每一寸墙壁上都看到人类正在经历的劫难,重叠的镜像放大了痛楚,要挟着这位英雄用灵魂去反思自身。

As an independent exhibition part of the annual Lianzhou International Photography Festival, the exhibition attempts to explore a series of issues related to our current living conditions by presenting the recent works of six young artists in the field of visual arts. In the first exhibition hall, two artists based their works on a particular group and event respectively, engaging the audience to look into the broader implications of globalization. Cheng Xinhao's long-term project, Strange Terrains, focuses on the ethnic group scattered along the border between China and Vietnam known as the Mang. The two films presented in the exhibition, "The Invasion of a Neutral Space" and "Towards the Sweetness", respectively demonstrate the artist's manipulation of viewpoints, space and time in a dual screen setup that puts forward his rumination on sugarcane plantations under the globalized economic system.

作为连州国际摄影年展的独立展览单元,该展览力图通过呈现6位活跃在视觉艺术领域的青年艺术家的近期作品,来追问一系列与当下人类生存状况相关的议题。在第一展厅中,两位艺术家的作品分别从群体和事件切入,将观众的目光引入了更广意义上的全球化状况。程新皓的长期项目《陌生地形》(Strange Terrains)关注散居于中国和越南边境的族群——莽人。展览中所呈现的两组录像作品《一个动作对空间的入侵》(The Invasion of a Neutral Space)和《奔向甜蜜》(Towards the Sweetness)分别呈现了艺术家对于移动影像中视点、空间、时间的转化,以及通过双屏录像的视觉表征来建构他对甘蔗种植在全球经济这一话语体系之下思考。

Cheng Xinhao, The invasion of a neutral space,Video, 4:50, 2016, from the series Strange Terrains, 
程新皓,《一个动作对空间的入侵》,录像,4 分50 秒,2016选自《陌生地形》系列

He Bo's work, Several Echoes of March 8, consists of five parts including video, photography and installations, and attempts to explore the complex views of human awareness, transmission and response to catastrophic events in the information age through the Malaysia Airlines incident that took place over the Indian Ocean in 2014. In this process, the artist aspires to confirm a question: with the huge amount of information trying to uncover the truth testing our intelligence and patience over and over again, and the process of controlling and disseminating information sculpting the “pleats and ruffles” of the story, would our initial desires only be repeatedly stripped away until they are exhausted?

何博的作品《三月八日的若干回响》(Several Echoes of March 8)由包含视频、摄影和装置的五个部分组成,借由2014年发生在印度洋上空的马航事件尝试讨论互联网时代人类关于灾难性事件的认知、传播和回应的复杂观点。艺术家希望借此确认一个问题:当为接近真相而生的巨量信息一次次冲刷人们的智性和耐心之时,当控制和传播信息的过程如造山运动般型塑“事实的褶皱”之际,我们最初始的渴望是否只能被不断剥减,直至消耗殆尽?

He Bo ,Who is your Daddy?,from the series (Several Echoes of March 8),2018
何博,《谁是你的父亲?》, 选自《三月八日的若干回响》系列,2018

The two sets of works in the second exhibition hall explore the issues of individual experience and collective values in multiple visual dimensions. Li Junnan's project, "Butterfly", includes a series of performance experimentation. Using the clothes that he has set aside in recent years as inspirations, he engages the viewers to reflect on the relationship between self-identity and consumer culture by directly posing in front of the camera, photographing the objects in sculptural forms, and exhibiting his skin in the capacity of body armor and embellishment. Jiang Yuxin's series, On Collective Identity, stems from the identity issues she has experienced during her study and stay in London. The daily conversations and encounters have led her to question the long-standing practice of differentiating identity and characters by nationality. Through a combination of still images, video and installation, the intricate thought process has been transformed into a complex set of visual works, revealing her repeated  deliberation on the subject to the audience without any reservation.

第二展厅的两件作品在多元的视觉维度中探索了个体经验和集体价值的议题。李俊男《蝴蝶》(Butterfly)的创作包含了一系列行为和表演的实践。他将自己在过去数年间闲置的衣服作为反思的对象,或将衣服穿在自己身上进行摆拍,或是将衣服制作成雕塑进行拍照,抑或是通过将自己的肌肤作为服装这一身体保护和装饰载体进行展示,讨论了自我身份与服装和消费文化之间的关系。姜宇欣《论集体身份》的创作初衷来源于她在伦敦学习和生活过程中所遇到的身份差异问题,那些细枝末节的日常对话和遭遇使她对固化的以国别划分的身份认同和差异问题产生质疑。通过静态照片、影像和装置的组合将隐秘的思维活动转变为复杂的视觉作品,向观众毫无保留地展现出她对集体身份的反复思考。

Li Junnan, from the series Butterfly,2016
李俊男,选自《蝴蝶》系列,2016

 

Jiang Yuxin, What's the difference between my rice and my neighbours rice? ,2018, from the series On Collective Identity
                                                                  姜宇欣,《我用的米和邻居用的米有何不同?》,2018,选自《论集体身份》系列。

The two exhibitions in the third exhibition hall feature specific locations. Young photographer Zhu Lanqing's series, Ten Billion New City, has selected Dongshan Island, an economically under-developed island in Fujian province, as its point of entry to deliver a story about the history of a real estate project, a resort area named Ten Billion New City, that was first established in the 1990s and was later flattened. The artist transformed the exhibition space into a hotel room that once could be found in the resort area. Through the depiction of specific architecture, space and locations, and with the help of archived documents and other materials, the artist leads the viewers to transport between history and present at will, demonstrating the possibility of photography as a mean of historical narrative from different angles.

第三个展厅中的最后两件作品选取了特定场域的展呈方式。青年摄影师朱岚清的作品《百亿新城》(Ten Billion New City)选取了东山岛——位于中国福建的一个经济欠发达小岛上的度假区项目作为进入点,为我们讲述了这座在90年代建立起的,名为百亿新城的度假区由盛转衰的历史过往。艺术家将展厅还原成度假区的酒店房间,通过对特定建筑、空间和地方的描绘,同时借助档案和其他材料,以其擅长的叙事手法带领观者在历史和当下之间自由进出,从不同角度展现出摄影在进入历史叙事时的可能性。

Zhu Lanqing, from the series Ten Billion New City, 2015-On going
 朱岚清,选自《百亿新城》系列,2015——持续中

Hidden behind this abandoned "hotel room" is a “disco dance floor” devised by Zhu Taole, under the title Undoing the Future. The work points to the artist's experience and observation of American life during President Trump's reign, taking an electronic concert in 1981 as the point of origin for a fictional journey and real history, with a live performance as the ending point in an attempt to invite the audience to participate in the concoction of objects, space and ideas.

隐藏在这座衰败度假“酒店房间”背后的,是朱陶乐以《解开自由》(Undoing the Future)为题创作的一个恰似“迪斯科舞厅”的展览空间。该作品指向艺术家在特朗普执政时期的美国生活的体验和观察,以1981年的一场电⼦音乐会为一切虚构和真实历史的原点,以现场的表演为结束,尝试通过邀请观众参与到表演当中的方式来激活展厅内物件、空间和思想的碰撞。

Zhu Taole, Whose Playground, Whose Future?  ,Video clip, from the series Undoing the future, 2018
朱陶乐,《谁的游乐园,谁的未来?》,录像截图,选自《解开未来》,2018

Taking the six projects above as representative examples, "In the Labyrinth of Knossos" attempts to demonstrate the artists’ sensibility and criticalness as self-interpreters of the surrounding world by interactive expressions of still images, video, text and performances, and the diversity and complexity of creative expressions, visual languages, narrative means and illustrative methods exhibited by these artists who grew up in the post-media era.

以上述6件作品为例,“在克诺索斯的迷宫中”尝试借助这些静态图像之间,以及它们与动态影像、文字、表演之间的互动来探讨艺术家作为周围世界的自我阐释者,在面对议题时的敏感和批判性,同时考察这些成长在后媒介时代的艺术家们选择媒介、语言、叙事方法、展示方式的多元与复杂性。