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颜磊是今天中国艺坛最独特的艺术家之一：他始终我行我素。然而他同时也具有真正的国际视野，深深关怀一些主要社会问题。他的创作使用高度个人化、但不断发展蜕变和开放的语言，涉及中国艺术圈的具体问题。这些问题，或者说是难题，产生于和全球艺术圈的互动。艺术家相互竞争，追求成名，看谁的作品能够卖到最贵、达到天文数字的价钱。艺术与权力普遍被视为密不可分。因此，艺术与权力的结盟成了艺术家们追求的目标……所有这一切竞争体现了中国社会成为全球化一部分的过程中所产生的矛盾与张力，而这也确实是一个全球趋势。
在全球化的时代，“本土”与“全球”之间的对抗和角力已成为艺术生产的一个关键点。审视艺术家渴望自由和体制控制企图之间的权力关系、冲突与斗争，构成了颜磊创作历程的一个核心主题。尽管如此，他不拘囿于理论或学术，而是以实际操作来处理这个问题，并且经常以最私密的方式展开。面对这个谈判过程中各式各样无法解决的难题，他总能想出激进、但充满出人意料的慧颉和带点自嘲的答案──有些嘲讽，到头来却深具批判性。
他说：“权力就像一个阴道，所有的人都在寻找它，对于哪的人来说都一样，游戏规则看起来是开放的──有人用的是嘴；有人用的是手；有人用的是肾功能……”
权力游戏是一场性游戏吗？颜磊用他自己的方式把玩这个问题，游移于高尚与低俗、高潮与阳痿之间。
另一方面，面对激烈的争斗，他经常宁愿藏身于某种“避难所”，在梦幻、空想和幻觉的境界里头寻找自由的圣殿。然而这个梦幻世界并非一块幸福乐土，相反地，这是从野心与失败、渴望与幻灭之间的张力簇生出的另一种生活方式。最终，一切都成虚幻，然而虚幻却又是如此的真实，他宁愿永远待在里头。他试图呈现现实生活中遇到的事件和人的图像，但他很快地放弃了自己去选择图像──而是由其他人来产生以绘画形式为主的图像，或是让他们用单色油漆将图像覆盖住……他因此摆脱了决定图像价值的负担。图像与图像的消失之间不再有区别。他说： “是经验让我们遇到了那些图像。在我看来，图像的存在和消失无非就是幻觉。” “真实在心里，现实没有真实。”
以放弃图像的决定权作为一种面对权力系统不合作的方式，更进一步地推向了“不生产”。颜磊强调艺术和现实生活里的其他活动，特别是做生意，没有什么不同。他宣称：“艺术和做其它的生意没什么不同。”这不仅促成艺术家自我意识的消除──艺术家的自我，或者说是主体性，已不再重要。最好的艺术生产方式是挪用工业模式：他雇用没有受过训练的画工来实现“他的”绘画，甚至决定“他的”作品的主题、数量和表现方式，同时拒绝以“艺术家”的标签来称呼自己的身份。他直接诉诸做生意的模式，作为“艺术生产”的模式。2001年，他成立了一家注册公司来制作和展示他的项目。从本质上来说，这些作品表达了他的幻觉感，亦即他对艺术和生命的幻灭。他原本想把公司取名为“空想”，但未获工商部门通过，他因此找了个带有异国情调的外来词，顺利把公司注册为“利悟利”──这个名字其实是法语“Rêverie（梦想）”一语双关的音译。如今，这个看似简单的名字兼具“空想/幻灭”和“利润启发了更多的利润”的涵义……梦想已然成真：艺术与生意如今完美地融合为一！
因此，艺术成了真正的无限，并且无法效仿──就像做生意一样。颜磊将自己的创作统称为《无限艺术工程》。在这个旗帜下，所有的作品都是持续形成这个“无限”境界的“有限”元素。
他为2012年第13届文献展创作了具开拓性的《有限艺术项目》，将此想法更往前推进了一步，直接拥抱工业生产。在文献展举行的一百天期间，每天从悬挂在文献展厅各式各样的图像中选择一些画送到当地大众汽车厂，用工业漆把画面图像覆盖住，之后再挂回展厅。最后所有图像都被覆盖住，具象绘画全都变成了单色画布……
诚然，当代艺术和文化对“作者之死”这个概念的探索和辩论已有很长一段时间。过去咸认为作者乃自成一体的创造者，透过亲手制作的作品来表达个人绝对的主体性和精湛的技艺──这个过时的概念似乎早已不复存在：作者只能被视为一种复数的“互为主体性”，不能免于受他人的影响与混合。在工业时代，艺术生产由劳工、他人、甚至机器来执行，因此是“去人性化”的；同时，艺术品不仅像工业产品一样可复制生产，通常也被视为商品，与奢侈品没太多两样。当代艺术近期的全球化 ——经常带有受到西方观念主义论述和其市场与体制系统界定的含义——正导致世界各地的艺术，不论本质和功能，都发生“突变”。如今世界各地正肆无忌惮、激烈甚至充满暴力地上演着一场新的权力游戏，萃炼着真实与价值，同时创造利润。这场全球性的“争夺战”是一个前所未有的现象。更有意思的是，先前位处“边缘”地区，如中国、印度和巴西等地，如今都成为新的生产中心，也因此是主要的权力战场。 谁才是艺术真正的作者──不是具体的作品，而是把艺术当成工业化和商品化产品来加工处理的权力体系——如今成了极其重要、可能同时也攸关存亡的问题。这是必须采取的最后立场：艺术家是这个体系的预言者？或者仅仅只是它的受害者？
颜磊绘画的消失和转化为机器制造的单色——事实上，应该说是“不具色彩”的——画布，证明了这种命运的不可避免。我们也可以认为：我们对艺术的一切良好观感和尊敬最终遭到了颠覆……
2
颜磊为红砖美术馆制作的新计划简单地以“利悟利”的名称作为标题。这是对“颠覆”的再一次尝试，而且是更壮观的展示。
他对《有限艺术项目》做了延伸发展，将第十三届文献展的作品根据现场空间重新在走廊展厅装置和展示。另一组绘画则是他（和他的员工）从传媒和其他资源里“遇到”和挑选的图像，这些图像悬挂于墙面，构成了一面面多层次的图像墙，以压倒性的姿态俯视着经过的人流……
他在中央展厅安置了一件大型装置，进一步地颠覆了传统绘画生产与展览的模式，将艺术与现实生活的审美层次结构整个上下颠倒地反转过来：画挂在汽车生产线的旋转带，而喷上工业油漆的车门则展示在墙面。这台机器模仿和复制了颜磊在卡塞尔大众汽车厂发现并爱上了的汽车生产线……车门上刻着“焰火3号”、“两头熊猫吃竹子”和“我选择这个地方，如今我把我的心搁在此地”等字样，从车门背后凸起显示，用来标示被工业漆覆盖住的“虚构”的图画。悬吊在机器上头的画则是第十三届文献展项目的草图。在此，颜磊对工业化无与伦比的完美氛围的迷恋获得了充分展现，并且更加“极端化”。他着迷于汽车厂洁白明亮的展会场，它所散发的美、“暖意”和“纯洁”，远胜于任何艺术空间。他想把它搬进美术馆。这一次，他的愿望得以成真……
位于这件装置的另一侧是八个文献展展厅的模型，里头挂着许多幅小画。这件作品的标题是《XANAX》，这是效力最强的抗忧郁药的名称。颜磊设置这些模型是为了“满足”观众的偷窥欲。窥视艺术家称之为“无限艺术”的微观世界，观众可能变得比艺术家更郁闷；或者，如果运气稍微好些，他们的郁闷可能暂时获得排遣……
3 （后记）
“利悟利”展终于实现并揭开了帷幕，展出效果精致的令人震撼。《利悟利》装置看起来完美无瑕，以着精准且无懈可击的惊人方式传达了工业的美感，体现着工业化和高科技时代之“美”和文化意涵的强烈欲望。这件作品不仅拥抱工业化的形式，也包括其操作和生产的模式。事实上，为了实现这项计划，颜磊委托其侄女就读的一所法国艺术管理学校来构思和绘制《利悟利》的布置图。整个装置的结构由北京一家工厂制作──艺术或策展人并未直接涉入其中──产生一种强烈壮观的视觉效果。作品呈现一种机械、系统、理性，多少去除人性的秩序。这蕴含着对于认为艺术展览和艺术机构是艺术家和观众情感相遇和交汇场所的传统观点的挑战。这种距离感迫使人投入一个不真实或超现实的世界——人在其中会失去自我，屈服于一种具绝对“客观”形式的未知力量的控制。我们生活在一个真实的“幻想”当中。
尽管如此，最后一刻却意外地发生了一个不可控制的事件，彻底打乱了这种绝对的秩序。颜磊的好友、同时是长期合作伙伴陈弘礼（陈底里），率领一批声音艺术家在展览开幕现场组织了一场噪音音乐的演出。当这场表演达到高潮时，颜磊本人也加入到这场混乱之中。展览鲜明的机械化、甚至非人性的秩序突然遭到了破坏。观众如今被另一个不可控制的力量——一种出神狂喜的状态——所吸引和震撼……
的确，这是颜磊长期以来对地下文化（或更准确地说，是亚文化）的迷恋与介入的一次精彩展现。他总是着迷于能够将“我”转化为超越所有常规定义的“下意识的我” 的状态。这个“下意识的我”不断摆盪于反抗社会规范和拥有遥不可及的梦想之间；而这种摇摆不定反过来也说明和界定了什么是“下意识的我”。颜磊多次试图扩展──甚至于放弃──自己的艺术实践，以投靠亚文化的生产。他为第十届伊斯坦布尔双年展（2007年）所呈献的计划，是从北京送一份礼物到伊斯坦布尔：让中国朋克乐团“脑浊”在双年展开幕晚会上表演。2009年，他与另一位长期合作的伙伴洪浩创立了一本名为《气泡Spark！》的杂志。 这是一本典型的后朋克迷杂志，融合了艺术、音乐、时尚和地下圈子的生活故事等等。尽管昙花一现——这本杂志只发行了一期──但不啻为一个具标志性的事件。多年间，酒精与药物是他最好的灵感来源──不只是作用于他的身体和心理，同时也影响了他的哲学和政治观点：他为2002年光州双年展所做的其中一件作品是一个银盘，上头以可疑粉末——可能是可卡因——写着“Biennale（双年展）” 字样：双年展和整个艺术系统，以及艺术本身，作为一种名声与权力的象征，对那些自称为艺术家的人来说，就是名副其实的药物！因此，在“前卫”艺术总是根植于一种精英主义的“高雅文化”的中国和亚洲文化圈，颜磊的运作模式和他对亚文化生活的喜爱更显得独特而别有意味。他力图颠覆一切。因而他的生活和创作独树一帜。颜磊和他的实践让我们想起了安迪·沃霍尔（Andy Warhol）和他工厂的“巨星们”，以及马汀·基彭伯格（Martin Kippenberger）和他的SO36俱乐部，既是“草根文化” ，同时也具反叛性和“全球化”，更重要的是，他毫不妥协地展开种种冒险之旅！
如今我们或许可以更进一步了解颜磊艺术所传达的真正信息：真正的天才总是在想成为 “人中之杰”的欲望和怀才不遇的孤独之间饱受折磨。他唯一能够存活之处只能是空想的世界。
所以，颜磊是一个真正独特的艺术家。
1
Yan Lei is one of the most idiosyncratic figures in the Chinese art scene today: he is always independent. But he also holds a truly global vision and is deeply concerned with some major problems of society. His work, using highly personal but ever-evolving and opening languages, deals with the specific questions of the art world in China. These questions, or problems, result from its interaction with the global art world. Artists are competing to be the most successful ones – namely, those who can sell their works at the highest, most astronomic, prices. And art and power are generally considered inseparable. Therefore, the alliance of art and power becomes the goal to reach… All this competition embodies the general contradiction and tension of Chinese society being a part of globalization. And this is also, indeed, a global trend.
Central to Yan Lei’s artistic adventure is examining the power relationship, or conflicts and struggles, between the artist’s desire for freedom and the will of control of the institutional system, in a time of globalization when the confrontation of and wrestling between “local” and “global” have become a key influence on how art works are produced. But his engagement with this question is by no means theoretical or academic, but practical, often unfolding in the most intimate manner. Facing all kinds of unsolvable problems in this process of negotiation, he always comes up with radical but unexpectedly shrewd answers, tainted with self-mockery: somehow sarcastic and in the end critical. He says:
“Power is like a vagina, everyone’s looking for it, and it’s the same no matter whose it is. The rules of the game appear to be open; one person will use his mouth, another his hand, yet another his loins…”
Is the power game sexual? Yan Lei plays with it in his own way, oscillating between the high and the low, between ecstasy and impotent-ness.
On the other hand, facing the violent struggles, he often prefers to hide in a kind of “refuge”, to seek sanctuary in freedom, in the realm of dreams, fantasy and hallucinations. But this dreamland is not a promised land of happiness. Instead, it’s a kind of alternative mode of life thriving on the tension between ambition and failure, between aspiration and disillusion. Eventually, everything will become fiction, but the fiction is so real that he prefers to stay in it forever. He tries to present the images of events and people that he encounters in real life. But immediately, he gives up the option of selecting them by asking other people to produce their representations, mostly in the form of paintings, or asking them to cover representational images with monochrome paint… Hence the burden of deciding on the value of the image is shed. There is no longer any distinction between the images and their disappearance. He says: “It is experience that makes us come across those images. In my opinion, the existence and disappearance of the images is nothing more than an illusion”. “Truth is in your heart, reality has no truth”.
Abandoning the decision making for images as a form of non-cooperation with the power system leads to a further level of non-production. Yan Lei insists that there is no difference between art and other real-life activities, in particular, commercial ones. He declares: “There isn’t really any difference between making art and doing other business”. This not only brings about the elimination of the ego of the artist; the self, or the subjectivity, of the artist no longer counts. The best way to produce art is to appropriate the industrial model. He employs untrained painters to realize “his” paintings and even to decide on the subjects, quantity and ways of presenting “his” work while denying the nametag of “artist” as his identity. He resorts directly to the model of doing business as the model of “art production”. In 2001, he founded a company to realize and present his projects, which are essentially conveying his sense of illusion and, therefore, disillusion about art and life. He failed to obtain the permission from the commercial authorities to call his company “Fantasy”. Then, he turned to a foreign and exotic term, and successfully named his company “Li Wu Li”, which is a phonetic but pun-like translation of the French word “Rêverie”. Now, this seemingly simple name can mean both fantasy-disillusion and “profits bringing more profits”… The dream has come true: art and business are now perfectly merged and have become one!
Therefore, art becomes truly unlimited, and inimitable, just like business itself. Yan Lei coins a term to describe his activity: “UAP – Unlimited Art Project”. Under this banner, all the works are “limited” elements to continue to form such a realm of the unlimited.
For his seminal project created for Documenta 13 (2012), in the name of “Limited Art Project”, he pushed the idea further and embraced direct industrial production. During the one hundred days the event lasted, every day he sent some paintings installed in the Documenta-Halle to the local Volkswagen factory to be covered with industrial paint. Then they were brought back to the exhibition. At the end, all the images were covered and the figurative paintings turned into monochrome canvases…
Certainly, the concept of the death of the author has been explored and debated for a long time in contemporary art and culture. The old concept of the author as an individual creator expressing his absolute subjectivity and ingeniousness through hands-on realization of his work seems to be long gone. The author can only be seen as a plural “inter-subjectivity”, the one that can no longer escape from influences and mingling with others. In the industrial age, the production of art is executed by laborers, by others, and even by machines, and is thus de-humanized. Along with this, the art works are not only reproducible like industrial products; they are also generally accepted as commodities, not much different from any luxury objects. The recent globalization of contemporary art – often with connotations derived from, and defined by, the discourses of western conceptualism and its system of market and institution – is leading to a “mutation” of the substance and function of art everywhere. New power games for defining truth and value as well as generating profits are now being played widely, with extravagance, ferocity and even violence. This global “conquest” is an unprecedented phenomenon. What is even more interesting is to see how the previously “peripheral” regions like China, India and Brazil, among others, have now become new centers of production, and hence major battlefields of power. Who is the real author of art – not specific art works, but the system of power via processing art as industrialized and commoditized products – is now the vital, and perhaps, at the same time, fatal, question. This is a final position to be obtained: is the artist a predictor of the system? Or, is he simply its victim?
The disappearance of Yan Lei’s paintings and their transformation into machine-made monochrome – or, in fact, non-colored – canvases show this fate. One can also assume that all our good perception of and respect for art has ultimately been subverted…
2
Yan Lei’s new project for Red Brick At Museum uses very simply the name of “Rêverie” as its title. This is a renewed and even more spectacular demonstration of the attempt of “subversion”.
Expanding his “Limited Art Project”, he will fit out the side galleries with a site-specific re-installation of the paintings presented in Documenta 13 and a series of paintings with images that he (and his employees) “came across” and selected from mass media and other resources. These images are mounted to form multi-layered image walls, overwhelmingly overlooking the flux of people underneath…
In the central space, he will set up a large installation that will further reverse the convention of painting production and exhibition, and, hence, will turn the aesthetic hierarchy between art and real life upside-down: paintings are hung from the overhead chain conveyors of a car production line while painted car doors are installed on the walls. The machine is an approximate replica of the car production line that he discovered and loved in the Volkswagen factory in Kassel… On the car doors phrases like “Fireworks N° 3”, “Two Panda Eating Bamboo” and “I choose this place, and now I place my heart here”… are engraved and pop up from behind as a kind of indication of the (imagined) painting covered by the industrial paint. Then, the actual paintings hanging on the machine are preparation sketches for the Documenta 13 project. Here his fascination with the extraordinary atmosphere produced by industrialization is amply expressed and “radicalized”. Charmed by the beauty, the “warm feeling” and the “purity” of the bright white “showroom” of the car production line, more than any art space, he wanted to bring it to the art museum. This time, his wish has come true…
Next to it, there is a series of 8 models of exhibition spaces of the Documenta-Halle with miniature paintings. Titled “XANAX”, the name of the strongest medication for depression, they are installed to “meet” the desire of the voyeuristic gazes of the public. Peeping into the miniature world of what Yan Lei calls Unlimited Art, the viewers will probably become more depressed than the artist. Or, with a bit of luck, their own depression may be temporarily relieved…
3 (Postscript)
The exhibition “Rêverie” has finally been realized and opened. The outcome is greatly refined and impressive. The quality of the installations seems to be perfect. The feeling of industrial beauty is impeccably conveyed, with a stunningly precise order. This expresses a strong desire to embody the “beauty” and cultural ramifications of the age of industrialization and high technology. It embraces not only its form but also its mode of operation and production. In fact, to realize this project, Yan Lei commissioned a French school of art management, where his nephew is studying, to conceive the installation plan. The fabrication of the structure was done by a local workshop without the artist’s or the curator’s direct intervention, it has generated a particularly effective and spectacular look. It presents a mechanical, systematic, rational and somehow inhumane order. This implies a challenge to the conventional perception of an art exhibition and an art institution as a place of encounter between the sentiments of the artist and the audience. This sense of distance forces one to plunge into a realm of the unreal, or surreal – a world in which one’s self-control is lost, surrendering to the control of an unknown power in the form of absolute “objectivity”. One lives in a real rêverie.
However, a last minute, unexpected and uncontrolled event occurred to upset this absolute order. A group of sound artists led by Chen Dili, a close friend and long-term collaborator of Yan Lei, came to set up a performance of noise music to inaugurate the exhibition. Yan Lei himself also joined in the melee at the height of the intervention. The unequivocally mechanical and even inhumane order of the exhibition is suddenly destroyed. The audience is now taken over by another uncontrollable force – a state of ecstasy…
Indeed, this is a highlight of Yan Lei’s constant fascination of and engagement with underground culture, or, more precisely, sub-culture. He has always been deeply attracted by a state of transforming the ego into a kind of sub-ego beyond any conventional definition of the self. This sub-ego is the one that is constantly oscillating between rebelling against social conventions and having distant dreams. This oscillation, in turn, is exactly what informs and defines the sub-ego itself. Yan Lei has made numerous attempts to extend, and even abandoned, his artistic practice to embrace sub-cultural production. In his project for the 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007), he sent a gift from Beijing to Istanbul. The gift was the Chinese punk band “Brain Failure” sent to play for the opening of the Biennial. In 2009, he launched a magazine called “Spark” with another long-term collaborator Hong Hao. This is a typical post-punk fanzine blending art, music, fashion and underground life stories, etc. It was a truly remarkable event in spite of its short life – the magazine had only one issue. For years, alcohol and drugs provided him with some of his best inspirations – not only physical and psychological but also philosophic and political: one of his works for the 2002 Gwangju Biennale is a silver plate with the word “Biennale” written in a suspicious powder – probably cocaine: biennales and the art system at large, as well as art itself, as a symbol of fame and power, is the real drug for those who call themselves artists! Then, Yan Lei’s mode of operation and love for subcultural life appear to be particularly interesting in the Chinese and Asian scene, where “avant-garde” art has always been rooted in an elitist “high culture”. But he wants to turn it upside down. This demonstrates a unique aspect of his life and work. Reminding us of Andy Warhol and his Factory “superstars”, as well as Martin Kippenberger and his SO36, Yan Lei and his practice are at once “grass-rooted”, rebellious, “globalized”, and, more crucially, uncompromisingly searching for adventures!
Now, one can probably understand better the real message conveyed by Yan Lei’s art: a real genius is always tormented between the desire to be “the best” and the loneliness of not being understood. The place where he can survive is only in the realm of rêverie.
So, Yan Lei is truly idiosyncratic.