现实的重量

策展人：卢迎华
艺术家：汪建伟，吴小军，李郁和刘波
开幕式：2007年3月31日周六下午5点
展览日期：2007年3月31日至4月28日
画廊开放时间：周二至周日11am-7pm
地点：玛蕊乐画廊, 北京市朝阳区酒仙桥路4号798艺术区
网站：www.marellabeijing.com
电话：8610-6433 4055
传真：8610-6433 4055
e-mail: marellabeijing@gmail.com, eleonorabattiston@yahoo.it
PINKSTUDIO 联合制作

现实的重量
 
现实的重量就像地球引力一样无处不在，无法逃离，我们总能在各种情形下遭遇它，感知它，构成现实重量的因素是复杂多样的，包括了已知的、未知的；外在的、自身的；有形的、无形的；现实的重量挑战也刺激着我们的行为和思考。
 
在生命中，个人所承受的重量或挫败感可能源于从对社会权威力量的服从到自我意识的觉醒的过程中，由于我们所依赖的各种力量的崩溃， 自我判断的失误以及在外力的作用下，内心产生了危机感。这种危机感有时转瞬即失，有时持续甚久，甚至令人绝望。或者，当我们在运用已知的经验和价值判断应对未知的过程中发现了已知的局限而并未寻找到更新的解决方案时，我们便开始质疑已知的经验，并对自我产生怀疑，内心发生挣扎，直到重新建立对自我的承认为止。
 
在社会的进程中，现实的重量体现为公共的知识体系和群体意识，以及这种权威性力量和社会规则的动摇和瓦解。社会的运行依赖于建立和实施权威的意志。但当这种权威面临新的形势和语境无法应对，甚至为了保全其位置而对新的力量形成阻碍的时候，或者当公共的知识体系和群体意识受制和服务于某种政治的利益而且备受操纵时，我们不得不对现有的权威宣战，重新寻找我们的坐标，建立新的标准和参照的系统。
 
政治、科学、技术、财富、信息、哲学、宗教、道德、童话、艺术等，这些坐标为我们应对“现实重量”提供了一些有效的工具，它们帮助我们克服无知、贫穷、停滞、谎言、疑惑、危机、懦弱、偏激、恐惧、狭隘、欲望、斗争、权力，指引着我们在充满荆棘的世界中找到继续前行的路径。这些系统性的经验形成发展的过程本身就是不断地用已知去探索未知的过程，不停地否定已知和已被确立的规则，建立新知和新的方法论。
 
如果根据维特根斯坦的断言，世界是事实的总体的话，那么我们迫切地需要重新建构我们与事实的关系，因为事实不仅是瞬息万变的，它还不断地在从积极向消极循环地转化的，它受制于各种形式和外力的操纵，我们既依赖于它又必须对它时刻保持警惕，并准备去否定和替代它。人们总是在已知经验的基础上去进行创新、改变和突破，但当这种突破被承认，被确立为经验和规则时，它又成为需要被改变的对象。它甚至会质疑和否定未知的和新的现象和方法并制造障碍和约束。
 
在中国，单一的意识形态削弱了个人的自我意识和个人对社会价值的判断能力，并使之在群体意识的淫威下变得悄无声息，个人在社会变革的激流中更容易迷失方向。作为大众，我们的觉醒和自我意识可能对现实的稳定性构成威胁，环境的力量也同时在影响和塑造着我们的世界观，并不断地抵制和麻醉我们对自我的认知和思考，以群体的意识和所谓的公众的标准来挤压个人的判断。这就是为什么大众传媒最终将成为平息公众声音的有力武器。
 
权威不仅存在于政治之中，也同样在宗教和文化中生效。不断叩问艺术和文化的本质不仅能将权威置于危机，也是推动艺术变革的根本性的力量。对权威和主流标准的挑战和批判性地分析是自达达主义和观念艺术以来艺术创作的原动力。这包括了对艺术史的重返和反思，对艺术标准的反思，对艺术家权威的反思和否定，对日常的利用和重新建构。
 
这个研究性的展览通过疏理和收集不同时期艺术家对“现实的重量”的讨论，试图寻找思考现实的新途径，并重新想像和建构我们与现实的关系。此次展览展出的作品在时间上有较大的跨度，其中包括汪建伟在90年代初期的一件具有重要历史意义的观念作品“文件”。在这个作品中，艺术家通过执行一系列自我规定的法则开展实验，对知识体系的建立进行数据化和事实性的分析和考证，以抽离主体和近似理性的方法来检验一种主观的思考体系，是一种由内而外生发出来的反思。我们将在展厅中复制汪建伟90年代初创作“文件”时所在的工作室并再现艺术家当时整个创作过程的状态，展出艺术家在这个创作过程中纪录数据和思考笔记的手稿和图像。
 
2006年，武汉艺术家李郁和刘波合作创作了“狗年13个月”，两位艺术家选择和重新利用2006年间在武汉本地报纸中所出现的小道消息和新闻事件，用摆拍的形式重新叙述这些故事，模糊了这些故事和场景的真实性。这些被制造成为灯箱的影像因为同时具备了现实的力量和视觉上的荒诞的效果而令人瞠目，为我们提供通道，进入现实中超越逻辑和违背常理的一面。也让我们重新思索我们所了解的逻辑和常识，以及公共领域的知识是否又似我们所认为的那样足以信赖。也许现实的边界本来就是虚幻的，它只存在于我们有限的想像和“已知”之中。
 
吴小军在90年代以观念摄影的手段模拟制造虚假的卡通形象和故事情节，2000年后转为创作以文字为基础的霓虹灯装置来对政治和社会事件进行关注。凭借他曾经从事过新闻编辑工作的经验从更理性的角度和历史的语境中去看待一个发生过和进行中的事件。往往触动他的灵感和思考的只是一个事件中的某个点，而他的视觉转化也围绕着一个特定的点生发出来，但是他在创作过程中从人性的角度和触觉来感受和分析一个事件的方式使他的作品更加睿智和耐人寻味。
 
参与“现实的重量”的艺术家们在各自不同阶段的创作和思考尝试着在艺术的实践中建造自己坚实的武器，发明新的思考方式，去冲破事实的疆域和边界，通过保持与现实紧密的关系和恰如其分的距离而与虚假、混乱和伪现实打着一场持久的战役。在此次展览中出现的作品提出了超越事实世界和集体想像来展开思考的可能性 ，从多种角度解读体系和制度之中错综复杂的本质，审视影响我们行为和思想的外在力量，试图认清现实世界的意义和千丝万缕的头绪，直至在我们思想的王国中建立一种全新的秩序为止。
 
 
 
THE WEIGHT OF REALITY
 
Curator: Carol (Yinghua) Lu
Artists: Wang Jianwei, Wu Xiaojun, Li Yu & Liu Bo
Opening: 5pm, March 31, 2007
Exhibition Dates: March 31 – April 28, 2007
Opening Hours: Tue-Sun 11am-7pm
Venue: Marella Gallery Beijing
Address: 4 Jiuxianqiao Rd., 798 Art District, Beijing
Website: www.marellabeijing.com
Phone: 8610-6433 4055
Fax: 8610-6433 4055
E-mail: marellabeijing@gmail.com, eleonorabattiston@yahoo.it
Co-produced with PINKSTUDIO
 
We live with the weight of reality as much as we do with gravity. There is no escape from it. We can always encounter and experience the weight of reality in different forms and under all sorts of circumstances. The weight of reality can be something that is known or unfamiliar to us, external or internal, tangible or intangible, visible or invisible. The weight of reality challenges as well as energizes our ways of living and being, as much as gravity means towards our livelihood.
 
The weight of reality or the sense of defeat that we bear as an individual originates from the process during which the individual recovers his/her own consciousness and self-control from his/her previous subordination to the authoritative power in the society. This sense of defeat can also be triggered by the collapse of the forces that support our survival, be it friends, family, value and so on. Besides, misjudgment of oneself and external impacts can also lead to a sense of crisis inside of a person. This sense of crisis is a fleeting experience at times but it could also persist for a long time, driving the person to a point of desperation. On the other hand, as we encounter the unknown while depending on our acquired experience and judgment of value, we will discover the limitation of the known and the acquired. But since we are yet to discover a new solution, we inevitably question our acquired experience and even harbor doubts about ourselves. We experience turbulence internally until we reestablish a new recognition of ourselves within.
 
In the course of social progression, the weight of reality manifests itself in the public knowledge system and collective consciousness, as well as the wavering and disintegration of the authority and accepted social orders. The operation of the society relies on the establishment and execution of the will of the authority. This authority may eventually fall short of responding to a new situation or context, and even becomes obstructive to the new force in order to sustain its own position. The public knowledge system or collective consciousness may become restrained and completely manipulated by a certain political motivation. Under these circumstances, we have to declare war against the authority and go on to discover our coordinates, establish new orders and points of references.
 
Politics, science, technology, wealth, information, philosophy, religion, ethics, fairytales, arts, and so on, these coordinates are some of the effective tools with which we deal with the weight of reality. They help us overcome ignorance, poverty, stagnancy, lie, doubt, crisis, cowardice, prejudice, fear, narrowness, desire, war, and power, leading our ways ahead in a confusing world. The evolution of these systems of knowledge itself is a process of constantly approaching the unknown with the acquired, incessantly questioning and overthrowing the accepted and the existing rules, marking new territories and creating new methodologies.
 
If, according to Wittgenstein’s words, the world is the totality of facts, our existence involves constant battles with these hurdles, and we are in a dire need to reestablish our relationship with these facts. These facts are not only fast changing, their nature is also continuously alternating between being positive and being negative. They are subject to the exploitation of various forms and external influences. While relying on them, we should be vigilant about them and be ready at any point to contradict and replace them. All innovations, changes and breakthroughs take place on the basis of the acquired knowledge and experience. Once the new idea is recognized and accepted as a fact and rule, it becomes something that needs to be changed again. It will also cast doubt on and reject the unknown and newer phenomenon and methods, and even become a hindrance and restrictive power. 
 
China is a society ruled by one singular ideology, which reduces an individual’s self-consciousness and his/her ability to determine social opinions and values. The individual consciousness is silenced by the overwhelming power of a collective consciousness. As a result, one’s individual consciousness easily loses its way in the turbulence of a time of radical reforms and dramatic transformations. As part of the masses, our consciousness and awakening are always a potential threat towards the stability of the reality. In the meantime, the forces of our environment never cease to control and influence our perceptions of the world and constantly attempt to negate and hypnotize our sense of self and intellect. Collective consciousness and the so-called public judgments and principles can crush individual opinions. Ultimately communications could be the pacifier for the public.
 
The authority does not only exist in politics but exerts its influence in religion and culture. To keep making inquiries into the nature of art and culture can not only place the authority in a position of risk and uncertainty, it is also the fundamental force that motivates the revolution in art. Challenging and critically analyzing the authority and the mainstream opinions has remained the engine that empowers artistic creation since Dadaism and the conceptual art movement. This includes revisiting and reflecting on art history, critically contemplating the standards in art, rethinking and denying the authority of the artist, appropriating and reconstructing the everyday.
 
This exhibition started as a research process to collect and sample the variety of approaches with which individual artists negotiate with, relate to and resist the pull of the reality and examine the secret weapons of the reality. These are examples of individual minds questioning given facts and re-imagining and reconstructing possible links and distances to the reality. It’s an issue that always fascinates and keeps the artists thinking and working at different points of time in history. There is a considerable time lapse among the three bodies of works presented in this exhibition, which includes one of the earliest conceptual works by Wang Jianwei, called “File”, from the early 1990s. In this work, the artist meticulously carried out a series of experiments sticking to a set of rules he invented himself and imposed on himself, in order to construct a body of statistical and factual analysis of the system of knowledge. He set off to look at a subjective system of learning by removing the subject as well as resorting to a method that was close to being rational. It was a purely internal reflection. This reflection will be manifested in the exhibition with a replication of Wang Jianwei’s work studio, where he carried out this work, with an attempt to capture the state of mind and work of the artist back in the early 1990s. In the meantime, we will display the manuscript_s and images, which bear notes, thoughts and actions that have resulted from this process of working.
 
In 2006, Wuhan based artists Li Yu and Liu Bo collaborated for a year on a photo-shooting series called “13 Months in the Year of the Dog”. All through the year of 2006, these two artists selected and recycled a number of news events from the local newspapers and retold these stories by shooting staged scenarios constructed based on the news. Each of these images is then made into a light box. The force of the reality embodied in these images along with a heightened sense of absurdity in their visual impact make these light boxes appear to be dramatic and incredible. They provide passages towards the side of the reality that is beyond logic and against common sense. But the question is whether what we know as logic and common sense, as well as public knowledge is really something to rely on? Does the border of the reality exist at all? Maybe it only exists in the confines of our limited imagination and the “known”.
 
Wu Xiaojun is an important figure in the conceptual photography movement in the 1990s, when he fabricated fictional cartoon figures and scenarios in his photographs. Since 2000, Wu has shifted the focus of his practice towards making site-specific neon-light installations, often involving texts and words, to comment on political and social events. Based on his previous experience as a news editor, he is able to place an event that has taken place or is happening, from a more logical perspective and in a larger historical framework. Even though what motivates his creativity and practice is always one specific aspect of an event, and his visual translation of an event also returns to his attention to the very same specific aspect, the process of thinking in between, which originates from a humanistic point of view and sensitivity, enriches his works and provokes deeper thoughts
 
This exhibition groups artists and works, which pose questions about the given and the accepted and attempt to reinvent our relationship with and perceptions of the reality. The artists in this exhibition try to devise their own mechanisms and re-imagine new systems of thinking in order to break the confines of existing facts and survive falsehood and chaos by keeping a personalized appropriate distance and closeness at the same time to the reality and reiterate a new sense of order into our mind. They are models and examples of thinking beyond the world of the reality and the minds of the collective. They inspire us to uncover the hidden models in life, to unravel the mystery of the system, to examine the ruling forces that condition our behavior and thinking, to reveal the meanings and implications of the reality world, and to get closer and closer to the ultimate truth on the matters.