Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

"Advance through retreat" is a stratagem elaborated in the Chinese military treatise The Art of War. Curator Martina Koeppel-Yang chose this as the theme of the exhibition. Attributed to Sun Tzu [Sunzi], a general who lived in the 6th Century BC, The Art of War was not only the most important book on military strategy of its time but continued to influence Eastern and also Western military and business tactics and strategies to the present day. For the curator this stratagem is best expressed by a historic photograph of Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), one of the most powerful generals of the late Qing Dynasty, wearing the traditional coat and hat of a Taoist hermit and sitting in a fishing boat. The image of Yuan in a hermit’s disguise along with his strategic retreat has therefore been the starting point for the concept of this exhibition Yuan here made use of the traditional trope of the loyal official — a lonely literati in a fishing boat. He did so to protest against his dismissal by the Qing court in 1909. The location Yuan had chosen for his retreat could not have been farther away from the usual perception of an appropriate setting for a lonely hermitage. Indeed, Huanshang in Henan Province, where he stayed until 1911, was a busy traffic junction. Together with Yuan’s use of the common trope of the loyal official, the evident ambivalence of his retreat from the center of power was to be read as an invitation for the Qing Court to make use of him again and to eventually invite him to govern as president of the first Chinese Republic. Quietly waiting for an opportune moment, Yuan used the strategy "advance through retreat", as many officials did before him. The image of the loyal literati choosing to be a recluse in times of conflict with the court developed into one of the most resilient tropes in Chinese art and literature and haunts Chinese culture like a kind of spectre.

“Advance through retreat” is a strategy relevant for artistic production in China today. This exhibition aims to look at traditional media from a different angle. It sets out to present artistic positions using traditional media and procedures, such as divination, the game, gambling and traditional strategies—for instance, “advance through retreat”—in order to develop autonomous languages that utter positions of resistance to the assimilating tendency and the power structures generated and maintained by a lingua franca. Advance through Retreatattempts to show, how, in specific historical moments, the use of or the retreat into tradition is employed as an efficient strategy of resistance.

Larys Frogier, the Director of the Rockbund Art Museum notes, “Advance through Retreat brings together Chinese and international artists who distance themselves from considering tradition as frozen time or as an established system. Rather, they question tradition as a way to test the limits and possibilities of contemporary creation, of remembering and remaking histories, and of revisiting certain established codes in order to re-invent today’s challenges of tradition in our urban societies, political contexts and daily lives.Advance through Retreat is thus a project in which tradition is embraced by contemporary artists as on-going living practices—from re-writing different layers of art and social histories to the uses and/or misuses of cultural codes, images and mundane objects. It is thus clear that tradition is not only about a simplistic opposition between past and present; it is about an evolving process of using, transforming, reinterpreting, and developing cultures. Hence in the exhibition Advance through Retreat, tradition is represented, performed and questioned as a whole set of practices, images, and objects based on vernacular, daily activities.”

展览的概念“以退为进”来自中国古代兵书《孙子兵法》中的一种军事策略。孙子生活于公元前6世纪，其所著《孙子兵法》不仅在当时是一部重要的兵书，后来更持续影响了东西方的军事及商业策略，这种影响力一直持续至今。对策展人而言，一幅晚清的历史照片极好地映证了这一策略。照片中的袁世凯（1859-1916）是晚清最有权势的将领，他身披传统蓑衣，头戴隐士斗笠，垂钓于一艘渔舟之中。本次展览的构想出发点即来自这幅将领乔装隐士图及袁氏退隐的故事。袁氏以此借喻忠臣，表达清廷于1909年将自己免职的不满。但是，他所选的退隐之地——河南洹上村，是一处繁忙的交通要道，此后，他在这里一直待到1911年。袁氏借用的忠臣之隐喻，以及从权力中心退隐这一明显与之矛盾的做法，都意在促使当朝再度请其出山，并最终将其推举为中华民国的第一任大总统。此处，袁氏效法其前代士子，采取了一种“以退为进”的策略。这幅忠臣士子与当世之朝不和随即退隐的图画，成为了中国艺术与文学中极富弹性的隐喻之一。

“以退为进”是一种同样适用于当今中国艺术生产的策略。试图呈现那些在当下运用传统媒介与手段，如占卜、游戏、博弈、方言等传统策略，进行艺术创作，以期发展出一套自律的语言，进而抵抗由一套“通用语汇”（lingua franca）所产生并持续至今的同化趋势与权力结构。在这方面，诗歌同样也扮演着不可忽略的重要角色。展览《以退为进》旨在呈现：向传统的借鉴和退让，能够如何作为一种高效策略来迎对特定的历史时刻。

上海外滩美术馆馆长拉瑞斯·弗洛乔表示：“《以退为进》汇集了来自中国本土及海外的多位艺术才俊，在他们眼中，传统不是一段已然冻结的时间，亦非一个建设完备的体系。相反，他们向传统发问，以此测试当代创作、记忆及再造历史、以及通过重访某套建设完备的编码系统来在当今的城市社会、政治情境和日常生活中再造‘传统挑战’的各种极限及可能性。因此，参展的当代艺术家们‘以退为进’，将传统作为一种‘在进行之中’的生活实践来接受——从重新书写艺术与社会历史中的不同层次，到对文化编码、影像与平凡事物的使用或/与滥用，皆是如此。由此可见，传统并非只是过去与现在的简单对立，而是一个关乎使用、转变、重新解读和文化发展的演进过程。因此，传统被视作一整套实践、影像、以及基于地方语言、日常活动的事物，在展览《以退为进》中被呈现，被演示，同时也受到审视。”