Liang Hao: Gesture and Speech 展览前言/Exhibition Preface: 李佳 Li Jia开幕式/Opening: 2023/08/05 周六 Sat 15:00 -18:00展览时间/Show Duration: 2023/08/05 - 2023/09/16地点/Address: 上海市徐汇区安福路298弄2号楼底楼 Basement, No,2, Lane 298, An Fu Rd, ShanghaiBANK欣然宣布艺术家梁浩个展“高手”即将于2023年8月5日开幕，展览将持续到9月16日。
“‘高手’是个一语双关的词，一方面在语言中作为对技术水平的描述，另一方面直接指涉关于技术的主体。在这里‘高手’作为题目，高手的对象是手，即为高手，而非具体的人。让我不断对‘手’产生兴趣的是一位古生物学家和人类学家：勒罗伊-古尔汉（Andre Leroi-Gourhan）的著作《Gesture and Speech》，这次展览的英文题目便是引自于此书名。他认为手势和语言被视为体现思想的孪生产物，它生产了我们的技术和社会成就。这些对于史前技术，以及考古，关于人类行为和文化发展的视角，让我不断调整与补充对于手的认知。” ——梁浩
总是这样一双手：从画布边缘伸出，在画面的中心打开。一双动作中的手：掌心摊开、手指聚拢，伸展、握持、触压、切削。手和它各个角度的映像同时出现，在它所接触和靠近的，那些如同反光镜面一样的物体表面：规整的几何体、如金属薄膜一般凸出的曲面、刀锋边缘、打火机的外壁。这样一双手，从手指、掌背、皮肤，到指甲的弧度，到肌肉些微的隆起，每一处，匀称、光洁、完美，但总在另外一些地方，透露出某种不真实的气息。一双仿佛在无时间的世界里伸出的手，它动作，但那动作以奇怪的方式成为永恒。那看上去就是我们熟悉的手，似乎又并不完全属于我们。手的主人并不透露其面目和信息，这双手于是以这样的方式伸到我们眼前，以这样的姿态掠过了感官的、具体和现实的领域。它在更高的某个地方存在着，像是一个理念。这是一双画中的手。这是关于手的一幅画。
总是如此：梁浩的画中，我们反复看见这双手。总是这样，这双手伸入画布的平面，仿佛在以某种方式暗示，那隐于其后不可见的画家的劳作。手的秘密，也包含着画家的秘密，不然，又何来高手之誉？在一个偶然的场合，看画的人脱口而出的一声赞叹，让我们的画家深有所动：这个用于赞美技术的语词，同时自身也是技术的主体。两手做事，就意味着操作，被手操作的就是工具或器具，手之为手就在于它打开了技艺、人为、技术之门。这是斯蒂格勒说过的。手教人征服空间，重量，密度和数量。手塑造了一个新的世界，在所有的地方都留下了自己的印记。手与它要使之变形的材料进行斗争，与它要改变的形式进行斗争。这是福西永说过的。而梁浩用他的手——在画布上第一遍起稿之后，他会反复覆盖、打磨、隐去这双手及其劳作的一切痕迹——去不断追摹和召唤另一双手。一双画中的手，略高于现实的手。同时又是画家理想中的，不断定义技艺之高度的手。这双手从一方画幅移往下一方，在这些连续的、重复的、呼应的平面上，手推动着一个不断变化的图像生成，推动其循环、运动、变形和再生。画家的工作因此在有限的图像序列中追摹着人以技艺模仿自然的无限过程。
The One Who Makes the Last Letter of the Alphabet双手就这样出现在一个难以定义的平面上，一个重合了画布（它的物质性存在）、 操作台（它的形象）和界面（它的意义）的三重平面。在画幅的有限尺幅内，它被截取为一个局部，介于实验室的桌面与手术台之间。双手在此操作、装配、重组和定义着它的对象物。我们的目光随手的动作而被牵引着，投注和胶着于这些物体：手按着一摞堆叠的书，它们被摆动和堆放的痕迹，书脊的标题所试图透露的信息；手拂过摊开的书页，指向那上面浮现的另一双手，卡拉瓦乔曾画过的，伸向果实的手；手握住珊瑚，仿佛握住一个小宇宙的缩微模型，一个多孔、曲折、套叠的时空，和它投在画布平面上的影子；双手之间的场域，光亮的连续的几何形体，在其表面映射的镜像迷宫，一个磁场，矢量和运动之场；台面上的双手相向挤压一片金属，在它表面拱成一个字母Ω，希腊字母表中的最后一个。在启示录的上帝之言中它出现，并自我言说：我是阿尔法，我是亚米加；是首先，也是最后；是开始，也是终结。
那么，画家在此描画和暗示的，是一双上帝之手吗？我们是否可以将这双手的动作，理解为定义世界的姿势？在无影的光亮中，手创造出最后一个字母，事物由此获得它们的存在与秩序。而画家之手在这重合了思想与实在、画面与画布、图像和语词的复合平面上游动，通过画出它自己，这双手将我们带回到那个最初的原因，那个将内在与外在的世界连通起来的时刻，以及它无数潜在的变体。一个由珊瑚、连续的镜像、自我指涉的符号迷宫所聚拢和象征的世界，一个巴洛克式的可能宇宙，思想在无穷褶皱中滑动、生成、裂变、增殖，在反复折叠和打开的动作中，内外翻转，消弭边界。这是画家以手来定义的世界，一个属于绘画的、间性的世界，高手的世界。
文/李佳
人的境况，对卡拉瓦乔《Boy Bitten by a Lizard》（1593/94）的引用
BANK is thrilled to announce that the solo exhibition "高手 Gesture and Speech" by artist Liang Hao will open on August 5, 2023, and will run until September 16, 2023. "The word ‘高手'(Master) holds a dual meaning. On one hand, it serves as a description of technical proficiency in language, and on the other hand, it directly refers to the subject matter concerning technology. In this context, 'Master' serves as the title. The subject of the master is the hand, in other words, being a master of hands. What continuously intrigues me about "hands" is a book by paleontologist and anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan, titled Gesture and Speech. The English title of this exhibition is derived from this book. Leroi-Gourhan believed that gestures and language are twin products that embody thought, giving rise to our technological and social achievements. These perspectives on prehistoric technology, archaeology, and the development of human behavior and culture continually prompt me to adjust and augment my understanding of hands." — Liang HaoIt is always the same hands, reaching out from the edge of the canvas and opening up at the center of the painting. It is the hands that are in motion, palms up and fingers clenching – stretch, grip, hold, touch, press, cut, chop. The hand appears in sync with its reflections from every angle, on the surfaces of the objects which it approaches and comes into contact with, the ones that look just like reflective mirrors: neat geometric shapes, a curved surface that resemble a convex metalized film, the edge of a blade, the outer case of a lighter. These two hands – from the fingers, the back of the hands, the skin, to the curve of the nails, and the appropriately subtle muscle bulge – each part of them is well-proportioned, smoothly clean, and absolutely impeccable. However, they possess a sense of unreality. The two hands appear to stretch out from a world devoid of time, they move, but, in an uncanny fashion, their movement morphs into eternity. They look familiar but do not completely belong to us. The owner of the hands shrouds their identity in secrecy. This pair of hands reaches out to greet our eyes in such a manner, gently caressing the realms of the sensorial, the concrete and the real with their distinct gestures. It exists somewhere higher up, like an idea- hand. These are the hands in a painting. This is a painting about hands.
Always, we see these two hands in Liang Hao’s paintings. Always, these hands enter the canvas plane as if alluding in their own way to the artist’s laborious efforts that are invisible behind the canvas. The secret of the hands also contains the secret of the painter. Without this connection, on what basis do we laud the master hand? Unexpectedly by chance, a viewer of the painting lets out a gasp of admiration, which deeply moves the heart of our artist: the word used to compliment skills is also the very subject of this technique. The skilled hand. Doing things with two hands means an operation, with the operated being a tool or instrument. Hands are valued as they are because they open the door for artistry, invention and techniques, as Bernard Stiegler stated. Hands teach human beings to conquer space, weight, density and quantity. Hands gives form to a new world and leaves its imprint wherever it has been.The hand combats the material it is going to transform and wrestles with the form it is going to alter. This is what Henri Focillon said. But Liang Hao employs his hands – after the first draft on canvas, he will cover, polish and conceal the two hands as well as all the trace of their labor, again and again – to keep recollecting and beckoning another pair of hands. The hands in a painting stand on a slightly higher ground above the hands in reality. At the same time, for the artist, they represent the ideal hands which never stop achieving a new pinnacle of technique. These hands pass from one painting to another, driving the development of an ever-evolving image and fueling its circulation, movement, transformation and regeneration on these continuous, repetitive and mutually echoing surfaces. The painter’s work thus skillfully traces the infinite process of man’s imitation of nature in a limited sequence of images.
So the hands appear on an inexplicable surface, one that integrates canvas (its material entity), operation console (its image) and interface (its meaning) into a triple plane. Within the limited dimension of the frame, it is cropped into a section which resides somewhere between a laboratory tabletop and a surgical table. Here, the two hands handle, assemble, reorganize and define their objects. Our gaze follows and adheres to the movements of the hands, attaching great attention, even obsession to these objects: the hands press against a stack of books, showing the marks they left as the books were placed away and put on top of each other, as well as the information hinted in the title on the book spines; the hands leaf through the opened pages, pointing at another pair of hands that rises from the surface, those that are painted by Caravaggio and reach for fruit; the hands grip corals, as if laying hold of a miniature model of a microcosmo, a porous, winding and nested universe, and the shadow it casts onto the canvas plane; the field between two hands, the glossy, continuous geometric shapes, the mirrored maze reflected on its surface, a magnetic field, the field between vector and motion; the hands on a tabletop squash a piece of metal from both sides, making its surface into an arched Ω letter, the last one in the Greek alphabet. It made an appearance in God’s words from the Book of Revelation and described itself, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Then, is the artist depicting and implying God’s hands here? Can we understand the movement of the hands as a gesture to define the world? In the absolute brightness without a shadow, the hands have created the last letter, so that things are bestowed with their existence and order. Meanwhile, the artist’s hands wander on this surface compounded by the imaginary and the real, picture and canvas, image and linguistics. By painting themselves, the two hands take us back to the original instigate, the moment when external and internal worlds first became linked, as well as their countless potential variants. A world made by the coalescence and metaphors of corals, continuously mirrored images, a self-referential maze of symbols. A Baroque universe of possibilities. Thoughts glide, generate, fissure and proliferate in endless creases. The actions of folding and unfolding alternate repetitively, and thus the inside goes out and outside in, boundaries dissolve. This is a world defined by the painter’s hand, a world that belongs to painting, ambiguity, a world of the master hand.
- 关于艺术家 About the Artist -
梁浩
Liang Hao
梁浩，1988年⽣于⼴东。2012年毕业于清华⼤学美术学院绘画系，⽬前⽣活和⼯作于北京。其艺术实践以绘画为主，并涉及不同的媒介。他围绕着⼿、凝视和思想之间的动态关系展开创作，通过构建技术⽣产的幻景，亦或对⽂字与艺术史上图像的引⽤，来重新考虑⼿的技术性，以及流转于其中的情感意识。 梁浩的个展包括：“高手”BANK画廊，上海，（2023）；“重现” ⽟兰堂，北京，（2022）；“时间的褶皱” 10号赞善⾥画廊，⾹港，（2020）；“⼀种⽬光” ⽟兰堂，上海，（2019）；“映像与猎场” ⽟兰堂，北京，（2017）。他的作品亦在不同机构参与展出，其中包括纽约 Art OMI艺术中⼼、韩国Daechumoo Fine Art、上海⺠⽣现代美术馆、北京今⽇美术馆、冰岛Offshore Project Space、北京中央美术学院美术馆。他曾参加美国纽约Art OMI（2016年）和冰岛塞济斯菲厄泽Island Iceland Offshore Project（2015年）的艺术家驻地项⽬，并于2018年和2016年⼊围“约翰‧莫尔绘画奖”。
Liang Hao (b. 1988, Guangdong Province) currently lives and works in Beijing. He graduated from the Painting Department of the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University, Beijing, in 2012. His practice focuses on painting while extending to other media. He is interested in the dynamics between the hand, gaze and mind, reconsidering the technicality of the hand and the affects that flow through it by constructing illusions of technical production and making references to images in art history or texts. His recent solo exhibitions include: Gesture and Speech (BANK, Shanghai, 2023); Present, Again (Line Gallery, Beijing, 2022); Unfolding into the Expanse (10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong, 2020); A Kind of Gaze (Line Gallery, Shanghai, 2019); Image and Hunting Ground (Line Gallery, Beijing, 2017). His work has been exhibited in worldwide institutions that include: Art OMI, New York; Daechumoo Fine Art, Korea; MinSheng Art Museum, Shanghai; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Offshore Project Space, Iceland; CAFA Art Museum, Beijing. His past artist residencies include: Art OMI International Artist Residency (New York, 2016); Island Iceland Offshore Project (Seydisfjordur, 2015). His award nominations include: John Moores Painting Prize (2018,2016).