Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

“Ifs, Ands, or Buts” is the first exhibition presented by Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in 2016 and the first museum solo exhibition in mainland China for Singaporean artist Heman Chong. The exhibition investigates spaces between text and images, producing new ways of relating the two through 7 new works commissioned specifically by Rockbund Art Museum.

Heman Chong often draws references from a multitude of things that we do not usually classify within the same group. He is able to place modernist literature such as Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, alongside something as banal as Mr. Bean and The Road Runner, and even the gossip newspaper Apple Daily as if they belong together. “Ifs, Ands, or Buts” can be interpreted as a fiction which may never be put into words. A fiction that is absurd and bizarre, one that is equipped with a sardonic, black humor, where different situations find themselves misplaced in the realm between reality and fantasy.

The exhibition begins with a site specific installation entitled Legal Bookshop (Shanghai). It involves the displacement of the gift shop with a bookshop. For this work, Chong hired Ken Liu, a lawyer who is also an award-winning author and translator of speculative fiction via email. Chong wrote, as an invitation:

“I would like you to select books that touches on the idea of the law; including both fiction and non-fiction books. They can be textbooks that law students use for their studies, books that lawyers use for reference, copies of the legal acts in China, novels where characters get entangled with the law, books that touch on the history of the law, maybe even books on scientific laws. I want you to interpret the idea of ‘the law’ when you think about this list.” The choice of books is solely Liu’s. Chong’s involvement is merely to invite him to participate by selecting the books, all of which will be available for sale at this temporary bookshop.

The duo channel video installation Re-Re-Re-Run screens every single episode from Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean and Road Runner animations, played repeatedly for the entire duration of the exhibition on a large outdoor LED screen with the sound from both channels amplified to an unbearable level. The Mysterious Island is a sad and unfulfilling recreation of the elusive and utopian Peach Blossom Island, using plastic peach blossom trees in full bloom ordered on taobao.com, set against a background of walls painted blue, a blue often used in film production as blue screens. A large-scale light box installation titled One Thousand And One Nights, which will be installed on the north façade of the museum, highlighting the differences in meaning of the title of the classic collection of stories in Arabic, Chinese, and English. Papaya Daily, a work that functions both as a short story and an installation, the name of which is also an anthology of gossip Chong has heard of or read about since 2003. Endless (Nights), is a monumental sculpture made up of ten thousand copies of unprinted, blank newspapers sit quietly in a darkened room. Finally, the performance, Everything (Baike) will witness a series of readers sliding over the content of Baidu Baike, the Chinese online encyclopedia, as an unrealized, unfinished fiction.

“闲言碎语”是上海外滩美术馆2016年度的首档新展，也是新加坡艺术家张奕满在中国的首场美术馆级别的个人展览。展览通过7件全新制作的艺术作品，对文本和图像之间的空间进行审查，并以一种全新的方式将两者联系起来。

张奕满的创作常蕴含丰富的典故，很多我们看来风马牛不相及的事物在艺术家的手中都能与其作品很好地融合在一起。他能将《等待戈多》这样的现代主义文学作品，和《憨豆先生》《跑步鸡》这样老套的电视节目，甚至八卦小报《苹果周刊》放在一起，仿佛它们本该如此。展览“闲言碎语”本身也可以被想象成一部也许永远不会写就的虚构小说的若干章节，它荒诞而离奇，带有讽刺性和黑色幽默的气质，在这里你将与各种“错位场景”不期而遇，探索现实与虚构的中间地带。

展览从一件名为《律法书店（上海）》的场地特定装置展开，它将美术馆原本的礼品店替代成为一间书店。为了实现这件作品，张奕满通过电子邮件联系并雇佣了刘宇昆为项目合作者。刘宇昆既是一位律师，又是一位屡获殊荣的幻想小说作家和翻译者。张奕满在电子邮件中向刘发出邀请时写到：“我希望你所选的书籍能触及律法的理念，对虚构和非虚构类书籍兼容并包。它们可以是法学院学生的教科书，律师们的参考文献，中国的法案，角色受律法所困的小说，关于律法历史的书，甚至可以有关于自然法则的书。在书籍的选择上，我希望能体现你对‘律法’的解读。”最终的书单均由刘宇昆单独拟定，艺术家只是是邀请刘宇昆参与作品中选书的部分。所选书籍都会在这个临时书店中售卖。

美术馆二层展厅将展出双频道录像装置《跑跑跑》。这件作品由英国演员罗温·阿特金森扮演的“憨豆先生”和美国动画片角色“跑步鸡”两个角色形象组成，两者将同时在一个大型户外LED屏幕上进行原声全集循环播放，音量被放大至常人难以忍受的程度。另一件场地特定装置《神秘岛》是对人们梦寐以求却难以实现的乌托邦式社会“桃花源”的再创作。桃花源是东亚民间传说与流行文化中的重要母题。这些盛开的塑料桃花树将被放置在蓝色背景墙前，由从网络电商购买的塑料花木打造。除此之外，其他展出的作品也各有其特点：大型灯箱装置《天方夜谭》将被安装在美术馆北面的外墙上，这部经典故事集的书名以阿拉伯文、中文、英文三种文字呈现在观众面前，突出了三种语言表达效果的不同；题为《木瓜日报》的作品既是短篇小说又是装置艺术，它是艺术家自2003年来听到或者读到的各种八卦的选集；《无尽（夜晚）》是一件纪念碑式的雕塑作品，由一万张没有印刷的空白报纸组成，它们将被静静地放置在一间昏暗的房间里；最后一件作品为行为表演《一切(百科)》将见证一位位朗读者在展览空间朗读百度百科的词条，以此构建一部从未发生的也没有结局的小说。