胶囊上海｜陶斯祺：嫩刺
文 / 贺潇
胶囊空间荣幸呈现艺术家陶斯祺在画廊的首次个展“嫩刺”，展览囊括了艺术家近年来最新的油画作品。展期为 2021年5月22日至7月3日。
陶斯祺擅长通过隐喻的图像去捕捉情动的瞬间，创作的媒介却并不局限。从她学生时代的摄影作品，到近期的布面油画，作品中无不集结了斯宾诺莎定义的驱动人类激情的三种基本情感，即痛苦，快乐和欲望。艺术家用来表现这些情感的题材来自多样化的现实，如信息便利时代我们唾手可得的电影场景、网络图片，以及如自建素材库般日常积累的摄影作品。
陶斯祺的作品展现出两种线索，其一是具有穿越性的能指（signifier），如手枪，小动物，雪人，自然风景等日常熟悉的符号中所影射的情欲，其二，直观描绘身体的感知器官与物品的接触，而舌头，手，皮肤，嘴唇依然会引发身体经验的诸多联想。这些无不指向人作为欲望的主体，需要通过不断获取来满足自身的欲望，而对应着欲望的需求又总是在得到满足后激发更大的欲望。如果说“爱”是通过形式显现自身的直观展现，“爱欲”却往往并不能被直观到，陶斯祺的作品试图通过作品让观众直观“爱欲”，达到列维纳[1]所赋予的面向未来的超越性含义，“欲望”具有神圣性和超越性，它朝向他人、朝向无限。
展览以“嫩刺”为题意在描述作品的视觉张力，即以稚嫩的色彩、柔和的色调来细腻描绘与危险、刺激、疼痛的体感并置后所呈现出的情欲。不难想象陶斯祺的作品为何曾被选做小说封面，与著名日本情爱小说家渡边淳一的一系列中文译本共同出现在读者面前。非同于小说中男女主人公以死亡殉情来表现的终极且决绝的爱情观，陶斯祺勾画的场景以羞涩、无邪甚至朦胧的处理粉饰了这种价值观的映射。与此同时，艺术家在刻画稍纵即逝的亲密关系或是对于欲望的憧憬时，饱含了前述三种基本情感之间的抗衡关系，甚至指涉出外在世界是如何将这种关系进一步复杂化的。《擦拭》（2021），《咬耳》（2020），《绳艺》（2020）等定格的诸多画面呈现出一种如费里茨·朗的电影中不去直击暴力事件的繁盛，而是挑逗人在心理层面对它的期盼，也正是这种悬而未决的状态为观者提供了独特的体验，那是一种摇摇欲坠、垂涎欲滴的玄妙感觉。
此次展出的作品犹如一部电影的诸多静帧画面，也可以延展为一部小说，每件作品均可视为进入一段令人浮想联翩叙事的棱镜，而整体的观展过程又绝非遵循着线性叙事。正如罗兰·巴特在《恋人絮语》中所表述的那样，情话的感悟和灼见从根本上说是片段的、不连贯的[2]。恋人往往思绪完全，语丝杂乱，种种意念常常稍纵即逝。艺术家将自己的情感轨迹和心路历程倾注到作品中，水乳交融，落入犹如庄周梦蝶的迷惘格局。
近年来，在对性别及取向的认知被日渐细分的表象下，平等权利尚未获得、弱势群体仍被静音成为了更为普遍的现象。陶斯祺作品中对于情欲的描绘跨越了这种政治性的分野，她希望在图像爆炸的语境中， 去探寻人们是否依然能够通过图像来发现、映照并表达欲望。
[1] Emmanuel Levina, Collected Philosophical Papers. Trans. Alphonso Lingis, Martinus- Nijhoff Publishers, 1987, p.56.
[2] 罗兰巴特，《恋人絮语-一个解构主义的文本》，汪耀进，武佩荣，译。上海人民出版社，2009
Text / Fiona He
Capsule Shanghai is delighted to present “Tender Thorns,” artist Tao Siqi’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, comprised of Tao's most recent works on canvas. The show will run from May 22nd to July 3rd, 2021.
Capturing transient feelings and emotions through imageries imbued with metaphors, Tao Siqi’s artworks embody what Spinoza defined as the three basic human emotions that drive passion, namely, pain, pleasure, and desire. Be it for the photographs from her student years or her most recent oil paintings in large or small dimensions, Tao adopts various visual resources ranging from film scenes and found digital images to convey the complexity of human eros. Her works on view in this exhibition can be roughly divided into two types: those depicting the transcendental signifiers charged with erotic desires, such as a pistol, a sweet and gentle animal, a snowman, the hazy landscape; those zooming in on the body’s receptive channels in a passionate situation, such as the tongue, hands, skin, and lips in contact with other objects and body parts. Once the pictorial language triggers a bodily response, one’s mind would subconsciously make such an association. It is a human instinct to desire. The complexity of the human heart and mind is none other than countless hybrids of reasons and impulses, which transform according to the changing circumstances.
陶斯祺 Tao Siqi | Bite the Ear 咬耳 | 2020 | oil on linen 亚麻布上油画 | 24 x 30 cm
The title, "Tender Thorns" describes the visual tension of Tao Siqi’s paintings. Every piece is an amalgamation of rosy colors, soft tones, and delicate depictions counterbalanced with the physical sensations of danger, excitement, and pain, complicating the nature of eroticism in an age of innocence. It is not difficult to imagine that Tao Siqi’s works were published as book covers of a series of Chinese translations of Junichi Watanabe’s famous novels. Unlike how many of Watanabe’s plots develop, where the protagonists often sought death to preserve their undying love for each other, Tao Siqi’s scenes encapsulate a sense of intimacy, innocence, and ambiguity that dissolve any suggestions of ethical values. At the same time, the artist articulates the nature of fleeting intimacies and longings, balancing the three basic emotions mentioned above while introducing external factors from the outside world to enrich those feelings and emotions. Many of her images, such as Wipe (2021), Bite the Ear (2020), and The Art of Rope (2020) present a state of imminence akin to Fritz Lang's films that magnifies the sensory experiences to allow for imagination of violence without the actual act. In Tao Siqi’s case, her works aim for a state of suspense that teases a psychological response, inflating the id with impulses that would trigger the mind to imagine one's own passionate and erotic endeavors.
With more than a few dozen paintings on view, these works of art are like scenes of a film or chapters of a novel, deflecting into evocative narratives, in a linear or non-linear fashion, through the prism of human perception. As Roland Barthes suggests in The Lover’s Discourse, the perceptions and insights of love stories are fundamentally fragmented and incoherent. Lovers are often completely thoughtful and disorganized, and the ideas are often fleeting. Tao Siqi pours her emotional experiences and journeys into her works, blending impulse with reason, putting her viewers into a dream-like situation such as Zhuangzi's dream of the butterfly.
Despite a growing tendency to define gender specificity and sexuality in recent years, many societies continue to silence the voices on gender issues. Informed with the current conditions we live in, Tao Siqi’s works transcend the discourse of sexual politics; instead, she focuses on exploring the pictorial potentials that would allow viewers to discover, reflect and express their own pain, pleasure, and desire.
灰蓝色的喷泉、柔软的金属武器、溶解的雪人局部等不常见的表达题材，都超越原图像的能指，映射出其画作中的真实与虚幻之间的张力。如何自然地建立、瓦解、延异现有的图示，并由此引发关于个人情感体验也成为她工作的轴心，其中饱含其对于生活着的时代的丰富、敏锐、独特的认知。
陶斯祺1994年出生于湖北武汉，现工作生活于上海。2016年，她毕业于湖北北美术学院油画系，获学士学位。她的个人项目曾在胶囊上海（中国上海）和 chi K11 艺术空间（中国武汉）展出，她曾参加由莎拉·福克斯策展的展览"匿于眼后"（中国上海，2019）；鲁明军策展的展览"力的能见度"（中国上海，2017）；RS_PROJECTS策展的展览"春日地陷"（中国武汉，2016）。
Tao Siqi’s practice of painting originates from her seeking of metaphors hidden under the surface of an object. The positive and negative grounds of an object intrigue her to explore its emotional undercurrent on the canvas.
The unusual subjects in Tao’s paintings - the fountain in a haze of dusty blue, the softness of the metal weapon, and the melting snowman - transcend their signifiers, and reflect the tension between reality and illusion. Rooting in her keen observation and sensitive perception of the times we live in, her works aim to trigger personal emotional experiences through the construction, extension and deconstruction of images.
Tao Siqi was born in Wuhan, Hubei province in 1994, and currently lives and works in Shanghai. She graduated from Hubei Institute of Fine Art with a BA in painting in 2016. Her exhibitions include solo exhibition "Tender Thorns" at Capsule Shanghai (Shanghai, China, 2021) and “Transient” at chi K11 Art Space (Wuhan, China, 2015), and group exhibitions “Right Behind Your Eyes” curated by Sarah Faux (Capsule Shanghai, Shanghai, China, 2019), “On Drawing: Visibility of Power” curated by Lu Mingjun (J: Gallery, Shanghai, China, 2017) and “Chūn rì dì xìan” (RS_PROJECTS, Wuhan, 2016) among others.
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