Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

Rockbund Art Museum will present a duo show A Potent Force from Jan. 26th to Mar. 31st, 2013.A Potent Force brings together the work of two strongly individual Chinese artists, Duan Jianyu and Hu Xiaoyuan, both of whom happen to be female. The distinct sensibilities that they each bring to their art are an amalgam of their respective life experiences, of the incidental features of their personal background and the environs in which they grew up, and of the aspirations of their respective generations: Duan Jianyu was born in 1970 and graduated in 1995 from the oil painting department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts; Hu Xiaoyuan was born 1977 and graduated in 2002 from the design department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

If these two artists have anything in common beyond their gender, it is how society views them as women and, as a result, what the art world expects from them. The different ways in which they navigate these issues is evident in their work, and by means of two entirely unrelated approaches to artistic expression. Duan Jianyu is one of the finest painters at work in China today, with a visual vocabulary that appears at first as simple as child’s play and, yet, is a highly sophisticated mechanism for capturing her perceptive observations of the world. Hu Xiaoyuan works with a range of mediums with a particular strength in video, which she deploys as a sensual experience for the viewer, providing the maximum emotive force via a minimum of factual information to draw upon. An encounter with the work of each of these artists engages viewers on a direct and subconscious level and, at the same time, provides a great many ideas to contemplate.

Duan Jianyu’s painting centres on its own universe as created by the artist herself, articulated in a language that parallels a ‘secret emotional code’. This is done using motifs familiar to viewers from any geographical or cultural background, but that combine to form a vernacular that is elegantly “Chinese”, and very much about life in the present tense. Duan Jianyu demonstrates a profound grasp of social realism through personal writings that function as a vast resource of inspiration for her paintings. Social, humanistic affairs unfold in the paintings and are linked by a poetic title given to the various series to which the individual paintings belong. These titles are deceptively romantic; The Mountain and Water Always Echo Our Love, or Going Home. They are also distinctly humorous; How to Travel with a Watermelon, Yes or You Are Welcome. This aura is accentuated in images of animals, particularly chickens, PLA soldiers, air-hostesses, blissful countryside vistas and still-lifes. The narratives that are undercurrents in the paintings interweave places, environments and physical and social character types from composition to composition on a variety of scale and of painterly mannerism. There is always more than meets the eye in Duan Jianyu’s paintings. Whilst every element she presents is recognisably real, the juxtaposition of individual parts is such that in this world of fantasy we become sharply aware that truth can be stranger than fiction. They also affirm the working of a vivid and articulate imagination. As the artist says ‘Imagination is the lubricant of everything’.

As a title, the phrase A Potent Force makes reference to the subtle, lyrical (Duan Jianyu) and introspective (Hu Xiaoyuan), intellectual prowess that characterises these conceptual plays with painting and video works. There is a socio-cultural shift in the generational gap that separates them, which is reflected in the topics they explore as well as the mediums chosen to express these. If a particular concern for Duan Jianyu is the complexity of human society, its bubbling desires, grand ambitions, lofty ideals and the innate weaknesses that are so often its failings, conversely, for Hu Xiaoyuan, art is a means to examine the self, as a purposeful sentient being; as the raison d’être for existence, for if there is no reason then existence becomes a nihilistic, futile void. Hu Xiaoyuan’s formative experiences were more or less devoid of “politics” in the ideological sense, but overrun with the politics of economy and internationalism that governed China’s “peaceful rise” to its present international status. Her generation is, courtesy of the internet as an information platform and the ease of travel, more widely versed in the ways of the international world than her elder peers. She is, as a child of the reform era, precious, precocious, confident and slightly insecure, yet independent in thought and will. Comfortable with her individualism, Hu Xiaoyuan finds reason to challenge the notion of art in China today, as a value system, as a process of visually interpreting the world and as a material object. Recent video installations increasingly undermine the process of reading the works: What we, as viewers, see is not clear in terms of narrative or form. Hu Xiaoyuan asks that we become aware of looking and does so by making it as hard as possible to recognise the work’s content. Her works focuses on what can be done and experienced within the sphere of the self, relying on one’s own sense alone to navigate and understand what is seen and felt of the world.

The art of Duan Jianyu and Hu Xiaoyuan lie at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. A Potent Force, therefore, is not a show about women artists: whilst in one sense the title alludes to the situation of women artists in the art world today, it points more directly to the succinct meaning and enduring resonance of the art of these two artists, Duan Jianyu and Hu Xiaoyuan.

上海外滩美术馆将于2013年1月26日起推出段建宇和胡晓媛的双个展《醍醐》，由凯伦·史密斯(Karen Smith)策划。

《醍醐》将两位极具个人色彩的中国艺术家段建宇和胡晓媛的作品同台呈现。两人恰巧同为女性艺术家，作品情感鲜明，融合了各自的生活经历、个人背景、成长环境及各自同辈人的抱负：段建宇生于1970年，1995年毕业于广州美术学院油画系；胡晓媛生于1977年，2002年毕业于中央美术学院设计系。

除了都是女性之外，若还要从两位艺术家身上找出什么共同点，那就得数社会看待女性的眼光及相应地艺术界对女性艺术家的预期。我们可以从其作品中看出两人处理这些问题的不同方式，而其艺术表达的立意也毫不相干。段建宇是现今国内最出色的画家之一，她的视觉语汇初看简单，好像小孩子的嬉戏之笔，实则构建了一套极致精密的体系来捕捉她对世界的敏锐洞察。胡晓媛的创作跨越多媒介，尤其擅长录像，为观者调配感性体验，以最简洁的事实信息创造最强烈的情感冲力。两位艺术家的作品在此相遇，共同给予无数可供冥想的思考，而观者则无意识地被直接吸引其中。

段建宇的绘画围绕着艺术家自己创造的个人宇宙而展开，她的艺术语言就像是一种“情感密码”。这种“密码”通过运用为来自不同地域及文化背景的观者所熟悉的形象而编成，但同一种优雅的“中国式”乡音结合起来，关切当下的生活。段建宇的个人写作是其绘画的灵感源泉，她用文字声张其对社会现实的深刻理解。她的画作展示了社会与人文事件，各个系列都冠有诗意的标题，把其中的一幅幅作品串在一起。有些标题读来浪漫，如《万水千山都是情》和《回家》；有些爽朗幽默，如《带着西瓜去旅行》、《嗯、是》和《不用谢》。画中的各种动物、尤其是鸡群、解放军战士、空姐、风景如画的乡村和静物等突出了画面的灵光。叙事如暗流在画作中交织起地点、环境、实体与众生相，组合多样，规模不一，画技精湛。段建宇的画作不仅总能喂饱眼睛，且在她的幻想世界中，每一元素及多个单一元素的并置都如此逼真，以至我们逐渐清晰地意识到现实可以比幻想更奇怪。这些作品也体现出艺术家生动、澄澈的想象。如她所言：“想象力是万事万物的润滑剂”。

此处用作标题的“醍醐”一词指向微妙、抒情（段建宇）与内省（胡晓媛），其绘画与录像创作的观念之戏恰由这股智性的强力而生。两人的年龄差异带来了一种社会文化的转变，这体现在她们所探索的主题与表达的媒介中。段建宇对于人类社会的复杂性、如泡沫般膨胀满溢的欲望、宏大的野心、崇高的理想及常导致失败的固有弱点很感兴趣；而与之相反，胡晓媛把艺术作为一种自我检视的方式，一种目标明确、充满情感的存在；为存在而作为存在的理由，为假使存在没有理由，则存在会沦为虚无徒劳之空。胡晓媛的成长经历基本未受意识形态的“政治”影响，但却被主导中国“和平崛起”时至今日世界地位的各种经济和国际主义政治所包围。随着互联网作为信息平台的普及与出国旅行的便捷，她这一代人相较其长辈，对国际世界有着更广泛丰富的熟稔了解。她是家里的掌上明珠，早熟、自信，有一点点不安全感，但思想意志独立。她乐于做个人主义者，理直气壮地挑战当今中国的“艺术”概念，挑战艺术之为一个价值体系、一个视觉化解读世界的过程、一个实在的物。她近期创作的视频装置不断弱化解读作品的过程：我们作为观者的所见就叙事或形式而言模糊不清。作品的内容被刻意处理为尽可能的难以辨认，胡晓媛以此邀请我们逐渐体会“观看”这一行为本身。其作品聚焦于在“自我”的范畴之内所能发生与体验的一切，仅仅依仗观者自身的观感来浏览并理解他/她所看到和感受到的世界。

段建宇和胡晓媛的艺术创作分列于情感光谱的两端。从而《醍醐》并非一场关于女性艺术家的展览：两位艺术家都为女性，然而其创作却丝毫不带“弱势”性别的痕迹。因而展览标题一方面暗指当今艺术世界女性艺术家风生水起的境况，而另一方面它也直接点出了段建宇和胡晓媛艺术创作的简洁意义与持久共鸣。