Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

The Rockbund Art Museum of Shanghai is proud to celebrate the creative and privileged links that unite the visual arts and the practice of writing in China and in Asia.

Pascal Torres Guardiola, curator of the Chalcography Department at Louvre, and Larys Frogier, director of the Rockbund Art Musum, have joined forces to conceive of the exhibition From Gesture to Language. Assembling numerous works originating from the contemporary collection of the Chalcography Department in the Louvre as well as major pieces commissioned specially for the show or else stemming from other collections, the exhibition proposes a journey that links up powerful visual and textual constructions in international contemporary art.

The exhibition accords a special interest to “anachronism”, which is to say the manner in which classical, modern, and contemporary works can be matched with each other — often in unexpected ways — thereby enriching their interpretation and broadening their historical perspectives.

The exhibition From Gesture to Language makes the connection between conceptual art and traditional techniques of creation in the plastic arts. If the concept in all works of plastic art is expressed in a form, can we abstract the materiality of the work in order to allow for the spectator’s reading of merely the concept structuring the work of art? Choosing a simple concept for the object of representation brings up a question of principle: can the plastic artist let the form of his/her work take a back seat while allowing for the reading of the message contained in his/her work by means of mere words? Is Bruce Nauman’s neon lettering or Jenny Holzer’s monumental projections first and foremost books before being objects destined for one’s sight?

It is clear that all classical works, beyond their formal or even figurative appearance, only exist abstractly and mentally as a structured work — “Painting is a thing of the mind,” said Leonardo da Vinci or Nicolas Poussin. Thus nothing new, so far.… As for the relation between works of classical art and reading, it is so natural that the educated public does not intend to see or even look at a painting but rather to read it. It is in this intellectualised conception of art where it is necessary to look for the foundation to the approach of conceptual artists.

From Gesture to Language intends to confront conceptual creation against the yardstick of another approach that has profoundly questioned creation in the plastic arts within the 20th century: Minimalism and Arte Povera — an approach whose final end also was to reduce the work of art to the structure that underlies it. Neither letter nor word, but the ordering of pure form like new primordial elements of a universe in gestation; in this way one must understand the presence of François Morellet’s red Lamentation.

The high point of these plastic reflections brushes, in our exhibition, against the book and the engraved prints. Book objects — such as Xu Bing’s installation devoted to Saint-John Perse’s poem The Order of Birds, or Salazar’s Kafkaesque narrative dedicated to The Trial, or the collection of engravings that the Qianlong Emperor addressed to the King of France Louis XV as a way to illustrate his own martial poetry. The art of engraving, where the primary material is that of the book, the paper, or the sheet, does not suggest a fortuitous encounter between the avant-garde and tradition, but reveals the proper core of the exhibition which is dedicated to the renunciation of the traditional classical work — the most imperious symbol of which remains the most famous painting of the Louvre, Mona Lisa. Inviting the public to Funeral of Mona Lisa by Yan Pei-Ming is the most honest way — surely because it is the most playful— to invite the spectator to the celebration. From Gesture to Language proposes above all to rediscover, in a struggle between matter and spirit, the primordial role of art, which is also to nourish the senses in order to impose, on a renewed plastic form apt for the fledgling 21st century, the supremacy of the concept, in opening this relation of the gesture to language in the art of poetic language itself which constructs our literatures in colour, rhythm, and sound.

Around the collection of contemporary engravings of the Louvre, the paintings, sculptures, videos, and installations summon three major issues, from “Power” to the “Body” as well as the “Writing of Space”. Far from fixing the works under the rubric of a theme, the curators on the contrary invite the visitor to combine these issues freely through unexpected associations between the works of art.

“Power of Language and Language of Power”

The philosophers Michel Foucault and Judith Butler have deftly demonstrated how much language is a permanent performative act that manifests countless unstable and changing relations of power. Language is an ensemble of historical, social, and political constructions with their systems of signs, codes, forms and significations. In the exhibition From Gesture to Language, the artists fabricate images and words in order to question such relations, for example by blurring the boundaries between Chinese calligraphy and Western writing (Xu Bing), or in activating and reversing the simulacra of objectivity and neutrality of scientific texts (Bruce Nauman, Jenny Holzer). In this way, works of art reveal that within which the human subject cannot escape from relations of power but that which is in a position to construct alternative creative procedures to think and represent the living for the making of text and of image.

The work of translation is equally a fascinating practice to understand the infinite processes in the reconstruction of language. When the Qianlong emperor, the fourth emperor of the Qing dynasty, had sixteen drawings depicting his conquests and battles delivered to the King of France Louis XV, the engravers of the Cabinet du Roy set out to turn these into bronze engravings but introducing modifications of forms and interpretations with respect to the original series. Two versions are displayed here in the exhibition and are confronted by the paintings of the contemporary artist Zhao Xuebing, depicting 140 warriors within an extremely delicate and complex latticework of lines

“Incarnation and Mutations”

From Gesture to Language questions language, not only as representation of concept but also that which constructs it by means of fluctuations, transformations, mutations while the words (dis)integrates into a body or is expelled from this — whether an intimate body or the social body. Thus, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Morris, Giuseppe Penone, Kiki Smith, Yang Jiechang have effective recourse to drawing and engraving in order to express ambiguous bodily situations that are mixed up with architectonic or landscape elements. Passing from trauma to erotic states, from delimitation of space to oneiric, dream-like extensions, the works demonstrate how language does not illustrate reality but activates new and surprising situations.

“Poetics and Writing of Space”

When language infiltrates real space, it becomes something else altogether. Contemporary artists extend the act of writing in exploring three-dimensional space in order to realize critical and poetic installations. François Morellet thus uses simple and long tubes of neon that stretch to the ceiling and collapses to the ground level in the manner of abstract forms becoming immaterially concrete, or like unfinished letters attempting to take form. In a completely different manner, Martin Salazar chooses not to visualize the letter in space, instead concentrating on the radical confrontation of very opposite materials (wood, metal, felt, sound, light), rendering the interpretation of the last phrase of the famous work of Kafka, The Trial, extremely sensitive and critical. From the 6th to the 4th floor, Xu Bing has literally constructed a mesh of interconnected letters to form an impressive vortex in space. Visitors are invited to take on the attempt to read the poem The Order of Birds, written by Saint-John Perse in collaboration with the painter Georges Braque.

Jean-Philippe Toussaint deploys on the 6th floor of the museum a performative space, “Read/Live”, where actors take their places on seats surrounded by videos showing different readers, along with a simulacra of a medical headset supposedly able to decipher the interior of the brain during the act of reading. Of course, the control of the spirit is simply impossible, with language having infinite possibilities.

上海外滩美术馆荣幸呈现视觉艺术与书写实践之间独具创造性的联接。《从手势到语言》由巴黎卢浮宫爱德蒙·德·罗契尔德收藏馆(Edmond de Rothschild Collection)及铜版雕刻收藏馆馆长帕斯卡·托雷斯•戈尔迪奥拉与上海外滩美术馆馆长拉瑞斯·弗洛乔联合策划。展品包括来自卢浮宫的当代铜版画馆藏，及来自其它国际收藏机构的珍品杰作，还有为本次展览特别创作的重量级作品。期待观众能够借助展厅中视觉与文本的有力建构，完成一次在国际语境下的当代艺术穿越。

本次展览“古今并置”，刻意打破时间顺序，使古典、现代与当代作品在空间中惊妙并置，由此为作品的解读带来丰富、宽广的历史视野。

《从手势到语言》意在使观念艺术与传统造型技法相关联。尽管一切造型艺术品的观念都通过形式获得表达，然而我们是否可以抽离作品的物质性，直面作为艺术品结构的纯粹观念？以观念作为再现的对象，将引发如下原则性的问题：造型艺术家是否可能隐退作品的形式，而单单通过语词呈现艺术品蕴含的意旨？布鲁斯·瑙曼的霓虹灯字形、珍妮·霍尔泽的宏大投影在成为视觉观看的对象之前，或者首先更近于“书”？

显然，一切古典作品，无论其形式的（甚至具象的）外表如何，都只因其抽象的、精神的结构而成其为作品。“绘画为精神之物”，达芬奇与普桑早已对此有过清晰的表述。在这点上，并无新鲜可言……至于古典艺术品与阅读的关系，则再自然不过：有修养的公众并非在画中看到什么，他们甚至不会去“看”画，而是去“读”画。我们正应该在这种将艺术智识化的观念中，寻找观念艺术家的实践源泉。

《从手势到语言》试图将观念创作与另一深刻颠覆了20世纪造型艺术史的思路相衡量，即极简艺术与贫穷艺术，后者同样将艺术品化简到其本体结构的根基。非字非词，仅将纯粹的形式缀合，成为正在孕育的宇宙至关重要的新元素。弗朗索瓦·莫尔莱的红色《哀恸》即属此意。

如上造型思考的高潮，将与本次展出的书籍和铜版画作品相得益彰。展览中的“工艺书-物”，例如徐冰就圣-琼·佩斯的诗作《鸟之维》所做的装置、撒拉萨从卡夫卡的《审判》衍生而成的作品，还有乾隆皇帝为了自己的征战诗配画，向法王路易十五发出的铜版画订制邀请。铜版画的原材料与书相同——纸或页，这并非暗示着前卫与传统的一次偶然际会，而在于揭示本次展览的精神所指，即对传统古典作品的拒绝——后者至高的象征依旧是卢浮宫的典藏名画《蒙娜丽莎》。将严培明创作的《蒙娜丽莎的葬礼》呈献给公众，无疑是最老实、也最有趣的邀请公众参与的做法。《从手势到语言》着意在材料与精神的大碰撞中，重新找回艺术的本要角色，即以新生的21世纪特有的全新造型方式，滋养意义，确立观念的至上性。手势同语言之间的关系，同时向着诗性语言的艺术开放，在色彩、节奏与声响中构建着我们的文学。

围绕卢浮宫的当代铜版画收藏，展览通过绘画、雕塑、影像与装置等媒材多元的作品，展开对三个问题的追问，即“权力”、“身体”和“空间书写”。策展人尽量避免作品被框限在某个主题之内，鼓励观众在展品间建立自由的联系，从意料之外的组合中触碰上述问题。

“语言的权力与权力的语言”

哲学家福柯与巴特勒都曾出色地阐释，语言是永恒的表演行为，呈现着无数变动不居的权力关系。语言是一系列历史的、社会的、政治的建构，其间包含符号的、编码的、形式的与含义的诸多机制。此次展览中，艺术家将通过编织图像与语词，围绕这些关系提问，例如模糊中国书法与西方书写之间的界限（徐冰），或者激活并颠倒学术文本的客观性与中立性假象（布鲁斯·瑙曼、珍妮·霍泽尔）。艺术作品由此揭示出，虽然人作为主体无法逃离权力关系，却完全可能建立更富创造性的替代程序，通过文本与图像的建构，思考并再现鲜活的存在。

在了解语言重构的无尽过程中，翻译同样是一种可贵的实践。当清朝乾隆帝向法王路易十五赠送十六幅再现其武功征战的素描时，路易十五命人将这些素描转制为铜版画，同时相对于原作，做出形式与阐释上的修改。这两个版本都将在展览中获得视觉呈现，并与当代艺术家赵学兵的画作相呼应。后者在一个极为精细繁复的线条网络中，表现出一百四十个武士。

“化身与变异”

《从手势到语言》质问语言，不仅当其作为观念的代表之时，而且关注当词语在生物或社会的身体中融入、脱离、抑或被驱逐时，一切波动、变形与转换对语言的塑造。由此，路易斯·布尔乔亚、罗伯特·莫里斯、居斯帕•皮诺内、奇奇·史密斯、杨诘苍等艺术家通过素描和版画，表达出身体在建筑体或景观元素中的微妙处境。从创伤到情色的各种状态，从空间的界定到梦境的延伸，作品展示出语言并非现实的注释，而是奇幻之境的触发。

“诗性与空间书写”

语言一旦渗入现实空间，后者即会为之一变……当代艺术家在三维空间中延展书写，完成了兼具批判性与诗性的装置。弗朗索瓦·莫尔莱利用普通长霓虹灯管，从天花板连缀至地面，似乎使抽象的形态即刻成为某种实在，但这种实在并不依赖于物质性的形态，或仿佛未完成的字母在试图寻找自己的形状……马丁•撒拉萨没有选择将字母在空间中视觉化的方式，而是关注迥异的材料间的极端对比（木、金属、毡、声、光），使卡夫卡的名作《审判》中最后一句获得极为感性、又极具批判性的解读。徐冰在美术馆4层至6层的空间里以字母为单位编织出一个震撼人心的空间涡旋，观众则被邀请与画家乔治·布拉克“一道”，试读圣-琼·佩斯的诗作《鸟之维》。让-菲利普·图森在6层展厅设置了一个“阅读/现场”的表演空间：演员坐在一个由视频录像环绕的座椅上（视频中展现的是其它读者），所谓的医学设备模拟展示出阅读时脑部活动的图像。当然，对精神的控制是不可能的……语言拥有无限的可能性。