日常观：一种生活实践
马艳
2012年12月22日至2013年1月13日，上海多伦现代美术馆将举办“日常观：一种生活实践”为主题的第五届上海多伦青年艺术家群展。
作为一个有中国本土特色名称的青年美术双年展，两年一届的上海多伦青年美术大展已经走过了它的第九个年头。首届上海多伦青年美术大展举办于2004年9月份上海双年展期间，大展采取了邀请上海本地知名艺术家以假名方式参加青年展的模式；第二届的展览通过征集方案的模式邀请全国各地当代艺术家参加；而第三届的展览以“囧”字为展览的主题，采取征稿和网上报名的方式，选取了在校和刚毕业的新锐艺术家参展；2010年，“后传统——放大的切片”作为第四届青年艺术家群展的展览主题，采用话题探讨的方式，在艺术圈内引起了极佳的反响。2012年，在各种“青年艺术家”大展齐齐上阵的时候，我们依然按照自己的步调，将艺术创作中的日常观，日常经验作为研究的课题，展开对青年艺术创作的梳理和书写。
从宏观和历时的角度看，中国当代艺术经历了从“集体”思潮的创作方式，向对话日常生活和日常经验，注重“个体” 艺术价值努力的转变。日常生活通常被视为一种烦琐无奇的、微不足道的、无关紧要的东西，对日常的讨论和关注也经常停留在一种自然状态和普遍意义的常识上，简单的前图像志层面—即观察日常的气质是琐碎的、感性的、直接的；日常除了这些基础性的存在外，日常生活还包含观察、体验、感悟甚至反思-理论的各种态度和实践。本次展览将关注和讨论青年艺术家在创作中面对日常生活的各种态度和认识上，更多地从艺术界、艺术家、艺术作品和艺术本体的角度讨论当代青年创作中的日常观的实践方式，以及“日常”在青年艺术创作和作品中的各种表述和呈现。日常观是从生活实践中积累的一种动态体验，介于感觉和理论之间的一种态度，是私人化的经验面对生活的一种感知和更深层次认识和思考的可能。在具体的艺术创作中，这些艺术家注重日常性的微妙体验，“迫使”眼睛去发现琐碎生活的激烈与细致，强调对于自身生活的经验和再发现，在乎对过程的把握和对时间的追问，作品彰显着强烈的日常气质，是一种综合性的生活创作方法与视觉经验。
从日常的观念和理念入手创作的青年艺术家，他们采用生活化的物品作为创作材料，对他们来说，艺术作品成为融入日常生活情感的“容器”，成为日常经验与艺术家的自我对话，成为现实生活的思想外延，而非孤立地呈现物质形式。这些青年艺术家的作品观念指向性不是很明确，艺术诉求主要投射出对于生活世界中那些仿佛不太重要却如此贴近自身气质和艺术言说的日常物——生活环境，居住的城市、老房子的瓦片、草坪、一只杯子，以及平凡普通的物等都成了他们关注和表达的对象，通过生活化的场景、现象和经验来探索视觉的有效可能性，“日常”同样有它的多重逻辑和表达，在这些青年艺术家的创作中，对日常观有几种不同的视觉介入角度，对生活经验的“借用”和“修辞”存在着不同的态度和倾向：一种是将日常物作为一种元素思考，表现为对生活空间和物的经验和迷恋，进行艺术创作；二是对生活世界和日常经验的反思和认识，在平淡无奇的生活中寻找艺术的力量；还有一种情况是作品气质上对日常视阈的内在书写。这个展览试图讨论这样的问题，除了艺术家挪用日常生活元素之外，艺术与生活如何彼此影响，日常生活形态艺术又如何与日常生活区别？对生活实践的私人化体验，以及日常的多重可能性汇总起来，会不会有一种共性的日常观？通过对这些艺术家进行个案式的集结和梳理，希望这些作品能够成为某种殊途同归的例证。
生活空间和物
作为一种“小写”的日常，此处的日常观表现为物和生活空间作为一种元素思考的创作经验，艺术家从现实和生活实践中，找到“可写物”，通过描绘和编排，释放出“庸常”物的视觉可能性,从相对“温和”的文化视角找寻物的往昔记忆和情感寄托。艺术家选取的创作对象与材料都是一些平庸寻常的东西，来自于生活里平凡的客体，艺术语言在作品细节中释放，作品与日常生活有种天然的亲密，与艺术家的私人情感有着时间和经验上的窝藏。
陈维的摄影作品洋溢着丰富的电影质感和黑色幽默，在对于道具和场景出乎意料的摆布和深思熟虑的建构、重组中，他往往赋予寻常物件某种异常的魅惑和象征，画面彰显出一种戏剧化的冲突和张力,近期的新作从先前繁缛杂乱的场景和叙事，渐而转向更为凝炼、简洁的舞台语言，以及对寻常琐碎事物的刻画，呈现出“静物”般的画意，重返了既熟悉又陌生的日常生活之中。
陈勇为通常用动画和绘画两种方式展现出他对生活经验和记忆的解读，其作品《记忆透支的代言》、《桌前的恍惚》等都是从日常生活的视角冷静而又敏感地捕捉自身和外界互动的状态，并用朴素简洁的方式记录下来，试图引发一场关于过去与现在，记忆与现实的讨论。
郭鸿蔚的趣味是简单的，微弱的，有诗意的。他惯常以纸杯、卷筒纸、牙刷等工作室内常见杂物为创作主题；最近的新作从充满触手可及日常之物的工作室里走向了一个更广阔的领域，延续出以矿物、鸟和植物标本为收集、归纳、描绘的绘画方式，郭鸿蔚在他插图式的水彩画中，不断充满了对其所处世界中平常的、微小的、司空见惯物件的好奇。
胡筱潇擅长并习惯采用日常生活化的物品作为创作材料，用关乎过去与现在的日常物重新整合，以此揭示出平时接触的抽象信息外象下的思辨内涵。而她诸多方案式的装置作品，在作品观念内容的表达和制作材料的选取上，并不以女性经验为诉求，而似乎秉持着女孩的敏感体验，并结合以浓重的怀旧基调，来关照出个人成长和生存记忆的痕迹。
申亮以年轻一代共有的乡愁与记忆为作品基调。在早期的连环画系列中，老旧图像被激烈而厚涂的笔触所放大和覆盖，而近期黑白拓片式的绘画则以怀旧物品和黑白老照片为蓝本，在平涂式的图像上有意制造了一种塑性的立体感，并让这种颜料之物与图像中的物形成张力，似拓片般，把那个已经消逝了的过去记录下来，充满了物质性颜料的作品成了一种物体而不是一种图片，承载着厚重视觉质感的背后是艺术家的日常记忆和经验。
尚一心的工作重心从仅仅在画面上探索光影变幻，扩展到以光、物及影三者关系为主题的综合呈现，在系列装置及灯光作品中，“光”从多角度以不同的方式“观看”着“物”，并相伴着产生“物”的空间之“影”，影子和影子互相交织，叠加，又簇成新的形状。尚一心以距离、角度、重量、变形等的日常方式，使“物”在光与影的交织下定格在虚拟的某时某刻。
陶大珉z在平时留意着各种无用的、废弃的物品和自然物，如包装、纸盒、杂物、树枝、果实等等，以此作为画面本身和描绘对象，在写生、涂绘与再组织后，日常生活的“形状”在这些剩余物的画面上得以诗意般呈现出来面。而散落着一些琐碎物品的局部场景绘画，放大了微观的现场，以“物证”来想见与此发生关系的人，形成一种情感化的视觉空间。
肖江对于日常生活中的“场景”着迷，画面上安排的那些杂乱的空间-破败凌乱的客厅和书房、废弃的厂房、脏破的抽水马桶大多取材于生活和电影的片段，林林总总地排布着尽可能多的物质细节，制造了一个个琐碎物质化的日常场景，这些场景往往因人们的习以为常而被忽略，但在艺术家独特的视角之下，他们被截取和再组合，氛围笼罩下的调子弥漫着艺术家的个人情绪。
向庆华的转变开始于一系列词与像关系的日常绘画练习，图像对应成不同的语词，以一种“图像字”的表达，揭示了视觉与概念、观看与阅读之间的错置，而他对绘画性、作品本体、文字符号与图像之间关系的不断探究和实验，把绘画性本身作为语言分析的对象，使具体的绘画工作成为一种真正自觉的自我实践。
异化的日常
列斐伏尔把日常生活比喻为鲜花与茂林下隐蔽着的土壤，蕴藏着秘密的生机和丰富的意义，蕴藏着无限的他者。通过对周边生活和日常性的体验，将作品作为反思自我和日常生活的一种方式，相对于具象的日常感受，这是一种抽离的异化的日常,这些被抽离出来的日常物已经回不到日常，而是被作为“一个问题”呈现于作者和观者的面前。艺术总想表达隐藏于日常生活中的问题，虽然是以残缺和幻觉的方式。这些艺术言说的内容虽然是对日常现实的拥抱，但其艺术的语言逻辑不是日常语言，而是一种陌生化的反日常语言。一些矛盾相依的、不明确的微妙特性,赋予了日常和生活特有的生命力，在艺术和生活之间的“脉冲式”运动中，激发着日常生活中潜在的内在能量。
马秋莎从不避讳自己创作中的日常性，生活的日常碎片于她而言有更多可挖掘之处。在多种媒介游刃有余的创作中，她常以细腻、女性化的个体经验，探究人与人之间微妙且复杂的关系，借由身体或是身体局部传达对成长经验的微妙体悟，成为马秋莎影像创作中反复出现的特质；而在其新作中，装置和影像作品一如既往地在探讨关系，只是这次的关系从身体经验转移到了日常生活经验与事物之间，日常材料和物的原生属性与惯常情境被架空，背后的象征和隐喻被注入其中。
金石的装置作品带有浓郁的城乡结合部地区的气息，这种草根性的手法带有独特的个人体验，在《小买卖》系列中，使用最日常状态的材料，为底层人们制造娱乐设施与三轮车的结合体，一种廉价的奢华呈现在细节真实的物品，在平平淡淡的生活中显现出一幕幕的荒诞剧。
李景湖带有一贯生活化的创作经验，对于自我与周围环境的体察细密且微妙。他的装置作品与生活有种天然的亲密，选取的创作对象与材料都是一些平庸寻常的东西，他对待它们，就像一位小人物对生活寄予厚望并引发出对周遭的热情那样，细致地端详、研究它们，再将它们的元素分解、集合，重构成它们的现实。李景湖所思考的问题都直接来他的生活，而不是对艺术的某种策略性想象，使作品接近生活的本质。
廖斐的日常词汇往往与草图、方案、实践，或是哲学、科学以及未知联系起来，没有固定媒介、明确符号、或是深化主题，他的创作经验便是在生活体验不断地寻找能激发起兴趣的课题，并以艺术的方法或名义来提问和交流，平凡之物在廖斐的思辨和实践之下，似乎带有了炼金术般的面貌和可能。
苏畅的雕塑作品一直关乎自己以及他与周围生活的关系。来自于公共空间中普通寻常的“新村”景观，例如路、街道、门、长凳、电线杆等与日常生活关系密切的建筑，它们悉数被他微缩成一件件模型般大小的超写实雕塑，并加入了时间的痕迹，原先居住空间中的美好记忆在留恋与不舍的情绪下得以固化，并且构筑了一个无法移植的理想空间，它既夹杂着陌生化的日常情感，也成为抽离出来返身俯察当下的借喻物。
吴笛或多或少受到马修巴尼的影响，她的装置和绘画呈现出一种波普与哥特的华丽混合，丝绸、图片或是手术刀、针管、包扎、切割等与日常事物的拼接组合，优美的女性化视觉和触目的图像之间的反差形成了一定的对比，使得吴笛作品中处处流露着一股“美丽而惊竦”的氛围，生活的隐喻得以释放。
内在的视阈
席勒把艺术家分为伤感和朴素两种：伤感型的艺术家对社会叫喊，乞求在艺术中获得拯救；朴素型的艺术家则表达自己，用天生自然的方式创作，此次选取的青年艺术家显然属于后者。个体的生命充满了内在的经验和能量，在日常的生活经验中寻觅到视觉的审美维度，继而探寻到日常经验和自身气质的契合点，对他们说，材料、手法、技术、媒介对他们来说已经不是最大的问题，如何思考、表达自身与艺术本体语言的“有限”体悟成了重点，作品之于他们更多地是关于艺术家对待艺术的“态度”和对待日常、自然、时间、过程的一种关照，内在的细碎促成了一种独特的美学气质，突出精神的支点。在这个时间和空间被碎片化的社会和生活背景中，此类对艺术的表征更有一种向内的视界。
树、门、小径、房子——就像作品的标题一样，康海涛的作品用画笔描写了夜色笼罩下的单纯的生活场景，并像一位游吟诗人般，所有的作品都在诗意的调子下铺陈开，通过独具他个人化风格的语言塑造，赋予普通场景以别样的精神体悟。康海涛的夜色，将普通人司空见惯的经验转化为美学范式的视觉，营造了一种冷静又包有情愫的视像。
石至莹标志性的黑白色域系列绘画和影像作品，以草坪、大海、石头、一只杯子、一双鞋子等日常物与自然风景为描摹对象，与绚烂的景观社会形成了强列的视觉反差，简约中饱有无形的内敛张力，透露出一股当代心境所久违的自然带来的“崇高感”。石至莹的创作是在对日常经验的质朴感受中认识自己，并试图将自身气质与自然界的客观真实达成一致，并以艺术的名义完成这些工作，建立对艺术的态度。
于吉在工作过程中非常强调身体的介入和有强度的劳动，用极简的物质材料，如稀有的石头、青苔、树枝等来塑造时间和空间，让作品的制作本身成为一种体悟艺术、挖掘艺术与自我关系的过程，把艺术劳作看作是一种把事物转化为生活的身体体验，因而对于吉来说，最后作品的视觉呈现仅仅是日常实践的某种“反刍”和结果。
殷漪是城市声音的采集、记录和保存者。这座都市日常的声响片段，无论是地铁、花鸟市场、晚报、或生老病死，对于他都是重新认识与思考声音与空间、人之间关系的“听筒”。而作为实验艺术家他又以自身的方式再造听觉空间，在消除声音的工具理性的同时，又导入影像的体验，从而转化为在对凝视与体验的某种“沉浸”。
艺术以何种方式与立场介入参与日常生活，正前所未有地挑战着中国当代艺术的内部神经。从以上这些艺术家的自我实践中，可以看到一种明显不同于以往的思维特质：艺术家作为生命个体的思想洞见，探索与思考来自不同境界的生活场域与日常的体认，构建自我生活认同与艺术的关系。艺术对这些青年艺术家来说是一种日常的经验遭遇，如何在艺术实践和创作中摸索和建立自己与日常生活之间对话的努力成为了他们艺术出发的诉求。他们反复追问着：自我实践应该是什么样的，才能使它避免成为社会形态的注脚，而相反地成为一种释放的过程？自我实践应该是什么样的，才能在自我释放的过程中寻找到自我认同？正是这些问题引导他们从整体性的社会形态问题中“逃离”，重返日常生活的细节，从身边事物的经验出发，开启一种新的视角和思想模式来思考艺术。
Daily view: a practice of life
By Ma Yan
Come back to the living world—phenomenology scholar Husserl first made an affirmation for the daily life on the aspect of philosophy in the 1920s. He criticized the western positivist who always believe in the trust of conceptual knowledge and ignorant of living world and thought that those positivists wholly took the living world as a “plane life” without any depth. He began to focus on the effort moving from the transcendentalism to the return of daily life world. His affirmation of daily life and study diversion has influenced a lot of following scholars including the Heidegger’s “stay with the daily life together”, Agnes ·Helle who studied “daily life” and Lefebvre who focused on the “daily life of modern world”. Although the philosophy study of daily life is originated from social practical problems, it provides abundant theoretical resources for the following creation and aesthetic thinking of daily life.
From the macroscopic and diachronic perspective, modern Chinese art goes through the creation form of “collective” trend to the talk of daily life and daily experiences, focusing on the change for the “individual” art value effort. The daily life is usually regarded as a kind of cumbersome, ordinary, tiny and unimportant thing and the daily discussion and focus is often stay at a common sense of natural state and general meaning. The simple anterior image level means to observe the daily qualities is cumbersome, perceptual and direct. Besides those daily existences of fundamentality, daily life also includes observation, experience, inspiration and even introspection of all kinds of attitudes and practices of theory. This exhibition will discuss and focus on the various attitudes and understanding towards daily life when the youth artists are in art creation and also discuss the practical forms of daily view in modern youth creation on the perspective of art world, artists, art works and art ontology as well as the various statements and presentations of “daily” in youth art creation and works. Daily view is a kind of dynamic experience accumulated from the living practice and an attitude between sense and theory as well as a kind of perception that private experience faces the life and an understanding and thinking possibility in a more deeply level. In the specific art creation, those artists pay more attention to the daily subtle experience, “forcing” the eyes to find out the fierce and meticulousness of trivial life, emphasizing the rediscovery and experience of life itself, caring about the grasp of process and asking of time. So, their works show a strong daily quality, which is a comprehensive life creation method and visual experience.
Those youth artists who make art creation from the daily view and concept adopt daily objects as creation materials. From their perspective, art creation has become a “container” filled with daily life emotions, a self-talking between daily experience and artists, a thinking extension of real life instead of showing material form solely. The direction of views of those youth artists is not clear. Their art mainly focuses on those daily things such as, living environment, city they live in, tiles of old house, lawn, a cup or ordinary objects etc. which are unimportant but so closely to their own qualities and art language. And those things are all become their focuses and targets of expression. Through daily scene, phenomenon and experience, they explore the valid possibility of visual sense. “Daily” also has its multiple logics and expression. In those youth artists creation, there are some different visual aspects on daily view and various attitudes and tendencies towards the “borrowing” and “rhetoric” of life experience. One regards the daily objects as a kind of element to think about; another focuses on the introspection and knowing of life world and daily experience, which finds out the art strength in the ordinary life; last one emphasizes on the work quality towards inner writing of daily perspective. This exhibition tries to discuss these questions such as, besides the artists using the daily life elements, how the art and life influence each other? How the daily life form art is different from daily life? Is there a common daily view towards the private experience of life practice and gathering of daily multi-possibility? After the collection and carding towards those artists, it hopes that these words can become an evidence for a same view.
Space and objects in life
As a kind of “non-capitalized” daily thing, here, the daily view shows that the objects and living space are seen as a creation experience of element thinking. Artists find the “object that can be written” from the reality and life practice, releasing the visual possibility of those “ordinary” objects through drawing and compiling and finding out the past memory and emotional carrier from relevant “kind” cultural view. The creation targets and materials selected by artists are some ordinary things which come from the normal things in life. Art language is released in the work details. There is a natural intimate between works and daily life and a time and experience hiding behind the artists’ private emotions.
The photograph works of Chen Wei are full of abundant movie quality and black humor. In the unexpected arrangement of props and scene as well as the deeply thinking construction and recombination, he always gives the ordinary thing a certain strange and unusual symbol, showing a kind of dramatic conflict and tension in the picture. The recent works changes from focusing on the disorder scene and narration to a more refined, brief stage language as well as the portrait of ordinary things, which shows a “quiet thing” like drawing sense and returns to a familiar but also strange daily life.
Chen Yongwei often uses animation and drawing, those two forms to show his understanding on life experience and memory. His works such as, Endorsement of Memory Expenditure and Blur in Front of Table etc are all from the perspective of daily life to grasp the state of interaction between itself and outside world calmly and sensitively and recorded in a brief form to try to initiate a discussion about past and present, memory and reality.
The taste of Guo Hongwei is simple, feeble and poetic.He usually uses sundries often being seen in the office such as, paper cups, roll paper and toothbrush. However, in his recent works, he moves his attention from office where daily objects are full of to a wider area and continues to adopt mineral, birds and plant specimen as drawing forms of collection, induction and description. In his drawing illustration type watercolor paintings, he shows curiosity on the ordinary, tiny and common things in his world.
Hu Xiaoxiao is good at using and prefers adopting objects used in daily life as creation materials, using the daily objects in the past and present to integrate again in order to reveal the speculative connotation hiding behind the daily abstract information. While in her many scheme type installation works and the expression of ideas and the selection of making materials, she doesn’t pursuit feminine experience but keeps the sensitive experience of girl with the combination of strong nostalgic mood to show the individual growing and trace of survival memory.
Shen Liang uses the nostalgia and memory shared by the young generation as his work tone. In the earlier series of picture- story book, the old image was magnified and covered by the strong and thick drawing method, while in his recent works, the black and white rubbings type drawings was used nostalgic objects and black and white photos as blueprint. And he made a sense of plastic spatial perspective on the plane painting images on purpose and also made this kind of pigment object form a tension with the object in the image just like rubbings to record the disappeared past. The works filled with material pigment become an object rather than a picture. Behind the strong visual quality perception carried by the paintings is artists’ daily memory and experience.
The working emphasis of Shang Yixin has expanded from exploring the changing of light and shadow in the picture to the comprehensive representation which regards the relationship of light, object, shadow as the theme. In a series of installation and light works, the “light” uses different forms to see the “object” in various angles along with the “shadow” of producing the space of “object”. Shadows are interconnected and added to form a new shape. He uses the daily forms such as, distance, angle, weight and transformation etc. to make the “object” stay at a fictitious time under the interconnection of light and shadow.
Tao Damin usually pays attention to all kinds of useless, dumped objects and natural things such as, packages, paper boxes, sundries, tress branches, fruits etc. to use them as description targets of picture itself. After sketching, painting and reorganizing, the “shape” of daily life is presented poetically on the picture of those remainders. While the partial painting of some scattered objects expands the microscopic scene, which uses “physical evidence” to imagine the people related with this to form a kind of emotional visual space.
Xiao Jiang is obsessed with “scenes” of daily life. In the picture, there is much messy space such as, sloppy sitting room and the study, waste plant, dirty and torn flush toilet, which are all selected from life and movie fragments. The material details are arranged as many as possible to make a materialized daily scene one by one. Those scenes are too ordinary to be ignored by people, but in the special visual perspective of artists, they are clipped and reorganized. Artists’ personal emotion is permeated with the tune enveloped by that atmosphere.
The change of Xiang Qinghua starts from the daily drawing exercise relating to the relationship between word and image. The image is corresponding with different words expressed in a kind of “image words” to reveal the wrong arrangement between visual sense and concept, watching and reading. And in his continuous study and experiment towards the relationship between drawings, work noumenon, word symbol and image, he regards the drawing itself as the target of language analysis to make the specific drawing work become a real self-conscious self practice.
Dissimilatory daily
Lefebvre regarded daily life as the soil hiding under the flower and forest which stores secret vitality and abundant significance and also stores infinite others. Through the experience of daily life around, regarding works as a form of introspection and daily life, compared with daily perception, it is a kind of “daily” being pulled away and dissimilated. Those daily things being pulled away cannot come back to the daily but being regarded as “question” presented in the front of author and viewer. Although in an incomplete and illusory form, art always wants to express questions hiding behind the daily life. Although these art contents are the embrace to the daily reality, the language logic of art is not daily language but a defamiliarized anti-daily language. A lot of contradiction dependent, undefined subtle characters give the daily and life a special vitality, which arouses the inner energy hiding behind the daily life in the “impulse type” motion between art and life.
Ma Qiusha never avoids the daily elements in her creation and the daily life fragment, for her, has a lot aspect to be found. In the creation available for all kinds of mediums, she often uses exquisite, feminine individual experience to explore the subtle but complicated relationship between people, using body or part of body to express the subtle perception of growing experience, which becomes the special features repeated appearance in her photograph creation. However, in her new works, the installation and photograph works still explore the relations but this time, the relations are studied from the body experience, now, moving to the daily life experience and objects. The essential attribute and usual situation of daily materials and objects are all overhead but the symbol and metaphor behind it are injected.
The installation works of Jin Shi are filled with a strong sense of rural-urban fringe area. This kind of grass roots method has special individual experience. In a series of Small Business, using the most ordinary daily materials to make a combination of entertainment facilities with tricycle, a kind of cheap luxury presenting on the detailed real objects, shows theater of the absurd scene by scene in the ordinary life.
Li Jinghu often has consistent creation experience of life with a close and subtle observation between individual and surroundings. His installation works shows a natural intimate relation with life and the creation targets and materials selected are all ordinary things. He treats them just like an unimportant person who has a strong desirability on life and shows enthusiasm around him to think and study them and then, resolving, collecting and reforming their elements into reality. The questions thought by Li Jinghu are directly from his life but not a certain strategic imagination towards art to make the works close to the essence of life.
The daily words of Liao Fei are always connected with draft, plan, practice or philosophy, science and some unknown without fixed medium, confirmed signs or profound theme. His creation experience is to find the courses in life experience that can arouse the interest, using art method or name to ask a question and communicate. Ordinary things in his thinking and practice seem to have alchemy like appearance and possibility.
The sculpture works of Su Chang always cares about himself and the relationship between him and life around, coming from the ordinary “new village” view in public space such as, street, buildings, trees, ladders, benches, fence and other buildings having a closely relation with daily life. They are all narrowed into a piece of model sized super realistic sculpture with adding the element of time trace. Those beautiful memories in the original living space are fixed under the emotion of loving staying and leaving unwillingly, constructing an ideal space that cannot be transplanted which not only contains defamiliarized daily emotions but also becomes the current figural things that can be observed when getting out.
Wu Di is more or less influenced by Matthew barney. Her installation and drawings present a kind of gorgeous mix of Pope and Gothic with the combination of silk, picture or scalpel, needle tubing, bandage and cutting with daily things. The contrast between graceful feminine visual sense and striking images forms a certain comparison which makes his works contain a kind of “soft violence” everywhere and thus, releasing the living metaphor.
Internal perspective
Schiller divided artists into two types, sentimental and simplicity. The former shouts towards society to beg for rescue in art; the latter expresses himself in a natural creation way. The youth artists selected this time obviously belong to the latter. Individual life is filled with inner experience and energy. Find out the visual aesthetic dimension in the daily life experience to explore the conjunction point between daily life and self qualities. For them, materials, tact, techniques and mediums are not the biggest problem. How to think and express “finitude” perception between themselves and art language has become emphasis. Works for them are mainly about the “attitudes” of artists towards art as well as a kind of care to treat daily, nature, time and process. The inner comminution helps to bring about a special aesthetic temperament highlighting the mental fulcrum. In this society and living background whose time and space are fragmentized, this type of art characterization has a more inward sight.
The picture of Kang Haitao doesn’t have any special symbols or structures of expressive function but selects many simple scenes at night through language model with personal style to give ordinary scene a special spiritual perception. He uses darkness as content and mood, transforming the daily experience accustomed to ordinary person into unfamiliar visual normal form, which constructs a kind of calm, dignified and distant spiritual image in the uncertain visual experience so that expressing the painting to the perfection and making the language itself possess some concept meaning.
Shi Zhiying’s landmark drawings and image works are a series of black and white domain which use daily objects such as, lawn, sea, stone, a cup, a pair of shoes etc. and natural scenery as depicting targets thus, forming a strong visual contrast with the gorgeous society of the spectacle, simple but having intangible inside collect tension, disclosing a natural “lofty sense” which hasn’t been seen in contemporary state of mind for a long time.
Yu Ji emphasizes the intervention of body and intense labor in the process of work, using simple materials such as, rare stone, moss, tree branches to mould time and space to make the art making process into a kind of art perception, discovery of the relation between art and self. He regards the art working as a body experience of turning objects into life, thus, for him, the visual presentation of works at last is only a certain “rumination” and result of daily practice.
Yin Yi is the collector, recorder and preserver of city voice. The daily sound fragments in this city, no matter it is subway, bird and flower market, evening paper or birth, senility, illness and death, they are all “stethoscopes” for him to rediscover and think about the relationship between sound and space, people. As an experiment artist, he adopts his own way to reconstruct the auditory space. When he eliminates the vocal instrumental rationality, the image experience is also leaded in at the same time, which turns into a kind of “immersion” towards stare and experience.
The question that art will use which forms and standpoints to intervene and participate the daily life is challenging the inner nerves of Chinese contemporary artists unprecedentedly. Through the self practice of the above artists, we can see an obvious thinking speciality different from the past. That is as thinking insight of individual life, artists are exploring and thinking the life field and daily perception coming from different realms and constructing the relationship between the self-identity of life and art. Art, for those youth artists, is a kind of daily experience encounter. How to explore and build the dialogue effort between themselves and daily life in art practice and creation has become their art appeal. They ask again and again about what the self practice should be like so that avoiding it becoming the footnote of social formation, but on contrary, it will become a process of releasing. What the self practice should be like in order to find the self-identification in the process of self releasing. It is those questions that guide them “escape” away from the integral social form problem to return the details of daily life. Start from the experience of objects around to open a new visual angle and thought pattern to think about art.
December 3rd, 2012, in Shanghai
