胶囊上海｜陈丽同：核心样本

陈丽同：核心样本 Leelee Chan: Core Sample

展期 Date: 2019.02.16 - 04.05

开幕 Opening: 2019.02.16, 3 - 6 pm

地址 Venue: 胶囊上海, 中国上海徐汇区安福路275弄16号1楼

Capsule Shanghai, 1st Floor, Building 16, Anfu Lu 275 Nong, Xuhui District, Shanghai, China 

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2019年2月16日至4月5日，胶囊画廊很荣幸呈现香港艺术家陈丽同的首次个展——“核心样本”。展览涵盖了艺术家过去3年所创作的雕塑、绘画与拼贴作品以及特别为画廊空间所制作的现场装置。

作为一名生活并工作于香港的年轻艺术家，陈丽同选择了持续性地从事雕塑创作，无疑是令人意外与好奇的。当然，这一选择离不开她在美国接受绘画及雕塑的艺术教育和训练。但生活在香港这一空间十分局限、艺术高度商业化的都市环境中，以雕塑为主要创作形式对艺术家而言是需要魄力的。但另一方面，环境与空间的复杂特性也使得她的创作实践并没有走向抽象或形式化的道路，反而是在作品中结合了大量日常生活中的现成物，以介乎于自然和工业之间的模糊状态呈现了现成品精工细作表象下的廉价劳动与情感剥削。所以，她的雕塑并不抽象，而是具体的、原始的。她以最自然地设置去铺排生活中的非自然人工物。

Artist Book Primal Matter  艺术家书《原始物质》

在《凝伫之盘（海洋）》（2019）中，这一处于封闭和外露之间的创作特质得到了最大程度的体现：塑料货板托盘的方形空格被树脂灌注，仿制成中国古典花窗；收集自汽车维修店的黑色泡沫包装物被混凝土所填充、包裹，组成了外围的框架结构；以及被嵌入混泥土结构中的六角形金属零件，和那些被暴露在平面上、如海洋生物一般的尼龙扎带，各种看似混乱无序的物质客体在工业的痕迹和伪造的自然之间实现了去粗取精的和谐。同样，《凝伫之盘 (引道)》（2019）中，被弃置的产品废料（木质货板托盘、粉红色泡沫包装块、半月形玻璃）被艺术家剔除了原有的核心价值物。这些曾经发挥辅助功能的材料本质和设计结构被规整地组合在一起，重构为一组复杂的镂空结构雕塑，又巧妙地流露出些了许自然意象。

Pallet in Repose (marine) 凝伫之盘（海洋）｜2019｜detail 局部

在陈丽同的作品中，物质的原始特性在她的实践中成为了一个矛盾而戏虐的本质存在。就像是工业零件被嵌入了混凝土灌注的鸡蛋包装中，凝固为380个坚硬的“藤壶[1]”。原有的形式与结构被反向凝固，主体性也在此过程中也发生了转换。鸡蛋如果这些灰色“藤壶”碰撞，应该会一击即碎（《藤壶》（2019））。汽车挡风玻璃、贝壳、鸡蛋包装、混凝土和石膏这些质地迥异的物质被她组装成一台不可触碰“白色扭蛋机”。这些具有“保护”功能的材料与设计形式被编织为一个现代社会的图腾，闪亮而脆弱的希望也被封锁其中（《守护者》, 2018）。石头纹路的马赛克瓷砖装饰的方形神龛里珍藏着叶片残骸，这些在拾得物讽刺着考古学和现代主义间的悖论。同时，无论是仿自然石纹的瓷砖图案，还是来源于香港城市中随处可见的细小马赛克墙面装饰和街巷中的神龛，都使得内里的叶片愈发脆弱不堪（《叶屋》，2017）。置于展览户外庭院空间中的作品《日暮胶囊》，2019，被残破、穿孔的混凝土结构所覆盖的led灯管装置，结合着金属结构和杂乱的电缆。它们以琥珀色的人工光照来营造了一个属于上海城市的恒久黄昏。

Sunset Capsule 日暮胶囊｜2018

在陈丽同的创作实践中，那些被丢弃在汽车店、超市、工业区街道边的无用之物却是重要的素材。她将工业或商品化材料的原有属性剥落，工业的痕迹被转化为更进一步的虚构自然。所以，这就可以理解为什么在陈丽同的创作过程中她会把那些现成品包裹在混凝土和水性树脂中，使其完全不可见，或是暴露出最本质的粗糙与人工质感。陈丽同的创作在某种程度上是拒绝被直接观看的，或是通过物质既有的形式和结构来消除对意义的单一化阐释和解读。这些现成品里所蕴含的丰富信息和社会议题并不是具体事件，而是普遍地渗透在人类日常生产与消费的经济模式中。她所探究的是：形式为何是该形式，本质又是何种本质？

[1] 藤壶是常见于海岸线、附着于海边岩石上的动物。它们多呈现为锥形，且在成虫后不能移动，因此常被误认为植物。艺术家取其群聚特性及表象来命名。

原文出处：“陈丽同：反向凝固”／陈立

Capsule Shanghai is pleased to present Leelee Chan’s solo exhibition Core Sample, on view from February 16th to April 5th. The exhibition includes a selection of sculptures, paintings and collage works realized over the past three years, as well as her latest site-specific installations.

As a young artist living and working in Hong Kong, Leelee Chan has － quite surprisingly and intriguingly － dedicated herself to sculpture. This choice is a result of her artistic education and her training in painting and sculpture in the United States. But in Hong Kong, a city with limited space and a highly commercialized art scene, it takes a daring artist to choose sculpture as one’s primary medium. The complexity of Hong Kong’s environment and space, however, allows Chan’s creative practice to stray from both abstraction and formalization. Chan incorporates myriads of ready-made daily objects in her works, revealing the cheap labor and emotional exploitation beneath the refined surfaces of these objects through a blurred state between nature and industry. Her sculptures are not “abstract,” therefore, but concrete and primal, laying out artificial objects in a seemingly natural arrangement.

Transmitter 传送者｜2017

This interplay between closure and exposure is most evident in Pallet in Repose (marine)(2019). The empty square grids of a plastic pallet are filled with resin, evoking a classical Chinese window panel. Black foam packaging materials collected from auto repair shops are filled and wrapped with concrete, forming the exterior structure. The hexagonal metal parts embedded in the concrete structure and the nylon cable ties resembling marine creatures clinging to the surface create a refined harmony between industrial vestiges and a simulated nature. Similarly, in Pallet in Repose (portal) (2019), the artist removes the original core components of value from discarded product waste (wooden pallets, pink foam packaging blocks, half-moonshaped glasses). The materiality and the design previously used for auxiliary functions are neatly integrated to rebuild a series of elaborate, skeletonized structures, wisely recalling perceptions of nature.

Pallet in Repose (Portal) 凝伫之盘 (引道)｜2019｜局部

In Chan’s works, the primitive essence of an object becomes contradictory and witty. For example, she embeds hardware metal nuts into a plastic egg container filled with concrete condensing into 380 hard “acorn barnacles”[1] (Barnacles, 2019). The material’s original form and structure are solidified in reverse; while the subjectivity completes its transformation: real eggs would break if they were to come into contact with these gray “acorn barnacles.” In Protector (2018), Chan employs a variety of different materials such as a car windshield, seashells, an egg packaging, concrete, and mother of pearl to assemble an untouchable “capsule toy machine.” These materials all share a “protective” function; they are woven into a totem of a modern society, sealing a gleaming but fragile hope. In House of Leaves (2017), leaves skeletons are encased in an imaginative shrine composed of a found fake stone-textured plastic frame and stone mosaic tiles, resembling those shrine stucked away in the alleys of Hong Kong’s urban space — these objects satirize the paradox between archaeology and modernism. Displayed in the gallery’s outdoor courtyard, Sunset Capsule, (2019) comprises LED construction lights combined with perforated concrete casts of their covers, metal parts and entangled cables. Giving off an artificial amber glow, the device re-creates a lasting Shanghai sunset.

House of Leaves 叶屋｜2017

In Chan’s artistic practice, the objects discarded behind an auto shop, a supermarket, or industrial zones become important artistic materials. The abundant information and social insinuations contained in these objects do not constitute specific events, but permeate the economic model of our daily production. It is understandable, then, why Chan wraps these ready-made products in concrete and Aqua-Resin, elevating their forms and exposing their underlying crudeness and artificiality. She forcibly rejects the absolute reality of nature but instead incorporates it into her criticism of the consumerism that plagues everyday lives. To some extent, Chan’s art works reject a direct gaze, or they eliminate a simplistic interpretation of meaning through a given object’s existing form and structure. Thus, in Chan’s works, form is more than a metaphysical meditation or a re-creation of a landscape, it is rather a complete embodiment of an object, whose form and nature are fully preserved and grafted. She explores the questions: "Why is the form in this form? And what is the essence in these essences?"

[1] Acorn barnacles are shoreline animals attached to seaside rocks. They are usually conical, becoming immobile once fully grown, and often mistaken for plants. The artist uses this name in reference to these animals’ communal nature.

Original text by Leo Li Chen, Leelee Chan：Solidification in Reverse

陳麗同于1984年出生于中国香港，2006年从芝加哥艺术学院学院毕业并于2009年从美国罗德岛设计学院获艺术硕士，目前在香港生活。陳麗同曾在不同的国际艺术机构呈现她的作品包括大馆当代艺术馆（中国香港）；Neptune空间 (中国香港) ；Artemis项目空间 (约克, 英国) ；Dorado项目空间（美国纽约）；Flux Factory空间（美国纽约）；Parallel 艺术空间（美国纽约）；Tompkins 项目空间（美国纽约）；Horse Trader画廊（美国纽约）；The Three Season 画廊（美国芝加哥）；Sol Koffler 画廊（美国普罗维登斯）。其作品也曾多次于国际艺术杂志包括Frieze雜誌、南華早報、亞太藝術雜誌、Cotonoha、Ocula线上平台, Bushwick 日报, Art F City, and The Providence 期刊中刊出。

Leelee Chan was born in 1984 in Hong Kong. She received her MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2009 and her BFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. She currently lives and works in Hong Kong. Her work was exhibited internationally including Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong), Neptune (Hong Kong), Artemis Project Space (York, UK), The Dorado Project (New Jersey, USA), Flux Factory (New York, USA), Parallel Art Space (New York, USA), Tompkins Projects (New York, USA), Horse Trader Gallery (New York, USA), The Three Season Gallery (Chicago, USA), Sol Koffler Gallery (Providence, USA). Her work has been covered by Frieze, South China Morning Post, Art Asia Pacific, Cotonoha, Ocula, Bushwick Daily, Art F City, and The Providence Journal.

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