拾萬石家庄 | 即将展出 | 阎洲：刀子的最后一扭
艺术家：阎洲
展览：刀子的最后一扭
展期：2022年8月13日 - 10月16日
开幕：2022年8月13日 周六16:00
阎洲，1986年生于西安, 目前工作生活于北京。
他通过摄影、录像、写作等创作语言与今日文化生态及实践者处境展开观察和对话。他面向当下社会环境的创作更深一层的源自其对历史场所、文物、人物所构成的文化驱动方式、情境的察访与想象。
Hunsand Center for Contemporary Art (Shijiazhuang) will bring the artist Yan Zhou's solo project "The Last Twist of the Knife" on August 13, 2022. The exhibition will present the latest video and sculpture works created by the artist.
In recent years, Yan Zhou has taken the sensitive reality of today's art practitioners as a starting point, and by introducing an examination of the history and culture of medieval China, especially by re-citing archaeological relics, historical materials and historical notebook novels, he has developed an imagination of events and changes in history, and thus expects to provide a certain tentative response to today's urgent reality, trying to provide new historical "evidence "and "narrative" paths for today. This exhibition is the latest chapter in this practice, focusing on the Hebei region of medieval China. The wandering borders of the Chinese Empire crossed this area, which was both the scene of civilizational exchange and a zone frequently involved ethnic disagreements and entanglements, and where complex geopolitical dynamics brewed internal and external concerns and choices of rebellion.
The exhibition revolves around the dreams of one of the most pivotal rebels of medieval China (An Lushan) on the night before his execution. Several places where characters from historical fiction interacted are inserted into his dream, creating a vision of a dream within a dream. In the dream, he meets the "Snowy Lady," a parrot that, like a ghost of history, recalls distant events to the forefront, haunting the rebel in the vortex of change. His emotional monologue in this dream tells of everything that happened at that time, while revealing his legendary life and doubts about his image as the "Hercules".
In the exhibition, the artist conducts a two-way examination of the historical field and its possible connection to the reality: he draws from the resemblance between the present and the past to construct an imaginary "edifice" and stares at the moment when it is about to fall. A kind of uneasiness hidden in the present pervades the work. Through the action of "re-copying" or "topo-graphing" history, the artist reactivates the flattened, vague memories of China's distant history in this domain in our consciousness, and summons the "edifice" that is about to collapse. The artist revitalizes the flattened memories of China's distant past in this field of our consciousness, and calls up the double of the falling "building" and its ruins behind.
The title of the exhibition comes from T. S. Eliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," a poem that repeatedly confuses memory and reality through a continuous progression of temporal notations. Underneath the seemingly everyday atmosphere of the poem, there is an accumulating "unease". The street scenes and smells under the streetlights gradually unfold, while memories keep surfacing and becoming clear. At the end of the poem, with the turning key of memory, the ordinary scenes of life are suddenly and violently interrupted by the "The Last Twist of the Knife".
Yan Zhou，born in 1986 in Xi'an, currently works and lives in Beijing.
Through the language of photography, video and writing, Yan observes and dialogues with today's cultural ecology and the situation of practitioners. His works for the current social environment are deeply rooted in his visits to and imagination of the cultural drive and situations constituted by historical places, cultural relics and people.
拾萬空间（北京）于2014年成立于北京草场地艺术区，2018年迁至北京798艺术区，并于2021年年底开设石家庄分馆拾萬当代艺术中心。拾萬空间（北京）作为专业画廊，对常规意义的方盒子展览保持警惕，意欲从当代艺术语言中的语法和语意结构出发并将之延展到更广泛的领域；希望通过持续的展览和项目，激发出当下文化中被忽视的部分，将当代艺术思想的价值生发到你我的身边。拾萬当代艺术中心（石家庄）为艺术综合体，除继续推出专业的艺术展览外，还将提供公教、讲座、艺术工作坊、艺术商品以及餐饮等活动和服务，并依托地缘差异，将艺术、声音融入地理、人文的维度，由而体验与追寻传统与现代、本土与国际、在地与全域、个人与历史以及精神与实体之间的差别与关联，让当代艺术思想进入更多人的生活。
Hunsand Space (Beijing) was established in Caochangdi Art District in 2014, relocated to the 798 Art Zone in 2018. At the end of 2021, Hunsand Center for Contemporary Art (Shijiazhuang) was opened in Shijiazhuang. As a professional gallery, Hunsand Space (Beijing) keeps vigilance in presenting art exhibitions with conventional way in white cubes, aiming to take the semantics and syntax from the language of contemporary art as a point of departure and expand them into a broader field. Through its vigorous programs of exhibitions and projects, Hunsand Space (Beijing) hopes to stimulate the neglected aspects in contemporary culture and brings the values of contemporary art into our lives. In addition to exhibiting contemporary art exhibitions, Hunsand Center for Contemporary Art (Shijiazhuang) as an art complex is dedicated to presenting public programs, lectures, art workshops, art merchandise, catering and many other activities and services. Relying on geographical differences, the Center's mission is to integrate artistic and audible practices into geographical and humanistic dimensions, by which to experience and pursue the differences and connections between being traditional and modern, local and international, on-site and territorial, personal and historical, spiritual and physical, bringing the ideas of contemporary art into more people's lives.
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