展览预告 | 缪斯，愚公与指南针
2010年，英国非裔艺术家约翰·亚康法在影片《谟涅摩绪涅》中，沿着但丁、贝克特、狄金森、乔伊斯、弥尔顿、尼采、莎士比亚、索福克勒斯和托马斯等所铺就的诗学路径，谱写了一曲有关迁徙和旅途、记忆和哀悼、知识和身份、自然与政治的“悲伤之歌”。无独有偶，新加坡艺术家何子彦在影片《无知之云》中书写了一部同样摄人心魄的史诗。受艺术史家达弥施《云的理论》的启发，他以卡拉瓦乔、苏巴郎、克雷乔、贝尼尼、曼特尼亚、玛格利特等艺术家的经典之作为母本，将影片中每一个片段的主人公都化身为云。它无边无形，但又交织着爱与恨、善与恶等种种荒诞、诡异而又蛊惑人心的情感与体验。
十年后，展览《缪斯、愚公与指南针》将沿着他们的想象和叙事方式，续写一部新的史诗。从亚康法的《谟涅摩绪涅》、何子彦的《无知之云》到龚剑的《缪斯》、方迪的《部长》，从杨福东的《愚公移山》、褚秉超的《七府環屏》到郑国谷的《种鹅》、段建宇的《马》，从瑞秋·罗斯的《飘浮灵》到鸟头的《情放志荡》《拜影教》，这是一部由缪斯、愚公和指南针编织的当代传奇，更是一个由神话、传说和魔法锤炼而成的醒世寓言。
一百年前，垄断资本主义和帝国主义的抬头曾一度致使很多人陷入魔性，并引发了两次世界大战；一百年后，资本主义的危机和病毒的全球大流行再次将人类逼进了一个神话、传说和魔法盛行的迷狂时代。我们都记得马克思在《路易·波拿巴的雾月十八日》中的那句名言：“黑格尔在某个地方说过，一切伟大的世界历史事变和人物，可以说都出现过两次。他忘记补充一点：第一次是作为悲剧出现，第二次是作为笑剧出现。”今天的局面是不是笑剧尚不敢说，但一百年前那些疯魔一样的幽灵的确又回到了我们的身边。
文/鲁明军
展期 | 2020.6.20-2020.8.30
主办 | 坪山区文化广电旅游体育局
承办 | 坪山美术馆
策展人 | 鲁明军
出品人 | 刘晓都
展览制作 | 乐造展务
设备提供 | 河路文化
平面设计 | 余晓丹
媒体策划 | 打边炉
特别鸣谢 | 鸟头工作室、马凌画廊、里森画廊、没顶画廊、柯芮斯画廊、香格纳画廊、Vanguard 画廊、维他命艺术空间
策展人
鲁明军
历史学博士，四川大学艺术学院美术学系副教授，策展人。近期策划《疆域：地缘的拓扑》（2017-2018）、《在集结》（2018）、《此地有狮》（2019）、《没有航标的河流，1979》（2019）等展览。论文见于《文艺研究》、《美术研究》、《二十一世紀》（香港）等刊物。近著有《论绘画的绘画：一种艺术机制与普遍性认知》（河南大学出版社，2018）、《目光的诗学：感知—政治—时间》（河南大学出版社，2019）、《自我解放的歧途：1999年的三个当代艺术展览/计划及其之后》（2020）、《美术变革与现代中国：中国当代艺术的激进根源》（2020）等。2015年获得何鸿毅家族基金中华研究奖助金。2016年获得YiShu中国当代艺术写作奖。2017年获得美国亚洲文化协会奖助金（ACC）。同年，获得第6届中国当代艺术评论奖（CCAA）。2019年获得中国当代艺术奖（AAC）年度策展人奖。
参展艺术家
约翰·亚康法
著名英国艺术家、电影人，作品多围绕回忆、后殖民主义、时间性和美学等话题，探索欧美的非洲裔移民的生命体验。1982年，他与艺术家David Lawson和Lina Gopaul在伦敦共同创立了影响深远的“黑色音频电影团体” (Black Audio Film Collective)，几位艺术家的合作延续至今。他们的首部电影作品《汉兹沃思之歌》(1986) 聚焦1985年在伯明翰和伦敦爆发的暴乱，影片中呈现大量的档案影像、照片和新闻片段。这部影片荣获了诸多国际大奖，并奠定了亚康法独具个人特点的多层次视觉风格。其他作品包括三屏装置《未完成的对话》(2012)，为理论家斯图尔特·霍尔生活工作的动人写照；《转折》(2012)，以德国艺术家阿尔布雷特·丢勒16世纪创作的两幅肖像作品为灵感源泉，对其中人物的生活展开想象；《谟涅摩绪涅》(2010) 揭露英国移民的经历，以经济困难与各种问题质疑英国所谓的应许之地。
约翰·亚康法出生于1957年，目前在伦敦生活、工作。他在世界各地广泛地举办过个展。
瑞秋·罗斯
生活工作于纽约。在过去的几年中，瑞秋·罗斯迅速成为了国际当代艺术界其中一位最受瞩目的艺术家。罗斯的作品探索了现实与人造物、内部与外部、死亡与生命多个状态之间的复杂关系。罗斯广泛吸收在电影史中出现的诸多创新元素，并在自身创作中进一步发展电影语言。通过其庞杂的创作主题——从低温生物学、美国独立战争、现代主义建筑到外太空行走的感官经验等——罗斯质询了人类存在的意义，以及人类改变、增强或逃脱此种意义框架的诸多努力。
褚秉超
1986年生于甘肃平凉。毕业于湖北美术学院雕塑系。2010年至今工作和生活在北京。作品创作包括有雕塑、装置、影像、出版等。长期致力于关注并针对社会性问题及自然环境、公共空间进行讨论和艺术创作，以期运用真实有效的制作方式探索当下以及未来，艺术与现实的共生关系。
个展包括：“石还山”（个展，墨方，北京，2019）；“七府環屏”（个展，墨方，北京，中国，2016）。其他主要群展及项目包括：“许村夏夜：大地的狂想曲”，山西许村，2019；“时间开始了-2019乌镇当代艺术邀请展”，乌镇北栅丝厂，浙江，2019；“过年特别艺术项目-万家灯火”，2019；“十夜——BMCA艺术文件展”，北京，2016；“所为何事”，北京，墨方，2015；“不在图像中行动”，佩斯北京，北京，2014；“WHY NOT!拍卖双年展”，上海世博会博物馆，上海，2013；“关注未来艺术英才—计划10人展”，今日美术馆，北京， 2013。2019年获得第二届乌镇当代艺术邀请展-青年当代艺术创作奖；第七届明天雕塑奖金奖。
段建宇
1970年出生于河南郑州，1995年毕业于广州美院油画系，现任教于广州华南师范大学美术系。
段建宇的笔触、色彩唤起我们意识中一个无法触及的边界，但又如此准确地唤起了我们在当代中国生活的感觉。她的绘画研究庸常的表达方式和风格，切入当下的生活。段建宇始终游走在绘画叙事和叙事绘画的边界，绘画从带有原生意念和生活形态的轮廓开始，成长成为绘画性的现实——这个现实是由诸种影响、情境和意识中的图景不断撞击、对抗、调整而生成，具有和我们所面对的物质现实同样的复杂性；而这同时也是基于对绘画与生命经验之间关系的重新信任。
方迪
本科毕业于广州美术学院油画系第五工作室,研究生毕业于美国马里兰艺术学院。他也是啾小组的创始人之一。
目前工作于中国深圳和巴布亚新几内亚首都莫尔兹比港。他的作品探讨种族主义与社会阶层。他通过研究社会新闻与时事政治，利用不同的身份像变色龙一样灵活圆滑地穿梭社会的各个阶层，以敏感的触觉，吸收和消化人们在迁徙生活中带来的智慧与欲望。他常用多种艺术语言探索城市生活的纠结与意义，勇敢地在左右倒置的现实中，寻找特殊群体在全球经济与民族主义的影响下是如何被定义的，并成为今天重要的社会裂痕。
龚剑
生于1978年，2001年毕业于湖北美术学院，现工作生活于武汉。他的创作媒介是多样化的，从绘画到装置都有涉及。艺术家一直致力于在社会干涉和体裁进步方面建立自己的道路，将油画材料与老式的前社会主义式的现实主义绘画风格结合在一起。近年来龚剑的作品由更多的趣味性转向探讨更富有深度与真实性的学术性倾向，在某种混乱和粗糙的美学中揭示出现实的力量。
何子彦
何子彦于1976年出生于新加坡，通过戏剧性的乐谱和光效来呈现大量的历史参照是何子彦创作录像和装置作品的主要手法。各不相同的录像作品向人们揭示鲜为人知的东南亚历史的同时，也在指出我们自身并未察觉的未知。何的作品脉络参考一系列文学、艺术史和音乐的文献，一种被扩大强化的模糊、戏剧性和不安的感受充斥于其中。何借由身心两方面来调动观众多种感知，并促使其思考那些我们已知的和更为重要的未知。
何子彦的录像作品的核心是观察历史，具体而言是编织事实和谬论，对比那些人们信以为真的事件来揭露和阐明道听途说的种种。游移于真伪的边缘，何的作品涉及调研为导向的纪实和无中生有的空想。
鸟头
鸟头成立于2004年，由宋涛（b.1979）和季炜煜 （b.1980）组成，“鸟头”源自一次为文件命名而来的随意键盘敲击。鸟头以摄影为创作基础而不被摄影所框限。他们的镜头捕捉任何能涉及的事物，将关于他们自身的成长思考逐渐内化到他们的图像语境中。他们结合照片矩阵，拼贴，装裱，装置，摄影书写各种对于照片的使用方式，在不同的展览空间和环境中呈现多个自我更新进化的“鸟头世界”。
杨福东
杨福东，1971年生于北京。毕业于中国美术学院油画系，被誉为目前中国最成功和最有影响力的艺术家之一。从九十年代末起，杨福东就开始从事影像作品的创作。无论是摄影、电影还是装置，均以多重的文化透视、交错的时空体验形成独特的文化视觉诠释。
杨福东凭借其极具个人风格的电影及录像装置作品，在全球多家著名美术馆、艺术机构和画廊举办个展。
郑国谷
郑国谷1970年出生于广东阳江，1992年毕业于广州美术学院版画系。2002年， 他和陈再炎、孙庆麟成立阳江组合。目前生活和工作在阳江。
郑国谷的创作涵括多种媒介，横跨行为、摄影、绘画、雕塑、空间和建筑，而根本的驱动力不是来自媒材而是与生活进程密切相关的意念。从2005年开始的土地/空间项目（开始命名为“帝国时代”，现名为“了园”）融合了复杂的空间形态和社会关系，包容了一个空间从理想到实现以及在生活中持续的全部过程。而近年来从能量研究而展开的绘画系列创作中，郑国谷力图揭示潜伏在感知过程中的能量流动。
关于坪山美术馆
坪山美术馆坐落于深圳市坪山区文化聚落北区，总建筑面积9900平方米。以 “打开世界， 超越边界”——作为艺术探讨的出发点，坪山美术馆关注时代社会变迁中，科技、 媒介、环境、思想、人性带给艺术的跨界融合与裂变，尤其关注艺术在空间中的不同形态与表现， 保存、收藏、传播当代艺术的能量与远见，期待通过将独特的观展体验、学习经验、在线在地的方式，把当代艺术产生的心灵震撼与创意激发带给在地以及国内国际的观众，促进国际间的当代艺术文化交流。同时，作为中国第一家区级当代美术馆，坪山美术馆是坪山文化的发动机， 拥有一套完善的美术馆研究、典藏、展览、教育团队和系统，正积极探索一条以理事会、基金会、 学术委员会为核心的国有美术馆的体制创新与专业发展道路。
Foreword
In the 2010 film of Mnemosyne, African British artist John Akomfrah composes a "sad song" about migration and travel, memory and mourning, knowledge and identity, nature and politics, following the poetic path laid out by Dante, Beckett, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, Milton, Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Dylan Thomas, etc. Coincidentally, Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen epitomizes a similar grief in his gripping epic, The Cloud of Unknowing. Inspired by A Theory of Cloud: Toward a History of Painting written by art historian Hubert Damisch, Ho takes classic artworks of Caravaggio, Zurbarán, Correggio, Bernini, Mantegna, René Magritte and others as the blueprint, depicting the protagonist in each section as clouds, boundless and flexible, yet interwoven with love and hatred, good and evil, as well as other absurd, bizarre and compelling emotions and experiences.
Ten years later, the Exhibition of Muses, Yu Gong and Compasses will continue the epic along their imaginative and narrative paths. From John Akomfrah's Mnemosyne and Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Cloud of Unknowing, to Gong Jian's Muse, and Fang Di's Minister, from Yang Fudong's Moving Mountains, Chu Bingchao's The Hill of Qifu, Zheng Guogu's Planting Geese and Pig Controlling Computer to Duan Jianyu's Horse, from Rachel Rose's Wil-o-Wisp to Birdhead's Passions Bloom Ambitions and Phototheism, here presents an epic story composed by Muses, Yu Gong and Compasses and a profound fable born out of myths, legends and magic.
A century ago, the rise of monopoly capitalism and imperialism messed with people’s head and triggered two world wars. While A century later, the crisis of capitalism and the global pandemic have once again forced humanity into an Age of Ecstasy where myths, legends and magic thrive. We all remember Marx's famous quote from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon:" Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." It’s still hard for us to say the situation today is a farce yet, but we are pretty sure those crazy phantoms from a hundred years ago are back with us.
Written by / Lu Mingjun
Translated by / Ye Kefei
Muses,Yugong
and Compasses
Duration|2020.6.20-2020.8.30
Host|Culture,Radio,Television,Tourism and Sports Bureau of Pingshan District
Organizer|Pingshan Art Museum
Curator|Lu Mingjun
Producer|Liu Xiaodu
Exhibition Fit-out Contractor|Le Zao
Equipment Supplier|Shanghai HELU Culture Communication Co., Ltd.
Graphic Design|Yu Xiaodan
Publicity|Art DBL
Special Thanks to|Birdhead Art Studio、 Edouard Malingue Gallery、Lisson Gallery、MadeIn Gallery、Pilar Corrias Gallery、ShanghART Gallery 、Vanguard Gallery、Vitamin Creative Space
About Curator
Lu Mingjun
Lu Mingjun is a Doctor of History, and an Associate Professor at the Department of Art Studies in the Arts College of Sichuan University. Recent curated exhibitions include “Frontiers:Re- assessment of Post-Globalisational Politics”(2017,Shanghai;2018,Beijing)，“Assembling”(2018, Shenyang)，“hic sunt leones”(2019，Wuhan，Beijing)，“River flowing without a Beacon， 1979”(2019，Beijing)，“Corner，Square，and Montage”(2019，Wuhan)，“Force Majeure”(2020，NYC)，and “Being of Evils”(2020，Beijing).Recent publications include Poetic Justice(2019, Henan University Press)，Conscious Forking Paths: Three Contemporary Art Exhibitions/ Projects from 1999 and What Followed (2020，Shanghai Calligraphy & Painting Press), and“Revolution of Art”and Modern China:Radical Origin of Chinese Contemporary Art(2020，The Commercial Press). Awards:2015 Appointed Artistic Director of Surplus Space Contemporary Art;2015 Awarded the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation China Research Grant;2016 Recipient of the Yishu Award for Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art;2017 Awarded Asia Cultural Council Fellowship. 2017 Recipient of the CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Critic Award. 2019 Recipient of the AAC Chinese Contemporary Art Curator Award.
About Artists
John Akomfrah
John Akomfrah is a hugely respected artist and filmmaker, whose works are characterised by their investigations into memory, postcolonialism, temporality and aesthetics and often explores the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982 alongside the artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul, who he still collaborates with today. Their first film, Handsworth Songs (1986) explored the events surrounding the 1985 riots in Birmingham and London through a charged combination of archive footage, still photos and newsreel. The film won several international prizes and established a multi-layered visual style that has become a recognisable motif of Akomfrah’s practice. Other works include the three-screen installation The Unfinished Conversation (2012), a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s life and work; Peripeteia (2012), an imagined drama visualising the lives of individuals included in two 16th century portraits by Albrecht Dürer and Mnemosyne (2010) which exposes the experience of migrants in the UK, questioning the notion of Britain as a promised land by revealing the realities of economic hardship and casual racism.
Akomfrah (born 1957) lives and works in London. He has had numerous solo exhibitions.
Rachel Rose
Within the past few years, Rachel Rose (b. 1986) has established herself as one of the foremost artists. Rose’s work explores states between real and artificial, interior and exterior, dead and alive. Rose draws from and contributes to a long history of cinematic innovation, and through her subjects – whether investigating cryogenics, the American Revolutionary War, modernist architecture, or the sensory experience of walking in outer space – she questions what it is that makes us human and the ways we seek to alter, enhance, and escape that designation.
Rachel Rose lives and works in New York. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions.
Chu Bingchao
Chu Bingchao was born in Gan Su, China in 1986, graduated for Hubei Institute of Fine Arts. Currently lives and works in Beijing. He is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, photography, video and installation. He has been devoted to social issues and public space for artistic discussion and creation, with a view to exploring the symbiotic relationship between art and reality in the present and future by using real and effective methods. Chu Bingchao has been held solo exhibition Returning Stones to the Mountain in Mocube, Beijing, 2019. The Hill of Qi Fu in Mocube, Beijing, 2016. Part of recent group exhibitions and projects include: A summer Night in Xucun Village: Rhapsody of the Earth, Xucun, China, 2019; Now is the Time –2019 Wuzhen Contemporary Art Exhibition, Wuzhen, China, 2019; Spring Festival Project - Myriad Twinkling Lights of the City, 2019; The Decameron –BMCA Documenting Art, Beijing, China, 2016; What For, Mocube, China, 2015; Unlived by What is Seen, Pace Beijing, China, 2014；WHY NOT! Auction Biennale , World Expo Museum , Shanghai ,2013; Focus on Talents Project , Today Art Museum ,Beijing , 2013 ,etc.
Award: Wuzhen Contemporary Art Exihibition / Creation Award， 7th Towmorrow Sculpture Award 。
Duan Jianyu
Born in 1970 in Zhengzhou, Henan province, Duan Jianyu graduated from the oil painting department at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art in 1995. She currently teaches at the South China Normal University of the Arts in Guangzhou.
Duan Jianyu’s works recall a boundary that is mentally non-tangible in our daily lives, yet they precisely recall the feeling of living in contemporary China under globalization. Duan Jianyu strives for the most generic subjects matter and she delves into banal expression and style, and very much about life in the present tense. Her painting grows from its proto-concept and outline of different modes of living into a painted reality. Continuously impacted, resisted, altered and formed by the pictures that emerge from different influences, situations and awarenesses, this reality has the same complexity as the material reality before us. Duan Jianyu wanders the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, so-called narrative follows the logic of painting itself, and unknown experiences open up.
Fang Di
Fang Di is a Chinese artist who is currently working for a state-owned enterprise in Shenzhen, China and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. His work discusses racism and social hierarchy through studies on news and political affairs. By switching in between identities like a chameleon, he moves smoothly among different social classes, absorbing and resolving people’s desire and wisdom gained through migration with his sensitivity. He often uses various artistic languages to explore the entanglement and meaning of urban life, and bravely discovers how special groups are defined under globalization and nationalism in the inverted reality, which has become an inevitable social fracture today.
Gong Jian
Gong Jian, born in 1978 and educated in Hubei, currently lives and works in Wuhan. Works in a diverse range of media from painting to installation and always willing to forge his own path in terms of stylistic development and social intervention, Gong Jian well-developed his blending of oil materials with the older graphic styles of pre-socialist realism folk painting. Recently, he has moved towards less playful and more academically informed experiments with discourses of depth and authenticity, revealing the power of reality in some raw and ragged aesthetics.
Ho Tzu Nyen
A plethora of historical references dramatised by musical scores and allegorical lighting make up the pillars of Ho Tzu Nyen’s (b. 1976, Singapore) complex practice that primarily constitutes video and installation. Features in their own right, each work unravels unspoken layers of Southeast Asian histories whilst equally pointing to our own personal unknowns. Permeating Ho’s work is a pervasive sense of ambiguity, theatricality and unease, augmented by a series of deliberate literary, art historical and musical references. Centrally, Ho charges the viewer emotionally and physically to deliver a multisensory consideration of what we know and crucially, do not.
At the heart of Ho’s films is an observation of history; more specifically, a weaving of fact and myth to unravel and reveal what one is told versus what one believes to know, interprets and remembers. Ho’s work titters on the edge of fact and artifice, tending in scope from research-driven documentative exposure to the fantastical.
Birdhead
Birdhead, consisting of Song Tao (b. 1979) and Ji Weiyu (b. 1980), has been working in the medium of analog photography since it was established in 2004. The name "Birdhead" came from a random keystroke for film naming. The artistic practice of Birdhead is based on photographs but also beyond the philosophy of photography. Capturing all the beings around them, the two members of Birdhead digest and apply the thinking mode of conceptual art into the context of their image interpretation. By combining the photographic matrix, collage, installation, particular mounting technique and so on, Birdhead delivers a “Birdhead world” in various exhibition spaces and humanistic environment.
Yang Fudong
Yang Fudong was born in Beijing in 1971, and now lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from the Department of Oil Painting, China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. He is among the most successful and influential Chinese artists today. Yang has started to create video works since late 1990s. His works form a unique cultural visual interpretation through multiple cultural perspectives interlaced with experiences of space and time with photograph, film and installation. They are all characterized by multi-perspectives, exploring the structures and forms of identities in myths, personal memories and life experiences.
Yang Fudong has participated in prestigious international art exhibitions,He had solo-shows at most acclaimed institutions and galleries.
Zheng Guogu
Born in 1970 in Yangjiang, Guangdong province, Zheng Guogu graduated from the printmaking department at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art in 1992. He lives and works in Yangjiang.
Zheng Guogu’s artistic practices utilize a wide range of media in order to express the extensive diversity of his ideas along with life process. The land/garden project (initiated from "The Age of Empire" in 2005 and it has evolved into "Liao Garden" since 2013) integrates even more complicated spatial modalities and social relations, which comprises the entire process of dwelling in a spatial location, from conceptual ideal to practical implementation to day-to-day living. In his recent painting series based on the research of life energy, Zheng Guogu tries to reveal the energy flow lurking in the process of perception, the vibration of color frequencies is closely related to the workings of human arteries and veins, as well as the operation of the universe. Furthermore, the vibration is the tempering of an existential insight. Zheng Guogu is also the founding member of Yangjiang Group, an art collective focusing on the experimental Chinese calligraphy, founded in 2002 in Yangjiang.
About PAM
The Pingshan Art Museum (PAM) is situated in Shenzhen Pingshan Culture Quarter, with a total area of 9,900 square meters. With an open-ended approach for artistic exploration, PAM is concerned about the cross-boundaries integration and fission of a range of areas. That include technology, media, environment in the changing society of the times. By putting forward different forms and expressions in space, PAM preserves, collects and disseminates the vitality and vision of art.
As the first district contemporary art museum in China, PAM is the engine of Pingshan's culture, with a comprehensive team and system that spans from research, collection, exhibition, education. With a council, foundation and academic committee as its core, PAM actively explores institutional innovation and professional development for state-owned art museums.
来源｜坪山美术馆
平面设计｜余晓丹
编辑｜李超群
审校｜郭琳 李耀