LINSEED | 展览预告 | 李黑地：雀在破晓 Tits at Dawn
李黑地：雀在破晓
Li Hei Di: Tits at Dawn
2022.11.11 - 2022.12.18
周二至周六 Tuesday - Saturday, 11:00 - 18:00
上海市五原路165弄4号
No.4, 165 Wuyuan Road, Shanghai
Opening: Nov 11, 5pm - 8pm, Friday
LINSEED即将呈现李黑地（Li Hei Di）全球首次个展“雀在破晓”（Tits at Dawn），展出艺术家一系列全新绘画作品。展览将于2022年11月11日开幕，展至2022年12月18日。写作者、英国泰特美术馆大中华区副策展人、Frieze杂志特约编辑李佳桓（Alvin Li）近期造访艺术家工作室，谈及艺术家创作状态及研究参考，就本次展览撰文如下：
我在十月初的某个周四造访了李黑地在西伦敦的工作室。这位25岁艺术家一身全黑，顶着一头小卷，风格就像她的创作一样，散发着独特的魅力。黑地的作画方式遵从“自己的感受”，而从不提前打底稿。她说这样能让她处于一种“焦灼”的状态，尽管她在和我说这事的时候显得非常轻松自在。我很理解这种感觉：那种未知所带来的快感，那种将事物的发展留给情绪、渴求、欲望主导的状态。绘画的过程于是成为了激情之罪，而这种激情之罪着实叫人上瘾。
李黑地 Li Hei Di
当我们的唇一起说
Where Our Lips Speak Together, 2022
布面油画 Oil on canvas
155 × 180 cm
如果要把黑地的作品概括描述的话，能最先进入脑海的是这几个词：纵情恣意、如梦如幻、流溢无常。除了无稿而起所展现的敏锐空间感知力外，她的每件作品始终都能够让多个层次、视角、叙事同时迸发：静物并非是静物的姿态，或如悬浮、或如糅融，变幻莫测。椭圆形态时常贯穿于她的作品之中——橘子、桃子、气泡、珍珠——巴塔耶式（Bataillean）般地展现出一股情欲能量。躯体轮廓似有若无，诚然暗示了身体的隐喻，但与情欲流派的基调不同的是，情色并未在她的作品中肆无忌惮，以至于终止画面的叙事。艺术家天衣无缝地将欲望交织在了更广大的世界里，使之与众多层面齐驱并行。如果将描绘躯体之欲的绘画类比为情欲文学，那么李黑地的画作更像是一种浪漫的“言情小说”，主人公们传达爱意作为多线情节的一支，被编织到庞大的极乐与嬉戏中。这些作品有时候也会带有或戏谑或幽默的元素，比如在《一整天，我看陆地分裂成海洋》（2022）中，暧昧隐晦的感官场景或许能在仔细观察后被发现——一场“滋水之战”。
雀在破晓，我们是被带入深林的旅行中，还是被带进了艺术家的私密空间？显然，当我们面向这些绘画时，这便不再是个非此即彼的问题：在李黑地的绘画，或者说，在她的小说故事中，世界（worlds）与文字（words）总能坍缩为一体而共存。
李佳桓，2022年11月
译 / 樊博
李黑地，1997年出生于中国沈阳，曾就读于美国马里兰艺术大学（Maryland Institute College of Art），于2020年获英国伦敦艺术大学切尔西学院（Chelsea College of Arts）艺术学士学位，于2022年获得伦敦皇家艺术学院（Royal College of Art）绘画硕士学位。综合自己切身的成长和情感经历，李黑地发展出了一套暧昧而独特的绘画符号语言，这些绘画作品常常位于大众电影文化、性别表演和静物传统的交界地带。而在其多样而具有强烈表现力的雕塑、装置和表演实践中，艺术家亦持续探索自身内在的性别和身体经验的多样性，在挑战着异性恋本位霸权的同时，暗示着纯粹欲望的本能、真实和自由。
艺术家个展有：“雀在破晓”，2022，LINSEED，上海；其近期群展包括：军械库展览会，2022，Kohn Gallery，纽约；“In Defense of Secrets”，2022，Downs & Ross，纽约；“Phantasmata”, 2022，Public Gallery，伦敦；“各找各家”, 2022，Gallery Vacancy，上海；“The Glass Bead Game”，2021，MAMOTH，伦敦；“隔岸观火”，2021，LINSEED，上海；“4 SOLOS”, 2021, LINSEED, 西岸艺术与设计博览会，上海；“闲人游戏”，2020，LINSEED，上海。
李黑地 Li Hei Di
丛林中的糖妈咪
Sodomitical Maternity, 2022
亚麻布面油画 Oil on linen
160 × 115 cm
Li Hei Di: Tits at Dawn
LINSEED is delighted to present Li Hei Di’s first worldwide solo exhibition, “Tits at Dawn”, featuring the artist’s latest series of works. The exhibition opens on November 11, 2022, and continues until December 18, 2022. Alvin Li, author, contributing editor of Frieze, and the Adjunct Curator, Greater China, Supported by the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, at Tate, recently visited the artist’s studio and had a conversation about Li Hei Di’s current practice, study and research references, writes the following article regarding the exhibition:
I visited Li Hei Di’s studio in west London on a Thursday in early October. The 25-year-old painter, dressed in all black with a short perm, was rocking a style as distinct as her work. She never sketches before a painting, determined to “follow her feelings.” She says this leaves her in a constant state of anxiety, though sounding perfectly at ease as she says it. I can empathize with that feeling, that thrill of not knowing, of leaving the course of events to affects, drives, and want. It’s painting as a crime of passion, and crimes of passion are often addictive.
李黑地 Li Hei Di
晚山 Tits at Dawn, 2022
纸本油画 Oil on paper
30.48 × 40.64 cm (each)
If one had to summarize the character of Li’s work, the first words that come to mind are: promiscuous, dream-like, in flux. That the artist doesn’t sketch only attests to her highly-developed sense of space; there are always multiple layers, perspectives, and narratives going on on each canvas. Still life does not appear still, but floats, melts, is on the verge of shape-shifting. Oval figures recur throughout—oranges, peaches, bubbles, pearls—all of which, in Bataillean fashion, evoke an erotic energy. Surely there is a deeply erotic dimension to these works: one almost catches a contour of bodies in coitus playing hide and seek. But unlike the general tone of that genre, in which the erotic act is so all-consuming that it utterly suspends narrative, Li sutures her erotics into larger worlds where many other things are happening at once. If erotic painting is akin to pornography, Li’s works are more a kind of romance fiction, with the love shared by its protagonists as but one of many ongoing threads woven into a fabric of bliss and play. They’re sometimes hilarious, too, as in All Day Long, I Watched the Land Break Up into Ocean (2022), where an otherwise opaque and sensual scene reveals, upon close examination, a battle between two penises urinating.
Another recurring motif in Li’s work is wrapping, or veiling. Objects and bodies are often seen through a layer of membranous foil that partially obscures vision, creating an effect of looking at something in a fish tank with your nose against the glass case. This trope has allowed the artist to blend the wild mix of images she collects from popular visual culture—from wuxia film stills to portraits of Zhou Xun—into a purée, which she then applies to her canvases like a lingering impression, or a wisp of body heat. More than just a visual effect, this penchant also marks the significant influence on Li’s work and worldview of certain literary metaphors, from Ursula K. Le Guin to Wang Xiaobo. In Xiaobo’s book Love in an Age of Revolution, the author uses the image of a wet duvet cover to frame a range of personal observations, from the nature of the human condition—vital matter beneath a soft shell—to sexual desire and adulthood. In Li’s works, this wrapping becomes a meta-commentary on the inevitability of seeing life through the veil of metaphor. We only encounter existence as illusions, as Nietzsche might have put it: the veil of Maya.
Tits at dawn. Are we being taken on a journey to the forest, or to the painter’s bed? Apparently, when it comes to these paintings, it’s not a question of either/or: in Li’s paintings—or fiction—worlds (and words) can always collapse into co-existence as one.
Li Hei Di, born in Shenyang, China in 1997, studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Chelsea College of Art - University of the Arts London, and received their Bachelor of Arts in 2020. In 2022, they received a master’s degree in painting at the Royal College of Art in London. Based on their own growth and emotional experience, Li Hei Di has developed a semiotic system of painting that is ambiguous and unique, which often lies at the intersection of popular films culture, gender performativity and classic still l ife. In their diverse and expressive practice of sculpture, installation and performance, the artist continues to explore the diversity of their own gender and body experience, challenging the supremacy of heterosexuality, alluding to the instinct, the truth, and the freedom of pure desire.
Recent solo exhibition: “Tits at Dawn”, 2022, LINSEED, Shanghai; selected group exhibition include: The Armory Show, 2022, Kohn Gallery, New York; “In Defense of Secrets”, 2022, Downs and Ross, New York; “Phantasmata”, 2021, Public Gallery, London; “Self-Dismiss”, 2022, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai; “The Glass Bead Game”, 2021, MAMOTH, London; “Watch the Fire from the Shore”, 2021, LINSEED, Shanghai; “4 SOLOS”, 2021, LINSEED, West Bund Art and Design, Shanghai; “Decadent Gaming”, 2020, LINSEED, Shanghai.
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