张云垚 Zhang Yunyao｜用毛毡来探索情感 Exploring emotions through felt
About the artist
关于艺术家
Zhang Yunyao is a Chinese contemporary artist that seeks to explore the unfixed meaning of emotions and desires by incorporating felt as the support for the medium of his art. Working from his studio in Shanghai, he delves into the development of his practice which emphasizes the important aspects of painting such as coloring, mood, brushstrokes, and more. Many of his works revolve around the human form and force the artist to push himself, challenging the notion and form of painting in itself, building a constantly developing perspective in his art while exploring the perceptual gaps between real and recreated artworks.
张云垚是一位中国的当代艺术家，他试图通过在艺术作品中加入毛毡的元素，以此作为一种媒介来寻找和探索情感和欲望的不定含义。在上海的工作室里张云垚一直致力于提高技艺，他着重于颜色，情绪，笔触等一些绘画的重要方面。他的许多作品都围绕着关于人的形态，迫使他不停地挑战自己，挑战绘画的观念和形式。他在艺术中建立起不断发展的视角，同时探索真实和重塑的艺术品之间的感知差距。
Narcissus (2015) by Zhang Yunyao. Oil on canvas 40x50 cm.
Hope (2015) by Zhang Yunyao. Oil on panel, 300x300 mm. Detail.
Zhang Yunyao would travel throughout Europe seeking out great sculptures as part of his creative research. One day, he would go to a restaurant in Ireland after seeing a group exhibition where he would be served a napkin with an intriguing texture. From this point, he would continue his experiment with materials until he found felt, which he believed would help push his painting and drawing to a new level.
张云垚曾经环游欧洲寻找精美的雕塑，这是他创作研究的一部分。有一天他在一次集体展览之后去了一家爱尔兰餐馆，在那里他得到了一张有趣的餐巾纸。这张纸巾的材质引发了他浓厚的兴趣， 这一刻开始，他持续寻找各种材料进行艺术实验，直到他发现了毛毡，这帮助了他将自己的绘画生涯推向新的高度。
Release (2018) by Zhang Yunyao. Graphite on felt, 215×200 cm.
Part of: Study in Figures (2019) by Zhang Yunyao. Painting, graphite, and pigment on felt 400x400 mm.
Part of: Study in Figures (2017) by Zhang Yunyao. Graphite on felt 305x230 cm.
Zhang’s art is highly defined by his creative process which is labor-intensive and time-consuming, becoming a sacred practice in itself. By using felt as a medium to paint on, he challenges himself to endure and form a new way of painting which maintains a duality by incorporating classic techniques in a contemporary way. At the same time, the texture and imagery he uses becomes a representation of the artist’s struggle which could further allude to the relationship between his inner self, the subjects he paints, and an expanded idea that permeates throughout his works collectively when viewed.
张云垚的艺术作品被定义是一项劳动密集且费时的过程，使它本身成为了一种神圣的创作。使用毛毡作为绘画的媒介，他需要挑战自己忍受这个过程并形成一种新的绘画方式，这种绘画方式将经典的技艺与现代的方式融为一体，保持了一种双重性。同时，他使用的材质和图像成为艺术家挣扎的一种象征，进一步暗示了他的内在自我，绘画主题以及一种扩展观念之间产生了联系，这种观念在他的作品中贯穿始终。
R (2016) by Zhang Yunyao. Graphite on felt 80x63 cm.
Tender Dream (2015) by Zhang Yunyao. Painting 650x500 mm.
Intimacy -3 (2019) by Zhang Yunyao. Painting, graphite, and pigment on felt 400x400 mm.
In Zhang’s exhibition titled “Nec Spe, Nec Metu” (Without Hope, Without Fear in latin), he embraces the exploration of hope and fear using depictions of figures seen from Greek mythology that are reimagined with his unique visual imagery. However, while these monochromatic figures and the narratives around them seem visceral, they are not the sole focus of the works. Through the deliberate manipulation of the sharpness and clarity of the layers in his meticulous yet varied techniques, the artist attempts to obscure any defined emotions from manifesting in his works, further raising questions on the ambiguous nature of the two underlying concepts, hope, and fear which act in both similar and opposite ways.
在张云垚“ Nec Spe，Nec Metu”（拉丁语译为“没有希望，没有恐惧”）展览中，他用从希腊神话中看到的人物形象描绘了对希望和恐惧的探索，并用他独特的视觉形象对其进行了重新构想。尽管这些单色的人物及其周围的画面看起来十分真切，但它们并不是作品的唯一重点。在他精巧而多样的技艺中，他通过细致地控制不同层的锐度和清晰度来尝试模糊掉任何在作品中展现出的明确情感，从而进一步对“希望和恐惧”这两个基本概念的含糊性提出疑问，因为这两个概念某种程度上有着相同的意义，但同时也完全相反。
"The process of making felt painting is my response to memory and its waning, which proves the unique temporal nature of painting itself. At a close distance, one can tell that the surface is formed by the fine blending and accumulation of graphite and pastel over time. The materiality of the surface texture in a way corresponds to the result of time lapsing, but differs from the complicated and multi-layered process of manually developing photographs in the darkroom.”
“制作毡画的过程是我对记忆，以及对回忆逐渐淡去的一种回应，这证明了绘画本身的独特时间属性。在一段短距离之内人们可以看出表面是混合了积聚的石墨和层叠的粉彩。这种材质上的表面的纹理在某种程度上对应着时间流逝的结果，但它也区别于在暗室中手动显影照片那些复杂而多重的过程。”
- Zhang Yunyao 张云垚
Trace (2016) by Zhang Yunyao. Painting and graphite on felt, 2670x2000 mm.
Fear (2015) by Zhang Yunyao. Oil on panel, 300x300 mm.
In fact, the nature of Zhang Yunyao’s work should not just be seen as a technical feat but also as a form of performance that is represented through his growth and creative decisions as an artist. In his exhibition, Skin, Gesture, Body he incorporates the felt as a driver for conceptual thinking and artistic motivation, imitating its essence as a skin on which he intentionally bruises and scratches, incorporating concepts of decay, time, and materiality which augments the complexity of the sensory nature he finds in the felt painting and drawing process.
张云垚的作品本质不仅应被当作一种非凡的技术，通过他的成长和曾经做出的那些创造性决定，同时也形成了一种表现形式。在他的展览《皮肤，手势，身体》中，他将毛毡融入概念思考和艺术动机，作为了一种驱动力。将它的本质模仿为皮肤，故意摩擦和刮伤，并融入了腐烂，时间，和物质性，展现了他在制作毡画过程中发觉的自然感官，增加了作品的复杂性。
Floating II (2020) by Zhang Yunyao. Pastel on felt 217x200.5 cm.
In recent months, Zhang believes that the pandemic has given him an opportunity to contemplate more on his works, further growing his interest around the digitalization of art and how it created a perceptual gap between the real life viewing and digital viewing of an artwork. Finding himself stuck in France during these troubling times, the artist has settled down, continuing his work throughout the pandemic. Zhang Yunyao exhibited his new works at the newly opened Galerie Marguo in Paris which will be on display until December 19th.
近几个月以来，张云垚认为疫情期间使他有机会对自己的作品进行更多的思考，从而进一步引发了他对数字化艺术的兴趣，好奇它如何在现实观看和线上观看之间造成感知上的间隙。得知他将在这段特殊时期内滞留在法国，他索性定居下来，在疫情期间继续创作。张云垚在巴黎新开幕的玛格画廊展出了他的新作品，该画廊将一直展出到12月19日。
For more information, please click here
点击这里查看更多关于艺术家的信息
Translation 翻译 Rona Xia
FOR MORE RELATED CONTENT