【SPURS 新展】乌雷：无量之物
乌雷：无量之物
2022年9月4日至10月30日
Gallery I & II｜SPURS Gallery，北京朝阳区酒仙桥路二号院798艺术区D-06
马刺画廊荣幸地宣布将于秋季呈现著名艺术家乌雷（1943—2020）的首次亚洲个展“无量之物”（ULAY: The Great Journey），他是宝丽来摄影、身体和行为艺术的先驱。展览由画廊合伙人来梦馨（Sherry Lai）和乌雷基金会总监哈娜·奥斯坦·奥日博尔特（Hana Ostan Ožbolt）共同策划。乌雷与中国有着长期且深厚的关系，这片广袤和伟大的土地激发他创作了大量作品——它的风景、文化、宗教和人民给予了他一系列作品的创作灵感。这次展览是一次穿越乌雷艺术作品与生活的旅程，关注三个不同的时期：他在20世纪70年代初的艺术活动、他在1976年至1988年间与玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇的合作和他在90年代末的个人创作。
身体是一个参考、是一个起点，也是乌雷卓越运用的媒介。“我一开始使用宝丽来相机，是把镜头对准自己的——我称之为‘自动宝丽来’拍摄法——并立即发现了它的表演元素。拍摄宝丽来照片对我来说是一种表演性行为。我是在镜头前表演。”[1]在70年代早期，不仅仅限于创作方法，在创作主题上乌雷也极具先锋性，他通过无数种方式操纵宝丽来相片来捕捉自己身体的变化，例如探究身份这一主题的《白色面具》（White Mask，1973）和《乱序警句》（Anagrammatic Aphorism，1974—75）。没有观众的在场，乌雷在转瞬即逝的私密表演中探索了社会构建的性别问题——《她/他》（S'he，1973—74）中他带上了半男半女的面貌，在《修整伤痕》（Retouching Bruises，1975）中他更关注摄影如何游走于真实和虚幻之间。
自1976年至1988年，乌雷和当时的伴侣玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇合作。他们在爱情和工作上强烈的共生关系持续了12年。乌雷不再深挖性别问题，而是与阿布拉莫维奇一起用前卫的行为艺术开辟了新的天地，将彼此推向新的、甚至更加极端的、无人涉足的领域，创作挑战情感和身体的作品，考验身体和精神的能力，质疑传统的性别气质。通过他们的行为表演，他们无可争议地在行为艺术史上独树一帜。马刺画廊将展出他们标志性的表演《静止能量》（Rest Energy，1980）。在四分钟的时间里，乌雷持箭、阿布拉莫维奇持弓，他们身体倾斜以身体的重量将弓拉满；箭头直指阿布拉莫维奇的心脏。两个麦克风记录了他们的心跳和呼吸声，随着这场关于完全彻底的信任的表演的进行，他们的心跳和呼吸也越来越强烈。宝丽来系列作品《星期三—星期六》（Wednesday–Saturday，1987）与他们表演实践相辅相承，专注于意识状态、精神能量、超凡的冥想和非语言交流。
1986年，乌雷和阿布拉莫维奇第一次访问中国。在早期的旅行计划中，这对情侣打算在长城中心结婚，但旅途最后他们用一个拥抱结束了他们的关系。在不朽的作品《情人·长城》（The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk，1988）中，他们从长城的两端相向步行了90天——当时这是一个尚没有任何西方人完成的旅程。在与中国政府进行了八年的谈判并为该项目筹集资金后，艺术家们获得了进行这项表演作品的许可。阿布拉莫维奇从长城的东端（渤海之滨的山海关）开始向西行走；乌雷从长城的西端（戈壁滩西南的嘉峪关）向东行走。两人持续向对方走去的两千公里中，他们也记录了这场旅程。展览将展出乌雷的宝丽来照片《中国——长城沿线》（China – Along the Great Wall，1986—1989），它们记录了沿途风景与他一路所遇之人，以及他当时的私密日记。受长城建筑启发的大型铝制门状雕塑《门，98》（Mén, 98，1988—89）也将展出，这是艺术家极少数量的雕塑作品之一。
1988年6月27日，阿布拉莫维奇和乌雷在陕西省神木市的二郎山相遇。长城漫步，最初是为了确认他们的爱情，最终却成为这段20世纪最著名而高产的艺术伙伴关系结束的标志。
《情侣》（The Lovers，1989）是乌雷在1989年创作的中型尺幅宝丽来系列作品的标题，通过纸偶的表演，在宝丽来相机前上演了乌雷和阿布拉莫维奇的长城漫步。乌雷当时的妻子丁小松通过操纵纸偶来解释这个故事，并为表演增加了新的参考层次。最后一幕是丁小松点燃了纸人，暗示了他们关系的结束，同时也宣告了乌雷生活新篇章的开启。
探索宝丽来摄影媒介的极限并从根本上融合摄影和行为表演，促使乌雷使用更大画幅的宝丽来相机，包括20 × 24英寸的相机（《情侣》和《星期三—星期六》系列）和最大的40 × 80英寸相机。此次展览将首次展出名为《低语》（Whispers，1993）的大尺幅宝丽来摄影作品（约240 × 110厘米）。在欧洲作家萨缪尔·贝克特（Samuel Beckett）和萧沆（Emil Cioran）的虚无主义文学的影响下，该系列的作品反映了乌雷的内心状态，同时也延续了他作品中反复出现的主题：表演性“自拍”，作为虚实象征的花瓶、死亡象征的骷髅与生命象征的水和种子。90年代中期拍摄的系列《孤挺花》（Amarilys，1997—2018）也深入了对这些主题的探索，正如乌雷所说，“它清楚地呈现了我探求的事物”。
乌雷的一生通过世界旅行游走于与不同文化和人与人的关系，探索身体与精神的状态及其发展。他对身份问题的终身考察是一个“舍却所学——忘记我那些赖以自圆其说的价值观与定论”的过程。“我期待的是更多的流动性，不再那么具体……我开始看到，一切都在不断地运动：生命在于变化。”[2]
[1] Alessandro Cassin对乌雷的采访：“Early Works: Ephermal, Intimate Actions, with No Audience, Arrested in Time through the Polaroid”，第88—93页。见：Whispers: Ulay on Ulay（Maria Rus Bojan和Alessandro Cassin著，Astrid Vorstermans编），Valiz Foundation，阿姆斯特丹，2014。
[2] 乌雷与Alessandro Cassin的对话：“Animism, Buddhism, Beckett and Cage”，第226—227页。见：Whispers: Ulay on Ulay（Maria Rus Bojan和Alessandro Cassin著，Astrid Vorstermans编），Valiz Foundation，阿姆斯特丹，2014。
乌雷/玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇，《静止能量》（静帧），1980，行为表演录像，16 mm胶片转数字录像，彩色，有声，4分4秒，版权为艺术家所有，图片致谢玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇档案、乌雷基金会、LIMA和马刺画廊｜Ulay / Marina Abramović, Rest Energy (still), 1980, performance for video, 16 mm film transferred to digital video, color, sound, 4 min. 4 sec., copyright the artists, courtesy Marina Abramović Archives, ULAY Foundation, LIMA and SPURS Gallery
ULAY: The Great Journey
September 4 - October 30, 2022
Gallery I & II | SPURS Gallery, D-06, 798 Art Zone, 2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang District, Beijing
SPURS Gallery will begin its fall exhibition season with the first official gallery presentation of the iconic artist Ulay (1943–2020), a pioneer in Polaroid photography, performance and body art. Curated by Sherry Lai and Hana Ostan Ožbolt, ULAY: The Great Journey is also the artist's first solo exhibition in China – a country with which Ulay had a long-lasting and personal relationship and that inspired a great deal of his oeuvre – highlighting various series of works, which were inspired by China’s vastness and greatness, its landscape, culture, religion and people. The exhibition is a journey through Ulay's life and his body of work, focusing on three different periods: his artistic activity in the early 1970s, his collaboration with Marina Abramović between 1976 and 1989, and his work as a solo artist in the late 1990s.
The body as a reference, as a starting point, as Ulay's medium par excellence: “As soon as I began using the Polaroid camera, mainly pointing it at myself – a practice I called Auto-Polaroid – I immediately discovered its performative elements. Taking Polaroids was a performative act for me: I performed in front of the camera”.[1] In the early 70s, Ulay developed an approach that was novel in both method and subject matter, using the Polaroid camera as a tool to capture the transformations of his own body, manipulated in a myriad of ways, and investigate the subject of identity (White Mask, 1973; Anagrammatic Aphorism, 1974-75). In those fleeting, intimate performances without an audience, Ulay explored socially constructed issues of gender, his masculine and feminine sides (S'he, 1973-74), as well as photography's slippery identity between the real and the illusory (Retouching Bruises, 1975).
From 1976 to 1988, Ulay collaborated with former partner Marina Abramović. Their intensely symbiotic relationship in both love and work lasted twelve years. Ulay no longer posed questions about his own masculine and feminine sides but, joint with Abramović, strived towards unification. Together they broke new ground with their pioneering performance art, propelling each other into new, evermore extreme and unexplored realms of emotional discomfort and physical endurance; testing the capabilities of the body and the mind, and questioning perceived masculine and feminine traits. Through their performances, they became indisputable icons of performance art. On display at SPURS Gallery is their iconic performance Rest Energy (1980). Recorded in a studio in Amsterdam, four minutes in duration, Ulay and Abramović hold a bow and an arrow with the weight of their bodies; the arrow pointing right into Abramović's heart. Two small microphones record their heartbeats and breaths, which are becoming more and more intense as the performance – about complete and total trust – progresses. The highly symbolic Polaroid series Wednesday–Saturday (1987) can be understood as a complementary and associated element of their performative practice, focused on states of consciousness, psychic energy, transcendental meditation and nonverbal communication.
In 1986, Ulay and Abramović visited China for the first time. Initially, when the couple planned the trip, they intended to get married at the center of the wall. With a hug, they ended their relationship with the monumental work The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk (1988) in which they walked for ninety days towards each other from either end of the Great Wall – a journey not yet made by any Westerner. After eight years of negotiations with the Chinese authorities and raising funds for the project, the artists got permission to carry out the durational performance: Abramović started walking at the eastern end of the Wall (at Shan Hai Guan, on the shores of the Bohai Sea), walking westward. Ulay started at the western end of the Wall (at Jia Yu Guan, the south-western periphery of the Gobi Desert), walking eastward. While they both continuously walked two thousand kilometres towards each other, they documented their journey: on view are Ulay's (Polaroid) photographs of the landscape and the people he encountered (China – Along the Great Wall, 1986–1989), as well as his intimate diaries from that time. Inspired by the architecture of the Great Wall itself, a large aluminium gate-like sculpture from 1989, Mén ("door" in Chinese), one of the artist's very seldom examples of sculptural objects, is also exhibited.
On June 27th, 1988, Abramović and Ulay met at Erlang Mountain, in Shen Mu, Shaanxi province. The Great Wall Walk, initially intended as a confirmation of their love, marked the end of their relationship, one of the most intimately productive and celebrated artistic partnerships of the 20th century.
The Lovers is also the title of the mid-size Polaroid series, Ulay created in 1989. Through a performance of paper figures, the series stages Ulay and Abramović's Great Wall Walk for the Polaroid camera. Ulay's wife at the time, Ding Xiaosong, interprets the story by manipulating the paper puppets and adding new layers of references to the performance. The last scene shows Ding setting on fire the paper figures, suggesting the end of their relationship, announcing at the same time a new chapter in Ulay's life.
Radically merging photography and performance and exploring the limits of the medium of Polaroid photography led Ulay to use the larger Polaroid formats, the 20 x 24-inch camera (the series The Lovers, 1989 and Wednesday–Saturday, 1987) and the largest, the 40 x 80-inch camera. Presented at SPURS Gallery are, for the first time, the large-format Polaroids (approx. 240 x 110cm) from the intimate series titled Whispers. Realized under the influence of the European writers Samuel Beckett's and Emil Cioran's nihilist literature, the works composing the series represent a statement that reflects Ulay's inner state while at the same time continuing recurring motifs from his oeuvre: performative auto-portraits, vases as symbols of emptiness and fullness, memento mori, water and seeds as symbols of life. The works, so Ulay about the series, “clearly reflect a certain search”. The works Amarilys (1997), photographed in the mid-90s, continue the search.
Ulay's life was marked by various journeys with diverse people and cultures – physical travels all around the world and spiritual explorations of different states of mind. His identity search was a life-long project, closely connected to the process of “unlearning – forgetting the values by which I had justified myself, my commitment”. “What I reached was a lot more fluid and no longer as concrete. (...) I began to see that everything is in constant motion: life is change.”[2]
[1] Ulay in an Interview with Alessandro Cassin: “Early Works: Ephermal, Intimate Actions, with No Audience, Arrested in Time through the Polaroid”, pp 88-93. In: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam, 2014.
[2] Ulay in conversation with Alessandro Cassin: “Animism, Buddhism, Beckett and Cage”, pp. 226–227. In: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam, 2014.
玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇/乌雷，《情人·长城》（静帧），1988，双频录像装置，彩色，无声，15分41秒，版权为艺术家所有，图片致谢玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇档案、乌雷基金会、LIMA和马刺画廊｜Marina Abramović / Ulay, The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk (still), 1988, two-channel video installation, color, silent, 15 min. 41 sec., copyright the artists, courtesy Marina Abramović Archives, ULAY Foundation, LIMA and SPURS Gallery
关于艺术家
乌雷，2016，Primož Korošeč为Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt摄影｜Ulay, 2016, photographed by Primož Korošeč for Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
乌雷（Ulay，1943年11月30日—2020年3月2日），是宝丽来摄影、身体和行为艺术的先驱。
乌雷，本名弗兰克·乌韦·莱西彭（Frank Uwe Laysiepen），1943年出生于德国索林根，1968年移居阿姆斯特丹，后担任宝丽来公司顾问摄影师，由此开始了他的艺术生涯。在艺术活动早期（1968—1976），他主要通过一系列宝丽来照片、警句、视觉诗和具体诗以及私下的行为表演，对理解身份诸概念、个人和群体层面的身体进行了主题性的探索。1976至1988年间，乌雷和当时的伴侣玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇（Marina Abramović）合作。交往12年，他们是20世纪最高产也最著名的艺术伙伴之一。凭借“关系”系列、《穿越夜海》、《情人·长城》等行为表演，他们成为行为艺术无可争辩的代表。与阿布拉莫维奇分手后，乌雷专注于摄影，探索这一媒介和它的边界，并不断通过大量合作项目、行为表演、工作坊和表演讲座“挑衅”观众，投身旨在提高意识并增进对水的理解感谢和重视的项目和艺术倡议。他2014至2017年间的晚期艺术活动在形式和内容上都以粉红色为标志（乌雷的“粉红时期”），由一系列素描、中画幅宝丽来照片和（合作）行为表演组成。2020年3月，乌雷在斯洛文尼亚卢布尔雅那逝世。
乌雷，以及他与玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇合作的作品，被世界各地的艺术机构收藏，包括阿姆斯特丹市立博物馆、巴黎蓬皮杜中心国立现代美术馆、纽约现代艺术博物馆（MoMA）、旧金山现代艺术博物馆（SFMOMA）、伦敦泰特现代美术馆、维也纳现代艺术博物馆路德维希基金会（Mumok）等。
Ulay (November 30, 1943–March 2, 2020) was the pioneer of Polaroid photography, body and performance art.
Born as Frank Uwe Laysiepen in 1943 in Solingen, Germany, Ulay moved to Amsterdam in 1968, where he started his artistic career as a consultant for Polaroid. In the early period of his artistic activity (1968–1976) he undertook a thematic search for understandings of the notions of identity and the body on both the personal and communal levels, mainly through series of Polaroid photographs, aphorisms, visual and concrete poetry, and intimate performances. From 1976 to 1988, Ulay collaborated with former partner Marina Abramović. Their 12-year relationship was one of the most fertile and celebrated artistic partnerships of the 20th century. Through their performances (Relation Works; Modus Vivendi; Nightsea Crossing, The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk), they became indisputable icons of performance art. After breaking with Abramović, Ulay focused on photography, exploring the medium and its boundaries. He also produced constant 'provocation' of audiences through the realization of numerous collaborative projects, performances, workshops, and lecture-performances, and engaged in projects and artistic initiatives that raise awareness and enhance understanding and appreciation of – and respect for – water. The period of his late artistic activity between 2014–2017 was marked in both form and content by the colour pink (Ulay’s “pink period”). It consists of a series of drawings, middle-size Polaroids and (collaborative) performances. Ulay died in Ljubljana, Slovenia in March 2020.
Ulay's work, as well as his collaborative work with Marina Abramović, is featured in major collections of art institutions around the world such as Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Musee Nationale d’Art Moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; MoMA. Museum of Modern Art, New York; SFMOMA. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Mumok, Vienna.
乌雷过往回顾阅读：
SPURS 即将展出
乌雷：无量之物
2022年9月4日至10月30日
Gallery I & II｜SPURS Gallery，北京朝阳区酒仙桥路二号院798艺术区D-06
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