|
Légendes de gauche à droite :
1/ Zhang Hui - 张慧, Blueprint No.2 - 蓝图No.2, acrylic on canvas - 布面丙烯, 96×120cm, 2014.
2/ Zhang Hui - 张慧, Blueprint - 蓝图, acrylic on canvas - 布面丙烯, 226×362cm, 2014.
3/ Zhang Hui - 张慧, Life Buoy-Blue - 救生圈-蓝, acrylic on canvas - 布面丙烯, 182×225cm, 2014.
|
|
présentation - 展览介绍 :
"When falling, people have two fears: The first is fear of the pain we expect to feel upon crashing into the ground. But if we continue falling endlessly we experience another sort of fear, the fear that we will continue to plummet eternally, that we will never fall to earth. The former will eventually fade away, but the latter is a fear that will never cease."
“Groundless”, Zhang Hui's last solo exhibition held two years ago at Long March Space Beijing was inspired by such fears. The exhibition title is imbued with this never-ceasing fear of endless uncertainty, of never reaching the ground, fear of a physical and mental existence lacking foundations. For two years, Zhang Hui continued to work in the state of ‘groundlessness’ while simultaneously striving to find a plane on which all his thoughts of the past, present and future could co-exist. “Plaza”, his new solo exhibition at Long March Space takes its name from "this search to find a relatively tranquil, yet fleeting space of temporary respite" in an existence of perpetual free-fall. The gallery will feature more than twenty of his most recent paintings of alienated objects emerging from a backdrop of black canvas to create a bizarre yet vibrant ’plaza’. It could be said that the vibrancy one is confronted with here, is not that indicated by the miscellaneous objects depicted in the paintings, yet the vibrancy fashioned from Zhang Hui's form of 'visual thinking' and the brilliance of his cognitive perceptions.
There are many ways in which an artist can work and Zhang Hui begins his artistic creation with his subconscious intuition. This intuition acts as an inspiration to enter deeper into his mental framework, searching for thoughts, which then emerge onto the canvas as visual manifestations of his ideas. It is under the guidance of this cognitive-visual procedure that the actual form of Zhang Hui's thought process is successively revealed to us in his artworks.
This creative process has matured and developed to the extent that everything, from the individual brushstrokes of pigment to the overarching composition as a whole becomes a cerebral tool for the artist. This is particularly apparent in the visual portrayal of Zhang's thoughts, which arise due in part to his particular wish for control. However, oftentimes what ultimately is portrayed on the canvas is not necessarily the same the principal subject or thought he had initially wished to portray. Zhang Hui himself has admitted that this is due to the fact that he wishes to 'un-fetishize' the subject matter of his paintings. This is consistent with the reality of his artistic production, for if the object which emerges onto the canvas is incompatible with the thought structure which engendered it, Zhang Hui will routinely alter or even abandon said painting.
However, non-fetishizing objects does not mean that they are ultimately absent from Zhang Hui's work. No matter how confusing or unstable his train of thought might be, Zhang Hui will still attempt to temporarily capture this rugged confusion through the objectification of his mental processes via painting. He uses captured illusions and gorgeously multi-coloured shadows to help the objects displayed in his 'plaza' materialise. His actions are utilised to invoke a narrative of seduction to tempt his audience into entering his own subconscious. At the same time, he must tempt himself to penetrate deeper into his own subconscious and continuously re-evaluate the endless processes that lie in the space between his visual-intellectual deliberations and their embodiment in his artworks. To unlock the key to Zhang Hui's works, one must first work layer by layer to try and uncover the depth of meaning which lies behind this complex process of artistic creation.
The works displayed in this exhibition all relate to Zhang Hui's conjectures that the reality of lived existence depends entirely on the machinations and designs of mankind and the subsequent creations to arise from such planning. If we take reality to be located along a temporal axis and consider it as the point of origin, then everything preceding this point of reality would be our plans and attempts, our designs and aspirations. This multifaceted and complex web of mental activities is exemplified in the painting series "Blueprint" (2012- on-going). What follows after the point of reality is a world of inspiration for Zhang's thoughts, a world in which visual-intellectual creative processes form the basis of interpretation. Working along this temporal axis, Zhang Hui has perfected the structural relationship between his various works. In the years since his "Miraculous Slope Analysis" (2008) series, Zhang has gradually been able to systematise his process of artistic creation built upon the visual thinking process, a development which has become increasingly fully-formed and enriching as exemplified by the "Blueprint" series shown in this exhibition.
Zhang Hui wanted to create a resting place, a plaza, to catch his free-falling train of thoughts, but even the plaza is in a perpetual state of descending, never reaching the ground. However, no one can tell where his ceaseless pondering will lead to in the future, what the next fleeting point of fall will be like.
“人在坠落的过程中，会有两种恐惧，一种恐惧是跌落地面时，预想中落地撞击带来的剧痛而产生；但倘若人持续下坠，永无止境，另一种恐惧则因永远无法落地而产生。前者，可以终结，后者，无法完结。”
因此，张慧给2012年4月在长征空间的个展命名为“空地”，取其没有根基、无法落地之意。而经历了两年的不断思考，张慧继续在无根基的悬浮和下坠中找寻能够进一步承载其思维的作品。2014年4月，他将在长征空间的新个展命名为“广场”，取其永恒下坠过程中“找到一个相对静止、给人暂时落脚的广场”之义。届时整个展厅将会由其创作的20多幅绘画构成。这些显现于黑色画布之上的异化之物，将营造出一个与异样而丰富的广场。可以这么说，这里的丰富，并不是指物种类的繁杂，而是指建立在张慧“视觉思想”之上的思维结构的精彩。
艺术家的工作方式有很多种，张慧是这样开始工作的——首先，直觉感受的引子，启发他进入思考，然后，他将思考呈现在画布之上，即在视觉思考的指引下，思考的过程会不断地陆续显现出来。此时，无论是张慧笔下的色彩，还是整体的构图，都成为了他思考的工具。特殊的是，由于张慧专情于掌控、呈现思维脉络和结构，所以，他笔下之物并不能一定成为画布的主角，哪怕是已经完成的作品。张慧坦言，这是因为他“不恋物”。事实也的确如此，若最终呈现在画布上的物和他整体创作思维结构不一致，张慧涂改或废弃成画，已是常事。
然而，不恋物并非最终不显现。无论思维之路有多么复杂崎岖，张慧还是会将自己的思想“成物”并暂时固化，比如借用视错觉或是五彩斑斓的阴影塑造出广场上的万物，并用之起到“勾引”的作用——一是勾引他人进入思考，二是勾引自己不断深入，继续重复从视觉思想到成物之间的循环往复。所以，打开张慧作品意义之门的钥匙，就在这一层又一层的覆盖之中。
回到展览作品本身，张慧认为现实都是依赖于人类“规划”“设计”后的“创造”。若将现实置于时间的轴线之上，并称之为原点的话——原点之前，是“规划、企图、愿望、设计”这种主体纷繁复杂的思维活动，“蓝图”是其承载之物；在原点之后，则是张慧思想的另一个开端，他开始用自己的视觉思考描述这个世界。在这样的时间轴线之上，张慧完善着自己不同作品之间的关系与结构，从2008年的“怪坡分析”系列到此次展览中的“蓝图”系列，张慧笔下的视觉思考已经渐成体系、日益丰满。
当然，让人玩味的是，在张慧此次创作思维的发端，坠落过程因艺术家试图创建一个虚拟广场而暂时停止；而在此次创作思维的末端，广场却因其处在永恒坠落中而无法落地。张慧的思考还在继续，谁知道下一次，他又会找到怎样的临时落点。
|
