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【上海狮語】「 请慢用! 」帕特丽夏·沃勒个展 ｜9月18日开幕
请 慢 用 ！GUTEN APPETIT !
Leo Gallery Shanghai开幕 | Opening 2021.09.18 4 - 6pm展期 | Duration 2021.09.18 - 10.24地址｜上海徐汇区武康路376号武康庭内Venue｜Ferguson Lane,376 Wu Kang Road,Xuhui District,Shanghai
* 参与开幕式，请在文末预约 Please make reservation at the bottom
前 言Foreword
作为一名最初的雕塑家，帕特里夏·沃勒对针与线的运用始于其在卡尔斯鲁厄国家美术学院学习期间。当时，帕特丽夏意在寻找在艺术世界中尚未被广泛使用的媒材，也有意摆脱机械制造下的工业束缚。羊毛、棉花、织布，这些在传统性别认知中被定位为“居家”、“典型女性”的媒材，与大众视野中“不合时宜”的针织工艺，被视作与高级艺术毫无关联。如同艺术家本人所言，“这种可以称之为真正女性化的材料和方法，反映出我们在艺术、文化和社会中的地位。”这也成为沃勒作品的第一重对撞，以对刻板印象中所谓“落伍”的形式运用，挑战传统惯例，并拓宽严肃议题的探讨边界。
沃勒作品的先锋之处，并不仅限于媒材的离经叛道，而关乎内容与形式间的古怪奇妙的反差。从艺术史上经典作品的再创造开始（约瑟夫·博伊斯和杰夫·昆斯的兔子），沃勒的创作常涉及天真的孩童、可爱的动物，或著名的电视卡通人物，但其明亮的卡通风格下常常带有惊人的暴力因子。残酷的伤害与肆无忌惮的屠杀似乎成为了好莱坞机器与游戏行业标配的视觉产物。它们改变了人们对于暴力与死亡的现实认知，创造了对于残暴的美化性描述的审美屈从。残肢断臂的孩童、被餐具压扁的动物、魔术台上的“意外”……取材于流行文化的血腥的元素在沃勒“充满童趣”的作品创造了荒诞、反常的喜剧效果。而在沃勒最具代表性的系列作品“食用艺术”中，艺术家挑战了传统上观众接触艺术的感官渠道，钩针细心编织的餐食成为了艺术的饕餮盛宴——观者是在用视觉而非味觉来享受沃勒以古灵精怪的点子烹调出的作品。
正是沃勒作品中对当前时代心理的精准侧写，让其“不恰当性”变得恰如其分。她游走在媚俗与高级艺术的间隙，以诙谐的姿态轻松搭建起一座极富智性挑战的文化迷宫。在线与线的勾缠间，每个不和谐的音符都最终找到了自己的归属。
With her native Germanic reflective nature, Patricia Waller is regarded as the first artist in the history of European art to use crochet work to express the dark humor of the modern avant- garde. Beneath the seemingly innocuous surface of her crocheted works lurks a surprising richness of metaphor. From the disjunction of form and content, the counterpoint between kitsch and elegance, to the collision between innocence and violence, "inappropriateness" could be considered a fitting label for Waller's works. The contrasting layers in Waller's works give voice to a grotesque but fascinating polyphony.
Originally trained as a sculptor, Patricia Waller's adoption of needle and thread began during her studies at The State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe. At the time, Waller was looking for materials not yet established in the arts, and wanted to become independent from the restrains of the industrial world and its machines. Wool, cotton and yarn, materials traditionally considered 'domestic' and 'typically feminine' in terms of gender perception, as was the 'anachronistic' craft of knitting, were seen as having no connection to high art. As the artist herself stated, "we women artists who work with it do so to reflect our status in art, culture, and society, using a material and method that one can call genuinely feminine." This becomes the first layer of contention in Waller's works, using forms disregarded by the mainstream view in order to challenge conventions and expand discursive boundaries.
The edginess of Waller's works does not only originate from the subversive nature of the medium, but also from the eccentric yet fantastic contrast between content and form. Starting with the recreation of well-known works of art history, such as Joseph Beuys’ and Jeff Koons' rabbits, Waller's works often involve innocent children, cute animals or famous television characters. However, the bright-colored, cartoon-like style often reveals a surprising undercurrent of violence. Cruel injuries and uninhibited slaughter have become a common element of the visual productions of the Hollywood machinery and of the games industry. They have changed and molded our perception of the reality of violence and death, and have shaped an environment in which people succumb to the fascination of an aestheticized depiction of violence in the media. Mutilated children, animals crushed by cutlery, 'accidents' happening during magic stage shows ... the gory elements rooted in popular culture added to Waller's 'childlike' subjects produces a sense of comedic absurdity. In Waller's most iconic series "Eat Art", the artist upturns the traditional sensory channels through which the audience can access art. The carefully crocheted meal becomes a feast of art, visually - the viewer enjoys Waller's whimsical creations with sight rather than taste.
Although the artist has cunningly and with great skill constructed a facade of 'innocence', Waller's works are the recreation of real nightmares - they have never been innocent. If examined closely, these works are suffused with wry irony and acerbic criticism, almost immediately provoking shock and unease in the viewer, even if just subliminally. In the way Waller handles her works, we can see how society deals with the various forms of violence and the growing acceptance of brutality. Wool is supposed to be a familiar, useful material that provides protection and warmth, but here it is used as a means of ensnaring or beguiling its objects. With seemingly banal and every-day objects, Waller creates new images through the crocheted skin. Through defamiliarization and a different form of presentation, she questions people’s ways of seeing. She focuses on how we deal with our fears and on our ability to repress them, and plays with the barely veiled craving for sensation, with irrational phobias and dangerous desires. In that sense, Waller's needle is more like a sharp axe, opening up a "grey zone between the world of black or white" in the chaotic modern society, in an attempt to present the most authentic experience of contemporary human existence. Inspired by everyday life, Waller’s works are replete with the artist's accurate observations of people’s inner worlds, and serve as bitter parodies of our seemingly perfect lives - animated characters one after another fall into the abyss of calamity; the most innocent children and animals are turned into the perpetrators as well as victims of war and violence. Referring to her artistic vision, Waller states: "Through a provocative playfulness, I combine absurdity and oddity with a careful insight into everyday life and an eternal curiosity about human nature." She confronts the present with subtle skepticism and witty self-mockery, revealing hidden traumas in our everyday lives that are habitually overlooked.
It is the precise portraying of the mental state of our times in Waller's works that makes their 'inappropriateness' appropriate. She wanders between the worlds of the mundane crafts and high art, effortlessly building an intellectual cultural maze. In the entangled threads and lines of Waller's art, each dissonant note eventually finds its right place.
*狮語画廊&Shirley's Temple-Art国际艺术家驻留项目合作展览 Leo Gallery & Shirley's Temple-Art International Artist Residence Cooperation Exhibition
关 于 艺 术 家About the Artist
帕特丽夏·沃勒
Patricia Waller
帕特丽夏·沃勒的作品历年来在欧洲、美洲、亚洲多国的美术馆与艺术机构展出，包括德国德施勒画廊、波兰BWA美术馆、西班牙大都会美术馆、芝加哥沃克斯展览馆等，并被欧洲各大藏家和博物馆收藏。帕特丽夏·沃勒曾入选巴塞尔基金会驻地计划，入选Shirley's Temple-Art国际艺术驻留项目，并获得法国巴黎国际艺术城奖学金、沃纳·施托贝尔基金会艺术大奖等奖项。 Patricia Waller, born in Santiago, Chile in 1962, received a master's degree from Karlsruhe School of Art, Germany in 1990, and currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Patricia Waller is known for her bright cartoon style crochet work that often has a macabre element to it. Her works break away from conventional techniques and mechanical constraints with the emphasis on the value of hand craft. Rich cultural metaphors and careful observations of human nature lie under the appearance of her seemingly lovely and harmless works. Patricia Waller’s works have been exhibited in many countries in Europe, America and Asia over the years, including Deschler Gallery in Germany, BWA Art Museum in Poland, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Spain, the Vauxhall in Chicago, etc., and have been collected by major European collectors and museums. Patricia Waller has been selected as the artist in residence by Bartels Fondation, Basel, Switzerlandand, and Shirley's Temple-Art International Artists Residence, and has won Scholarship Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France and the art award of the Werner Stober Foundation.
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展期 Duration | 2021.5.23 - 10.24
地点 | 狮語画廊 · 一楼空间
上海市徐汇区武康路376号武康庭内
Venue | 1st Floor Space · Leo Gallery
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Mon-Sat 11am-6.30pm (Public Holidays Closed)+852 2803 2333 hongkong@leogallery.com.cn