Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

On the fifth floor of the exhibition, Tobias Rehberger presents the latest version of the pixel series (2015-). The audience needs to constantly adjust the angle and distance to identify the image composed of monochromatic mosaic tiles. These abstracted images, deriving from popular culture, form a pixelated scene of modern life, which makes the audience think about how we view these visual cultural icons in an era flooded with images and videos.

The idol consumption is one of the most representative image symbols in Chinese contemporary mass culture. It reflects the pleasure-based narrative strategy and visual politics in the “Tiny Era” formed by mass culture around “Eye-catching Economy.” In the diachronic dimension, the evolution of this image symbol includes the spiritual fission history of contemporary culture from idealism to consumerism and hedonism. There also hides a history of image evolution from a “spiritual” hero to a “materialistic” successful person and then to a “symbolic” consumer idol. In the synchronic dimension, it mainly produces a kind of image “charm” in the way of "ostentatious display" that makes people have no time to reflect on and urges the public to obtain “intuitive” pleasure of instant experience through the consumption behavior of image symbols.

艺术家托比亚斯·雷贝格在展览五楼呈现的是像素系列作品（2015年至今）的最新版本，观众需要不断调整角度和距离，识别由单色马赛克砖组成的图像。这些被抽象化的图像来源于大众文化中随处可见的元素，它们组成了一种像素化的现代生活场景，使观众思考在如今被图像和影像充斥时代环境下，我们是如何观看这些文化偶像的视觉图像。

消费偶像是中国当代文化实践最具代表性的形象符号之一，深刻反映了大众文化围绕“眼球经济”所形成的“小时代”快感叙事策略及其视觉政治。在历时性维度，这一形象符号的演变过程既包含了当代文化从理想主义走向消费主义、享乐主义的精神裂变史；又隐藏着从“精神化”的英雄向“物质化”的成功人士，再向“符号化”的消费偶像转换的形象演化史。在共时性维度，它主要以“炫耀性展示”的方式，产生一种令人无暇反思的形象“魅惑”，促使大众通过形象符号的消费行为获得即时体验的“直觉式”快感。

李健，南京大学艺术学院副教授，文学博士。南京大学人文社会科学高级研究院兼职研究员，《艺术理论与艺术史学刊》执行主编。主要学术兴趣集中在艺术理论、美学及文化研究等领域。主持、参与国家及省部级课题十余项，出版专著《审美乌托邦的想象》（社会科学文献出版社，2009年）、《跨学科视域中的当代艺术理论》（北京大学出版社，2018年）。