只能“空想”
Only ‘Reverie’
Only ‘Reverie’
电话中颜磊加倍的回声让人可以想象他正处在一个人的房间内，努力描绘脑中“空想”的状态，但想象不出他夹着香烟的手正在指向什么……
虽然把“不做事”当作其艺术形式，但颜磊还是要以艺术的名义不时与画廊、美术馆、媒体沟通。对于那些整日在工作室“耕耘”的艺术家来说，这个每天只用电话、邮件联络事务的人，更像个经纪人。而随这些误解而来的就是孤立，因为颜磊对艺术的态度挑战了很多人存在的价值。同时他对于艺术的纯粹性要求极端洁癖，以至于放弃了图像的选择权。
1991年从当时的杭州美院（现为中国美术学院）毕业，直到1997年的这段孤独时期，对于颜磊来说是至关重要的。这种被公认的“艺术家的孤独”，影响了他对于艺术的理解。彼时，经过“85新潮”、柏林墙倒塌、法国蓬皮杜艺术中心“大地魔术师”（Magiciens de la terre）展览等标志性事件之后，中国的当代艺术开始有了基于霸权和文化优势的“体制”意识，以及由这种优越感所带来的虚无的文化精英主义。而中国艺术家对于卡塞尔文献展、威尼斯双年展等强有力的西方文化“权力”符号，一直抱有极高的幻想和渴望。1997年，当大批艺术家收到来自Ielnay Oahgnoh寄来的卡塞尔文献展邀请信时，并未意识到“Ielnay Oahgnoh”正是颜磊与另一位艺术家洪浩名字的拼音逆写。而炮制信件事件发生之后出奇的缄默，也意味着颜磊从此被孤立于当代艺术江湖之外。这次未被预料的“孤立”，同时也促使了颜磊对于群体政治的思考。
相反我们也能够看到，彼时的颜磊也像收到《邀请信》的艺术家一样，对西方文化语境有着特别的想象。然而没过多久，他的文化身份就从之前单纯对艺术“高地”的意淫和怀疑的矛盾心理，转变为对于艺术文化权力的揶揄，因为他开始更直接地把欲望放进行动中。1998-1999年已移居香港的颜磊，将红灯区标志性的粉灯挂满了位于粗鄙的上海街一间由香港政府打造的艺术中心内。这个伪造的让人遐想无限的暧昧空间，竟因整洁的环境，招徕了众多香港蓝领顾客上门消费，甚至还曾造成了一时的拥堵，但很快人们便意识到这里并不做生意（《红灯区》，2000年）。
这种对于艺术空间文化权力的调侃，打破了香港当时沉闷缺乏交流的艺术氛围，并且也用“艺术是桩生意”的语气，暗讽了艺术背后所隐藏的巨大政治、利益，以及交易。2000年的《画册封面 》系列，颜磊凭借VIP身份免费得到了一些画册后，将其转手卖出，并将这些画册的封面转化为绘画后再次出售。这种黑色幽默式的调侃行为, 被掩盖在一张张封面绘画的背后。而这种将“权力”转化并循环利用的方式，最终也消解了权力的价值。2002年上海双年展的《国际运气》中，颜磊用台球桌上代表最后一球的“黑8”告诉我们，他看到了来自国际艺术市场的召唤。2004年的深圳双年展上，颜磊以展览主题《第五系统》的名义，说服当地政府，在黄金地段圈出一个足球场(本来希望是高尔夫球场)大小的地皮长达两年的时间。而这个“交易”正是代表了地权关系的链条：政府／开发商／土地所有人三方的买卖，而这个名为《第五系统》的作品也呈现了他对于各种体制的试探，无论是艺术领域还是政治领域。2006年，在被篡改的梵高的作品《阿尔勒医院的病房》中，颜磊和他的艺术伙伴洪浩“隐藏”在画作里，旁边附上的保险单原件证明，在合约签订之日起一年之内，两位艺术家如果因艺术创作罹患精神或肉体疾病，便可获得泰康保险的全额赔付。颜磊在与洪浩合作的这个《泰康计划》中，用向主办方泰康人寿保险要得高达700万的巨额保费，以及面对国内保险机制“缺失”的规避动作，一举完成了他对于商业体制的试探和周旋。
2002年开始的《彩轮》系列中，颜磊用看似真实的色彩计算理论，匹配艺术价值体系，让我们看到了一个简单却带有极强征服力的市场符号。
2007年，作为第12届卡塞尔文献展“黑马”的颜磊首次出位时，人们还未意识到，他的对象并不止于外在的宏观议题，在与“文化权力”、“资本权力”互动的同时，其原点始终是自我——通过象征身份变化的《上升空间》系列（始于1998年）；代表艺术“刺点（Punctum）”的《特醇》系列（始于2004）；以及与记忆有关的《追光》系列（始于2005），在借绘画之名回应商品经济与资本运作的模式之外，他也面对了自我的欲望。然而颜磊画了什么并不重要，其作品中的图像是非表达的，它代表艺术家经验的一部分而留存。与此同时，这条绘画的线索也借丙烯材料所具有的商品经济、工业量产的符号性意义，回应了绘画的商品属性。
至此，颜磊全然没有向商业系统“缴械”，恰恰相反，商品是其对艺术认知的反面。虽然2015年4月25日在红砖美术馆开幕的大型个展“利悟利”中，颜磊不但用自己公司的名字命名展览，还在展场中呈现了交响乐一般壮阔的现代工业化流水线，然而工业化并非其作品的形式，他认为自己亲手参与制作是作品的多余部分，所以雇佣别人为其制作作品，因为他理解的艺术存在于视线以外。
在展览同名的作品《利悟利》中，颜磊将被喷上漂亮金属漆的大众汽车组件，与墙上的艺术品对调，将艺术品悬挂于巨大的环形流水线之上，而让工业化产品占领美术馆的墙面。这一举动再明显不过地传达了艺术品就是商品的概念，颜磊不绘画的目的就是不亲手制造商品。更有趣的是，当人们经过红砖美术馆展厅中《有限艺术项目》 颇具压迫感的色块“商品墙”时，脑中会时空错乱地闪现出教堂直通天顶的迷离的彩绘玻璃墙。而最后颜磊与声音艺术家陈弘礼（陈底里）基于马达转动声音合作的混音现场表演，更是用将商业交响推向极致的方式成全了一场试听狂欢——可当演出戛然而止，人们走向出口的时候发就会现那些耸立的“商品墙”背面竟然是一片虚无。这时“音响”骤停，大脑中只留下白噪音……
在几个工业化量产方式的绘画系列之后，我们能很明显地看到，颜磊从一开始对于权力体系的正面对抗，转为对专制和集权采取了犬儒式的周旋策略。这种犬儒主义的“蛰伏”态度使得展览“利悟利”更像是一场巨大的玩笑。在经过深思熟虑的“装傻”之下，颜磊宣称什么都不做，而这也正是“利悟利”所代表的“空想”的真正意涵。同时这个“空想”也构成了一幅图像——挂掉电话的颜磊正一动不动地坐在一个家徒四壁的空间里，而周围找不到任何可供参考的物件。
The way Yan Lei’s voice echoed on the phone, one could imagine he was alone in a room, striving to explain what ‘reverie’ meant to him. Yet one could not imagine what his hand, holding a cigarette, might be pointing to…
Although he has taken “doing nothing” as his artistic form, now and then Yan Lei still has to communicate with galleries, museums, and the media for the sake of his art. For other artists who toil away all day in their studios, this person who only conducts his daily affairs via email and phone seems more like an agent than an artist. Isolation follows in the wake of this misunderstanding, as Yan Lei’s attitude toward art challenges many people’s ideas of existential values. At the same time, his stipulation that art be untainted is almost mysophobic, to the extent that he has even given up the power to select images for his works.
For Yan Lei, there was a crucial period of solitude from 1991, when he graduated from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now known as the China Academy of Art), until 1997. This “artistic solitude,” as it is often called, also influenced his understanding of art. Having witnessed the ’85 New Wave Movement, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the “Magiciens de la Terre” exhibition at the Pompidou Center, and other landmark events, Chinese contemporary art at the time began to exhibit a “systemic” awareness rooted in a sense of hegemony and cultural superiority, along with a nihilistic cultural elitism brought on by this superiority complex. For Chinese artists, a great degree of fantasy and longing surrounds symbols of Western cultural “power” such as Documenta and the Venice Biennale. In 1997 many Chinese artists received letters from a certain Ielnay Oahgnoh, who invited them to participate in Documenta. They did not realize that “Ielnay Oahgnoh” was just Yan Lei and Hong Hao, another artist, spelled backwards. The surprising silence after the fake letter incident forced Yan Lei into an artistic exile of sorts; however, it also spurred him to contemplate the politics of community.
We can also see that at the time Yan Lei was just like the artists who received his “Invitation Letter”–he too fantasized about Western cultural contexts. Soon after this, his cultural identity began to shift, moving from an ambivalence between fetishization of and skepticism toward the “holy lands” of art, to ridiculing artistic and cultural power as he began to address desire through his actions more directly.
From 1998 to 1999, Yan Lei, who had moved to Hong Kong by that time, filled an art center there with the iconic pink lights of the city’s red light district. The center had been built by the Hong Kong government on Shanghai Street, in a rough area. Due to its smart appearance, this deceptively ambiguous space attracted many working class people. For a while, it even caused congestion problems in the area, but very quickly people realized that the space was not “doing business.”
This derision of the cultural power of art spaces broke through Hong Kong’s stifling cultural atmosphere of the time. Its message of “art is dirty business” subtly satirized the huge amount of politics, interests, and commerce that were tacitly hiding behind art. For his Catalogue Cover Series in 2000, Yan Lei used his VIP credentials to obtain free catalogues. He then sold them, after which he painted their covers on canvas to sell them a second time. His actions have an air of dark, derisive humor, which is obscured by canvas after canvas of catalogue covers. This method of transforming and recycling “power” ultimately dispels the value of power.
For the painting International Luck, exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale in 2002, Yan Lei uses the black 8 ball, the final ball on a pool table, to proclaim that he too hears the call of the international art market. For the 2004 Shenzhen International Public Art Exhibition, Yan Lei appropriated the name of the exhibition, “The Fifth System,” to convince the local government to allow him to fence off a plot of prime real estate the size of a soccer field (he originally hoped for a golf course) and let it grow wild for two years. This “exchange” represented a chain of relationships related to land rights: the three-sided business transactions among government, developers, and landowners. The artwork, also entitled The Fifth System, embodies Yan Lei’s various institutional explorations, both artistic and political.
In 2006, in a revised version of the Ward in the Hospital in Arles by Van Gogh, Yan and his art partner Hong Hao “hid” themselves in the painting. The original insurance contract accompanying the painting stated that if they suffered from mental or physical illness due to their artistic activities within a year starting from the date of the signing of the contract, the two artists would receive the full settlement from Taikang Life Insurance. In this piece, titled Taikang Project, Yan Lei and Hong Hao claimed a massive insurance premium of seven million Renminbi to lay bare the “deficiencies” of China’s insurance mechanisms and the evasive actions these companies take, in one stroke completing his explorations of and engagement with this commercial system.
In his Color Wheel series, begun in 2002, Yan Lei employs seemingly true theories of color and pairs them with systems of artistic value. The work allows us to see a symbol of the market that is simple yet imposing.
Yan Lei first participated in Documenta 12 in 2007, and was the “dark horse” of the exhibition. At the time, many had yet to realize that the object of his searching was not merely the grand topic he seemed to address. Even as he interacts with “cultural power” and the “power of capital,” his starting point is always the self—from the Climbing Space series (begun in 1998) that symbolizes the transformation of identities, through the Super Light series (begun in 2004) that represents artistic “punctum” to the Sparkling series (begun in 2005) that is related to memory, Yan Lei does not merely respond to the commodity economy and operations of capital, he also faces his own desire.
However, the objects Yan Lei paints are not important; the images in Yan Lei’s artworks are non-expressive. Rather, they exist to represent a part of the artist’s experience. This kind of painting also uses the symbolic significance of acrylic materials as they relate to the commodity economy and industrial production. It responds to the fundamentally commercial character of painting.
However, Yan Lei is in no way surrendering to the commercial system. Quite the opposite, the “product” is the other side of his understanding of art. For the opening of his large-scale retrospective “Rêverie” at the Red Brick Art Museum on April 25th, 2015, Yan Lei not only used the name of his company for the title of the exhibition, he also set up a modern industrial assembly line of almost symphonic proportions within the exhibition space. However, this industrialization was not the form of his work. He believes that it is superfluous for the artist to participate personally in the production of his work. Thus, Yan Lei employs others to make his art, because his understanding of art exists out of sight.
In the artwork entitled Rêverie, Yan Lei swaps art for Volkswagen car parts that have been sprayed with a beautiful metallic paint. Artworks are hung up along a large overhead chain conveyer belt while industrial products occupy the walls of the museum. This action is the clearest expression of art being a commodity. By declining to paint, Yan Lei aims not to manufacture any products. More interestingly, when you walk past the oppressive “product wall” of color blocks that comprises Limited Art Project , you feel like you’re in a time warp, looking at a wall of blurred stained glass windows in a church, reaching upward towards the heavens. Finally, Yan Lei’s collaboration with sound artist Chen Hongli (Chen Dili) took the form of an on-site sound performance based on the sounds of an engine revving, taking the idea of a “symphony of commerce” to its logical extreme in a kind of auditory carnival. Yet after the performance, as people were heading towards the exit, they suddenly realized that behind those towering “product walls” there was nothing. When all the “acoustics” suddenly stop, white noise still echoes in your head…
Through these painting series that incorporate industrial production methods, we can clearly see a shift in Yan Lei’s practice, from his early direct confrontation with structures of power to a cynical engagement with despotism and centralized power. The “dormant” quality of this cynicism makes the exhibition “Rêverie” seem like a big joke. Through careful consideration, Yan Lei adopts a posture of affected naiveté, proclaiming that he does not do anything. This is the real meaning of the ‘reverie’ in the exhibition’s title. This reverie also constitutes an image–hanging up the phone, Yan Lei sits motionless in a barren room, without a single object around him for him to refer to.