问故而知新
开幕式艺术家张大力讲座
OV画廊新闻稿
5月22日—7月17日
艺术家讲座：5月22日星期六下午3-4点
开幕式：5月22日星期六下午5-8点
世博会为上海跻身为未来国际大都市提供了机会,曾经的老社区一跃成高楼,装饰着玻璃的墙面闪闪发亮,我们几乎没有时间回顾过去。历史是什么,这些都是如何记录,构建,保存或者掩盖的？
历史是一种缓慢记录的资料：官方记载,政府报告,媒体文章,各种档案的照片和承载着时代变迁的邮票,但并没有反映确切的真相。随着时间推移,不同的历史学家和文化理论家们都将在此基础上进行叙述,他们的写作角度也较多从自身出发反映在政治身份方面。
历史如同躺在文件柜深处一堆泛黄页面—涉及了用来纪念行为和记忆的教科文本,国家英雄的传记和出版物,战争时期的电影,以及各种战役的纪念游行活动。
问故而知新展览的目的不在揭露 “真实事件”,而是关注在历史著作,教育和消费的问题上。此次群展主要由任虹和张大力作品组成,也包括为展览新创作作品的艺术家们：Robert Davis,霍杰明, Monika Lin, 计文于, 钱嵘和苏畅。
任虹探讨了记忆的错误本质,表达出历史图像与典型的宣传海报意象的概念—投射在充满各种明亮紫,绿色和玫红色彩的基调上。这些如梦幻般的画面,覆盖了一些复杂而精细的图案,象征着时间过滤性的意味,有选择性地扭转了我们对过去的认识。
参展的还有张大力和他的《第二历史》作品,那个曾在各大媒体中发表过的关于中国历史相片版本差异的项目。张大力将关注度放大在这些历史的原始照片上, (他费劲苦心地从中国档案库调取的资料) 对因为宣传目的被改动的同一版本的照片进行研究。这其中的差异很明显,一些人从画面中被删除了,添加上枝繁叶茂的背景,标语也被刷在旗帜和墙面上。
展览包含由毛太设计提供的大量历史宣传海报,题目诸如“会战年代,”“军民共学习,”和“革命秩序维护好,交通战线换新儿”等。
我们邀请艺术家从他们自身对历史分析的角度出发,从主题,思想和海报的图像作为灵感的来源,重新创作作品。
霍杰明以 “革命秩序维护好,交通战线换新儿,”的海报为基础,在新录像作品中展现的是历史的层次,清除和重新构建的角度。原海报是以广角透视的农民画来表现中国街道的景象,画面中挤满了源源不断的自行车,轿车和公共汽车和温文尔雅井然有序的行人。艺术家以这个有趣的场景为背景,通过随机性和颠覆画面,绘制有趣的线条,探索Malevich至上主义和抽象的概念。
Robert Davis从海报中看到了带有乌托邦理想的他们,与当代社会对抗。作品叫“我们建造的房子,我们住不起,”（2010）。他把在公共场所展示的海报压缩成通常在私密环境下观看的明信片形式,用色彩,手写文字和剪报下来的新闻头条层层覆盖—通过加入微妙的细小变化,来反映社会的阶级分层。
艺术家Alexandrine Dévé也选择进行具有现代感的创新,以“今日在池塘,明天守海疆,”的旧海报作为她创作的来源。作品用相同的名字,并维持与原作相同的风格,结合中国庆贺新年的年画演绎出天使般面容的孩子,用工笔画的手法表现牡丹。她的作品反映当前社会的形态,对各个社会角色进行评论：农民,妇人和暴发户等。
Monika Lin也选了同样的海报创作她的作品“小卫士,”（2010）,不过她展现的是儿童天真无邪与好战的民族主义的相对面。Lin用轻柔的颜色涂在坦克和飞机上以削弱它们本身的力量,这些移动的物体,让战争游戏潜在的阴险变得有趣。
苏畅的作品“街道花园,”（2010）也是选择天真无邪的概念来创作一系列孩童玩耍的雕塑—这种形态天真的公共艺术曾在上海街头无处不见—不过现在大部分被尖锐的城市不锈钢雕塑所代替。苏畅从城市景观中看到了历史被忘却,而渐渐淡出我们记忆的过程。
钱嵘在记忆方面进行思考,完成了他的水彩系列的绘画作品“美食谍影,”（2010）。在作品里他将宣传画的概念置换成电影海报的形式,那些中国社会特色电影角色成为了记忆过程和集体身份中的表现部分。他用水彩和铅笔绘制出大概的轮廓,间谍,恶棍与小笼包这些形象被组织在一起。这里的美食是过去和未来之间的连接,体现了历史的延续性。
计文于同样以这个历史延续性的主题进行探索,创作作品“中华人民共和国史,”（2010）。这件作品是由1949年到现在的流行标语组成的,一张张写在硫酸纸上,其中包括一些经典口号 “不管白猫黑猫,会捉老鼠就是好猫,” 又比如“超英赶美平常事,”等。每张硫酸纸进行覆盖直至看不清楚,表现历史不断变换周期的概念。
展览概要
问故而知新: 开幕式和艺术家张大力讲座
张大力,任虹和本地艺术家研究历史如何构建,扭曲和消费的问题。任虹展出具有历史意象和复杂图案形式结合的作品。张大力的作品是将原始历史相片和曾在公共刊物中发表过的修改后的相片的对比,讲座中他会进一步探讨。最后是由本地艺术家群体包括Robert Davis,霍杰明, Monika Lin,计文于,钱嵘和苏畅,带来一批选自半个世纪中的政治海报进行再创作的作品。
媒体联系
林白丽
+86 139 167 35537
+86 21 5465 7768
rebeccacatching@gmail.com
展览日期
2010年5月22日至7月17日
开幕式：5月22日星期六 下午5到8点
艺术家讲座：5月22日星期六 下午3到4点
绍兴路19号丙,陕西南路和瑞金二路之间
+8621 5465 -7768
Madame Mao’s Dowry
www.madamemaosdowry.com
Re-Visioning History
Opening and Artist Talk by Zhang Dali
OV Gallery Press Release
May 22 - July 17, 2010
Artist Talk: Saturday, May 22, 2010 3-4pm, Opening 5-8pm
As Shanghai positions itself as a futuristic metropolis on the occasion of the World Expo, repositioning historical neighborhoods to give way to cool reflective glass, there is no better time to ponder the past. What is history and how is it recorded, constructed, preserved and obscured?
History is recorded through a slow accumulation of materials: official records, government reports, magazine articles, various archival photographs and objects which bear the stamp of that era but don’t necessarily reflect any tangible truth. As time goes on, historians construct narratives based on these archives which often reflect as much about the era of writing and the identity and politics of the writer as they do about history.
History amounts to more than a pile of yellowed pages lying at the back of a filing cabinet – it involves demonstrable acts of remembrance including the writing of textbooks, the publishing of biographies of national heroes, the filming of period war period films and the commemoration of various events with parades.
“Re-visioning History” seeks not to uncover the “true events” of the past, but to look at how history is written, taught and consumed. The group show is anchored by the works of Ren Hong and Zhang Dali and includes newly commissioned works by Robert Davis, Ben Houge, Monica Lin, Ji Wenyu, Qian Rong and Su Chang.
Ren Hong explores the faulty nature of memory, with historical images typical of propaganda poster imagery – cast in a variety of bright purples, greens and hot pinks. These dream-like renderings are then overlaid with an intricate filigree of patterns, which reference the filtering nature of time, which selectively twists our understanding of the past.
The show also features Zhang Dali and his “Second History” project whereby he displays different versions of photographs which were published in various print media throughout Chinese history. Zhang Dali takes a magnifying glass to history displaying the original photographs (painstakingly procured from Chinese archives) alongside versions of the same photographs, which have been altered for propaganda purposes. The differences are evident with certain people being erased from the photos, leafy backgrounds being drawn in and slogans painted on flags and walls.
The show will also feature a number of historical propaganda posters from the collection of Madame Mao’s Dowry with titles such as, “The Age of Decisive Battle” and “Safeguard the Orderliness of the Revolution: Transportation is Getting a New Look.”
We asked artists to enact their own analyses of history using the themes, ideas and imagery of the propaganda posters as fodder for creating new works.
Using the poster “Safeguard the Orderliness of the Revolution: Transportation Is Getting a New Look,” Ben Houge captures the layering, erasing and re-construction of history in his generative video work. The poster itself uses a nongminhua or peasant painting perspective to depict a busy street scene. In the video images, bicycles, cars and buses pop up in fragments, creating interesting rhythms and patterns. It’s work that explores and subverts the nature of propaganda through repetition and randomness and draws interesting parallels to Malevich’s ideas of suprematism and abstraction.
Robert Davis looks at the utopian ideals portrayed in these posters to see how they stack up against contemporary society in “We Build Houses We Will Never Live In,” 2010. He shrinks the posters to an intimate postcard format and layers them with paint, hand-written text and headlines cut from newspapers – adding in a plethora of small changes, which reflect the stratification of society.
Alexandrine Dévé also offers a contemporary update of the poster “Today We Play by the Pond; Tomorrow We Defend the Coast,” in her work of the same name. This work depicts a bunch of cherubic children playing with battleships. Dévé leaves much of the imagery intact, re-creating the flowers in excellent gongbihua style. She does, however, update the work to reflect the current social ecology with a comment on the roles of various social characters: the peasant, mistress and nouveau riche.
Monica Lin takes this same poster as her template using some of the motifs to create a kinetic sculpture, which explores the strange juxtaposition of children and war. In “Little Defenders” 2010, she’s taken model tanks and airplanes and coated them in a variety of soft pastels, thereby subverting their power. These objects form part of a mobile which makes a playful comment on the insidiousness of war play.
Su Chang’s work, “Street Garden” 2010 also explores the idea of innocence with a series of sculptures which feature children playing – the kind of innocuous public art that used to be ubiquitous in Shanghai – but has now been replaced by strident stainless steel sculptures. Here Su Chang is looking at the effacement of history from the urban landscape and the memories of that time which fade from our consciousness.
Qian Rong explores historical links to the past in “Local Snacks and Spy Films,” 2010 turning the propaganda aesthetic into a film poster aesthetic which references the use of film in collective memory. His watercolor and pen drawings feature images of generals, spies and villains juxtaposed with images of food such as dumplings. Here, food serves as a bridge between past and future generations and reminds us of the continuity of history.
Ji Wenyu also explores the theme of continuity in his work “History of the People’s Republic of China,” 2010. The work features a series of popular slogans taken from 1949 up until the present, meticulously printed on parchment paper, things such as “I don't care if it's a white cat or a black cat; it's a good cat so long as it catches mice,” and “To catch up with Britain and America is simple.” With each layer of parchment paper, the previous layer becomes fainter in a reference to the rapidly changing cycles of history.
Short Description for Listings
Re-Visioning History: Opening and Artist talk by Zhang Dali
Zhang Dali, Ren Hong and a selection of local artists examine how history is constructed, distorted and consumed. Ren Hong takes historical imagery and overlays it with intricate patterns. Zhang Dali makes comparisons between original historical photographs and altered versions of those photographs published in magazines, something he will discuss in depth during his talk. Finally a group of local artists including Robert Davis, Ben Houge, Monica Lin, Ji Wenyu, Qian Rong and Su Chang, create newly commissioned works based on a selection of political posters culled from the past half century of history.
Press Inquiries
Rebecca Catching
+86 139 167 35537
+86 21 5465 7768
rebeccacatching@gmail.com
Exhibition Dates
May 22-July 17, 2010
Opening: 5-8pm, Saturday, May 22, 2010
Artist Talk: 3-4pm, Saturday, May 22, 2010
19C Shaoxing Lu, between Shanxi Nan Lu and Ruijin Er Lu
+8621 5465 -7768
Madame Mao’s Dowry
www.madamemaosdowry.com
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