Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

The Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai is proud to present the latest exhibition Walking On The Fade Out Lines from March 24 to May 27, 2018. The fruit of a fascinating collaboration and exchange with Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, one of the most renowned contemporary art institutions in Italy, the exhibition will be curated by Larys Frogier, the director of Rockbund Art Museum, and Hsieh Feng-Rong, the senior curator of Rockbund Art Museum. With 30 works from over 23 artists from all continents, spanning such various forms as paintings, interactive installations, photography, video, among others, the works are selected from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, along with additional video works from Song Tao and new commissioned works from Zhang Ruyi, with the latter two artists originating from Shanghai and thus strengthening the rich connection to local contexts.

Walking On The Fade Out Lines tackles the ways and angles of “seeing” and invites viewers to revisit history, explore unfamiliar cities and regions. Viewers can scrutinize how artists offer up dilemmas through creative questioning, examination, and analyses from the end of the 20th century to the present, as well as how the thinking of the “Alterity” of the trans-regional is proposed in a globalized context. Through a poetic elaboration, the exhibition attempts to transform the intrinsic understanding of cognitive structures that had gone along set paths, thereby offering up more open and plural interpretative perspectives.

As Larys Frogier says, “Walking On The Fade Out Lines whispers, listens, connects with the Other, and yet there is no need to see the foreigner as the Other or to travel such distances to meet with and speak on behalf of an exotic Other. Radical alterity has first to be found and cultivated into our own place, our inner self, our individual and social interaction, with all kinds of beauty, ugliness, tyranny, harmony. There is always a foreign land from where we stand”.

Aligning with the respond to the notion “alterity”, Walking On The Fade Out lines unfolds the meanings of artworks through open viewing perspectives. Walking into the museum, the first thing that strikes the eye is a yellow bear crawling on the floor. Created by the Italian artist Paola Pivi, Have you seen me before? is made up of feathers, plastic, and wood, commonly seen materials in everyday life. The yellow bear seems to awaken our memories of stuffed toy animals that accompany our coming of age, accidentally greeting us here. Midnight, Cadiz is a large oil painting by the British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye; in it, a black man lies leisurely on the ground at night, carelessly looking backward. When one approaches, one abruptly discovers that he is seemingly looking back. Still Untitled, a huge 12-meter-wide tapestry created by the American artist Pae White, portrays wisps of white smoke on a black background; the abstract misty design is actually made with traditional European craftsmanship. In the British artist Damian Hirst’s painting work Love Is Great, colorful butterfly samples are systematically stuck on the turquoise surface, as though fluttering in the serene heavens, vivaciously embodying the fragility of life and the conflicts of existence.

Shifting the ways of seeing allows viewers to reflect completely anew about the environment in which they are situated. The American artist Paul McCarthy’s large installation work Bang-Bang Room is a deconstructed living space; though viewers are invited to step into this seemingly familiar environment, they will immediately feel the shifts in the space, the moving walls, the constantly opening and closing doors along with the sounds, leaving them completely unprepared. The artist initiates a profound attack on the influence of people and environment on people’s psychology. The Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s work Muriel Lake Incident creates a miniature model of a cinema which plays a Midwestern film noir. With the earphones on, viewers can peer into the interior of the cinema and yet immediately they will feel an intense dislocation: a woman eats popcorn while sharing her dreams and anxieties as though she was sitting right next to you. Through a relationship of double vision, the work subverts a traditional unidirectional system of viewing.

Different viewing perspectives also bring about reflections on numerous issues such as cultural memory, urban transformations, power politics, and identity, among others. Hassan Khan, an artistic pioneer of the underground music and experimental video art scenes in Cairo, has a sound installation DOM-TAK-TAK -DOM-TAK which brings viewers to the streets of Cairo through light and sound. The artist invited six Egyptian street artists who improvise six local Shaabi tunes respectively, and then the artist mixes the soundtracks into an all-new subjective improvisation. The video work Ariana meanwhile recounts the French artist Marine Hugonnier’s summer journey to Afghanistan in 2002. The artist was heading to shoot some footage in the Pandjsher Valley with an anthropologist and a geologist, but the authorities initially forbade them from entering due to the area’s strategic value. Even though permission to shoot was obtained in the end, the artist decided to give that up, instead turning her camera at everyday life there. The short sudden bursts of blackout and the poetic soliloquies explore the relationship between scenery and history and attempts to broach and reflect on the power and political relationship of viewing between the subject and the other. Ariana is part of a trilogy with the other two parts taking place in the Swiss Alps and the Amazons in Brazil; the entire trilogy will be presented in this exhibition.

Additionally, viewers will also accompany the Shanghai artist Song Tao in returning to early 2000s Shanghai in From the Last Century. The artist records in video the rapidly developing urban landscape. A group of youngsters similarly return to early childhood, kicking a football on the broad boulevards, playing on the newly built high-rises. What the artist wants to inquire is this: with the changes and improvements in living conditions, is Shanghai’s cultural memory also disappearing? The artist Zhang Ruyi, similarly from Shanghai, specially created site-specific works for this exhibition. By employing tiles and concrete, she examines from spatial displacements and attributes the “blockages” and “pressures” between people in cities.

The exhibition Walking On The Fade Out Lines minutely sorts through the trans-regional particularities in cultural contexts. In the totality of artistic expression constituted by the works, we hope to open the dialogic space of the epistemological world and continue to spark processes in which people explore the unknown. As the curator Hsieh Feng-Rong says, “By means of the artistic statements and imagery as carried across by the works, the exhibition uses the artworks as critical reflective tools and brings viewers into an unfamiliar landscape, entering into dialogue with them, and attempting to rebuild the state of imagination in that blurred boundary between the known and the unknown.” At the same time, a series of public education events will take place over the course of the exhibition in order to further explore this issue.

2018年3月24日至5月27日，上海外滩美术馆很荣幸向您呈现最新群展“行将消退”，此次展览是上海外滩美术馆与意大利最负盛名的当代艺术机构之一——山德雷托·雷·雷包登戈基金会的一次精彩携手与交流，由上海外滩美术馆馆长拉瑞斯·弗洛乔和资深策展人谢丰嵘共同策划。展览将呈现来自各大洲23位艺术家的30件作品，涵盖架上绘画、互动装置、摄影、录像等形式，作品精选自基金会的珍品收藏，此外还有宋涛的录像作品以及张如怡的委约新作，这两位来自上海的艺术家巩固并丰富了展览与本地语境的联系。

“行将消退”对“观看”的方式和角度提出讨论，邀请观众走入过去，探访不熟悉的城市和地域，重新审视二十世纪末至今艺术家如何透过创作提问、剖析并拆解时代给予人类的难题，并在全球化的语境下提出对跨地域“殊异性”的思考。展览试图通过诗意的阐述，转换对于有迹可循的认知结构的固有理解，因而向观众提供了更开放和多元的解读视角。

正如拉瑞斯·弗洛乔所说的那样，“展览‘行将消退’试图与他者（the Other）建立联系，聆听并窃窃私语，不需要将外来的人当作他者，或长途跋涉与其相见，抑或代表他者发声，而是从我们自身、从个体和社会的互动中发现殊异性，一切的美丽、丑陋、暴虐、和谐尽在其中。我们脚下总会有一片陌生的土地”。

进入美术馆，首先映入眼帘的是一只趴在地上的黄熊，意大利艺术家波拉·彼薇运用生活中常见的羽毛、塑料、木材等材料创作了《你见过我吗？》。黄熊仿佛唤起你对于儿时毛绒玩具的记忆，它随着你一起长大，并不经意间向你打着招呼。《午夜，加的斯》是英国艺术家利奈特·伊阿德姆-博阿基耶的大型油画作品，黑夜中一名黑人男子悠闲地躺在地上并向后望着，当观者走近他时，会愕然发现他似乎也正在看着你。美国艺术家派·怀特所创作的12米巨幅壁毯《仍旧无题》描绘了黑色背景上的一缕缕白烟，抽象飘渺的图案实则由扎实的欧洲传统壁毯编织工艺所制成。英国艺术家达米恩·赫斯特的绘画作品《爱是伟大的》，彩色蝴蝶标本被不规则地粘在绿松石色的绘画表面，好似在静谧的天空飞舞，淋漓尽致地展现了生命的脆弱及生存冲突。

改变观看的方式，会让观者对所处环境有全新的思考。美国艺术家保罗·麦卡锡的大型装置作品《砰-砰房》是一个被解构的生活空间，观者被邀请踏入这个看似家常的环境，但第一时间会感受到空间的变化，移动的墙、不断开合的门和声响令观者措手不及，艺术家对人物和环境对人心理的影响发起了一次深刻的攻击。加拿大艺术家珍妮特·卡迪夫和乔治·布雷斯·米勒的作品《穆里尔湖事件》创造了一座微缩版电影院，影院正在播放一部美国中西部的黑色电影。观者戴上耳机窥看影院内部，但随之将感受到一种强烈的错位：一个女生一边吃着爆米花，一边与你分享她的梦和焦虑，她就好似坐在你的身边。通过双重观看的关系，作品颠覆了传统单一向度的观看机制。

不同的观看视角同时会带来对于文化记忆、城市变迁、权力政治关系、身份认同等更多问题的审视。作为开罗地下音乐和实验录像艺术先驱的哈桑·汗，他的声音装置《咚-嗒-嗒-咚-嗒》通过光和声音瞬间将观众带到埃及街头。艺术家聘请六位埃及街头音乐人分别即兴演奏六首当地的莎比音乐，再进行音轨混缩成为一首全新的主观即兴演绎。录像作品《阿里亚纳》则讲述了法国艺术家马琳·于戈尼耶在2002年夏天的阿富汗之行。艺术家与人类学家、地理学家共同前往潘杰希尔谷进行拍摄，然而当局考虑到此地的战略价值禁止他们进入，后虽得到拍摄许可但艺术家选择放弃，转而将镜头对准当地的普通生活。其画面短暂的黑频闪现、富有诗意的独白，探究着风景与历史的关系，并试图探讨并反思主体与他者之间的观看的权力政治关系。《阿里亚纳》属于三部曲之一，另两部在瑞士阿尔卑斯和巴西亚马逊进行拍摄，本次展览将完整展出三部曲。

此外，观众也将跟随上海艺术家宋涛的《从上世纪来》回到2000年初的上海，艺术家用录像记录飞速发展的城市景观中，一群年轻人如同回到孩提时代，在宽大的马路上踢足球，在新建高楼屋顶玩耍，艺术家所欲叩问的是：随着居住环境地貌改变，上海的文化记忆是否也会随之消失？同样来自上海的艺术家张如怡，为本次展览全新创作了限地制作作品，她将运用瓷砖、混凝土的材料，从空间的错置与空间的属性，探讨城市里的人们之间被“阻断”、“挤压”的关系。

展览“行将消退”通过细致地梳理文化脉络中的跨地域殊异性，在作品共同形成的艺术表达中，期望打开认识世界的辩证空间，持续催化人们探索未知事物的进程。正如策展人谢丰嵘所言：“本次展览借由作品传递出的艺术陈述与图像，作为批判性思考的工具，带领观者走入陌生的景观与之对话，在知与未知的模糊边界试图重建想象的国度。”同时，一系列公共教育活动将在展览期间举办，以进一步探讨这个话题。