BANK 新年首展 | 谢其个展《锁骨》Xieqi: Clavicle 1月11日开幕&特别开幕演出
BANK 荣幸宣布新展谢其《锁骨》开幕，此为谢其的首次上海个展，也同样是艺术家与 BANK 的首次合作。
“锁骨”呈现了一系列艺术家最新创作的个人标志性的油画作品，在这位常居北京的艺术家作品中，同时蕴有传统的人文原则和当代精神，此次个展筹备数年，标志着这位艺术家新的突破。
Wave and Reef 3
120x150cm oil on canvas 2018
当精妙的人体结构置于形态各异的动作姿势时，艺术家用笔触唤起人体闪烁的美感，个体潜伏的灵魂和多重的情感状态。谢其在画中提醒我们，人的身躯一直是通往我们固有的内在的一个通道。锁骨则是这一认知过程中的触媒——是人体最明显、因而也是最脆弱的骨骼之一，其蜿蜒的分界线将上半身、头部与身体的主要躯干分开。对于艺术家来说，锁骨是肖像和人体之间的一条分界线。我们感知到人的身份，和那些日常被遮蔽的胸部、腹部、腿和性别。锁骨，或称琵琶骨，它通常是一条偏离中心的悬臂，它通过支撑周围的身体部位而成为焦点。它是人类成为主体和客体的开端。锁骨以上是头——理性的永恒孵化器，其以下是身体，是生理寄托与情感能量的容器。谢其在画布上游走于这块脆弱的骨骼之间，一些全身人体似半神状态，一些只聚焦于扭曲的上半身，另一些则是纯粹的肖像。
微冷的
Ruth Ruth in Blue
77x155cm oil on canvas 2018
这位艺术家指出，叙事和这些主体身份对她来说并不重要。“我喜欢的是生活中的重要主题，悲剧与喜剧并驾齐驱，这才是生活，是某种结合。” 就像音乐——直接作用于情感的艺术，谢其亦试图将无名的和经典的主题融合一起。她在画作中运用了一种戏剧性的灯光和独特的色彩模式，使她的作品对象弥漫开一种亲密的夜间感觉，像隔着梦的面纱中看到的一般。她的调色板不禁让我们想起社交媒体中常用的滤镜，这些滤镜装饰我们的日常生活，更像是夜晚的红灯区、霓虹灯指示牌和夜总会背后的晦暗一面。然而这些颜色并非象征性的，对象也并非孤立的个体，皆是为了一种视觉上的和谐，并形成了一种轻微的干扰和特有的氛围。她说：“灯光将人物置于舞台中，它暗示着某种困境或窘境。”画面的其他遮蔽物使作品中的的轻盈氛围叠加。有些画面看起来尚未完成，像墨水已耗尽，而另一些画面则似乎被随性所致的色块流淌开来。现实生活就被这些骚动侵扰，一种完整的感觉则被弃之一旁。这些就是艺术家所追求的某种效果-一种脆弱、无常的美。这也是锁骨或骨骼的矛盾之处——它们因脆弱而美丽，像我们的情感能力一样，它们只能承受这么多。
驻北京音乐家的宋雨喆，谢其的朋友和长期以来的合作者，将为展览作开幕演出。宋雨喆，木推瓜乐队主唱，而后创立大忘杠乐队。以其民谣与实验摇滚而闻名，他赋了一句为谢其展览的歌词：温暖潮湿的谷地有霓虹和墨绿厮磨，岩间清冽的溪流隐隐瞧的见锁骨。”
XieQi: Clavicle
The body is our general medium for having a world. – Maurice Merleau ponty
BANK is pleased to present Xie Qi’s Clavicle, marking the artist’s first solo show in Shanghai and her first collaboration with BANK.
Clavicle presents a series of recent oil paintings by this Beijing-based artist in a signature style that embraces both transcendental humanistic tenets and a contemporary spirit. The show is the result of several years of preparation and marks a new breakthrough in the artist’s oeuvre.
羞怯和緊張1
Timid And Strained1
88.5x69cm oil on canvas 2017
Taking notice of the human figure’s delicate structure in various natural postures the artist evokes not only the radiant beauty of the human form but also the individual’s underlying psyche and its myriad emotional states. Xie Qi reminds us in these paintings that our surface lying flesh has always been the portal to our entrenched inner conditions. The catalyst for this body of work is the clavicle, one of the body’s most visible and therefore most fragile bones, whose sinuous line of demarcation separates the upper bust and head from the main trunk of the body. For the artist the clavicle is a line ofdistinction between portraiture and figuration. On one side we perceive the identity of the person and on the other we reveal the habitually obscured portion of breast, abdomen, sex and legs. The clavicle or collarbone, as it is commonly referred to, is an off-center cantilever that props the surrounding body parts into focus. It is the threshold through which the human becomes both subject and object. Balanced atop the clavicle is the head, a perpetual incubator of reason, and suspended below is the body, a vessel of physiological sustenance and emotive energies. Xie Qi vacillates her attention around this fragile bone through many canvasses. Some are full body models counterpoised as celestial beings; some show only contorted upper bodies, while others are simple bust portraits.
Wave and Reef 2
117x91cm oil on canvas 2018
The artist notes that narrative and the identity of her subjects aren’t important to her. “The themes I like are the big ones in life. Tragedy and comedy together-that is life, the combination.” Like music, an art that targets the emotions directly, Xie Qi attempts to meld anonymous and universal themes together. To achieve this she has employed a dramatic sense of lighting and unique color schema, making her subjects emanate with an intimate nocturnal feeling, as if being seen through the veil of a dream. Her tinted pallet can’t help but remind us of social-media image filters that help to embellish our ordinarylives, or the sordid side of evening- red light districts, neon signs and nightclubs. However these colors aren’t symbolic as much as they are visual harmonies for otherwise solitary subjects, creating slight disturbances andambience. She says “The lights putthe subjects on a stage, connoting a certain predicament or dilemma.” The ethereal atmospheric quality of the work is heightened by other incursions to the canvases. Some pictures appear unfinished as if a printer ranout of ink, while other seem to have been assaulted by random swatches of color. Reality is broken by these disturbances and a sense of completeness betrayed. This is the effect that the artist strives for- atenuous, impermanent beauty. Such is the paradox of the clavicle or bones in general – they’re beautiful because of their fragility, and like our emotive capacity they only can bear so much.
For the opening reception of Clavicle the Beijing-based musician, SongYuzhe, a long time friend and collaborator of Xie Qi will perform an unplugged set of songs carefully chosen for the exhibition. Song Yuzhe, known for his off-folk ballads, says of Xie Qi’s paintings : 'Warm and moist is the valley whereneon strains against murky green/ Amid rocks a bracing stream where a clavicle shows through.'