【SPURS 新展】阿卡迪亚之梦
阿卡迪亚之梦
策展人：托马斯·斯托弗
艺术家：玛丽亚·巴莱亚、维多利亚·坎顿、安纳·科恩、纳塔利娅·冈萨雷斯·马丁、霍滕西娅·米·卡夫钦、迭戈·科利、阿林娜·科佩恰、普雷斯拉夫·科斯托夫、塔米娜·内格玛特、莉迪亚·佩蒂特、卢克·席尔瓦、奥莉维亚·史特林、许阳
2024年4月14日—5月19日
新展预览及开幕对谈
4月14日 星期日 18:30—21:00
SPURS Gallery，北京市朝阳区酒仙桥路2号798艺术区D-06
马刺画廊欣然宣布将于2024年4月14日推出群展“阿卡迪亚之梦”。展览由托马斯·斯托弗策划，将在Gallery I & II双层展厅空间呈现玛丽亚·巴莱亚、维多利亚·坎顿、安纳·科恩、纳塔利娅·冈萨雷斯·马丁、霍滕西娅·米·卡夫钦、迭戈·科利、阿林娜·科佩恰、普雷斯拉夫·科斯托夫、塔米娜·内格玛特、莉迪亚·佩蒂特、卢克·席尔瓦、奥莉维亚·史特林、许阳共13位艺术家的作品。
阿卡迪亚之梦
文/托马斯·斯托弗
“阿卡迪亚之梦”这个群展标题，取自明星经济学家和作家杰里米·里夫金的著作《欧洲梦》。
“欧洲梦”可以有多种解读方式，而我们希望将这里的“欧洲”定位为一方理想化的、令人憧憬的美好世界，换言之一处阿卡迪亚。几个世纪以来，欧洲一直是旅行家、作家、音乐家和艺术家向往的地方，是灵感和诗意之源。但是，这种我们通过小说和游记得到的浪漫化的、梦幻般的欧洲印象，和现实世界中危机四伏、正在走向失序的“旧大陆”形成鲜明对比。
在当前欧洲风云变幻的社会、经济背景下，此次展览呈现一系列杰出的艺术作品，涵盖从肖像画到风景画的多种形式，彼此间展开对话。所有参展艺术家都生活和工作于欧洲，其中许多人具有移民背景。
展览将持续展出至2024年5月19日。
霍滕西娅·米·卡夫钦，《林中快艇》，2023，布面油画，149 × 190 cm，摄影：Trevor Good，图片由艺术家和Galerie Judin提供
Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Yacht in the Forest, 2023, oil on canvas, 149 × 190 cm, photo: Trevor Good, image courtesy the Artist and Galerie Judin
The Arcadian Dream
Curated by Thomas Stauffer
Artists: Maria Balea, Victoria Cantons, Anner Cohen, Natalia Gonzalez Martin, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Diego Kohli, Alina Kopytsia, Preslav Kostov, Tahmina Negmat, Lydia Pettit, Luke Silva, Olivia Sterling, Xu Yang
April 14–May 19, 2024
The Preview & Talk
18:30–21:00, Sunday, April 14, 2024
SPURS Gallery, D-06, 798 Art Zone, No. 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing
SPURS Gallery is pleased to announce the group exhibition “The Arcadian Dream,” opening on April 14, 2024. Curated by Thomas Stauffer, the exhibition presents works by a total of 13 artists in Gallery I & II: Maria Balea, Victoria Cantons, Anner Cohen, Natalia Gonzalez Martin, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Diego Kohli, Alina Kopytsia, Preslav Kostov, Tahmina Negmat, Lydia Pettit, Luke Silva, Olivia Sterling, and Xu Yang.
The Arcadian Dream
By Thomas Stauffer
“The Arcadian Dream,” the title of the group show is inspired by the book “The European Dream” by star economist and writer Jeremy Rifkin.
The European dream can be interpreted in many ways, and we want to locate it in the romanticized sense of a place of longing and bliss or as an Arcadian dream. Europe has been a place of desire and a source of inspiration and poetry for travelers, writers, musicians, and artists in particular for many centuries. But this idealized and dreamy image of Europe, which we know so well from novels and historical travel literature, is juxtaposed in the real world with disruption and impending chaos surrounding the “Old Continent.”
In the context of the current social, economic and disruptive tensions in Europe, the exhibition presents a selection of outstanding artistic positions ranging from portraiture to landscape paintings, in dialogue with each other. All the artists represented in the exhibition live and work in Europe, many of them with a migration background.
The exhibition will remain on view until May 19, 2024.
莉迪亚·佩蒂特，《如何避免成为受害者》，2023，布面油画，180 × 160 cm，图片由艺术家和Galerie Judin提供
Lydia Pettit, Don't Be A Target, 2023, oil on canvas, 180 × 160 cm, image courtesy the Artist and Galerie Judin
关于策展人
托马斯·斯托弗，图片由托马斯·斯托弗提供
Thomas Stauffer, image courtesy Thomas Stauffer
托马斯·斯托弗是知名艺术私洽和顾问机构瑞士格斯艺术收藏的创始合伙人，自十几岁起便开始他的私人艺术收藏。凭借其对20和21世纪艺术品市场行情的准确判断和遍布全球的人脉网络，斯托弗成为业内广受尊重的一级专家，尤其擅长从非公开的私人收藏中搜寻艺术精品。作为一名顶级艺术顾问，他经常在Artnet，Artnews和彭博等知名媒体上就艺术市场发表评论。
托马斯·斯托弗拥有经济学和人力资源管理学士学位，以及艺术与文化管理的研究生学位。他为瑞士各大银行和家族办公室提供专业艺术收藏及投资咨询服务，并自2021年起担任瑞士艺术品交易协会主席。
Thomas Stauffer, Partner at leading private art dealership and art advisory firm Gerber & Stauffer Fine Arts, has been a passionate collector of art since his teenage years. With a keen eye for anticipating lasting market developments in 20th and 21st century art and an excellent network of contacts worldwide, Stauffer has made a name for himself internationally for sourcing important artworks off-market from within private collections. As a top art advisor he is frequently quoted in renowned press like Artnet, Artnews and Bloomberg about the art market.
Thomas Stauffer holds degrees in Economics and Human Resource Management as well as a postgraduate degree in Arts and Cultural Management. He advises Swiss banks and family offices on art investments. Stauffer has been the President of the Swiss Art Trading Association since 2021.
关于艺术家
玛丽亚·巴莱亚，图片由艺术家提供
Maria Balea, image courtesy the Artist
玛丽亚·巴莱亚（1990年出生），现生活和工作于罗马尼亚克卢日-纳波卡。巴莱亚的创作涉及绘画、物品制作、拼贴和装置等不同媒介，她的实践是一种基于神话信仰、记忆和内心想象的细腻观察过程的延伸。她着迷于混乱的日常生活中支离的生活节奏，她的风景画和作品诞生于在潜意识中进行的探索。在借鉴女性超现实主义传统及其炼金术式象征主义风格的同时，她的作品也让人联想到数字美学中流动的表面和变化的组合。
Maria Balea (b. 1990) lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In her work, Balea embraces painting and object-making, collage and installation in a practice that extends a delicate process of observation relying on myth-beliefs, memory, and interior imagining. With a fascination for discrete life rhythms against everyday turmoil, her painterly landscapes and works rummage through the subconscious. Borrowing from female surrealist tradition and its alchemical symbolism where human and nature dissolve into each other, she also hints at a fluid surface and permutations reminiscent of digital aesthetics.
维多利亚·坎顿，摄影：许阳，图片由艺术家提供
Victoria Cantons, photo: Xu Yang, image courtesy the Artist
维多利亚·坎顿（1969年出生），现生活和工作于英国伦敦。从希腊罗马戏剧诗歌、意大利文艺复兴绘画、欧洲中世纪插画手抄本和西方古典音乐等多样化的源头汲取灵感，探索人的境况和社会身份是坎顿作品的核心。她的实践涉及不同媒介，表达她对欲望、时间、失去至爱的痛苦、在与不在、语言等的思考，划定或挑战我们与自己和他人的关系中的心理界限。
Victoria Cantons (b. 1969) lives and works in London, UK. Drawing on sources as diverse as Greek and Roman plays and poetry, Italian Renaissance painting, European Medieval illuminated manuscripts and Western classical music, exploring the human condition and social identity are at the core of Cantons’ work. This is done through a multidisciplinary practice and worked through a filter of thinking about desire, time, loss, presence and absence, and language, connecting and disconnecting psychological boundaries in the relationships we have with ourselves and others.
安纳·科恩，图片由艺术家和格斯艺术收藏提供
Anner Cohen, image courtsy the Artist and Gerber & Stauffer Fine Arts
安纳·科恩（1997年出生于特拉维夫），现生活和工作于德国柏林。科恩戏剧性、半抽象的静物和自画像探索自我形象、欲望、焦虑等主题在我们数字化、内容泛滥的时代是如何被塑造和扭曲的。科恩自己布置并拍摄作为参考的模特，留意美与腐败之间的微妙平衡，为作品注入一种模棱两可的心理状态。他将草稿导入一系列软件中，让程序不断复制、擦除、拆解并重新拼合图像，直到它们失去了连贯性，吸收了数字领域中过度消费和共享使内容变得抽象的方式。通过对算法的过度使用，科恩操纵了数字内容的操纵力量，并在这个过程中制造了多个原始图像的或碎片化或半抽象的衍生版本。他用绘画性、拼贴式的技法将意象呈现在画布上，传达介于记忆和肢解之间的概念。
Anner Cohen (b. 1997 in Tel Aviv) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Cohen’s theatrical, semi-abstract paintings of still life and self-portraits explore how themes of self-image, desire, and angst are being shaped and distorted in our digitized, content-saturated age. Cohen stages and photographs his references himself as he probes into the fine balance between beauty and decay to instill an ambiguous state of mind. The analog compositions are introduced to a series of softwares that repeatedly multiply, erase, take apart, and piece the image back together until it loses its coherency, assimilating the ways in which the overconsumption and sharing of content in the digital realm constitute abstraction. Through the overuse of algorithms, Cohen manipulates the manipulative power of digital content, and thus, generates through the process multiple references of fragmented or partially abstracted versions of the origin. The imagery awakens onto the canvas through a painterly, collage-like technique that disseminates the notion between remembering and dismembering.
纳塔利娅·冈萨雷斯·马丁，摄影：Cob Studios，图片由艺术家和sébastien bertrand提供
Natalia Gonzalez Martin, photo: Cob Studios, image courtesy the Artist and sébastien bertrand
纳塔利娅·冈萨雷斯·马丁（1995年出生于西班牙马德里），现生活和工作于英国伦敦。冈萨雷斯·马丁的作品借鉴了圣像画的形式特征，探索了一种文化遗产给一个人的身体和心灵打下的烙印。她描绘的人物大多置身于田园风景中，周围是精美的丝绸、熟透了的水果、爬动的小虫等等。这些繁复的细节充满了历史象征意义，提醒观者注意自己继承的传统、行为和习惯。她的作品融合古老寓言中的角色和我们每天不断接触到的图像，旨在模糊神圣与世俗、凡尘之间的界限，指向欲望、感受和存在的不同方式，令人敏感于其中的矛盾。
Natalia Gonzalez Martin (b. 1995, Madrid, Spain) lives and works in London, UK. Borrowing the formal qualities of icon painting, Gonzalez Martin’s work explores the inscriptions of a cultural heritage on one’s physical body and moral codes.Placed in a bucolic setting, the figures represented are often adorned with detailed elements as delicate as fabrics, ripe tempting fruits and crawling insects. They are filled with historic symbolism, allowing us to pay attention to the traditions, gestures and habits we have inherited. Her work merges the characters from old fables with the constant supply of images we are subjected to daily aiming to blur the boundaries between divine, secular and earth in order to gesture towards other ways of desiring, feeling or being in the world, attuned to these paradoxes.
霍滕西娅·米·卡夫钦，图片由艺术家和Galerie Judin提供
Hortensia Mi Kafchin, image courtesy the Artist and Galerie Judin
霍滕西娅·米·卡夫钦（1986年出生于罗马尼亚加拉茨），现生活和工作于德国柏林。卡夫钦毕业于克卢日-纳波卡艺术与设计大学，是（约20年前引起国际艺术界普遍关注的松散的艺术家团体）“克卢日团体”中的一员，但又在如下两个方面区别于团体的其他成员。其一，她热爱实验，这使她得以熟悉从绘画、雕塑到装置等不同媒介，并能够将所有这些融合在一起。其二，卡夫钦有一套独特的母题，不同元素像万花筒一样反映着我们所处的媒体时代拼贴般的视觉环境。她混合来自科幻小说和古代神话的图像。在她的笔下，人与机器相遇，有时是作为竞争对手，但更多时候会结为一体。然而，卡夫钦的人物不是完美、优越的技术的象征，而是敏感、忧郁的机械的存在，他们的地位介于主体和客体之间。卡夫钦经常将人体描绘为一片正在经历巨变的建筑工地。这些身体可能被脚手架包围，被置于化学实验室中，或接受着药物治疗。
Hortensia Mi Kafchin (b. 1986, Galați, Romania) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj, Kafchin belongs to the “Cluj Connection,” while standing out from this group in two respects. For one thing, she loves to experiment, and this has familiarised her with a broad range of artistic media from drawing, painting and sculpture to room installations blending all these techniques. For another, Kafchin has a distinctive canon of motifs which, like a kaleidoscope, reflect the collage-like visual environment of our media age. Hers is a fascinating iconography where science fiction blends with ancient myths. There are frequent encounters between humans and machines, sometimes as adversaries, but mostly as hybrids. Kafchin’s figures, however, are not heroic symbols of technical perfection and superiority, but sensitive and melancholy mechanical beings whose status hovers between subject and object. Indeed, Kafchin often depicts the human body as a building site undergoing transformation. These bodies might be surrounded by scaffolding, placed in chemical laboratories or exposed to medication.
迭戈·科利，图片由艺术家提供
Diego Kohli, image courtesy the Artist
迭戈·科利（1991年出生于西班牙马德里），现生活和工作于瑞士巴塞尔和西班牙巴伦西亚。科利的绘画邀请观者阐释自艺术家对物品、空间或记忆的速写中浮现出的意象，并进行反思。科利鼓励观者再看一眼，注意他们对一种通过抽象和拼贴实现的混合体的过度解读。这种反应和概念的重叠将一种全新的叙事引入最终完成的作品。这些绘画并非来自先入为主的观念或想法，而是一条在潜意识工作中发展出的线索的结果。科利自我认同为画家而非艺术家——对他来说绘画是最为崇高的形式。他的作品受画家和他们对绘画这门手艺的敬畏、对形式及其演变的迷恋启发。在他的作品中，他有时把静物置于带有幽默色彩的、不同寻常的环境中，以探索静物画的界限。这样创作出的作品，让人感到既陌生又熟悉。他从精神分析、自由联想、梦境和无意识等不同领域汲取灵感来创作自己的绘画。
Diego Kohli (b. 1991, Madrid, Spain) lives and works in Basel, Switzerland and Valencia, Spain. Kohli’s painting invites interpretation and open reflection from an imagery that emerges from the artist’s sketches of objects, spaces or memories. In his works, Kohli suggests, at second glance, the over-interpretation of an amalgam of abstract collages. This overlapping of reactions and ideas simultaneously introduces a new narrative into the final composition. The paintings do not begin with a preconceived notion or idea; on the contrary, the series are the fruit of a common thread that develops in the workings of the subconscious. Kohli does not identify himself as an artist, but as a painter—for him the practice is the highest form. His work is inspired by painters and their admiration for the craft, as well as a fascination with form and its evolution. It’s evident in his work that he plays with fixed compositions such as the still life, testing their limits by subverting them with humour and unfamiliar contexts. He creates works that are at once strange and familiar. For his paintings he draws from many fields such as psychoanalysis, free association, dreams and the unconscious to create his paintings.
阿林娜·科佩恰，图片由艺术家提供
Alina Kopytsia, image courtesy the artist
阿林娜·科佩恰（1983年出生于乌克兰波利斯克），现生活和工作于瑞士苏黎世。科佩恰的实践涉及性别、权力关系、社会规范、文化禁忌等复杂而开放的议题。她使用多种媒介，包括纺织拼贴、陶瓷和水彩等等。她关注讲故事的艺术，从个人经历、日常生活，以及她认识的人的故事中汲取灵感，并结合来自艺术史、文学、神话和电影的材料。
Alina Kopytsia (b. 1983 in Poliske, Ukraine) lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Kopytsia’s practice delves into the complexities and ambiguities surrounding gender, power dynamics, social norms, and taboos. She works in various media including textile collage, ceramics, and watercolor. In her textile collages, she focuses on storytelling, drawing inspiration from personal experiences, everyday life, and stories of people she knows, combined with quotes from art history, literature, mythology, and cinematography.
普雷斯拉夫·科斯托夫，图片由艺术家提供
Preslav Kostov, image courtesy the artist
普雷斯拉夫·科斯托夫（1998年出生于保加利亚卢塞），现生活和工作于英国伦敦。科斯托夫的作品涉及身份认同和移民经验的复杂性。科斯托夫的绘画使用自动主义的方法，是一个渐进的、不断围绕被觉察到的记忆展开自我怀疑的过程的结果。科斯托夫的作品与老大师的形式和色彩对话，表现想象的场景、在两者之间的边缘地带发现的叙事。他的作品探讨了人类经验亘古不变的现实，但又拒绝与任何特定的时刻产生直接联系。
Preslav Kostov (b. 1998 in Ruse, Bulgaria) lives and works in London, UK. Kostov’s work engages with the intricacies of identity and the immigrant experience. Employing the technique of automatism, Kostov’s paintings emerge from a cumulative process of self-questioning around observed memories. Kostov’s imposing compositions dialog with the form and palette of the old master painters, presenting imagined scenes of discovered narratives situated within a liminal realm. His works speak to the enduring reality of human experience while rejecting direct association with any particular moment in time.
塔米娜·内格玛特，图片由艺术家提供
Tahmina Negmat, image courtesy the artist
塔米娜·内格玛特（1994年出生于乌兹别克斯坦布哈拉），现生活和工作于英国伦敦。内格玛特的作品从她在乌兹别克斯坦度过的童年、在俄罗斯度过的青春期和成年后在英国的经历中汲取灵感。这些作品是献给一位反英雄、一个孤独地潜伏于废墟中的恶魔的。他既是一个困惑的独裁者，也是一个到处都是过去的幽灵的不确定现实的反映。内格玛特以毛毡为画布，它们被绷在画框上，就像兽皮经常被用作鼓皮一样。来自苏联的貂皮和狐皮继承自她的母亲，承载着被困动物的焦躁情绪。在她的作品中，内格玛特探索被特权和一种支配一切的权力感禁锢的心灵的堕落，正是这种堕落带来了“伦理上可解释的”食人主义，使同类相残被看作成为“超人”的哲学进路。她在绘画中召唤来自不同文化传统的符号，用它们来表达她自己、她的家庭乃至国家的现实处境——信仰体系掩盖了没有人愿意为之负责的悲剧后果。
Tahmina Negmat (b. 1994, Bukhara, Uzbekistan) lives and works in London, UK. Negmat’s work draws from embodied experience and stories taken from her childhood in Uzbekistan, adolescence in Russia, and adulthood in the UK. The works shown are dedicated to an antihero, a demon lurking over ruins, alone. He is at once a confused dictator and a reflection of the uncertain present, replete with the ghosts of the past. Felt is an important surface that imitates the drum-like quality of a tensed over the stretcher skin. Inherited from her mother, mink and fox from the Soviet Union hold the febrile tension of a trapped animal. In her work, Negmat is exploring the corruption of the mind locked in privilege and an overarching sense of self-righteousness that leads to “ethically explained” cannibalism as a philosophical step towards a superhuman. Herein lies a summoning of disparate symbols she conveys in painting to translate the state of confusion in her life and that of her family and country, where belief systems mask away tragic consequences no one wants to be accountable for.
莉迪亚·佩蒂特，摄影：Scandebergs，图片由艺术家和Galerie Judin提供
Lydia Pettit, photo: Scandebergs, image courtesy the Artist and Galerie Judin
莉迪亚·佩蒂特（1991年出生于美国马里兰州），现生活和工作于英国伦敦。身体和自我是她的家园和城堡——也是战场。在寻求和解的过程中，佩蒂特的作品在这两极之间摇摆。这包括大尺幅绘画、绗缝、精美的刺绣，以及许多中间环节。通过多种技法的使用，佩蒂特实现了形式和内容的统一。她的作品围绕保护和暴露展开。在这一语境下，“可触可感”扮演着十分特殊的角色。它既关乎实际地接触材料、抚摸（包括自己的在内的）身体，也关乎一种比喻意义的——有时还是消极意义的——触摸。并且，作品中或由佩蒂特画出的或真实的纺织品也指向应用艺术，几个世纪以来纺织是女性被指派的工作也是她们被允许使用的唯一一种表达方式。
Lydia Pettit (b. 1991 in Marylan, USA) lives and works in London, UK. The body and the self as her home and castle—and a battleground. In search of a truce, Pettit’s work oscillates between these two poles. It spans large-format paintings, quilts, finely wrought embroidery, and many stages in between. Drawing on this extraordinary range of techniques, Pettit achieves an evocative unity of form and content. Her work revolves around safeguarding and exposure. Palpability has a special roles to play in this context. It is about the actual touching of materials, about the caressing of bodies, including one’s own, but also about being touched in a figurative—and sometimes negative—sense. Also, Pettit’s painted and actual textiles memorialize the applied arts, for centuries the assigned bastion and only legitimate expression of female artistry.
卢克·席尔瓦，图片由艺术家和格斯艺术收藏提供
Luke Silva, image courtesy the Artist and Gerber & Stauffer Fine Arts
卢克·席尔瓦（1999年出生于英国伦敦），现生活和工作于英国伦敦和马尔盖特。席尔瓦创造性地以他独有的技法在纸本或画布上使用水彩这一经典媒介，发展出一种高度个人化的艺术语言。席尔瓦的经历，特别是他在童年和青少年时代遭遇的重要挑战，是他作品的基石。他的作品是一座避难所，是一个建构出的国度，为观者提供暂时摆脱动荡的现实世界的慰藉。然而，这些空间并非完全独立于现实，其中的物品和风景与外面的世界有所联系。他的艺术叙事是破坏力和吸引力复杂的相互影响的结果。他反复描绘灾难性的大火这一主题，这道自然力量在具备毁灭性破坏力的同时又有着致命的吸引力。它是许多类似的具有两面性的事件的象征，同时预示着毁灭和新生。
Luke Silva (b. 1999, London, UK) lives and works in London and Margate, UK. Silva has masterfully reimagined the classic medium of watercolour, on both paper and canvas, with techniques which are stylistically his own, creating a unique, very personal artistic language. Silva’s journey, marked by profound challenges and experiences in his childhood and youth, serves as the foundation of his work. His art is a sanctuary, a constructed realm that offers solace from the turbulence of the real world. Yet, these spaces are not entirely detached from reality, as they are tethered by tangible objects and recognisable landscapes, reminders of the world outside. His artistic narrative is a complex interplay of devastation and allure. He revisits the theme of a catastrophic fire, a powerful natural force that, despite its destructive capacity, is portrayed with a sense of fascination. This motif is a symbol of the dual nature of such events, embodying both the potential for destruction and the promise of renewal.
奥莉维亚·史特林，摄影：Brynley Odu Davies，图片由艺术家和Guts Gallery提供
Olivia Sterling, photo: Brynley Odu Davies, image courtesy the Artist and Guts Gallery
奥莉维亚·史特林（1996年出生于英国彼得伯勒），现生活和工作于英国伦敦。史特林在使用绘画处理21世纪英国种族议题方面开辟了一片天地。她的绘画表现五彩缤纷的混乱场景，带有一抹怀旧色彩和标志性的“闹剧”风格，将欢乐的节庆气氛与对种族化观看方式的微妙批判相结合。通过将如此尖锐的议题融入她对日常场景和物品的描绘，史特林的作品反映了我们是如何在日常生活中时时处处遭遇种族化话语的。看似快乐无害的空间也被编码为他者化、区别化的结构；在这场将在画面之外继续上演的戏剧中，每件物品、每种肤色都被指派了它们的位置。
Olivia Sterling (b. 1996 in Peterborough, UK) lives and works in London, UK. Sterling has carved out a distinctive niche in using paint to address questions of blackness and whiteness in twenty-first century Britain. Her paintings present scenes of colourful mayhem with a nostalgic twist and signature “slapstick” style, combining joyous celebration with a subtle critique of racialised ways of seeing. Blending pointed references like this into her depiction of ordinary scenes and subjects, Sterling’s work reflects on how we are confronted by racialised discourse everywhere in the everyday. Even happy or anodyne spaces are encoded with structures of othering and difference; every object, every skin tone, is assigned its place in a drama that continues beyond the edges of the canvas.
许阳，图片由艺术家提供
Xu Yang, image courtesy the Artist
许阳（1996年出生于中国山东），现生活和工作于英国伦敦。许阳挑战——甚至乖离——她的亚洲教养，用她的酷儿身份探究“何为女性气质？”“何为社会建构？”，思考我们在网上看到的是否是真实的。她从（经常是透过男性凝视被观看的）17、18世纪西方艺术史中汲取灵感，也受到变装表演、卡巴莱和戏剧的影响。她以自己为模特，通过绘画、行为表演和摄影探索女性在当代社会和流行文化中的地位。她使用硅胶义乳、束身衣、臀垫、假发和化妆改造自己的身形，质疑所谓理想化的女性身材和社交媒体结合Photoshop、图像滤镜对女性进行的身材羞辱，重塑女性价值。她的作品涉及权力与身份议题，乃至当代绘画与绘画史之间的对话，关注它们可能引起的情感反应，以及再阐释和翻译的潜力。
Xu Yang (b. 1996, Shandong, China) lives and works in London, UK. Challenging—and being in contrast to—her Asian upbringing, Xu uses her queer identity to investigate “What is femininity?” “What is a social construct?” and to consider whether what we see online is real. Inspired by and referencing 17th- and 18th-century Western art history, often seen via the male gaze, Xu is also influenced by drag performance, cabaret and theatre. Using herself as a model, Xu explores through painting, performance and photography the position of women in contemporary society and pop culture. Transforming her body shape with silicone breasts, corsets, hip pads, wigs and make-up allows for an investigation of the idealized female figure and social media’s use of Photoshop and image filters to body shame, and to reshape the value of the female. Probing themes of power and identity and the dialogue between painting’s contemporary iterations and its history, there is a concern with the emotional response triggered and the potential for its reinterpretation and translation.
SPURS 即将展出
阿卡迪亚之梦
策展人：托马斯·斯托弗
艺术家：玛丽亚·巴莱亚、维多利亚·坎顿、安纳·科恩、纳塔利娅·冈萨雷斯·马丁、霍滕西娅·米·卡夫钦、迭戈·科利、阿林娜·科佩恰、普雷斯拉夫·科斯托夫、塔米娜·内格玛特、莉迪亚·佩蒂特、卢克·席尔瓦、奥莉维亚·史特林、许阳
2024年4月14日—5月19日
SPURS Gallery，北京市朝阳区酒仙桥路2号798艺术区D-06