星空间｜香港巴塞尔线上展厅

2020香港巴塞尔艺术展 | 线上展厅

ART BASEL HONG KONG ONLINE VIEWING ROOMS

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2020/03/18, 6pm BJT - 03/20, 6pm BJT

公众开放 PUBLIC ACCESS

2020/03/20, 6pm BJT - 03/25, 6pm BJT

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亚洲不安之旅

“亚洲不安之旅”的关键词是“不安”，旅居中国的饭田祐子曾在其2008年的个展中首次使用。作为一家地处北京的画廊，星空间代理了以中国艺术家为主的亚洲艺术家，并试图通过他们的作品来呈现：艺术家如何解读与自身相关的历史？对急剧变化的社会现实做何反应？怎样以富于创造性的方式形成个人美学？2013至2014年，星空间借用“亚洲不安之旅”这一主题，曾与更多的艺术家讨论“不安”，完成了跨年度的系列展。2020年伊始，星空间再度以“亚洲不安之旅”为题，在巴塞尔艺术展线上展会呈现19位艺术家的作品，在一个令人极度不安的特殊时期，在艺术的世界里寻求情感的共鸣并激发思考。

Focusing on the Chinese artists of this social transforming period, to whom “uneasiness” is both a shared imprint and the source of inspiration, we attempt to arouse emotional resonance and thinking with the works from 19 artists at this uneasy 2020.

“Uneasy” is the key word of “Uneasy Trip in Asia”, the title of a series exhibition derived from the 2008 solo show of Iida Yuko, a Japanese artist living in China. Located in Beijing, Star Gallery has been focusing on the artists in Asia, especially in China, trying to present the following topics with their works of art: How do they interpret the history relevant to themselves? How do they react to the drastically changing reality? How do they form their own aesthetics in a creative way? In 2013 and 2014, Star Gallery borrowed the title of “Uneasy Trip in Asia” to bring more artists into the discussion about the “uneasiness” with the result of a series cross-year exhibition. At the beginning of 2020, “Uneasy Trip of Asia” became the gallery’s theme again as the title of its Art Basel online showroom, in which the artworks from 19 artists will be shown with the attempt to seek emotional resonance and to encourage thinking in the art world at this extremely “uneasy” moment.

陈可 Chen Ke

包豪斯女孩No.1  Bauhaus Girl No. 1

木板上油画 Oil on board

27.3 × 22CM

2020

CNY 58,800

陈可曾绘制过弗里达、梦露、伍尔夫、阿勃斯等具有标志意义的女性肖像，她的这一类作品皆因她对相关摄影作品的着迷而触发。2020年，她开启的新计划“包豪斯女孩”亦是如此，一本名为《bauhaus mädels》的影集引起她的注意，该书封面印有一行小字：“致敬女性先锋艺术家”（a tribute to pioneering women Artist ），扉页上写着“女孩子有求知欲”（girls want to learn something ），书中一个又一个年轻女孩的面孔像初生的朝阳，新鲜、独立、自信，对未来充满期待。“在她们身上似乎看到二十岁的我的影子，也看到女性与周遭环境磨合的艰难历程。我想要转译这些面孔，记录生命的短暂与永恒，时间的快速与缓慢。”

Inspired by the photo books of Frida Kahlo, Marilyn Monroe, Adeline Virginia Woolf and other iconic female figures, Chen Ke has been painting portraits for these women. 2020 marks the start of her new project “Bauhaus Girls”, which also comes from a photo book subtitled “a tribute to pioneering women artists”— Bauhausmädels (Taschen, 2019) . As the title page of book writes, “girls want to learn something”. The faces in this book are like the rising sun, which belong to one and another fresh, independent, confident and young women looking forward to their bright future. “I kind of saw myself in the 20s from these girls, as well as women’s struggles with our surroundings. I want to interpret these faces, recording life, transient and eternal; time, fast and slow. 

饭田祐子 Iida Yuko 

独居红灯 Solitary Red Light

综合材料 Mixed Media 

95×120cm

2011

CNY 30,000

《独居红灯》来自于饭田祐子在台湾驻留时的亲身体验，是她在散步途中偶然看到的景色：晚上，在一个破旧的老房子里，一个老太太开着门吃饭，点亮了台湾老百姓家中常见的两盏红色的灯，“我被吸引了，有一种寂寥，但说不上具体是什么，黑暗中的光线像是一种希望，也许她并不寂寞，中华五千年的各种神仙陪伴着她。”

Solitary Red Light derives from Iida Yoko’s encounter on a walk during her residency in Taiwan: In the evening, an old lady is having dinner in a shabby old house with the door open and the dim light on. The red light comes from two common lamps in the ordinary Taiwanese households. “I was absorbed. It’s a kind of solidarity, or something I couldn’t tell. The light in the darkness was like a hope. Maybe she wasn’t lonely at all, for she might have all the fairies from the Chinese nation’s five-thousand years with her.

金氏彻平 Teppei Kaneuji

青春粉丝俱乐部（巨怪）Teenage Fan Club (Giant)

铸铜，金箔  Bronze, gold foil

W200×H310×D65cm

2019

CNY 1,280,000

从童年时起，金氏彻平就显现出他对“收集”的浓厚兴趣，起初是玩具和贴纸，后来则延伸到各种各样的工具与日用品，一直延续至今，这些“收藏”构成了他艺术项目的“培养基”，等待通过他的“拼贴”而获得重生。《青春粉丝俱乐部》是他最具代表性的系列之一，其创作方式是用手办中的头发与现成的塑像组合，构成一个全新的魔幻造型。作为该系列中迄今为止最大的一件，这尊高约3米的金色雕像的“身体”是楚巴卡，他是《星球大战》中富于力量的忠诚勇士，他的正面被难以计数的头发完全覆盖，以夸张的手法象征着千万青春粉丝的簇拥。

From an early age, Teppei Keneuji has been a collector and assembler of the objects that fascinate him. Beginning with toys and stickers, his collection has evolved to tools and other items. His fascination with such things continues to the present, becoming the “matrix” of his future projects. Teenage Fan Club is hailed as Teppei Keneuji’s most famous series, in which various colors of iconic hairstyles climbed up a readymade figurine of what looked liked Chewbacca, a strong and loyal warrior from Star Wars. This seemingly surreal approach of artistic expression by recasting the ordinary underscores the fan culture typical in Japan in the age of global consumerism that the artist’s practice has been deriving from theretofore. So far, Teenage Fan Club (Giant), a 3-meter-tall gilded bronze cast, is the largest piece of this series. 

康好贤 Kang Haoxian

写虚之掩悲  Hiding Sorrow, Abstraction

木板丙烯喷漆  Paint spray on board

31×21cm

2020

CNY 5,000

《掩悲》是康好贤近期完成的系列作品中的一幅，这批作品关注人物的表情及肢体语言，并刻意揭示其中的矛盾性或复杂性。《掩悲》的人物用手掩面，貌似正在悲伤哭泣，“现实生活里外表悲伤，内心欢心雀跃的事情并不少见。”

Hiding Sorrow is one of Kang Haoxian’s recently completed works that emphasize the facial expressions and body languages of the subjects, whose internal contradictoriness and complexity are revealed by the artist intentionally. The subject in Hiding Sorrow, seemingly weeping in sorrow, covers her face with both hands. “It’s nothing rare in life that one who appears to be sad is actually quite happy inside.”

李继开 Li Jikai

看书 Reading

布面丙烯 Acrylic on canvas

60×50cm

2020

CNY 55,000

一个带有自我隐喻的少年形象，始终贯穿在李继开的创作中，伴随年龄的增长，这一人物也日渐苍老，甚至多了几分邋遢，以一种自嘲的姿态承载着他步入不惑之年后的人生体悟。2020年初，武汉爆发新冠肺炎，常驻于此的李继开被隔离在家中，完成了新作《看书》。画中的人物被包裹得严严实实，背负着比肩膀更宽的行囊，矗立在一片灰蓝色的天空前。他的右手带着手套，擎着一本打开的书，似在阅读。这本书恰好挡住了他的口鼻，将观众的注意力全部留给了他那令人窒息的目光，说不清是惊恐还是木呐。较之平日，李继开在这幅作品中的绘画状态更为放松，更加任由直觉的摆布，“现在每天我只能关门闭户画画，往往在起了一个形后，便让自已的习惯与偶然去引领我，走去未知又必然的那个画面的终点，这是我追寻的自由和宿命的限制。”

It’s the image of a self-metaphorical youngster continues to inform Li Jikai’s works. Growing old with the artist, the youngster also turned to a middle-aged man in his 40s, sometimes sloppy, still a vessel of the artist’s understanding of life with self-deprecating humor. In the beginning of 2020, due to the outbreak of novel coronavirus, Wuhan-based Li Jikai was quarantined at home and completed this new work Reading, in which a well-muffled figure carrying a pack wider than his shoulder stands upright below the dusty blue sky, probably reading the open book in his gloved right hand. The book covers his mouth and nose, diverting all the attention of the audience to his breathtaking eyes. One could barely tell whether it’s panic or numbness in his eyes. When he was working on this painting, Li Jikai has loosened up and relied more on his tuition than usual. “I can do nothing but painting with the door closed nowadays. After making a draft, I will let my habits and the fortuities take the lead, taking me to the unknown but inevitable destination of the painting, as required by the freedom and fate that I’ve been after.

刘海辰 Liu Haichen

失联 Out of Contact

纸本油画棒 Oil pastel on paper

38×108cm

2020

CNY 20,000

《失联》描绘了一个军机坠毁的现场，夜晚冰河上的搜寻者、等待营救的坠机者，这些身处危险境地的人们，点燃了画家的欲望，“我仅关注的是晃动的光线，光线带来的紧张感，激活了我的不安。”

Out of Contact depicts a military crash, where the people in danger — the searchers on the frozen river at night and the victims waiting for rescue — ignited the painter’s desire. “All of my attention was on the swaying light beams, who have created a tension that activated the uneasiness inside me.”

刘香成 Liu Heungshing

大连理工大学里，一位滑旱冰的学生滑过一座毛主席像。

辽宁，1981

A student skates past a statue of Chairman Mao. 

Dalian Institute of Technology, Liaoning Province, 1981

黑白喷墨打印

315克哈内姆勒摄影纯棉硫化钡纸

B&W inkjet print

Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Baryta 315 gsm

55×37cm

19/50

CNY 80,000

这幅照片是刘香成最富代表性的作品之一，曾收录于其首部个人摄影集《China After Mao（毛以后的中国）》（企鹅出版，1983），2010出版的中文版《中国：1976-1983》一书曾将其作为封面， 2008年Taschen出版的《 China, Portrait of a Country（中国，一个国家的肖像）》将其作为封底。在2019年由德国Steidl出版的摄影集《A Life in a Sea of Red（红海余生）》中，刘香成回忆了1981年的拍摄经过：“我接到纽约编辑部的通知，跟拍第一批即将在中国开设MBA课程的美国学者。教授们去上太极拳课的时候，我借此时机在校园散步，邂逅了一位滑旱冰的学生。在拍下这张他即将滑过毛像的照片前，我已经进行了几次尝试。这张照片似乎在说：举国上下已经做好准备迎接新的发展方向。许多中国知识分子将1976年后的几年间视为中国的’第二次启蒙’。中国的第一次启蒙是1919年学生反对《凡尔赛条约》的‘五四运动’，在那之后，德国人占领的租界落入了日本人手中。”

As one of the most characteristic works of Liu Heung Shing, this photograph has been included in the artist first photo book, China after Mao (Penguin, 1983), chosen as the cover image of its Chinese version — China after Mao: 1976-1983 (WPC, 2010), the back cover of China, Portrait of a Country (Taschen, 2008), and published in A Life in a Sea of Red by the renowned German publisher Steidl in 2019. “I was on assignment to photograph the first group of American academics to teach MBA courses in China. While the American professors took a class in taiqi, the Chinese breathing exercise, I wondered around the campus and came across a student on roller skates. I took several photographs before I achieved the frame that he was seemingly skating past Mao as if China was on course to embrace a new direction of national development, which many Chinese intellectuals have described the years immediately after Mao’s death that China had experienced a ‘Second Enlightenment’. The first being the 1919 May Fourth Movement when Chinese youths opposed the 1918 Versailles Treaty, which turned German-occupied concessions in China to Japan.”

庞宽 Pang Kuan

机器人两室一厅-第八集氷山下の机械人 Robot Liangshi Yiting - Episode 8: Robot by the Iceberg

单频道有声影像 Single channel HD video

4′25″

2018

庞宽创作的机器人“两室一厅”融合了他的音乐创作与现场行为表演，具有标志性的头盔来自网络文化，跳动的表情符号创造了他独有的面孔。《机器人两室一厅》系列影像目前共分为八集，讲述了这个机器人的诞生、日常生活、音乐演出、远行等不同的故事。

Pang Kuan’s Robot Liangshi Yiting series is a mixture of his music and live performances. The iconic helmet of Liangshi Yiting, whose facial expressions are made up with dancing emojis, deprives from the internet culture. The Robot Liangshi Yiting video series consists of 8 episodes, telling the story of the robot from the birth to his daily life, live music performances and long journeys.

彭磊 Peng Lei

我们羞于表达的感情 The Feeling We Are Ashamed to Express

布面丙烯 Acrylic on canvas

50×40cm

2019

CNY 100,000

新裤子乐队主唱彭磊具有多重身份，在音乐事业以外，漫画、电影、动画是他极为着迷的领域。他创造了咪咪和嘎嘎这两个角色，并用他们的故事承载他对社会现实的批判、也体现他对生活的温情。《我们羞于表达的感情》即是对都市平常人的写照，“两个人在普通的居民楼里过着平淡的生活，就算生活有时很无聊，但因为有了彼此细水长流的陪伴，才从不会感觉厌倦。”该作品于2019年作为与大张伟合作的同名单曲封面。

Peng Lei, vocal of the rock band New Pants, has multiple identities. Beside his music career, he is also fascinated by comics, movies and animations. He has created Mimi and Gaga, a pair of roles who criticize the social reality and express their love for life on his behalf. The Feeling We are Ashamed to Express is a portrait of the ordinary urbanites. “The two of them live an uneventful life in an ordinary residential building. Even though life is boring sometimes, they are never tired of it as long as they have each other’s long and consistent company.” This painting has been chosen as the cover of Peng Lei’s 2019 EP with the same title featuring Wowkie Zhang.

邱炯炯 Qiu Jiongjiong

行者  Ascetics

布面丙烯  Acrylic on canvas

100×120cm

2020

CNY 88,000

僧人与圣徒是邱炯炯绘画中常见的主题，他所塑造的形象往往带有作者对自我的隐喻，他所构思的情节也往往体现了他对现实世界的关照。2020年的新作《行者》描绘了一段自我放逐的旅途，画面中的两个人物正在中国川南的废墟内歇脚。位于画面右侧的僧人像只猴子，他的面庞有如年迈的孙悟空，背着书箱，凝望远方，神情疲惫而悲悯。书箱内坐着同行的白鹅，它是诸多古代画家笔下的缪斯，书箱内的卷轴，承载着有关绘画的坚信和虔敬。位于画面左侧的门徒在战斗的间隙喝着酒水，他头缠绷带，怒发冲冠，片刻的歇息过后他还要继续迎接恶战，继续书写这个世界的启示录。在他们身后的那片废墟中，还可依稀看到村落、人物和富有象征意味的白马以及被木签戳中的果子。“废墟像一个片场，如同我2019年在乐山拍摄《椒麻堂会》的影棚，我在一个封闭的大棚里用废弃的材料一点一滴地重构自己的故乡。”

Monks and saints are often seen in the paintings of Qiu Jiongjiong, whose subject matters are usually metaphors of the painter himself. More often than not, the plots that he conceives reflects his concern about real world. His latest painting in 2020 depicted a journey of self-exile, in which a pair of monks stop for a rest in a ruin of South Sichuan, China. The one on the right side looks like a monkey with the face of the elderly Sun Wukong. Worn but still filled with mercy and compassion, he gazes into the distance. A goose, which has been the “muse” in a number of ancient artists, sits along with loads of scrolls symbolizing the faith and reverence for painting in the bookcase on his back. The disciple on the left with bandages swathing his head was raging. In the middle of a savage war, he was having a drink during the interval of battles. He will continue to write the apocalypses for mankind after this short break. Behind them, villages, figures, a symbolic white horse and a sticked fruit are just visible in the ruins. “The ruin is like the set of a movie, the studio of Neo-New Adventures, the hometown that I had reconstructed with castoff materials bit by bit in a big shed.” 

宋琨 Song Kun

泛灵生物-软体 Sukhavati - Mollusc

木板油画 Oil on board

直径 Diameter 59.5cm

2016

CNY 95,000

宋琨偏爱的视觉母题中不乏章鱼、水母等这一类柔软而致命的生物体。当下人工建造的“伪自然”和原始自然及人类自然属性的本来样貌出现了很多杂交状态，宋琨真正感兴趣这些混搭的部分，这也是她想象力的来源。因此，这样一种营造不可避免地被赋予了某种社会意涵。延续“千吻之深”及“泛灵净界”系列作品里对软体生物图像的使用，这张伸开触手捕猎的章鱼意指“贪婪”，人类恶业的“贪嗔痴慢疑”里，贪是第一位的，是人类恶业的首要来源，宋琨具体描绘了这一图像，作为对现实的暗喻和警示。

Creatures that are soft but lethal, like octopus and jellyfish, are among Song Kun’s favorite visual themes. The manmade “artificial nature” are mixing together with the original appearance of primal nature and human nature, creating many hybrid forms. Her true interest lies in these hybrid forms, and these are the source of her imagination. Thus, it is unavoidable that such contrasts would be imbued with social implications. As a continuation of Song Kun’s utilization of mollusc in A Thousand Kisses Deep and the Sukhavati series, the octopus in this painting, hunting with its tentacles stretching out, is a symbol of “greed”, the first of the “five poisons” to human beings, i.e. greed, hatred, ignorance, pride, and doubt, and the primary source of bad karma. Song Kun has depicted this image in great detail as a metaphor of the reality and an alarm at the same time.

孙彦初 Sun Yanchu

迷途-初夏 Lost Souls - Early Summer

收藏级艺术微喷 Archival pigment print

80×60cm

2012

CNY 10,000

孙彦初在高速行驶的车内用传统的胶片相机拍照，这很像是一种赌博，飞速闪现的景物使拍摄的结果难以预期，但越是难以控制就越激发孙彦初的快感，他所迷恋的正是这种不安全感，并且他能够依赖自己独有的经验、技巧和直觉，从中斩获令人过目不忘的影像，让我们在恍惚的影像中，体验生命如白驹过隙。

Sun Yanchu photographs when he sits in fast moving vehicles with a traditional film camera. It’s like a gamble with unpredictable results when he shoots an object quickly flying past. For the artist, however, the harder the better. He is so obsessed with such insecurity that allows him to catch something totally unforgettable with the experiences, techniques and instincts only to his possession, something that allows us to feel life passing away like a fleeting show in the blurred and indistinct images that he gets.  

仝天庆 Tong Tianqing

踏雪寻梅 Go Over the Snow in Search of Plum Blossoms

纸本水墨设色  Ink and color on paper

35×35cm

2020

CNY 2,000

《踏雪寻梅》是仝天庆为鼠年特制的生肖水墨系列之一。鼠年之初，北方连降几场瑞雪。然而，人们却无心欣赏雪景，因为武汉肺炎的肆虐，人们不敢聚集甚至必须被隔绝在室内。只能通过图画来聊以自慰了。画面中拟人化的老鼠着冬衣手擎梅花折枝，在雪地中愉快独行。这是很多普通人在庚子年初春的雪天里的美好憧憬。

Go Over the Snow in Search of Plum Blossoms is part of Tong Tianqing’s Year of the Mouse ink on paper series. There were several auspicious snow falls in the beginning of the year of mouse in north China. However,  people didn’t have the mood to admire the snow due to the outbreak of the rampant novel coronavirus, which forbade people from coming outside or gathering. For Tong Tianqing, the only relief has been painting. In Go Over the Snow in Search of Plum Blossoms, a personified mouse in winter clothes is walking in the snow alone with a branch taken from a plum blossom tree. It’s the scene that is longed for by many ordinary people in the spring of 2020. 

王一凡 Wang Yifan

吴小可与大沙发 Wu Xiaoke and the Big Sofa

布面油画 Oil on canvas

80×60cm

2020

CNY 42,000

王一凡坚持与当代绘画流行风格形成“距离感”，他喜欢从较为冷门的或“过时”的艺术中找到他称之为“险峻的味道”。《吴小可与大沙发》即体现了他近期的成果：在写实绘画的框架内，营造带有魔幻色彩的超现实氛围。画中的女孩多次出现在王一凡的作品中，是他的女友吴小可。她慵懒地斜倚在书房的墨绿色沙发上，带有图案的窗帘半掩着，一缕阳光射入屋内，投射在她的身体周围。“她刚洗完澡，我趴在猫的视角看她，像是小人国，沙发就像大型纪念碑。我喜欢把常规的东西画出意思，不论一个场景还是一个人，你总画他他就露馅儿了。”

Wang Yifan persists with his “disconnection” from the popular styles of the contemporary painting. Instead, he is keen to look for what he called “a smell of the steepness” from the byways, if not “the outdate art”. Wu Xiaoke and the Big Sofa shows his recent achievements, in which he creates a magically surreal atmosphere within the framework of the realistic painting with a more subjective palate and more flamboyant brushworks. Again, the girl in the painting is the painter’s girlfriend Wu Xiaoke. She leans languidly on the dark green sofa in the study. The window is half-covered by a patterned curtain, allowing a stream of sunlight in to cast around her body. “She just finished a shower. I was looking at her from the angel of a cat. It was like the Lilliput, and the sofa became unusual, like a huge monument. I’d like to paint something special out of the common subjects. No matter it is a scene or a person, if you paint it patiently enough, it will reveal eventually. 

韦嘉 Wei Jia

李白 Li Bai

布面丙烯 Acrylic on canvas

300×200cm

2014

CNY 1,000,000

学生时代的韦嘉深受伦勃朗与弗洛依德的影响，成为职业画家后，他试图将古典绘画的精神运用在当代，并在既有的风格基础上注入新的活力。步入中年后的韦嘉，时常从中国古代文化中寻找主题。李白是中国历史上最伟大的诗人之一，他虽享有诗仙之称，但有关他的真实来历却莫衷一是：在中国现代教科书插图中，他被打造成一位英俊风流的汉族书生；但另据研究表明，李白生于中亚地区，而非唐代的汉民族后裔。相互矛盾的说法构成了李白的身世之争，也折射出当代中国颇为典型的身份焦虑。韦嘉突破了常识的约束，以大于等人的尺度绘制了一幅颇富荒诞色彩的李白肖像：他有一幅外国人的面孔，并且身着现代装束，上身穿半截袖圆领衫，下身赤裸，只在脚上套着一双红绿条纹的袜子，他手捧一本厚厚的大书，正从昏暗纷乱的背景中向观众走来。

Wei Jia was profoundly influenced by Rembrandt and Freud when he was in school. Since he became a professional artist, Wei Jia has tried to bring the spirit of the classical painting to the present, and to infuse new dynamics into its established styles. Stepping into middle age, he often looks for themes from the ancient Chinese culture. Li Bai is one of the greatest poets of China. Although he was hailed as “the fairy poet”, no unanimous conclusion regarding to his real origin could be drawn. Li Bai has always been described as a handsome and fair Han Chinese scholar in today’s textbooks, while some researchers have proved that he was not the son of a Han family in the Tang Dynasty, but was born somewhere in the Middle Asia. The debate on his origin comprises contradictory opinions that reflect the anxiety of identity in the contemporary China. We Jia has broken the bonds of the accepted knowledge and made a human-sized portrait of Li Bai with a fictitious touch: With the face of a foreigner, he is dressed modernly with a round neck T-shirt and a pair of red and green stripped socks, bottomless. Holding a bulky volume in his arm, he walks toward the audience from the dark and chaotic background.

温凌 Wen Ling

自画像2020之一 Self Portrait 2020 No.1

布面油画 Oil on canvas

45×40cm

2020

CNY 34,000

温凌的自画像作品始于1995年，彼时他就读于中央美术学院附中，25年来，他从未中断自画像创作，近年，他主动将绘画的实验性融入其中，有意识地通过对自己的陌生化，而超越日常经验，获得重新认知自我的快感。2020年春，中国新冠疫情爆发，他隔离在家中再一次陷入这种他喜爱的状态。“屏住呼吸，忘掉经验、忘掉价值判断，生疏化眼前的一切。这之后，那些以往经验中认为不重要的部分，会神奇的凸显出来。”

The first self-portrait of Wen Ling appeared in 1995, when he was studying in the High School Affiliated to the Central Academy of Fine Arts. For 25 years, this practice has never stopped, where he intentionally unfamiliarized himself in order to go beyond the everyday experience and attain the pleasure of self-perception again and again. In the spring of 2020, the outbreak of the novel coronavirus allowed him to come back to this favorite state in the self-quarantine. “Holding my breath, I forgot about my experiences and all the value judgements, disaquainted myself with everything in front of me. Whereby, those that I reckoned unimportant in the past revealed themselves magically. ”

徐毛毛 Xu Maomao

绿色和大管子们 Greens and the Big Tube

布面丙烯，油彩 Oil and acrylic on canvas

100×120cm

2019

CNY 34,500

多梦，给徐毛毛带来了无尽的诱惑，为她提供着丰沛的创作源泉，也使她的作品带有明显的超现实主义特征。在近期的绘画中，她试图对原有的插画和卡通风格进行大幅度的简化，用更为单纯的色彩和符号般的形状，来挖掘深藏在潜意识中的感受，这种艺术上的转变也为她的自我疗愈带来了意外的收获。“管子”几乎伴随徐毛毛绘画的全部历史，但在2019年的新作中她第一次将大管子作为画面中唯一的主角，“一直以来大管子都是作为配角出现，表达了一个事件里的混乱、焦虑和纠结感。但当她独立出现，不再缠绕，就好像一个生命在成长。我们可以正视自己在成长中的种种恼人的情绪变化，当你开始面对的时候，其实一切也没有那么糟糕。”

Dreaminess has been a great temptation for Xu Maomao. It’s the source of endless inspiration to  her art, giving an obvious surreal feature to her artworks. In the recent paintings, Xu tried to simplify the illustrational and cartoonist styles that she’s been working with, and to excavate her subconscious feelings with purer colors and symbolic shapes. Surprisingly, this transition in art also became a self-healing method. For the first time, the “tubes” that are visible in almost every phase in the history of Xu Maomao’s painting became the only protagonist in her new works in 2019. “Tubes have always acted as the supporting role, playing the chaotic, anxious and struggling part in an incident. But when she appears on her own with no more entanglement, she gains the vitality to grow. We can face up to the annoying emotional fluctuations while growing. When you start to do so, you’ll find it’s not that bad.”

烟囱 Yan Cong

猫咪和它们的艺术家 Kitties and Their Painter

布面丙烯 Acrylic on canvas

170×115cm×2

2019

CNY 148,000

烟囱长期以漫画的形式来进行创作，在与画廊合作的十几年间，他时常意识到漫画并未具备与绘画同等的地位，画廊、美术馆、艺术媒体很少关注这个特殊的绘画群体，他坦言“这说明当代艺术的系统太落后了”。自2015年开始，烟囱使用画布在传统的架上绘画范畴绘制漫画，让漫画更适合在“当代艺术”、“精英文化”的语境内呈现，使之进入艺博会、美术馆等大型展示空间。在内容方面，这类作品大多都是以自嘲的口吻，描写一个漫画家如何混迹于功利色彩浓重的“精英艺术圈”。《猫咪和它们的艺术家》延续这一主题，讲述了一个通过猫毛获得灵感的艺术家，让猫咪代替自己工作并且名利双收、大获成功的故事。当艺术家和猫咪去世以后，美术馆仍在用猫咪完成的作品为艺术家举办回顾展，令其在艺术史里获得永生。这是一个挖苦“精英艺术”的故事，同时也描述了在“精英艺术”里那些活生生的人和情感，这是一直以来烟囱漫画的价值所在。他认同当代艺术的价值，但他同时认为漫画应该是其中的一部分，而不应该被排除在外。他愿意在这个“落后”、“保守”艺术系统中去和更多的艺术观众建立联系，让他们领略漫画的魅力，也愿意去打破漫画被局限在出版行业的壁垒，让漫画在当代艺术系统有更多展示和讨论的可能。

Comics have been one of Yan Cong’s forms of art for a long time. Having worked with the gallery for more than a decade, Yan Cong is aware of the drop from the status of painting to that of comics. In his eye, galleries, museums and art media have barely paid any attention to this special group of artistic workers, i.e. the comic makers. Therefore, “the system of contemporary art is way behind,” asserted Yan Cong. Since 2015, in order to give comics a better ground in the context of “the contemporary art” and “the elite culture”, and to have it admitted by large-scale exhibition venues like art fairs and art museums, Yan Cong started to make comics in the domain of traditional easel painting on canvas. In terms of contents, these comics usually introduce how a comic maker would run around among the utilitarian “circle of elite artists” with a self-deprecating humor. Kitties and Their Painter continues with this topic, where an artist, inspired by cat hair, gains huge fame and tremendous wealth with the kitties working on his behalf. When the artist and his kitties pass away, art museums keep holding his retrospectives with works created by the kitties, which gives the artist eternity in art history. The value of Yan Cong’s comics always lies in the quality of his sarcasm and genuineness. In this story, the target of the sarcasm is “the elite art”, while the artist also portrays the real conditions of those living within and their emotions. He buys the value of the contemporary art, and firmly believes that comics should be a part of it. He would like to build up connections with a bigger audience in this “lagging” and “conservative” art system, giving people chances to admire the beauty of comics; to break the barriers faced by the comic makers in the publishing system; and to give comics a wider platform to be exhibited and discussed in the contemporary art system.  

张晖 Zhang Hui

楼房 城市，橙色有光芒的太阳 Buildings, City and the Orange Beaming Sun

布面丙烯 Acrylic on canvas

112x145cm

2020

CNY 77,100

城市是张晖最偏爱的题材之一，新近完成的《楼房、城市，橙色有光芒的太阳》以略带俯瞰的视角远眺一座现代都市，千篇一律的楼房密集地混生在一起，这样的日常风景可以存在于任何一座中国式的速生城市，与提升城镇化率的社会记忆构成关联。楼房的朝向、高度虽然各不相同，但单一的建筑造型与规整的几何布局，形成了特有的韵律感，为张晖提供了一种“简单又复杂、枯燥又丰富”的特质，这如同中国古代山水画家面对的千沟万壑，为艺术家借题发挥表达“心中风景”提供了一种物理上的结构。张晖以旁观者的视角真正关注的不仅是外表，而是身处这一时空当中的人的＂存在＂，所具有的深层心理结构及感受，他用夸张的手法和稚拙的构图营造出一种浪漫天真的氛围，一轮橙色的太阳，巨大而浑圆，正在从地平线徐徐升起或者即将落下，并放射着笔直的光芒，与色彩暧昧不清的天空形成了强烈的心理反差，也因此而颇富诗意。

“City” is one of Zhang Hui’s favorite subjects. In his recently completed Buildings, City, and the Orange Beaming Sun, the artist looks from afar and above at a modern metropolis, whose buildings crowd together looking monotonously alike — It could be the landscape of any rapidly  growing city in China, which is relevant to the social recollections of the raising of urbanization rate. The orientations and heights of the buildings may vary, but the never-changing architectural shape and the regular geometric layouts have formed a unique rhythm, providing Zhang Hui with a quality that is “simple but complicated, dull but colorful”, a physical structure that allows the artist to give vent to his “landscape at heart”, just like the Shanshui painters’ depiction of the “hundreds of gaps and thousands of valleys” in ancient China. The real focus of Zhang Hui as a bystander is below the surface. It’s the “existence” of the human beings in this time and space, as well as their underlying psychological structures and feelings. He has put up an innocent air with exaggerations and childish compositions — an orange sun, huge and perfectly round, is moving slowly above or towards the horizon, beaming straight down, creating a strong psychological contrast with the ambiguous color of the sky, and thereby poetic.

北京市朝阳区酒仙桥路2号798艺术区797东街A05

No. A05, 797 East Road, 798 Art Zone, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China 100016

www.stargallery.cn

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