1

A few months ago, a curator invited me to participate in an exhibition titled, “Four Seasons”. After he left, I turned on my computer and wanted to jot down some ideas on my blog to awaken some of my sentiments on seasons. It is almost embarrassing to say this, since there were AC and heating in this world, and the fridge being stocked with various fruits and vegetable from any season (our conception on the season in the past), my feelings on seasons were tamed. Moreover, as a result of global warming, there are signs of seasonal inversions between the north and the south.

I typed in one sentence, “It is spring nonetheless. The dry soil in our yard began to bud with green.” I immediately noticed the somewhat sentimental wording. The problem was not my literary youth “nostalgic sentiment” for “spring”, but on “our yard.” It is risky and can be suspicious of being a show off. To claim having one’s own yard in this city would be cursed by skeptical web surfers. If one writes “my yard” twenty years ago, it would not have been inappropriate, especially for someone (like me) who grew up in the countryside and picked hot peppers to play with, in contrast, it would have shown my love for the land. Yet, this only patch of “land” I have that is not covered by cement came as the compensation from the real estate developer for our discounted amount of sunlight on the ground floor.

Nevertheless, I rephrased it, “It’s spring nonetheless. The dry soil in the park began to bud with green.” Although, what does the park have to do with me? It has been years since I last visited a park. My relationship with the park is definitely not comparable to that of gardeners. Even though their relationship with the park is unusually close, mostly a closely intense relationship, or a tensely close relationship. Either way you put it, the meaning is the same.

It’s better to return to an appropriate position to write a sentence on “spring,”…time flew, the sun is about to fall behind the building in front of me. I usually use the arrival of this light to determine if it’s two o’clock in the afternoon. So I hurried up to complete “an expression.” I thought for a while and wrote, “It’s spring nonetheless. Our motherland began to bud with green.” A bit dumb, I crossed it out. Then I wrote, “It’s spring nonetheless. In Asia – China in Asia – Northern China in Asia – Beijing in Northern China in Asia – Chaoyang District in Beijing in Northern China in Asia – Wangjing neighborhood – a residential area – dry soil at a corner, began to bud in green.” Not bad, even though it’s imperfect, but it barely meets my aspiration for a unique perspective in my artistic practice -a perspective of satellite mapping.

Having completed my thought procedure on seasons, I began to draw out a plan…

2

A month has passed, I still can’t come up with any plans for “four seasons,” so I called up the curator to complain. He said it is not necessary “at all” for the work to be related to the four seasons. He was afraid that I was still confused, so he gave me this example, “I got a spicy hotpot, either you cook fatty lamb, duck tongue, sliced potatoes, or rat-mouth, Collybia mushroom, it will still be a spicy hotpot.” I suddenly felt enlightened.

Momentarily, I felt I had forty plans configured in my mind.

A day passed, I suddenly warped back to worrying about the irrelevance of my plans to the theme of the exhibition.

3

On the exhibition of “four seasons,” there is a work: a white sheet of paper measuring the height of an average person with untrimmed edges. From the looks of it, we know it’s not a product of industrial processing, but was entirely handmade. It is pressed between the two sheets of glass. The title of the work is printed on the label next to it: Winter Coat. That’s right, this is my work. The material of the work and a brief explanation are also printed on the label. The general content printed explains the configuration of this sheet of paper, an inspiration of a poor man’s winter coat he wore four seasons out of the year. Through the procedure of soaking, pulping, bleaching, screen filtering, etc., it became this sheet of white paper.

Other texts of explanation would be difficult to reiterate here, because it’s a special edition that I rendered on the computer with special software. This software compiled over three-thousand essays and writings of art critique. By only typing in a few key words and length, it can find the matching academic essay. Moreover, this software can also perform searches online and analyze the ranking and influence of certain critics internationally, and it renews the ranking of the essays accordingly. It’s “intelligent” software. It has an adjustable “level of understanding” from low, medium to high. I often make it challenging. Being too literal would affect the result and ultimately damages the interest of the audience that expects a certain level of intelligence from the artwork.

The key words I have entered are: question, society, city, comprehensive, globe, time, artist, generation, -ization, post, sense, solemn, in other words, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, jello, perpetual, existence, new, -ness, type, mini-skirt, colonizing, technique, industry, agriculture, information, furthermore, consumption, obviously, very, discuss, history, in terms of, transform, indigenous, world, politics, peel off, real, in contrast, unfold, era. These terms, and I requested over 200 words in length for the essay. These key terms yielded great results, and I have been using them over the last two years (with the exception of ’60s, since it was not used often and was quickly eliminated).

4

I looked pensively at this sheet of blank paper encased in two sheets of glass and white wooden frame of exquisite workmanship.

At least it respects physical principles. One’s self-respect when sitting on a luxurious toilet with gold inlaid is different than sitting on a low quality ceramic toilet bowl.

Looking dignified, neat, without any pleats, I was bombarded with waves of vanity.

The days of nailing works on the wall have long passed. I even felt the heroic passion of 1949. This work will soon be exhibited in a museum in New York, The gallery that represents my work had carefully specified to the museum the required condition of lighting, temperature and humidity for this work. I must admit, the treatment it receives is off the top.

5

I need to explain the ins and outs of this work to the audience and the journalists. First of all, the former being of this sheet of blank paper was a winter coat made of cotton that was worn over a decade. The owner of this coat is someone I knew from childhood who is now over seven years old. He held me in his arms when I was a small child. He enjoyed throwing me in the air and catching me. Soon, he felt that his skills had improved, and he tried to catch me with one hand. Luckily, he caught one of my legs as I fell, otherwise I would have been done. He never had another chance to hold me thereafter. He never left that village, married, or had children. He has being wearing this very same coat for over a decade. He led a fashionable and environmentally friendly “life of simplicity.”

Once the proposal for this work was made, and before I began to search for this winter coat, I never imagined that this old man who almost caused my death would be part of my artwork. I hardly remember him. He is insignificant to my life. I realize such indifference is also happening between myself and others.

He, Liu Qingshan, was surprised by my visit from afar. I left the village when I was four years old, yet he still kept all memories of me from that time intact. I invited him out for a drink and asked him to tell me the story of the winter coat. Surprisingly, he told me that it was a gift from Boddhisattva. Ten years ago, a farmer in the village sensed his “promiscuous” conduct with his wife and urged him to burn down Liu’s house where he lived for decades. Amazingly, the winter coat was not damaged at all (I guess he was wearing it at the time). Now, he lives in a building he constructed for over a decade. He collects logs, pieces of brick, bamboo, mineral water bottles, soft drink cans, grass, etc., everyday in the village and piles them against a tree. This house is now becoming a double-decker, with works still in progress.

I brought four sets of clothes for him, one for each season. He agreed to give me the winter coat he wore for over a decade in exchange. He became excited once he had a few drinks and spoke to me of his loneliness – no one wanted to have anything to do with him. He was wronged; he has always been the first to be accused of if the villagers had lost anything; he was worried that the village committee would sell the land where his house was built to the owner of a chemical factory; his wish was to see Chairman Mao in Tian’anmen Square…I didn’t have to know every detail of his story, I only needed to fill the gaps of information necessary for my artwork in order to satisfy those journalists. Therefore, once his words over floated I became distracted. I believe most artists would feel the same way. They, migrant workers, the handicapped, the unemployed, beggars, whose property only occupy a few square meters of an exhibition space. In fact, they are all categorized as materials of art works.

If his pain does not speak to you and his joy can’t be shared, then effective communication does not last, thus communication with an agenda would not be a pretentious act. Honestly, I think it’s rather normal. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a student name Mi Nana a few months ago. We talked earnestly in a bar for a few hours and both felt we could continue this conversation for hundreds of days. However, in the next morning when we put on our socks in the hotel room, there was nothing more to be said. That evening, I also told her one of my work proposals. I wanted to make art with a monkey, hiring it as my assistant. It can make some paintings for me. Mi Nana asked with humor, “How many years would you carry this on for?”

I said, “A few months, one year at the most.”

She said, “Then what?”

I said I would return the monkey to its owner. Her round watery eyes stared at me, “Don’t you think that’s cruel?”

“Why?” I asked.

She said, “What if it has feelings for you?”

Then I began to think seriously. I can’t appear senseless in front of this beautiful girl. Beauty is persuasive, and the more beautiful one is, the more persuasive one can be. This is especially true for a “healthy man.” We are mere physical beings. And physical beings constitute our mentality of the spirit and mores. In this hormone-driven evening, I followed her belief of animal protection.

6

Soon a sheet of blank paper was made. I thought of doing something on it, because I didn’t intend it to be so minimal. What should I draw on it? I recalled that Liu Qingshan once had said his life dream was to go to Tian’anmen. That would be too “Chinese,” too “symbolic,” and too suspicious of “post-colonialism” if it were to be shown in Europe or America. It would trash this work.

Perhaps there is still a woman on his mind? An unforgettable woman. I flew over immediately to meet with him. Thus, I increased the cost of this work. He was surprised to see me and said with excitement that he will leave me his building. I handed him the Tian’anmen postcard I had brought for him, he looked at it for a long time without saying anything. I invited him for a drink in town. He told me since he began wearing the new clothes I gave him, the villagers treated him differently. They would nod at him, a widow in her fifties even threw him a flirtatious look. He said it wasn’t because of his new attire, but the villagers thought he had connections in Beijing. I followed his words and redirected the “communication” to women. Surprisingly, he seemed to enjoy discussing it. He said his first lover was the woman tractor driver on the Chinese currency – that one yuan helped him to masturbate seven to eight times a day. He said he had always been very poor, no girl wanted marry him, only his hand could give him a sex life. At the time, he was depressed and wished that tracker were to be driven over his body, especially if the driver was her. I told him, in fact, that woman tracker is close in age to him and now lives in Harbin with her children and grandchildren. He showed slight embarrassment. He explained that people were conservative at the time, their imaginations were limited. That round face was the image that flashed most in his mind, and sometimes he thought of her breasts, but never of her pubic hair…I began to envision my sheet of blank paper with a woman tracker configured in pubic hair.

I teased him, “What have you have done to the RMB, no wonder the RMB does not like you. Have you liked any real women?” He said there was someone when he was younger, working as the chef in the village’s school canteen. There was a female teacher who was very beautiful. He would give her double the usual amount of food. The girl learnt his heart and would smile at him timidly. Later, this girl was reassigned to work in the county school. Before she left, she gave him a photograph of herself as a souvenir. I anxiously asked him, “Do you still have that photograph?”

He took me to his tree house. This tiny “tree house” measures less than 4 square meters and is approximately 5 meters tall. Like a museum, it houses various odd objects. He fished out a shell of the size of a small basin from a wicker basket hanging on a branch. This photograph was worn and faded, it was difficult to see her face other than her long pigtails, the thin layer of film on her face was completely gone. He said it was the only thing he rescued from that fire ten years ago. I asked him, “What does she really look like?”  He looked at me baffled, pointing at the photo, “Isn’t it clear here? Can’t you see she has round eyes, long eyelashes, her nose, look, how straight, here, her mouth, the tips tilt up. She usually looks this way…”

I was speechless for a long time and felt truly moved by it.

In the end, I borrowed this photograph from him and promised I would return it within a week.

7

Once I arrived in Beijing, I immediately took this photograph to digitize it. I also asked a coroner to digitally restore her face according to this fuzzy photograph. On the second day, I received a call from the old man’s family, and learnt the news of Liu Qingshan’s passing.

I suddenly warped into a state of emptiness. All have passed for this person. Life is a calendar with an end, and many interesting lines drawn. Yet, without the reference of memory, it’s eventually meaningless. His misery and luck, big or small, heartbeats in the canteen, and thousands of lonesome erections, his palace under the tree…are all, in fact, fictional. From the first blank page to the last, the content in everyone’s calendar, thick or thin, are all individual fictions.

Therefore, this work is this white sheet of paper. I seem to feel that this life is in it, and this is the emptiness I truly feel.

March，2008

Author / Jiang Zhi
/ Translated from Chinese: Phyllis Hendrix
/ Illustration /

© / A Work, 2009

1

 几个月前，策展人告诉我，邀请我参加的展览的主题是“四季”，等他走后，我打开电脑，想在博客上写点什么，想恢复一下对季节的感受，自从世界有了空调和暖气设备，冰箱充满不同季节（以前的那种季节）的蔬果之后，对季节的感受开始淡漠了。而且，全球都在变暖，甚至今年的南北的季节开始有错位的迹象。

 我敲下了一句：“毕竟是春天了，我们园子里干燥的土地上开始有些绿色。”我立即发现这样的说法有些矫情。问题不是出在我对“春天”文艺青年般的“情怀”，而是“我们的园子”上。它带有一种危险感。它有炫耀的嫌疑。说在这个城市拥有自己的园子，会被眼明手快的网民骂得狗血喷头。在20年前，你说“自己的园子”，这没什么不妥，尤其像我这样在农村长大，摘辣椒当玩具的人来说，这是对土地热爱的表现。我现在这块没有被水泥覆盖的“土地”——巴掌大小的——是开发商对我们一楼的住户在阳光上损失的歉意。

 不管怎样，我还是换了一个说法：“毕竟是春天来了，公园里干燥的土地开始有些绿色了。”但是公园和我有什么关系呢？有好几年都没去过公园了。我和公园的关系显然比不上公园的清洁工。虽然他们和公园的关系不是一般的紧密关系，而更多的是紧密的紧张关系，或紧张的紧密关系。怎么说都可以，反正就那个意思。

 还是要回到一个恰当的关系位置来写一句关于“春天”，……时间过得真快，阳光快要落到前面那幢楼的背后去了。我一般是以这个光线的消失来确认是不是到了下午两点。所以我要抓紧一点时间，来完成“一个表达”。我想了一会，写到“毕竟是春天了，祖国大地开始有些绿色了”。太傻了，我划掉了这句。改写成：“毕竟是春天了，在亚洲——亚洲的中国——亚洲的中国的北方——亚洲的中国的北方的北京——亚洲的中国的北方的北京的朝阳区——望京地区——一个住宅小区——一个角落的干燥的土地上，开始有些绿色了”。不错，虽然不是很完美，但也勉强达到了我一直对艺术创作的独特角度的追求。卫星地图的视角。

 完成了对季节的思考程序，我开始设想一些方案……

2

 一个月过去了，我仍然想不出半个“四季”的方案，我只好打电话给策展人诉苦，他回答说“根本”不需要作品和四季有什么关系。他怕我仍然不明白，举了一个例子说，我这个火锅是麻辣火锅，不管你端来的是肥羊、鸭舌、土豆片，还是耗子鱼、金针菇，它仍然还是麻辣火锅。我觉得豁然开朗了。

 那一刻，我觉得我的脑海里马上要产生四十个方案。

 过了一天，我突然又为方案和主题太没关系而忧心戚戚。

 3

 在“四季”的展厅里，有一件这样的作品，就是一张一人高的白纸，纸的边缘不整齐，看得出不是现代工艺的流水线上出来的，而是纯手工的纸。它夹在两块玻璃之间的真空层里。作品的Title在旁边的小标签上：《棉衣》。没错，这就是我的作品。那张小标签上，还有作品的材料说明以及对作品简单的阐释。大致内容是，这张白纸来自于一个一穷二白的老头身上一件一年四季都穿着的棉衣，它经过了浸泡、捣烂、磨浆、漂白、滤网……等一系列工艺之后，做成的一张白纸。

 其它的阐述文字难以在这复述了，因为那是特殊的文本——我用一个秘密软件在电脑上自动生成的。这个软件的资料库有三千多篇/本艺术评论的著作，我只要输入一些关键词和所需要的字数，就能得到一篇学术性不错的文章。而且，这个软件还能自动上网搜索资料并分析批评家在艺术界影响力的排名，更新候选文章的次序。这是一个“智能”软件。它还有“理解难度”强、中、弱三个可调等级。我一般会让它令人费解点。太自白会影响效果，这无疑会损害对此有智力要求的观众的利益。

 我输入的关键词有：问题、社会、城市、全、球、时间、艺术家、代、化、后、感、严肃、换句话说、60、70、80、90、果冻、不朽、存在、新、性、型、迷你裙、殖民、技术、工业、农业、信息、进一步说、消费、很显然、非常、探讨、历史、在这个意义上、转换、本土、世界、政治、剥离、真实、反过来、展开、时代。就这些。字数要求是200字内。这些关键词效果不错，用了两年了（除了“60”因使用率不高很快被淘汰了）。

4

 若有所思。我望着这张在两块大水晶玻璃和做工考究的白色木框之中的这张白纸。

 它起码获得了物理上尊重。在豪华镶金的马桶上和在劣质陶瓷的马桶上获得的自尊感是不一样的。

 看到它那么有尊严，那么平整，那么没有一点折印。我就明显感觉到了来自虚荣心的辐射波一阵阵荡漾过来。

 把作品用图钉摁在墙上的时代一去不复返了。我甚至有了1949年的豪迈之情。这件作品不久后还将去纽约一个美术馆展出，我的画廊还给对方慎重地提出了展厅的光线、温度和湿度的要求。我得承认，它获得的待遇有点太过分了。

5

 我需要给观众们记者们介绍这件作品的来龙去脉，首先，这张白纸的前身是一件穿了十几年的棉袄。棉袄的主人我从小就认识，现在七十多岁了。我小的时候他还抱过我，经常喜欢把我高高地抛起来然后双手接住。后来他觉得这个技术太娴熟了，就尝试用一只手来接。幸好他还是抓住了一条腿，要不然我就完蛋了。他以后再也没有得到抱我的机会。他一直没有离开过那个村子，没有娶老婆，没有孩子，十几年只穿同一件棉袄。过着现在很时髦很流行很环保的“简单生活”。

 在这个作品方案想出来后，开始寻找这么一件棉衣之前，我从来没有想到过这个差点把我摔死的老头会进入我的艺术创作中来。我从来没有记起过他。他对我是不痛不痒的存在。我知道这种残酷性也正发生在我和其他人之间。

 他，刘青山，也对我千里迢迢来找他感到非常的意外，我四岁离开了那个村子，他仍然完整地保留了对我那时候的所有记忆。我请他喝酒，请他讲述这件棉袄的故事，他竟然说这件棉袄是菩萨给的，十年前因为村子有个农民觉得他对他老婆有“老不正经”的行为，一把火烧了他的住了几十年的房子，而这件棉衣奇迹般的完好无损（我想是因为那时他刚好正穿在身上）。现在他住在一座他靠自己一人之力搭起的楼房里，花了十年时间，每天他都在村子里拾来一些木头、烂砖块、竹子、矿泉水瓶、可乐罐、草等等，依傍一棵大树慢慢堆砌，现在已是2层的复式楼。工程还在继续。

 我给他带来了四套服装，春夏秋冬他都有适季的衣服了。他答应把他那件穿了十多年的棉衣送给我。他喝了酒之后开始兴奋起来，讲他的孤独，别人都不愿意和他来往；他的委屈，村子的人丢了东西都会首先怀疑他；他的担心，村委会要把他的房子那块地卖给一个老板作化工厂；他的愿望，他想去天安门看看毛主席……我对他的故事的需求其实没有这么多，只要能满足我的作品阐释和应付一些记者就可以了。所以，当他的话溢出这个容器的时候，我开始心不在焉。我相信大多数艺术家的感受和我一样。他们，民工、残废者、失业者、乞丐等等那些所有家什财物只能堆满展厅几个平方的人，其实都属于一个种类：艺术作品的材料。

 如果他的痛苦不是你的痛苦，他的快乐不是你的快乐，有效的交流将会是短暂的。这意味着，有需求关系的交流，才不会是虚假的。平心而论，我觉得这一点也十分正常。我想起几个月前和一个叫米娜娜同学的交流。我们在酒吧里热切地交流了几个小时，都觉得和对方起码还有几百个昼夜的话要倾诉，但是第二天上午，我们在酒店房间各自穿好袜子之后，再也无话可说。那天晚上我还讲了自己的一个想法，找一只猴子来当我的助手，帮我画一些画。米娜娜同学幽幽地问：“这样做多少年呢？”我说：“几个月，最多一年吧。”她说：“然后呢？”我说就还给驯猴的人啊。她水汪汪的大眼睛望着我：“你不觉得太残酷了吗？”“为什么呢？”我问。她说：“它对你产生了感情怎么办？”然后我开始真正反思了。面对这么一个漂亮的女孩我不能表现出没有情感。美貌是有说服力的，越美貌越有说服力。这点对一个“健康的男人”来说尤其如此。我们几乎就只是肉体。肉体的状况构成了我们精神和道德观念。在这个荷尔蒙主义的晚上，我追随她信奉了动物保护主义。

6

 一张白纸很快就制作出来了。一开始我想在那上面做点什么，我本来没有想做得那么极简的。画点什么呢（和他有关系的）？我想起刘青山曾提起过他一辈子的梦想就是去天安门。但是这个也太“中国”了，太“符号化”了，如果拿到欧美国家去展览，就太有“后殖民主义”嫌疑了。这会把事情搞砸。

 也许他心目中还有个女人？一个念念不忘的女人。我马上飞过去和他见面。这样，作品的成本又增加了。他看见我又出现在他面前很吃惊，非常高兴地说，以后他要把他的楼房留给我。他接过我带给他一张天安门的明信片看了半天，但没有说什么。我请他去镇上喝酒，他说自从穿了我给他的新衣服之后村里人对他不一样了，见面也会点点头，甚至还有一个五十多的寡妇对他抛了几个有意思的眼神。他说并不是几件新衣服的原因，而是村里人觉得他在北京有人。我接着他的话头把“交流”引向女人方面。出我意料的是，他好像很喜欢谈这方面的话题。他说他的初恋情人是人民币上的一个女拖拉机手，对这那张一元钞票一天可以手淫七、八次，他说他一直很穷，没有姑娘愿意嫁给他，只有自己的手愿意和他过性生活。无比苦闷，他当时愿意死于那辆拖拉机下，如果是她开着从他身上压过去。我告诉他其实那个女拖拉机手和你差不多大哩，现在哈尔滨，都儿孙满堂了。他略微表现出一点不好意思。解释说那个时候的人都很不开放，想得不多，想得最多的是那张圆圆的脸，然后有时能想到乳房部分，阴毛部分根本没想过……我开始想象我的那张白纸，上面出现了用阴毛勾勒的一副女拖拉机手的形象。

 我开玩笑说：“你对人民币做那些事情，难怪人民币不喜欢你。你就没有喜欢过一个活生生在你面前的女人吗？”他说有的，年轻的时候他在村办学校的食堂做过炊事员，有个女教师长的很漂亮，每次她来打饭他都会特意给她双份的菜。那个姑娘也明白他的心意，每次见到他都会不好意思地对他笑笑。后来那个女孩被调到镇上的学校去了，临走前还送给他一张照片作留念。我很期待地问：“那张照片现在还在吗？”

 他带我去他树上的楼房里。这个“树楼”很小，只有不到4平米，大概有5米高，里面像个博物馆一样有很多奇怪的东西，他从房子中的半截树枝上挂着一个竹篓里拿出一个有小脸盆大小的贝壳，小心地打开它，我看见一张一寸黑白照片像珍珠一样躺在里面。但是因为磨损和褪色，已经看不清五官了，只看得出有条长辫子，照片上的脸部分的显影膜完全没有了。他说这是十年前那场火，他唯一救出来的东西。我问：“她到底长得是什么样子呢？”他用奇怪眼神看着我，指着照片说：“这不是很清楚吗？你看她的眼睛大大的，多么长的眼睫毛啊，还有鼻子，你看，多挺，这儿，她的嘴，嘴角是上翘的，平时她都这样……”

 我半天都没说出话来，真的觉得被感动了。

 最后，我还是狠下心向他借出这张照片，答应他一个星期就给他送回来。

7

 我一回到北京，马上把这张照片拿去电分。另外我还请了一个法医根据这张模糊的脸形来做电脑复原绘图。我就接到老家的人的电话说我走后的第2天，刘青山就去世了。

 一瞬间我的感觉成了一种空无的状态，世间的一切对这个人来说都逝去了。人生就是一本有限的日历，在上面曾经留下过也许有意思的线条，但没有记忆的参考，它们最终也是无谓的。他的那些大大小小的灾难和幸运、食堂里的心跳、那些几千次孤独的勃起、他的树上的宫殿……其实都是虚构。从空白的第一页到空白的最后一页，不同的人或厚或薄的日历内容，都是个体的虚构。

 所以，这件作品，就是这张白纸了。我仿佛觉得他的一生都在里面，这是我彻底感到的虚空。

 2008年3月北京

（图／江奕）

By Jonathan Thomson

Attraction is all about making connections.  Attracting people or things, drawing them closer to oneself or other things, and the ways in which those connections are made (or at the very least made possible) have concerned countless generations of physicists, philosophers, social psychologists, biologists, poets and lovers.  Especially lovers.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet that begins with the timeless lines “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” strives to enumerate the myriad possible connections and to illuminate the mysteries of passion and desire.¹

Browning knew, and her work articulates the fact that attraction works simultaneously on many different levels.  Making connections is also at the heart of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy.  Widely considered to be the most influential philosopher of the 20th century, Wittgenstein imparted a way of thinking and understanding not by saying what was distinctive about it, but by showing how it can be used to clarify one’s ideas.  His ideas hinged on keeping in mind that things are as they are, and on seeking illuminating comparisons to get an understanding of how they are.²   Illuminating comparisons help us to sense hitherto unnoticed distinctions and relations between things and suggest a proper connectness and relatedness, both with each other, and with our larger surroundings.  For Wittgenstein, an illuminating comparison or “perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’’’.³

But drawing connections is a risky business as it “can often appear as if one is making assertoric statements, claims to truth to the effect that there is such and such a connection, and then can arise the question ‘Well, is there, in reality such a connection or not?’  Think for example of seeing a likeness between two faces, say those of a mother and her baby.  Some people can see it and others can’t, and if a dispute breaks out about whether this likeness is real or only imagined, how is it to be resolved?  Is there a fact here that one can appeal to?  Can one say, ‘Look, there is either a likeness here or there isn’t.’  One can point to one face and then to the other, but can one point to the connection between the two?  One can draw one face and then the other, but can one draw the similarity between them?  Seeing connections provides us at once with the most familiar form of understanding and the most elusive.  What eludes us, in particular, are direct statements of what, exactly, is understood.”⁴

What then can we say about the work of Jiang Zhi in his exhibition On the White?  Some of these works, images of human figures constrained within a gauze shroud, appear to be making a statement about the connections between people and their attraction for one another.  In the series titled Fate, we sense the figures either locked together in an embrace, or straining to repel one another.  Their bodies and gestures tension parts of the gauze, drawing it into vectors that help to articulate the connections between them, leaving other parts crumpled in flaccid piles on the floor.  In On the White the figures are at a distance from one another but within the same proximity.

The gauze gives the figures form but cloaks them in mystery.  Jiang Zhi distinguishes his work from (say) the wrapped objects of Christo and Jean Claude.  He observes that their kind of wrapped works “will definitely be able to reveal the feeling of mystery, it will change the original form, and allow more people to be interested in the change of the form, wrapped up its own characteristics. However, in my work, [the intention] is more to wrap it up without a specific image; it is a movement, there is a force inside to make it become more abstract.  There will be some folds and detailed things, and those things can enrich the feeling. I will not simply make an object to be a square or a circle for expressing feeling, but express it according to the movement of human body.⁵   Jiang Zhi himself does not wish to over-elaborate these works.  He notes that while “for most of the people, the works seem to be very poetic, but I can not very accurately describe to you how the poetic feeling can be revealed.”

The colour of these new works is significant.  In the past, many of Jiang Zhi’s works have been concerned with light.  For him, the use of white in these works may be seen as an alternative to light.  “I think the relationship between them may be, in fact, white cloth is also light’s variations. It is like a diffused light.  White is a very well reflected light’s carrier.  White is also a colour with particular cultural significance.  “For traditional Chinese, white is a symbol of cleanliness, a kind of emptiness. It is also symbolic of the supremacy of a certain state of mind, and there are many different explanations of this concept. In Buddhism, there is a legend that people after death will enter a realm of Nirvana, only in white and no darkness. This is one of the realms for people after death to enter.”  The colour also gave rise to the motif and structure in many of Jiang Zhi’s recent works.  “In fact, white has given me a basis of the form of my works. This basis may be relatively withered and empty and pure. I do not wish to explore problems of reality or the current political problems. Those issues are more about a creation of outward concern, and my work is more introverted.  I feel my work has more force, confrontation, entanglement coexistence and contradictions. I am more concerned about fate, and have reflected it in my work.”

In his works involving light, “the light beam is a very strong confrontation, it is just like two powerful things in opposition. In this series of “white cloth”, there is no confrontation between black and white, no strong difference between light and darkness. It is because fate itself is vague, it will not only be a matter of either black or white, neither black nor white, it is more about a similar value.”  In a similar vein, the great abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky described white as “a symbol of a world from which all colour as a definite attribute has disappeared.  This world is too far above us for its harmony to touch our souls.  A great silence, like an impenetrable wall, shrouds its life from our understanding.  White therefore, has this harmony of silence, which works on us negatively, like many pauses in music that break temporarily the melody.  It is not a dead silence, but one pregnant with possibilities.  White has the appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in the ice age.”⁶ 

Jiang Zhi’s works are also replete with possibility. The bodies that are caught within the gauze are in effect a moveable sculpture.  Jiang Zhi is interested to express the ways in which they work within the limitations of the space but also how they are constantly testing its boundaries, and using the force of their movements and the restraint of the cloth as a form of balance.  The work may be taken as a metaphor for society.  “It is about relationships among people, more specifically, the relationship between men with women. A kind of coexistence, they also have connections to each other but also want to escape from such a relationship. They do not know if they are willing to do it or being forced to do so.  They are really inside a devil, inside a nuclear bomb.”  The artist directs his performers to use the movement of their bodies to “say something about the relationship between men and women, something about on the symbiosis, destiny, entangled and their experience. But the concrete movement they will do or what form will be shaped in the cloth, they are free to elaborate.”

In some works the figure describe a spatial and a psychological relationship while ensconced within the same shroud.  In others they occupy different places within a room and the room itself becomes charged with meaning.  “In the works of On The White, this space may give us a sense of distance, like the two rooms’ distance, they seem to be separated, but are connected. Just like two tracks, the feeling is that they will have their own parts. The two individuals have their own spaces and do not have a very close relationship.  In the works of Fate they may refer to something like fate, that is flat and continues to infinity, there is no deflection in the space.   In the works of Corner, there is a very obvious deviation. A kind of loneliness is in the corner and you have the feeling that you have no way to escape from it.”

Not all of the works in this exhibition are white or involve the physical movement of people.  After the earthquake in Wenchuan, the artist created a group of photos with black cloth that can be described as a kind of black in black.  “One time, I went into a space, then suddenly entered into a house in darkness, through the black cloth, occasionally I could see the things outside, but the people outside do not know that I am looking at them from inside. Suddenly there is a feeling of death, because am just thinking of a major earthquake in Wenchuan where there are many people buried in the ruins. In the darkness, they may be able to hear voices from outside, or see a little bit of a glimpse from outside, or they were completely insulated. So there are three levels, one is black and white in contrast, very strong, a bundle of light in the darkness. The second one is a kind of white, a kind of diffused light that is not based on the confrontation. It is on a rather unified basis for discussing some fundamental problems. Last level is in the darkness, black in black, that kind of weak light, a glimpse of light.”

Often times it may be artists who are best able to make the illuminating comparisons or perspicuous representations that Wittgenstein felt could assist us to see connections.  The trick is being able to present information in such a way as to assist people to “condense fact from the vapour of nuance”⁷.   The human mind can absorb and process a tremendous amount of information, if it comes in the right format or in such a way as to make those connections explicit.  Finding the right format is crucial.  In his recent works, Jiang Zhi may well show us the way.

1.Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet 43”, Sonnets from the Portuguese, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, pg 26.

 2.  Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Vintage, London, 1991, pg. 451

 3.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, Blackwell, Oxford, 1958, Section 122.

 4.  Ray Monk, “Philosophical Biography: The Very Idea” in Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy, ed. James C. Klagge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, pg. 5.

 5.  Telephone interview with Jiang Zhi on 13 August 2008.  Transcript translated by Janet Fong.  Unless otherwise stated, all direct quotes are from this interview.

 6.  Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Translated by MTH Sadler, Dover Publications, New York, 1977, pg 39.

 7.  Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, Penguin, London, 1992, Pg. 56.

Jiang Zhi_-   On the White

:: Jiang Zhi: ON THE WHITE

osage kwun tong: 10.10.2008 – 16.11.2008

Curated by Isabel Ching

ON THE WHITE is Jiang Zhi’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. It is an introspective examination of confrontation, entanglement, coexistence and contradictions. A male and a female body move under the white cloth. Rather than emphasizing gender difference, the bodies seem to be governed by mystical force and tension, indicating a sort of yin/yang co-dependence that underlies the basis of life. Indistinct forces are shown to be at work, intimating what is experienced and felt rather than theorized or verbalized. The white cloth manifests a fluid form and visual/conceptual ambiguity from which can arise intuition, direct insights and a nuanced understanding that approaches the truth.

不在服务区的彩虹 之一    Rainbow -out of service  NO.1            C-Print     2008                   A size: 180 x 240 cm   B size:120 x 160 cm

 不在服务区的彩虹 之二    Rainbow -out of service  NO.2            C-Print     2008                      A size: 180 x 240 cm   B size:120 x 160 cm

  不在服务区的彩虹 之三    Rainbow -out of service  NO.3           C-Print     2008                      A size: 180 x 466 cm    B size:90 x 233cm

   不在服务区的彩虹 之四    Rainbow -out of service  NO.4         C-Print     2008                      A size: 180 x 466 cm    B size:90 x 233cm

不在服务区的彩虹  作品简述

《彩虹》（2005）是一幕当代商业城市奇观，童话体的反讽之作。一轮绚丽彩虹跨越城市的上空。这彩虹，全部由夜晚分布城市各处的霓虹灯招牌组成，由人工景观替代了自然景观，构成了一道消费社会独特的风景。

继2005年的《彩虹》之后，2008年创作的《不在服务区的彩虹》虽然同样炫目壮观，但是却横跨在的空寂的茫茫大海、核试验之后的荒漠、人迹罕至的世界屋脊上（云南的梅里雪山和西藏的喜马拉雅山）。象征物欲的霓虹突然被扯脱了其所施欲的对象。

Rainbow （2005）is a wonderful sight on the modern commercial metropolis; it’s a sarcastic work in the shape of a fairy tale. A splendid rainbow traces a path across the city sky.  This rainbow consists of neon commercial signs taken from different places in the city.  This artificial landscape takes form from natural scenery offering a unique view on consumerist society.

Following 2005’s “Rainbow”, 2008’s “Rainbow Out of Service” although is a dazzling spectacle too, however it spread across the wide ocean, the barren desert after nuclear tests, or the inaccessible roofs of world (the Meili Snow Mountain in Yunnan and Himalayas in Tibet). The neon which symbolizes material (or “materialism”) has all of a sudden been deprived of its target.

《非常地妖的风景 之一》
Yang Jia’ Landscape  NO.01

C-Print   Size:100X167X6cm   2008

摄影：杨佳
(蒋志选自杨佳博客照片制作)

《非常地妖的风景 之二》
Yang Jia’ Landscape  NO.02

C-Print   Size:60X60X3.5cm  2008

摄影：杨佳
(蒋志选自杨佳博客照片制作）

关于“非常地妖的风景”的对话

许崇宝（许）与蒋志（蒋）

许：什么动因促使你做了“非常地妖的风景”这组作品？

蒋：换一个角度重新观察人，思考人，看待人。

许：对“非常地妖”这个博客名字，你怎么理解？你的作品标题也借用了这四个字。

蒋：我不知道，网络上很多人的ID都有带“妖”字，里面可能有一种流行文化认同心理。因为我是从他这个博客中选取了照片，所以要注明来处。

许：博客上一共四百八十六张照片，你只选了这两张？

蒋：我选当时让我有所触动的。当然还可以选一些，但是我觉得就先选两张吧。我觉得重点不是选什么照片。

许：我对比了一下，你的作品在细节上和杨佳博客上的照片没有区别，是否可以说你挪用了现成的图像？摄影作品在此是否会出现“作者危机”？

蒋：对的，我只是把这两张照片制作出来了，一张很大，一张比较小，是展览中常见的方式。作品标签注明杨佳是摄影者，他就是作者，这毫无疑问。作品，我想，最重要的是表现方式，我的方式是让它们在和以往不同的空间和时间中生成新的意义，同样一张照片，可能，在家庭相册里是纪念照，在法院是证据，在展厅中是艺术作品。与事物相遇，每个人都能有感而作。

许：有意思的是，博客上大多数照片拍摄的是山和花，你选择的图像虽然同样是有山和花的形象，但重点却是云？这是我的错觉？还是你有意为之？

蒋：你的感觉很细致和敏锐。其实我一开始并没有意识到这一点，我只是当时在众多照片中选出最让我有感觉的几张，后来我才去想这里面是什么打动了我？可能像云和花，越是容易变化和消逝的事物越能给人触动吧。但是，选任何不同的照片都会给人不一样的感觉，所以，画面是什么，不是我首先要考虑的。

许：这两张照片的调子截然不同，一张给我以诡异、阴郁的感觉，另一张是春暖花开，晴空万里。

蒋：云就是云，任何感觉都是人赋予的。虽然我不知道杨佳当时拍摄的时候是怎样的感受，所谓调子都是观者自己定的，当然我也比较看重睹物生情、悯天忧人的审美传统，我觉得这也是做人的传统。我们需要重新恢复感觉，抵抗麻木症的侵袭。但不是恢复俗套的感觉。在这里，我想要的是重新去感觉一个人。对我来说，重新去感觉的过程比最后形成的照片重要。

许：杨佳事件后网络上有很多人对他的这些照片进行分析，试图将事件与图像联系起来，仿佛有“在劫难逃”之意，摄影也是你常用的表达媒介之一，你如何看待这种分析？

蒋：一场巨大的劫难，它的力量会促使人把很多事物联系起来，把我们的无知编写成神秘传说。如果我们再单一、简单地看待事物，看待人，看待政治，看待所谓恶，看待我们和世界的联系，我们当然会“在劫难逃”。

Dialogue between Xu Chongbao (Xu) and Jiang Zhi (Jiang) on “Yang Jia’ s Landscape”

Xu: what’s the motif makes you create Yang Jia’ s Landscape?

Jiang: it’s the purpose of observing, thinking and treating people from a different angle.

Xu: How do you think about the blog name of “Fei Chang Di Yao” cited as the title of your works?

Jiang: I don’t kown, the ID is very attractive. The “Yao” character is included in many netizens’ ID. There is certain psychological identification with the pop culture inside this character. It’s necessary for me to indicate the source of my photographs, i.e. the blog of “Fei Chang Di Yao”

 Xu: why did you only select two out of the 486 photographs published in the blog?

Jiang: I selected those touched me then. It’s possible to select more, but I thought two is enough. I don’t think what selected is the point.

 Xu: After comparing your work and Yang Jia’s photo, I find there is nothing different. Does it mean that you use the already-image as art? Will “crisis of author” arise with respect to photography works?

Jiang: Yes, I just produced these two photos, one is big while the other is small, which is popular form in exhibitions. It is indicated on the labels that Yang Jia is the photographer and the author; this is beyond question. I believe the crucial factor of photographic works is the way of expression. My way is to give varied meanings to my works in different spaces and at different time. A photograph may represent memory in family album, evidence in court, and art work in exhibition hall. Everyone would do something following the feelings brought by encounter with things.

 Xu: mountains and flowers are subjects of most photographs online; the interesting thing is that cloud is the focus in your works although mountains and flowers are contained too. Is this my illusion or your intent?

 Jiang: You are meticulous and sagacious on the images. At first, I just chose photos that moved me, then, I asked myself what moved me behind the images? Maybe, the easier things vanish like flowers and clouds the more they could touch human. However, any different photograph selected will make people feel differently. So, picture is not my prime consideration.

  Xu: the tone of these two photographs are completely different, one makes me feel quirky and gloomy while the other brings the feeling of spring flowers and blue sky.

Jiang: cloud is cloud and any feeling is endowed by man. I have no idea about what Yang Jia felt when he took those photographs; actually the so-called tone is determined subjectively by audiences. Certainly, I think highly of aesthetic traditions such as feeling-upon-seeing and concerning state and people, and this, in my opinion, is also the tradition of behavior. We need to recover our sense resisting strike of callousness. However, it is not the conventional sense that I want to recover. I want to re-feel a man. For me, the process of re-feel is more important than the art work.

 Xu: There are plenty of analyses of his photos online after Yang Jia event, attempting to connect those photos with the event, as if “there’s no escape”. As an artist uses photography as medium, How do you think about those analyses? 

Jiang: The power of a disaster will urge people to establish relation among many things and compile our ignorance into mysterious tale. Obviously, “there will be no escape” for us if we keep viewing things, persons, politics, so-called evils, and the relation between man and world from a mono and simple angle.

关于杨佳的艺术评论 

文/蒋志

就我个人来言，写杨佳的艺术评论是一个亏本生意，但是，作为一个艺术评论家，我有更高的价值追求。而且，这次不想卖弄我驾轻就熟的写作技巧，看了太多的电视和报纸之后，我对一面之词感到厌倦了。所以，我想更多地引用相关的人和我十分尊重的评论家们的话。为了更方便我的引用的学术发挥，我对所引用的相关人士和评论家们的原文做了少许技术处理。

 还需要事先申明的是：我在文中对“艺术家杨佳”的提法，将直接称呼其姓名，而不像惯例称呼为“优秀的艺术家杨佳”“不可多得的非常优秀的艺术家杨佳”或“中国当代乃至当代国际艺术界不可多得的不能不说非常优秀的艺术家之一杨佳先生”，不是我有意怠慢这位至今为止已拥有观众五十三多万人次的艺术家，也不是我的Ctrl 键和C、V键不好用（读下去你会注意到这3个键非常便捷），而是这篇无偿的评论失去了增加稿费的可能性——也不是出于我心地善良。

 首先我要简单的介绍这位80后艺术家，他出生在1980年8月，生活并无工作于北京，未婚，他自己说“一个大龄光棍现在最想结交的就是美女”。除了摄影之外，爱好旅游和读文艺书籍。处女座的他性格内向，特别守规矩，和我一样不擅言词。守规矩的习性，有几个熟识他的人举了几个例子，一个是他小时候为了乱扔烟头而指责其父，一个是有次埋怨其母亲随手扔一个雪糕包装纸，还一个是他从不违反交通规则。杨佳的小学同学黄淼说，小学时代的杨佳虽然内向，但仍然喜欢参加集体活动，喜欢和同学一起掷沙包做游戏，玩的时候从来不作弊胡闹。

 据知情人说，由于父母离异，更使他性格内向沉默，除了经常旅游面对大自然，网络是他乐于进入的世界。2006年，杨佳加入网络上的小学校友录后，第一条发言就是希望大家能在入学20年后聚会庆祝。博客上唯一一篇也可能是最后一篇日志发表于今年6月4日，上面记载了在北京爬山的经历，“下周再有这样的活动还参加，争取一直保持在头队”。这篇博客看得出他是惜命之人，他写自己爬山时体力不支的情况，“本来还计划要坐车去找领队吃饭的，现在只想能活着走到山下就谢天谢地了”。在写文章中他还连续打了9个“哈”。

 他母亲的1500元退休金用来维持一家生活，但是他为了艺术，不仅辞了工作，还买了一台准专业数码相机，并且还装了一个可以把连拍的照片合成一张全景图的软件。杨佳发表的摄影作品有486件，都贴在国际知名传媒大亨默多克的太太主办的聚友网。他的博客名为“非常地妖”。我相信大多数摄影是出自他本人。

 他的摄影作品第一次受到专业的关注是来自于心理学界，看完他的所有摄影作品后，心理专家李惠敏的第一感觉是“博主对远景、近景的构图都把握到位，可见其”布局谋篇”能力较强，分析问题周详、细微而冷静。除了旅游照，博主很少放生活照，隐约反映出他对真实生活的一种回避。在少见的集体照中，博主常站在后侧或靠边，有一种自卑或默默无闻的心态。”

 好了，我得开始我的正文，其实所谓的正文都是我略做修改的别人的文本（别人的写别人的文本）。本来我想用斜体字标出我引用的原文部分，但是斜的太多了，我只好放弃这个负责任的想法。但是每段我会标出抄了几成（按十成计算,姓名的技术处理不算）。

 杨佳从二十八岁的某一天（2008年7月1日）闯进上海闸北艺术空间的那一刻开始，或者是从2007年10月5日晚上8点半骑车经过上海一个普通的路口的那一刻开始（见注释1），就注定了他将是一个被艺术史抛弃的人。尽管这一次，他以艺术的崇高的名义干预到社会的各个层面，又借助社会的力量完成了以通常艺术的方式无法完成的事情。这“事情”无疑都被他自己称为艺术。然而高雅的艺术圈中永远不会承认这是艺术，而更像是暴戾的行径，用今天的话说，是蓄谋已久的谋杀。为了完成这“事情”各式各样的手段和匪夷所思的方式逐渐成为他自认为的艺术的一部分。孤僻、无正当职业、单亲家庭、沉默寡言、暴躁、凶残成为艺术圈中评价他最常用的词汇。真正的文化精英们面对他的“事情”，绝大部分的人采取了回避和不置可否，或不屑一顾的态度。他认为自己是艺术圈中最被蔑视的人，尽管多数纯粹的艺术家认为他并不在圈中。很多人谈起他时都咬牙切齿，用他们能想象的到最恶毒的语言诅咒他。有人甚至他的律师都扬言他难逃一死。可以确定的是，他是最臭名昭著的人，他不知疲倦的频繁亮相于各大主流媒体，他的作品总是引起激烈的争议，被社会和媒体广泛关注。争议成为他的举措的不可缺少的部分。（9成）

 闸北艺术空间是近年来兴起的艺术空间之一，其实他们的总公司，做过很有影响力的展览，主题是“意外或被自杀”。参展艺术家有湖南湘潭的黄静、湖北襄樊的高莺莺、浙江温州的戴海静、重庆李琴、广东佛山廖梦君、阜阳李国福、广州谭静、上海刘凌波等等。展览大大突破了传统的展览观念和形式，不展示、不报道、不评论。几乎所有的媒体都被口头通知不能擅自发表报道和评论，但是，由于互联网常穿马甲的业余评论员过于人多嘴杂，这些作品和艺术家还是被广为人知，展览频频意外地获得了巨大的效果，虽然艺术家们的亲友团表达了不同看法，挑起了一些不满甚至敌意的情绪，然而，这个展览仍被认为是中国当代艺术现状具有历史价值的重要展览，埋下了突破艺术困境和传统展览机制的颠覆性的种子。（5成）

 如果每个艺术空间都是一个小王国的话，那么这个空间则代表着一个小王国的最高权利意识形态和文化形态。众多的小王国又构成了大的帝国。当杨佳穿梭于这些空间时，被隐藏在空间里各种力量包围。让他不得不去面对一些复杂的现实。尽管每个机构都有自己的各领风骚的风格，但当权者却有着惊人的相似。当杨佳的刀飞舞在这些空间时，我相信我们一定可以感受到或者接受到另一种知识。杨佳还创造了语言独特的非凡技艺，他将人对身体的欲望潜能，对胸部的迷恋情节夸张到了某种极至。让我们在幽默中不知所措。他用上访材料、催泪瓦斯、单刃刀具、榔头、登山杖、防尘面具、 橡胶手套、 打火机等各种艺术材料，无限的扩张放大他的一刀观。他甚至希望他的一刀可以刺痛积弊以久的机制，并被世人誉为“杨一刀”。（8.5成）

 当我们讨论艺术家的创作的时候，更为客观的态度是，不要一味偏重于他的代表作，我们如果从一些他平时的并不经意的作品进行分析，我们更能一窥艺术家的整体的审美趣味和精神面貌。他大量的摄影作品虽然都是“莫名其妙的重复一些琐碎的细节，毫无道理的拍摄着一些不重要的东西。” 但是另一位评论家说：“几百张照片记录着一个快门狂人的点滴生活，那些早被时间淡忘了的旅游合影，风景观光，这就是生活本身。” 还有人说：“他在画面中创作出一种背景与前景间、个人与集体间、人与环境间暧昧的、具有悬疑的关系 — 这些全都转瞬即逝却又故若磐石。”

 他的作品“在看似简单的画面构图中着力追求素朴、凝炼的文人精华和情怀，从而创造出纯正高雅的意境和格调。”这是和他平时勤于文艺书籍的阅读和经常观摩中国古典山水名作（在他博客上可以找到他拍摄的国画和书法作品与网友分享的照片），擅于汲取中国传统文化的精髓是分不开的。

 我个人非常欣赏他拍的一张天空的照片，天空占去大部分篇幅，一片饱含阳光的刺目的白云是画面的主体，白云的中心有一小片不祥的阴影，黑色的山影盘踞一角。正如有人评价的：“它能很好地表现特殊的意境和画者的主观情趣。构图的一些基本法则如开与合、聚与散、藏与露、虚与实、对比与调和、局部与整体、变化与统一等，是很见功力的”。

 还有一张拍的桃花的照片，“意境清新、恬静、幽谷、高雅，诗一般的艺术风格。”正如一个风景画家介绍自己的创作：“追求宁静自然、丰富耐看、平实的意境。”这位艺术家的自述好像正为杨佳道出了心声：“与自然风景的对话交流多了，很自然就有了表达的愿望。如果没有丰富的人生体验，也很难深刻表现风景之美。一样的风景，不同的境遇、不同的心境与年龄所感受到的风景自然不同，细心观察体味大自然四季的微妙变化，并寄情于其中，记下打动你的瞬间感受，这些就是我风景摄影创作的生活、情感素材的积累，它已经成为我的生活习惯。”

他的作品还获得了大量的评论：

 今年7月初，因杨佳一次饱受争议的行为，中央和地方媒体给予了积极的关注。为此许多媒体作了人物专题。就作品本身的评价，在艺术界无疑是一次轰动。在艺术创作日益活跃的今天，我们有理由提出这样的问题，为什么艺术?艺术为什么? （9．5成）

 昨天我看了电视剧《大奋斗》，他和成长在八十年代的杨佳正是这样性情的一群人。

 杨佳的作品与电视剧《大奋斗》不谋而合，异曲同工，这是一个年代的性情，这是一群人的性情，无法背叛，无法忘却。所有的故事都在细枝末节中迷漫。你、我、他或许都是这样的性情中人，在现实的生活中哪里是我们的单元？　（9.8成）

 他的创作手法吸引着观者去思索人与其环境间、被遗忘以及被渴求的、现在与未来之间的冲突。此次发生的作品充满着对社会与政治的评论、描绘着确定性以及不确定性、反映着艺术家对中国发展的信心和发展中衍生出来的问题。杨佳将被掠夺的与被敬畏的事物并置，将被遗忘的与被重访的地方并列。他的作品捕捉那近乎于沉默静止并正消逝中的历史，更深入地探索并揭露着某种不满与愤慨的情绪。（10成）

 他对空间和形式有自己独到的见解，并对人类的生活方式有着深刻的见解。他通过照相机表达着他对世界的理解。（10成）

 他的作品有其内在的重量感和个性张力。这种内在的力量来源于他的生活和想像而不是某种艺术形式或流派，从作品中能看到个人的生活和性情，我想这是衡量艺术品好坏的重要标准。（10成）

  他的作品和他本人一样，有很多元的阐释性。（10成）

 他很注重汲取中国传统文化的精髓，本土文化特征很浓。（10成）

 我们可以从他的作品中体味到社会和人本等艺术性。（10成）

 他的创作表达了对这个被商业化、网络化、全球化的时代的感受，通过作品的表达来与复杂的社会发生关系。（10成）

 他更多的关注内心世界和表象世界之间的关联。（10成）

 他的艺术作品无一例外的走结合社会的道路，中国当代社会就是杨佳们的直接实验场，他的艺术与社会发生了最紧密地联系。杨佳的所为一直是在为当代艺术进入社会主流寻找一种途径，他追求一种生活是艺术的、艺术是生活的态度。从这种意义上说，杨佳是一个最彻底的中国式的前卫艺术家。像这样杰出的艺术家在这个世界上只有两个地方能找到，一个是南半球，一个是北半球。（9．5成）

 我很高兴终于完成了这篇评论，笔者才疏识浅，本想提高一下认识再写，但是由于时间有限只好作罢。在写作过程中得到了许多朋友的帮助，他们在评论事业中作出的卓越贡献，我只能高山仰止，没有他们的评论文本，我也无法写完这么多字。在遇到某些问题的时候，我总是向美丽大方的谷歌小姐求教，无论多忙，她都会及时帮我查找，我差点陷入她那宽阔的胸怀不能自持。有时我会埋怨她是不是对我隐瞒了什么，她不计较我的粗暴无理，每次都会小声地解释“我真的有难言之隐”。

 2008-9-1

注释1： 2007年十一期间，杨佳去上海旅游，被闸北艺术空间分馆的芷江画廊的一个工作人员一眼看出他极有可能是艺术家，我们姑且称之为“疑似艺术家”，说他的自行车不错，问艺术家本人是不是有版权，艺术家宣称这是用租的材料做成的作品，“艺探”看了租赁合同之后觉得这个作品很“当代”，然后盛情邀请他去画廊看场地，没想到十分投缘，画廊工作人员陪了他6个小时，当然，6个小时的良宵没有按摩很难舒服地度过，所以，据艺术家说有7、8名工作人员给他按摩了，但是艺术家觉得他们按摩的手法不好，于是叫来他们的经理，经理来看了看，问手下的人：“谁按得不好？”，“没有啊！”所有人都否认了这个问题。于是，经理转身对艺术家很客气地说：“你看，没人吧，我们都很专业的。”

 艺术家愤愤返回北京，但是经常投诉到闸北艺术空间要求一个说法。可能是艺术家对按摩过敏，2006年他去山西旅行的时候也曾被当地某画廊工作人员按摩掉几颗牙齿，最后索赔了3万。这次他也向闸北艺术空间提出3万的索赔。虽然空间两次派专员从上海来北京协调此事，但是艺术家的过于认死理的倔脾气上来了，拒绝让步。他再次到上海讨说法的时间是2008 年6月12日。

An Art Critique on Yang Jia

Jiang Zhi

Personally speaking, writing an art critique about Yang Jia is a loss making business. However, as an art critic, I am more ambitious than that. I won’t show off my highly developed writing skill this time. One result of watching too much TV and reading far too many newspaper articles is that I get really tired of just showing one side of the coin. So I want to quote more often from relevant personnel and some critics I greatly respect. Besides, some technical processing was applied to the quotes of those relevant personnel and commentators, to better facilitate the academic materials.

 There is something I feel the need to state from the outset: I would just address “the artist Yang Jia” by his name, instead of the more commonly adopted titles like “outstanding artist Yang Jia” “rare and extraordinary artist Yan Jia” or “Mr Yang Jia, one of the most rare and extraordinary artist in the contemporary Chinese, and even the international, art scene.” I am not deliberately slighting this artist who has an audience of more than five hundred thirty thousand people. And the Ctrl, C and V keys on my keyboard work just fine (read on then you would notice how highly convenient these three keys are). The real reason is not how kind-hearted I am , but this is a free commentary with little possibility of any increase of writing fees.

 First I’d like to introduce this artist briefly. He is born in August, 1980, lived but did not hold a job in Beijing, is unmarried, he said of himself that “as a not so young bachelor, the one thing I want to do is get to know some pretty girls.” He loved traveling, reading literature books and photography. As a Virgo, he was quiet and obeyed every rule. Like me, he wasn’t good at words. As for how rule-abiding he was, several of his acquaintances provided us some examples. When he was a child, he once condemned his father for tossing a cigarette butt, another time, he complained to his mother over her littering of an ice cream wrapper.  Besides, he never disobeyed any traffic regulations. Huang Miao, Yang Jia’s primary schoolmate, said that although Yang Jia always kept to himself, he still enjoyed group activities, like throwing sandbags with his classmates. And he never cheated when playing.

 According to the account of some insiders, the divorce of his parents made him even more quiet. Other than nature which he encountered when traveling, the internet was the world he enjoyed most. In 2000, he joined the online community for his primary school alumni. His first post was to ask everyone to hold a reunion party for the 20th anniversary of their entrance into the school. The only, and maybe the last entry of his blog, was posted in June 4th this year, describing a mountain hike in Beijing. He wrote, “If there is another such activity next time, I will join again, and strive to be among the first “. From this blog, you can also learn that he treasured his life. He wrote about how tired he was during the hiking, “I was planning to go and dine with our team leader, but at that moment I would be grateful for just being alive after hiking down the mountain”. And he typed nine consecutive “hah”.

 His mother supported the whole family with her RMB 1500 pension. But for art, Yang Jia did not only quit his job, but also bought a semi pro digital camera, then installed software to generate panoramas. Yang Jia published 486 pieces of photographs, all posted in MySpace.cn, a website created by the wife of Murdoch, the international renowned media tycoon. The name of his blog is “unusually coquettish”. I believe most of the photographs are created by him.

 The first professional attention his photographs got was from the field of psychology. Psychologist Li HuiMing viewed all of his works. Her first feeling was that “the blogger arranges the perspective very properly, which demonstrates a rather strong capacity of composition. He would be thorough, specific and calm when analysing problems. The blogger rarely posts any photos of his life except when traveling, which more or less showcases his avoidance of real life. In the rare group pictures, the blogger usually stands in the back or by the side, demonstrating his self-contempt.”

 Well, I should start my text now. Although in fact, the alleged texts are all quotations from other people’s articles (other people’s articles writing about other people) with a few revisions. I was going to write all quotations in italics, but was forced to  abandon this responsible idea for there would be too many italics. However, I would mark down the percentage of the quotation.

 Yang Jia was doomed to be abandoned by art history since the day (June, 1st, 2008) he went into the Zhabei Art Space, Shanghai when he was twenty eight, or since the day he rode a bicycle across an ordinary crossroad in the evening at half past eight of October, 5th, 2007, (see note 1). Although this time, he intervened at various levels of society in the noble name of art, and leveraged the force of society to accomplish an undertaking that any normal art form would never be able to accomplish. This undertaking was undoubtedly called art by himself, yet the refined art circle would never admit so. Instead, they consider it a ruthless conduct, a premeditated murder in today’s language. The various ways and unimaginable methods he adopted to accomplish this undertaking gradually became a part of his so called art. Unsociable, without a proper job, single parent family, quiet, testiness, cruel are the most commonly used vocabulary when he is mentioned by the art circle. Facing his undertaking, the true art elite’s attitude was avoidance or indifference. He considered himself the most despised person in the art circle, despite the fact that the majority of pure artists did not even consider him a part of this crowd. Most people would become quite emotional when talking about him, cursing him with the most malicious language they could think of. Some, even his attorney, claimed he could not escape the fate of death. If there is one thing we can be sure of, it is that he is the most notorious person. He tirelessly showed himself in all major media, created works which generated violent controversy and attracted wide concern from the media as well as from society. Controversy was an indispensable part of his activities. (90 percent)

 Zhabei Art Space is one of the art spaces which emerged in recent years. In fact, their mother company hosted some rather influential exhibitions. One of them was called “Accident or committed suicide upon”. Artists in the exhibition include Huang Jing from Xiang Tan, Hu Nan, Gao Yinyin from Xiang Fan, Hu Nan, Dai Haijing from Wenzhou, Li Qin from Chong Qin, Liao Mengjun from Fu Shan, Guang Dong, Li Guofu from Fu Yang, Tan Jing from Guangzhou, Liu Ningbo from Shanghai. The exhibition was a major breakthrough in both the concept and form of traditional exhibitions, with no showing, no report and no comment. Almost every media received an oral notice not to comment or report it. However, thanks to the abundance of amateur critics on the internet with multiple screen names, these works and artists became widely known, and the exhibition unexpectedly yielded tremendous effect, despite the fact that some of artists’ families and friends who saw the exhibition expressed some different opinions which gave rise to discontent and even hostility. The exhibition was still seen as an important one with historical value, which planted a subversive seed of breaking the dilemma of art and the traditional exhibition mechanism.(50%)

 If a single art space is a small kingdom, then this space represents the form of supreme ideology and culture. All these smaller kingdoms join together to form a larger kingdom. When Yang Jia was shuttling between these spaces, he was surrounded by various forces hiding inside, and was forced to face the complicated reality. Although every institution has its own style, those welding authority are shockingly similar. When Yang Jia’s blade was flying in these spaces, I believe that we could surely feel or receive another kind of knowledge. Yang Jia also created a unique and extraordinary skill with language, which exaggerated man’s potential desire towards the body and the obsession with breasts to the greatest extreme. As a result, we are at a loss with regards to his humor. With various art materials like petitioning materials , tear gas, back swords, hammers, alpenstocks, dust proof masks, rubber gloves and lighters, he exaggerated his idea of a single stabbing. He even hoped that by his blade, he could cut through the long decayed mechanism. Thus, he was called “Yang the blade” by the world. (85%)

 When commenting on the work of an artist, it’s more objective if we see further than his representative pieces. When analysing his not so deliberate work, we may gain a better glimpse of his overall aesthetic preferences and inner world, even though his great number of photos are “unintelligibly repeating some trivial details, and inexplicably filming some inconsequential matters.” Another critique said: “Hundreds of photos recorded the bits and pieces of a shutter–holic. Those long forgotten travel group photos and landscape pictures, is life itself.” Someone said that “(I)n those pictures, he created a kind of ambiguous and suspenseful relationship between the background and foreground, person and group, as well as human being and environment  They are all transient but somewhat solid. “

 His work “pursues the simple and condensed idea and emotion of the literati in a seemingly simple picture, thus creating a pure and elegant feeling.  Much is due to his reading of literature and appreciation of Chinese landscape painting classics (you could find his photos of Chinese painting and calligraphy posted in his blog) as well as his proficiency of drawing from the essence of traditional Chinese culture.”

 I personally highly appreciate one of his photos of the sky. The sky occupies most of the space, and a piece of glaring cloud brimming with sunshine is the principle part of the picture. In the middle of this cloud, there is a scrap of ominous shadow; by the edge is the dark shadow of a mountain. It is just as someone had commented: “It could very well represent a specific sentiment of the artist. From its use of some basic composition rules like open and close, gather and disperse, unveil and reveal, empty and solid, contrast and harmony, segmented and whole, change and unify, we can learn the proficiency of the artist.”

 And there is also a photograph of peach blossoms, “fresh, tranquil, isolated, elegant, just like a piece of poetry.” Just as a landscape painter said when introducing his own work: “I am seeking a peaceful, natural, rich and down to earth feeling.” This self-statement seemed to be speaking for Yang Jia : “When you communicate more with the natural landscape, you would naturally feel the need to express. Without a rich life experience, it would be hard to show the beauty of nature in any significant way. Even when you are facing the same scenery, the feeling would be greatly different when you are in a different stage of life, mindset or age. Carefully observe and appreciate the subtle changes of the seasons, feel it, and mark down the touching seconds. That’s how I gather the life and emotional materials of my landscape photography. It has already become a part of my life.”

His works also gained lots of comments:

 One of Yang Jia’s highly controversial conduct attracted wide attention from both the central and local media in early July, many of which did special reports about him. And the shockwaves from the critique of the work itself have reverberated through the art community. As art creation becomes more and more active, we should ask such questions. Why do art? What is art for? (95percent)

 Yesterday I watched the television series called “The Grand Strife”.  Yang Jia who is born and grew up in the 1980s is just like those people.

 The works of Yang Jia are highly similar to the television series “The Grand Strife”. It showed the temperament of an era and a group of people, which cannot be betrayed and cannot be forgotten. All of the stories dwell hazily in the trivial details. You, I and he may all be such a person. Where in real life is our chapter? (98 percent)

 The way he created his works invites the audience to consider the conflict between people and the environment , the forgotten and welcomed, the present and future. The work that happened this time was filled with commentary on society and policy, describing the certain and the uncertain, reflecting the confidence of the artist on the future development of China as well as his concern about the issues generated by such development. Yang Jia put together the deprived and respected, the places that are forgotten and popular. His work grasped the almost silent, static and decaying history, and even more deeply explored and unveiled certain discontent and anger. (100 percent)

 He has unique insight into space and form, as well as profound understanding of how people live their lives. Though  his camera, he expressed his understanding of the world. (100 percent)

 His work carried intrinsic weight and character. Such inner force came from his life and imagination instead of any form or school of art. It enabled the audience to see his life and temperament. I think this is an important criteria when judging any piece of art. (100 percent)

 Like himself, his work could be illustrated in various ways. (100 percent)

He addresses learning from the essence of the traditional Chinese culture; a person with strong local color. (100 percent)

 We could sense the society and human nature from his work.(100 percent )

 His work expressed his feeling of the commercialised and globalized era. And he was connected to the complicated society through the expression of his work. (100 percent)

 He was more concerned about the connection between the inner world and the outside world.(100 percent)

 His artwork connects with the society without exception. Contemporary Chinese society is the direct experimental field grounds of the ‘Yang Jias’. His art connected with society in the closest way possible. What Yang Jia did had always been about finding a way for contemporary art to enter into the mainstream of the society. He pursued such an attitude, that life is art, and art is life. In this sense, Yang Jia is one of the most thorough pioneer artists of the Chinese style. Such an excellent artist could only be found in two places in this world, one is the Northern Hemisphere, the other is the Southern Hemisphere. (95 percent)

 I am very glad this commentary is finally finished. Because of my highly limited knowledge, I was considering writing it after having acquired a better knowledge of this subject. However, the limited time forced me to abandon such a thought. During my writing, I received assistance from a lot of friends. I greatly admire their outstanding contribution to the field of critique. It would be impossible for me to write so many words without their commentaries. When encountering some problems, I always go to the gorgeous Miss Google. She found me the answer no matter how busy she was. I was almost lost in her generosity. Sometimes I complained whether she was hiding something from me. Regardless of my brusqueness, she explained quietly in a low voice, saying, “I really had to”.

August 2008, Beijing

note 1 : 

During the National H oliday in 2007, Yang Jia travelled to Shanghai. A staff in Zhijiang gallery, a branch of Zhabei Art Space immediately realised that he was probably an artist. Let’s call it “suspected to be an artist”. The staff said the artist had a nice bike and asked whether he owned the copyright. The artist claimed that it’s a piece made of rent material, then showed the staff the lease. The staff considered the piece to be quite “contemporary”, then warmly invited him to see the gallery. They hit it off at once, and the gallery staff accompanied him for six hours. Of course, the six hours could not be such a nice time without a massage. That is why according to the artist, seven or eight staff gave him a massage. But the artist thought they didn’t give a nice massage and thus called their manager. The manager came, then asked his staff “Who didn’t give a good massage?”. “No one!” All denied. Thus the manager said politely: “See, no one. We are professionals.”

 The artist went back to Beijing greatly angered. Later, he frequently complained to the Zhabei Art Space, and asked for an apology. Maybe the artist was allergic to massages. When he was travelling in Shan Xi in 2006, several of his teeth were massaged away by local gallery staff, and he claimed RMB 30,000’s compensation. This time, he also made a claim of thirty thousand. Though the space twice sent commissioners from Shanghai to Beijing to negotiate, the artist was far too stubborn to give in. He went to Shanghai seeking for justice again, the time was June 12th, 2008.

展览主题：摄影劫 Kalpastival of Photography

展览时间：5月29日——6月27日，2010

展览地点：伊比利亚当代艺术中心 B厅

 参展艺术家：董文胜、高世强、韩磊、蒋志、金石

 展览脉络：这是一个与马德里摄影节相关联的一个影像展览，策划人期待通过本此展览与艺术家共同探讨“摄影劫”这一主题。  

 展览主题概述：摄影劫，以劫代节，“劫”来自是佛宗梵语，指自开始至毁灭的轮回，在此摄影劫指向摄影本体，作为最当代最易产生影响力，也最为直接、便捷的图像生产途径之一，其“劫”何在？。 同时做“劫持”之劫，作者与对象/观念之间以摄影为媒介，三者之间是否存在多变、微妙的劫持关系？

 作为与马德里摄影节相关联的展览，在中国本土我们如何看待和讨论摄影节？是形象工程？还是有内在体制化倾向的艺术展览方式？在很大程度上，摄影节成为一种在地化的图像应对策略，艺术家以其生产的图像参与全球各地的摄影节展览，作者所处的创作纬度与图像的态度关联性何在？这种纬度与态度在多大程度上影响了不同社会语境中的阅读趣味的形成？

展览主题的英文 Kalpastival 是一个合成词汇，由 Kalpa(劫)与Festival(节日)两个词根据英文词汇构成法则组合而成，有“劫节并存”之意。

Interpreting   Jiang Zhi’s   Solo Exhibition Neurosis and Prattle

By  Li Jianchun

This year’s series of events have coincidentally broadened the background of a supposedly individualistic exhibition. All of the works for Neurosis and Prattle were made before the Wenchuan earthquake. Looking back at it now, they are somewhat indicative, like the wind before the arrival of a storm – signs of struggle and perdition, the daydreams of a paranoid, his observations while waiting for an omen, the psyche of neurosis… Since our civilization has contracted the new crimes of modernity, artists usually intervene in their artwork by learning about their personal situation in order to understand the condition of the times. As it is suggested in I Am Your Poetry, through conceptual purification and “peeling” art, the capillaries that Jiang Zhi exposes are intertwined with the pause of times. Illusions and absurdity are found throughout his work. He is used to the abstract from his individual existence, and designs certain images accordingly, from which he expands, broadening the area covered in order to complete a series. Only until he has entered the greater absurdity of reality does he then come to a sudden stop. In fact, he tamed his imagination long ago, although he likes to pretend he is unaware of this fact because if ready-made objects are not marked by illusions, they would not be considered his art. The Light Series is a good example (Things Would Trun…Once They Happened). The series originated from an idea, for which he experimented with the confrontation of blinding light, making it into performance art. Then, the artist made further conceptual developments by replacing certain scenarios according to the unique images that he captured as he documented the performance, allows him to explore various possibilities and be interpretive of coincidental incidences that were offered. Jiang Zhi documented the feelings of being shone on: no direct eye contact, and once you’ve been hit, your mind is blind, submissive, and fearful when confronted with such powerful presence. One’s existence becomes that between “normality” and the legitimacy of skepticism. Things Would Trun…Once They Happened  (An “insider scoop” at the most reported “stubborn nail household in history”), “fantasies found in reality” makes the designed fantasy seem inadequate, marking its time to conclude. In the process of exploring ideas, the role of the light exceeds the changes that the artist predicted: a head on confrontation with violence, it ascends everyday miracles by illuminating the desolate places, saviors, and the indispensable through its approach to reality – precisely what we often call the beauty of visual thinking. The works made of silicon or works on “rainbow” are conclusive works for each respective series, in which the artist associates metaphors to expand upon the ontological meanings in order to demonstrate different variations on the artist’s original concept.

Skin: surface, sensation, phenomenon, gratification, rejecting depth, the anti-essential, enjoyment, photographs.

Skin with exposed capillaries or nerves: flesh, essence, shock, sexual turn-off, true love, examining essence based on phenomenon, anti-photography, anxiety.

 The audience is only allowed to perceive a single aspect of the model, in other words the “fresco,” known as the ultimate limit for photography. It is not difficult to render a three-dimensional work because the difficulty resides in transcending the artist’s true feelings. Once the conceptual delirium is shown, it becomes difficult to resume – Jiang Zhi’s eyes and experiences are, strictly speaking, his lens, and he is not yet ready to give up the role of being the photographer. Therefore, the artwork must be as lucid as the developing film for which the texture of the silicon would also be as effective. The capillaries made of red wool fibers were in fact spread out casually, looking real – an effect that provided technical possibilities for absurd appearances on the skins of the pigs, sheep and dogs. The content for I Am Your Poetry No. 1-10, is quite complex. Besides No. 5 being the skin of a vehicle, the rest are byproducts of the body. The artist made the body into a sample of pseudo-science, purposefully creating a research atmosphere in order to dissolve the cruel effect of the conceptual. Yet the vehicle itself carries scientific qualities, therefore only the “surface of the vehicle” needs to be three-dimensional and site specific. Because the vehicle is an extension of the body with a “skin” (a fear of traffic accidents) – some vehicles could be more afraid of pain than people: because people only have one life, once a person is dead, he is dead. Whereas a vehicle has a social life, and once it’s dead, it can be revived; complex indeed. I Am Your Poetry is inevitably immersed in an atmosphere of death and remorse, revealing similarities between fetishism and morbidity. NO.9 sampled the sexy parts on female bodies, cut them off and adored them separately. The three new works for this exhibition have completely abandoned the inhumane characteristics of pseudo-science, but surprisingly entered into the realm of hope.

 Pig: Dumb, fat, fleshy, consumable, symbols of post-modernism. “In God We Trust” is printed on the U.S. dollar, becoming an omen in Jiang Zhi’s art – an experience of confronting blinding illumination.

Sheep: An animal perceived as a positive image in most cultures, glutinous, docile, righteous, and representing belief.

Dog: Loyal, snobbish, intelligent, often controlled by certain power, nationalism, boycotting French goods, longing for the “natural course of history”.

 The formation of this work came into being when the bubbles in the real estate business and the stock market burst, reflecting the psyche of many owners of stock and real estate. It was completed after the earthquake, and will be exhibited before the Olympic games. The context it has entered and the meaning it has obtained is involuntary.

 In a time of instability, there are many omens. Much historical turmoil in China had something to do with superstition. At the end of the Yuan dynasty, there was a farmers uprising along the Yellow River. “A look by the stone man, caused the uprising along the Yellow River,” a phrase that summarized the last straw on the camel’s back. Prophetic reenactment has shown the artist’s command of the surreal experience of the Chinese masses (using phrases of Christian significance as an “omen”, the writer believes it to be rough. Anthropology and semiotics tend to “associate” the research on religion and superstition that the artist also agrees with). As for how to construct a rationale for the spirit of the masses, the three statements regarding the pig, sheep and dog can be read backwards, forward, or as a rhyme – reading it backwards is for its ideology, reading it as is for its truth, although the truth is also a kind of ideology – the interesting aspect of an “omen” is its inescapable fate. Media violence and extreme nationalism is none other than the outcome of spiritual slavery and continuous enslavement. The information behind the “omen” is in fact rather realistic. “In God We Trust” as a sign appearing on the pigskin is a metaphor for global currency – believing in the US dollar is not necessarily good news for the RMB, and the current inflation began with raising prices on pork. All publicity on “I Want To Believe” and highly stylistic news are in essence protection for our own safety (how fragile is this safety); as docile as a sheep, before one turns on the News and opens up the front page of a newspaper, a slight finger movement in mid-air has already clicked on “agree” (virtual agreement in a forum). As to “The Inflection Point Is Coming,” it comforts the farmers and laid-off workers and the mass stockowners. In effect, the beliefs of the Chinese intellectuals are also revealed, or what is so-called unrelenting. The critic Zhu Dake pointed out in his popularly circulated text Who killed our children – reflecting and probing on Wenchuan earthquake that after each major earthquake, Chinese history arrives at an inflection point believed by the writer, “After the 1966 Xingtai earthquake, the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution erupted; after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, political changes were evoked in Beijing, causing the Mao clique to surrender and the Cultural Revolution to conclude. If the two previous earthquakes had give rise to political change, then the long-term outcome of this earthquake is yet to be determined. However, it had already sparked an intense spiritual awakening. It forced us to reflect systematically upon and improve structural abuse practices. Meanwhile, it will also become a type of cultural memory, and its theme is none other than allowing the Chinese to discover the humanity in themselves over the last half century.”

 Jiang Zhi’s interest has been shifted from imagery to semiotics. In the aforementioned work using silicon, a light, soft, and semi-transparent material is often used to mask the effect of human flesh – a wisdom that has not been mastered by just any artist learnt from the adult shops. It engenders a tension in I Am Your Poetry between the toss off “goose bumps” and morbid pseudo-scientific “sample”. The red woolen fiber looks like capillaries or nerves. In the process of masking the real, the artist discovered other possibilities for “juggling things”. If life has deceived you, either ontologically or visually, with Home Sick, from the exhibition point of view, seems quite sentimental. However, using gray earth as its “tone” callously positions romantic sentiments into the meaningless and boring realm. The melancholic attitude often found in art history or literary history often “engrains” the sentimental object into the heart, the material or tone used not necessarily can storm the erosion of time in order to attain “eternity”. In Jiang Zhi’s view, this is entirely self-indulgent. He allows Home Sick to masturbate at the corner – a self-portrait of extreme nationalism and nativism. Without the earth in indigenous or native land, how can conceptual seeds be planted, and how could “the zero form of sexuality” (appropriating Lacon’s concept) come to fruition? The earth is sacred, and dust is meaningless, which is essentially the same. Microscopically, Jiang Zhi’s work can be meticulous, which is entirely projected visually.

  Perhaps most people’s idea of a sponge is “soft”, “comfort”, “absorbing”, “moist”, as well as the spongy body in the penis. The work on sponge in this exhibition enters from the conceivable impression in setting up its maze. As it is said previously, enticing the audience into a contextual trap is Jiang Zhi’s usual approach. Enjoyment and idleness implies certain spiritual handicap, and more professional knowledge on the sponge also verifies such a danger: mad cow disease for instance, is a mutation of the sponge body of the human brain nerves, and excessive intake of drugs will also lead to such outcome. The audience is directed from the blissful sensual imagination, until they encounter sickness recklessly – the steps in the “attraction” in art follow the same course as in reality. Infatuated with Your Flirty Angel’s Hair shows a badminton implanted on a sponge – this is no longer “the zero form of sexuality”, one can already see the penetration of concepts, and it is quite problematic. Badminton is a sport most Chinese people enjoy, just like ping-pong during the 70s, if one also recalls the very popular ping-pong politics between China and the U.S. Tying sports to the fate of a nation, or even global political structure is what the state and the masses await for the upcoming Olympic games, even though their expectations are different (another inflection point). Let me get back on track. Hair – the practicality in their application and modification, as well as its associated Foucaultian crime and punishment and etc., are all rather interesting: hairdressing cannot escape from a specific cultural and political context. The axiom of “keeping the hair to lose one’s life or keeping one’s life and abandoning his hair”, to the late Qing revolutionary action of cutting the queue, to the farmer and worker hairdo after the liberation, to religious requirements, hip-hop styles … one’s attitude on the body and hair can be seen as an expression of his ideology. Flirty Angel’s Hair is amorous and “promiscuous”. That’s Right, Infatuated with Your Flirty Angel’s Hair has a slit on the sponge, where it is stuffed with duck and goose feathers.  Jiang Zhi claims, “This an honor or reenactment to the infamous Italian artist Lucio Fontana’s series using a sharp pen to slit the canvas done in the 1950s.” Lucio Fontana found greater artistic space by “breaking the space on canvas”, he published the “White Manifesto”, and was named the “the master on spatialism”, and is a forefather for minimalism. Jiang Zhi is influenced from minimalism and formalism (which are in fact secondary aspects in conceptual art, because conceptual art is essentially “hyper-style” – referring to Jiang Zhi’s writing Original Photography and Hyper-Style for an young artist, Zheng Guogu), therefore, this work revealed the artist’s dual attitudes of revering and satirizing the former master. Perhaps there is a more realistic background: because Neurosis and its Prattle is a solo exhibition hosted by an Italian Gallery in China, Jiang Zhi’s plot met with the existing one, subconsciously conducting a distant discourse.

 In terms of inheriting semiotics, from the lightness of dust to the drifting of the feathers, meaning deepens. Dust denies self-pity, the enclosed condition for “parthenogenesis reproduction”, where feather reveals the ambiguous and superfluous relationship with others. “Loneliness” cannot find the sense of existence, and “communication” cannot guarantee spiritual maturation. In fact, it would be great if one could truly enjoy himself. Yet Jiang Zhi had to “peel off” the superficiality, therefore, Flirty Angel became unreliable. “To Live” is like this (the title of Yu Hua’s novel, key term for contemporary cynicism), is like walking on soft sand. Walls in a mental hospital are often covered with sponge in order to prevent suicide. The existentialist “banging one’s head on the wall” scrutinizes the purpose of existence, however, in our planned “prosperous society” (Jean Baudrillard’s term), discounted freedom – consumption has already dissolved the metaphysical passion, and the necessity to bang on the wall is abolished. The sponge is also often used to isolate or insulate sound – your scream would only be heard by yourself, but unable to traveling any further.

 Day After Day, Fast Dairy, done in 2004, has accurately portrayed the unique information consumption on dissolving individual discourse in an internet generated era. Andy Warhol had once said, each person would only get 15 minutes of fame. The most common motion in reading online is to drag the mouse down. From breaking news to gossip on self-promotion, or even on the electronic version of classics, or new works by contemporary writers, the reader only has to lightly click, and drag down. I wonder if Andy Warhol had lived to this day, what would be his comment? Online diaries, or blogs, as a publicized personal discourse (very few are truly part of the circle), would be honored to be viewed, and would be a blessing to scroll down on the page. This is the background for Diary in the era of technology.

 Avant-garde artists’ requirement for material and techniques are different from the others: the material needs to be unique, because the artwork most likely to be expressive through the material used; the techniques applied needs to be common, which implies for its expected startling effect by using this technique, in other word, its effectiveness. Jiang Zhi has separated the content of the diary into one character per shot, and 25 shots per second screening speed, in order to show is “normalcy” in such form of reading. Therefore, the paradox in the outcome is entirely due to the personal mistake of the diary writer, others would not have to take responsibilities. Subsequently, the thousands of words, endless discussions of personal sentiments or narration of life becomes a beautiful dance of Chinese characters. Of course, they show the voyeuristic “personal news” that are inconceivable with ineffective communications. However, from another perspective, it is clear – the act of the diary writer using words to perform the dance of the spirit is successfully achieved. With this “view”, the outcome would be the same as switching the content or the author of the diary. Is it because “personal news” is meaningless? Or is it because the spiritual life of the individual in this era has been homogenized? The Shakespearian play Macbeth writes, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” William Faulkner had written a famous novel The Sound and The Fury. Jiang Zhi had only used a three minutes short video to express similar concept (although the meaning expressed is not comparable), who has fully expressed the intelligence and beauty of media art. We cannot ascertain the psychological condition of author of the diary, where “prattle” is strictly speaking not the tragedy of a person, but the tragedy of the medium. After Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky, many have involved Chinese characters as part of their artwork, although I haven’t seen anyone who’s done this well.

 According to Genesis in the Holy Bible, as Noah’s ark sailed out and offered sacrifice to the Lord, God blessed Noah’s family and rescued the lives on earth, and decided not to curse the ground because of man “even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood”. (Genesis8:21). He used the rainbow to mark his covenant. Rainbow thus signifies promise, hope and tolerance, and most people who have been influenced by western culture share similar concepts. However, in ancient China, the significance of the rainbow is entirely different. Notice that the character for “rainbow” has the “insect” radical, where in the Book of Songs recorded “rainbow” as didong (literally, rainbow), or larva. The Chinese in ancient times believed, if one used his finger to point at the rainbow at the head, would make him swell in pain. Guofeng includes a poem depicting a man and a woman eloping entitled didong, “didong is in the east, no one dares to point at it.” The interpreter believed, the rainbow is an outcome of disharmony between yin and yang, signifies illegitimate desire, therefore it’s inauspicious. Jiang Zhi’s “rainbow”, began with the significance of “promise”, and ends with the symbolism of “inauspiciousness” and “enticement”, a great combination between the east and west. Rainbow has been the projection on the “golden way” but has become the totem of consumerism – the endless enticement of insatiable desires, marking the coherent relationship between enticing and the enticed.

 This extensive series began in 2005. Jiang Zhi calls it Work of Satirizing Fairytale. In Between Worlds – Rainbow video installation (2007) has restored the ontological meaning of the rainbow into the era of planned economy. The artist has collected various old photographs from the Cultural Revolutionary era. Every photograph presents a brainwashed smile in full revolutionary vigor. Jiang Zhi has skillfully printed the rainbow over it without any hesitation, allowing utopia to be visualized on these memorabilia – on the interior, set up the spotty bathroom walls the audience is familiar with, the old style radiator, and one could almost smell the vacuous moisture; outside the window, “Rainbow of Time” is playing, of course that is the vital act. This rainbow is synthesized with neon lights: myriads of lights flashing in forming for one rainbow, like a possessed atmosphere that suddenly shines over the city, making people fearful. The two opposing spirits of the two era exposed the same commonality in this exhibition: both are “ rainbows in between worklds”, both are utopia on earth – according to mainstream and legal perspective, the latter can also be the “preliminary stage” of the former. Then, what would the “superior stage” be?

 The photography aspect made “possessed atmosphere” – the monster ancient Chinese were afraid to point at – added onto the different “service area” of different settings. In fact, nothing has been added, only allowing the neon lights banners to be placed “where it supposed to be” (“neon light” also underlines the relationship between “light” and “neon”). These prolific fragments of the rainbow manipulate the desire of the contemporary becoming rightly the “mark of the covenant”: consumerism has made the entire land into a venue for consumption, and seems to feel the need to emphasize it at all times and all places that “God will not punish us again” (which reveals its internal anxiety). In the exhibition of Neurosis and Prattle, the “superior stage” arrived ahead of time. Two photographs of Rainbow Out Of The Service Area, shows one rainbow above the sea, crossing the blue water; the other depicts Luobupo, the desolate scene after a nuclear experimentation, where the “rainbow” still rises. However, the planet is already empty (all consumed?), the prosperous city is unseen, and so are people. Who is to be enticed by this “possessed atmosphere”? “Come on! Buy me! ” is lit on the deadly scene – hopefully this is only the artist’s “neurosis”.

June, 2008

――读蒋志个展《神经症及其呓语》

李建春

今年发生的一系列事件让一个原本很个人化的展览意外地获得了开阔的背景。《神经症及其呓语》中的所有作品都创作或构思于汶川大地震之前，现在看来，却很有点山雨欲来风满楼――挣扎、沉沦的写照，偏执狂的白日梦，对征兆的观察和期待，神经质的通灵……自从文明染上了现代性这一新原罪，艺术家总是从领悟了个人的处境开始，进而领悟了时代的处境。正如《我是你的诗歌》所暗示的，通过观念净化和为艺术“去皮”的工作，蒋志裸露的毛细血管与时代的脉搏交织在一起。幻象、荒诞感在他的作品中贯彻始终。他习惯于从个人性的存在感中提炼、设计出某种图像，并渐次拓展、扩大覆盖面，得出一个系列，直到遭遇了现实中更大的荒诞，才嘎然而止。现实早就让想象黯然失色，但是他假装不知道这个事实，因为现成品如果不烙上梦幻的印记，就不能算为他的艺术。“光系列作品”（事情一旦发生就会……）就是一个很好的例子。开始于一个意念――试探性地进入、面对强光，像做行为艺术，然后才把记录该行为的独特影像进行观念复制和情景置换，探索各种可能性，不拒绝偶然事件的惠赐。蒋志曾记录过被照射的感觉：不能直视，被击中后大脑空白，臣服，面对更强大存在时的战战兢兢，生活于“普通”状态和怀疑主义的正当性。但到了《事情一旦发生就会变成钉子》（对被媒体炒作一时“史上最牛的钉子户”的“探照”）时，“现实中的魔幻”竟使设计出的魔幻相形见绌，因而也差不多是终结的时候。在主题深入的过程中，光的角色发生了超出作者感受的变化：从迎面入侵的暴力，到提升日常的奇迹，或荒凉死寂处境的照明、拯救者，再到作为“看”现实必不可少的方法――这正是通常所讲的形象思维的魅力。本次展览中出现的硅胶作品和“彩虹”作品应该都是相应系列的尾声部分，通过转喻－图象置换拓展语义，已显示出与原初观念异趣的漂移。

皮：表面，感性，现象，快感，拒绝深度，反本质，享乐，摄影；

露出毛细血管或神经的皮：肉，本质，震惊，对性恶心，真爱，透过现象看本质，反摄影，焦虑。

观众只被允许看到模本的单面，即“浮雕”，这是摄影的极限。做成全立体的作品并不难，难在不能超出艺术家内在的真实感，因为一旦出现观念的谵妄，就不好收场――蒋志的眼睛和经验，严格说来就是镜头，他还没有作好放弃摄影家身份感的准备。因此作品必须如显影膜一般轻盈，若有若无，硅胶的质地很好地实现了这一点。用红色羊毛丝仿造毛细血管，其实只是随意敷开，做得像而已，这也为猪羊狗的皮上出现怪现象在技术上提供了可能性。《我是你的诗歌》1－10号，内容很复杂，除5号是汽车“皮”以外，都是人体的拓件。把身体做成标本一样的东西，是伪科学――刻意营造出某种“研究”的氛围，以冲淡观念的残酷。但汽车本身包含了科学因素，所以唯独“车皮”需要是立体的、现场的。因为汽车是身体的延伸，所以也有“皮”（对车祸的恐惧）――有些车比人还怕痛，因为人只有一条自然的命，死了就死了，很简单，车子却有一条社会的命，死后还可以“复活”，很复杂。《我是你的诗歌》不可避免地沉浸在死亡和哀悼的气氛中，可见恋物与恋死差不多。9号作品把女人性感的部位切下来分别地爱。本次展览中的三件新作却完全放弃了仿科学的非人性，出人意料地进入希望的领域。

猪:白痴，发胖，肉欲，消费，后现代的象征。“我们信赖上帝”――印在美元上的一句话，在蒋志的作品中成了谶记。直面强光的体验。

羊：在所有文化中形象都不错，好吃，温顺，像义人，代表信念。

狗：忠实，势利，灵敏，总是被某种势力驱使，爱国主义，抵制法货，对“历史必然性”的期待。　

这个作品构思于中国地产和股市泡沫崩溃时，反映了不少股民和房奴的心理，但完成于地震后，展出于奥运前，进入了什么语境，获得了什么意义，不由自主。

风雨飘摇的年代，征兆多多。中国历史上历次动乱都与迷信有关。比如元朝末年黄河民工起义，“石人一只眼，挑动黄河天下反”，一句谶语，竟成了压倒骆驼的最后一根稻草。戏仿谶语显示了作者对于中国民众的超验精神的把握（把含有基督教精神的语句用作“谶语”，笔者认为粗率。人类学和符号学倾向于将宗教和迷信“等同”地研究，艺术家亦取此态度），至于怎样建构理性的民众精神，猪羊狗身上的三句话反读之后又正读，或许就是口诀――反读于意识形态，正读于真理，但真理也是一种意识形态――“谶语”之妙就在于无处逃避。媒体暴力、极端民族主义等等无非是精神奴化的结果和持续的奴化。“征兆”背后的信息其实非常现实。IN－GOD－WE－TRUST整体作为一个符号，显露在猪皮上，作为世界通货的提喻――信赖美元对于人民币可不是好消息，当前的通胀正是从猪肉涨价开始的。“我愿意相信”所有的宣传和高度风格化的新闻，最终，是为了保护我们切身的安全（此安全多么脆弱）；像绵羊一样温顺，打开新闻联播和报纸头版之前，手指轻轻一划，已在空气中点击“我同意”（虚拟论坛的协议）。至于“拐点即将到来”，安慰了农民、下岗工人和广大股民，作用极大，中国知识分子的信念亦见于此，可谓百折不挠。批评家朱大可在一篇广为流传的文章《谁杀死了我们的孩子？――关于汶川地震的反省和问责》中指出，历次大地震之后，中国历史都会进入THE　INFLECTION　POINT：“1966年邢台地震，当年引发无产阶级文化革命；1976年的唐山地震，当年引发北京政治变局，促使毛派倒台和文革结束；如果说前两次地震催生了政治变革，那么本次地震的深远后果，我们至今还难以预测。但它至少已诱发了一场剧烈的精神地震，敦促我们反省和改造制度的结构性弊端，同时，它也必然会形成一种文化记忆，而其主题不是别的，就是大半个世纪以来，中国人第一次从自己身上，发现了更为健全的人性。”

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蒋志的兴趣早已从图像学转向媒介－符号学。上述作品用的硅胶，轻、软、半透明的质地，常被用来替代肉身――成人用品商店中的智慧一般艺术家是学不到的，《我是你的诗歌》以轻而易举的“肉麻”与仿科学“标本”的死亡气息构成张力。红色羊毛丝极像毛细血管或神经，从仿真制作的过程又发现了“做一番手脚”的可能性。《假如生活欺骗了你》从字面和图像，《乡愁》从展出搭档的安排看来，都很感伤，但是以灰土为“颜料”，已冷酷地把浪漫主义情绪置于无意义、无聊的境地。艺术史和文学史中常见的感伤态度，是把感伤之物“铭记”于心，所用材料或语调，务必经得起时间的磨损以期达于“永恒”。在蒋志看来，这纯粹是自恋，他让“乡愁”对着墙角手淫――极端民族主义和本土主义的自画像。乡土或本土的土，如果没有观念的种子种植，“性的零形式”（挪用拉康的概念）怎样开花结果呢？泥土神圣，灰尘无意义，却本是一物，蒋志的作品细微处有字眼的功夫，可不全是视觉。

或许大多数人对海绵只有“柔软”、“舒适”、“可吸水”、“湿润”之类的概念，此外还有阴茎中的海绵体。本展中的海绵作品就是从一望而知的印象入手设置迷局。如前所述，利用题目引诱观众进入语义陷阱是蒋志惯用的手段。享受、怠惰意味着某种精神上的瘫痪，而更专业一点的海绵知识也证实了此类危险：“疯牛病”就是脑神经发生海绵状变性，过量吸毒也会造成这样的情况。观众被引导着，从令人愉快的色情想象出发，直到不小心遭遇了病态――艺术中的“诱惑”与现实中的诱惑步骤一致。《迷恋你这个发骚的小天使可爱的小羽毛》就是在海绵上有一只插入的羽毛球－－这已经不再是“性的零形式”了，可见观念性的“插入”，问题也不小。羽毛球是普通中国人爱玩的运动，一如上世纪七十年代的乒乓球。曾记否，脍炙人口的中美乒乓球外交。体育关系国运，甚至国际政治格局，这是官方和民间对即将到来的奥运一致的期待，尽管内容有所不同（又一个“拐点”）。此话题不宜多讲。羽毛――对动物身体实用性的利用和改造，以及由此进入的福科意义上的训戒与惩罚等，也很有趣：修整毛发确实逃不开特定的文化政治语境，什么“留发不留头，留头不留发”，以及晚清时期剪辫子的革命意味，乃至新中国的工农发型，宗教标志，嬉皮士……对身体和毛发的态度可以成为意识形态的表达。“发骚的小天使”竟如此秋波乱传，“骚味”够浓。《没错！迷恋你这个发骚的小天使可爱的小羽毛》在海绵上划一刀，刀口处塞满鸭或鹅的绒毛。蒋志宣称：“这是对意大利著名艺术家卢西奥·冯塔那在五十年代一系列以利刃划破画布的作品的致敬或戏仿。”卢西奥•冯塔那以“打破画布的空间”来成就更大的艺术空间，他发表过“白色宣言”，被称为“空间主义的大师”，是极少主义的一位先驱人物。蒋志利用了极少主义在风格、形式感上的影响（这在观念性艺术中实际是次要的层面，因为观念性艺术本质上是“超风格”的――参见本人评论另一位青年艺术家郑国谷的文章《元摄影和超风格》），所以此作品表明了他对前辈大师既敬仰又戏谑的双重心态。或许有更现实的背景：因为《神经症及其呓语》是由一个在中国的意大利画廊举办的个展，蒋志将计就计，“半真半假、有心无意地来了一次遥远的对话。”

从符号的承续关系上讲，从灰尘之轻到羽毛之飘，又深了一层。灰尘否定了自我感伤、“单性生殖”的封闭状态，羽毛则揭示了与他者关系中的暖昧、轻浮的方面。“孤独”既找不到存在感，“交往”也就不能保证精神成熟。其实真能享乐也不错，但是蒋志偏偏要给表象“去皮”，于是，“发骚的小天使”就靠不住，如此地“活着”（余华小说名，当代犬儒主义的重要用语），踩着此在松软的沙子。精神病院的墙面一般都要贴上海绵，以防止病人自杀。存在主义的“以头撞墙”，是拷问存在究竟何为，但在我们这个有计划的“丰盛社会”（让·鲍德里亚语），廉价的自由――消费已经消解了形而上学的激情，撞墙的必要性被取消了。

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作于2004年的《一天又一天，快速的日记》准确地描述了网络时代特有的信息消费方式对个体言说的融化。安迪·沃霍尔曾言，每个人最多只有15分钟的知名度。网上阅读最常见的动作是：鼠标往下一拖。从社会要闻，到自我炒作的丑闻，乃至于经典的电子版，或当代名家新作，都是轻轻地，一点、一拖。不知沃霍尔活到现在，会作何高论？视屏日记，或称博客，作为一种公开的个体言说（除极少数真正的圈内人），能被点开就是荣幸，能被一拖就算为有福。这是《日记》的时代技术背景。

前卫艺术对待材料和对待技术的态度正好相反：材料要求独特，因为作品多半用材质表意；技术要求普通，则是为了暗示创意地使用该技术所得出的惊人效果的普遍性，即有效性。蒋志把日记内容按照每字一帧位置不变、每秒25帧的标准速度视屏播放，表明了这种阅读对于外界来说是“正常的”，因而结果的悖谬，纯粹是日记作者个人的错误，他人不必负责。于是千言万语、滔滔不绝的个人心绪或生活的记述就变成了一场美妙的汉字舞蹈，当然，被展示、或者说被窥视的“个人新闻”什么也没有看清，传达完全失效，但是从另一个角度上说又看清了――日记作者以文字表演精神之舞这个事件本身被成功地表现出来。在这种“看法”下，随意更换内容和作者，效果不会有什么两样。是“个人新闻”没有意义？还是在此时代中个体的精神生活已经同质化？莎士比亚的剧本《麦克白》中有一段独白：“人生不过是一个行走的影子，一个在舞台上指手划脚的伶人，登场片刻，就在无声无息中悄然退下；它是一个由白痴所讲的故事，充满了喧哗和骚动，却找不出一点意义。”福克纳写过一部名著《喧哗与骚动》。蒋志仅用一个3分钟的短片就表达了类似的概念（尽管意义不可同日而语），把新媒介艺术的智慧和优美发挥到极致。我们没法认定日记作者精神健康的状况如何，此处的“呓语”，严格说来不是人的悲剧，而是媒介的悲剧。徐冰的《析世鉴》之后，当代艺术中利用汉字做作品者不乏其人，我还没有见过做得这样好的。

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 据《圣经·创世纪》，挪亚从方舟里出来时，献了全燔祭，上帝就降福挪亚一家和得救的万物，决定以后不再因人的罪恶而兴洪水毁灭大地，“因为人心的思念从小就邪恶”（创8：21）， 并以彩虹作为立约的标记。彩虹是承诺、希望、宽免的象征，几乎所有受过西方文化影响的人，都有类似的观念。但在中国古代，彩虹的含义完全不同。注意“虹”字从“虫”，《诗经》又称“虹”为“蝃蝀”、“蛴”，中国古人相信，如果用手指指虹霓，指头就会肿痛。《国风》中有一首描写男女私奔的诗《蝃蝀》：“蝃蝀在东，莫之敢指。”注释者认为，虹是阴阳二气不和谐的产物，象征着不正当的欲望，因此不祥。蒋志的“彩虹”，以取“承诺”的象征为始，以取“邪气”、“勾引”的象征为终，中西结合得很好。彩虹曾经是“金光大道”上的投影，现在则是消费主义图腾――欲壑难填的无穷无尽的勾引，勾引和被勾引之间默契的标记。　

这个庞大的系列开始于2005年，蒋志称之为“童话体的反讽之作。”2007年的《尘世彩虹》录相装置又将彩虹的语义回溯到计划经济时代。他收集了一批文革时期的老照片，每一张照片上，标准的洗脑后的笑容，满脸的革命纯真。艺术家毫不犹豫地、有技巧地把彩虹印上去，让乌托邦在逝物上显影――室内，是观众熟悉的斑驳的卫生墙，老式暖气片，几乎可以闻到一股撤空后的霉味；窗外，“时代彩虹”正在表演，这当然是重头戏。此彩虹由霓虹灯招牌的影像集合而成：成百上千个标志闪烁，汇成一道虹霓，像一股妖氛，忽然照临城市上空，令人悚然。这个展览让表面上对立的两个时代的精神暴露了内在的同一性：都是“尘世彩虹”，都是地上的乌托邦――按照主流的、合法的观点，后者还只是前者的“初级阶段”，那么，“高级阶段”是什么呢？

摄影部分将“妖氛”――中国古人不敢手指的怪物――添加到不同场合的“服务区”上空。其实并没有添加什么，不过将霓虹灯招牌放到“本来该在的位置”（“霓虹灯”这个词也暗示了“灯”与“霓虹”的联系），这些引导着当代人欲望的无处不在的彩虹碎片竟理所当然地成了“立约的标记”：消费主义把整个大地建成了消费场所，似乎感觉到有必要时时处处强调“上帝不会再毁灭我们”（可见其内心深处的不安）。在《神经症及其呓语》展中，“高级阶段”提前降临了。《不在服务区的彩虹》有两张照片：一张是在海上，“彩虹”雄赳赳地横跨碧波万顷；一张是在罗布泊，核试验后的洪荒地貌，“彩虹”照常升起。可是地球上已经空荡荡（消费干净了？），不见了繁华的都市，不见了人，“妖氛”还在勾引谁呢？“你来买我！你来买我！”在一片死寂中亮着――但愿这真的只是艺术家的“神经”。　

2008年6月

- Interpreting Jiang Zhi’s narrative on the Light series

By Zhu Dake

A brief history on the narration of light

 The eye, the world and the light that illuminates the world are the three fundamental elements for the birth of images. The ontological meaning of light, in other words the duality smof  between bright and dim, light and darkness are filtered into the canonical teachings of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity to symbolize the eternal light, warmth, truth, righteousness and love.

 Light is not only a positive force, but also the core constituent for utopia. As it is clearlyed written in the Old Testament, “When God gives it light, there was light.” – a simple narrative at the wake of humanity. The spirit brought light to the land with a supreme love. ThereonTherein, the light became symbolic of the savior in its resistance toof the darkness of the world consistings of demons, miseries and painful memories. In the New Testament, God was the light. He was the origin of the supreme entity and theological ontology.

 Light is a key term in spiritual rhetoric. However in the antediluvian time and Neolithic times, light had always been teamwas associated with the sun and fire. The sun symbolizeding the origin of daylight, and fire as the origin of light at night, are two illuminations that shine upon our eyes and spirit through the cycle of these two ultimate phenomena.

 The positive narration of light governs the visual mode in the human axial age, it floated perpetually in Van Gogh’s eyes, transforming the sun, the stars, the field and steeple churches into steep raising flames. The last flame bearer in the Neolithic period was entangled inby the golden light and its reflections. However,  thatthis is not the artist’s envision of light, but the light’s chaotic burning on the human retina.

 This Neolithic narration of light was revised by Walter Benjamin in a poetic story on gas lamps. Benjamin reminded us of the dim mood on the dark streets of Paris – a scene rendered by gas lamps that embodies the dark quality of Europe as a whole. The city was concealed and became gradually ambiguous with somnolent illumination. Compared withto other timeses in the past, the Paris night in Paris is radiatesing athe most feverish passion. Even though all European urban areas are lit by new light sources, yet it had extended the romantic aura from Benjamin’s time. 

 The general topic on light is mostly absent in traditional Chinese painting. Literati painting of the countryside only focused on representing the eternal daylight andthat has shown a rare indifference to the representation of the sun and the flames. It is not only due to the idleness of ink paintings techniques to the narration of light, but also refers to thesorts to a kind of yin of Taoist philosophy. Such philosophy overlooks the illumination and warmth of the yang., Iinstead it promotes objects of the meek and  the dim. In Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, only one phrase consolidates the existence of light (all glares tempered);, its goal is to educate people in adjusted and weakened the functions of light. Laozi is a keeper of xuan (Night, black and darkness) as well as “trance” and “ignorance.”. Such conservative stance of an “era of before illumination” had been stubbornly supporteding the ancient beliefs of indigenous artists.

 The waves of modernization of the late twentieth century had completely transformed this ancient Chinese tradition. Responding closely to the late capitalism of the west, China under transformation was hurried into constructing a political legend of “heyday” and “the most powerful nation of the twenty- first century.”. The passionate nationalism, state-ism and populism had formed into a homogenous ideology that made an deafeningear numbing bang to the world. As we have already seen, most postings on the internet called on all corners of the world for the relay of the Olympic torch. The flame became the most captivating political symbol, andd has caught the attention of the world. To a certain extent, this is precisely an exciting narration on “the blinding light of the system.”.

 In most cases,  either traditional or contemporary art, art has omitted its their narrative on light as well as  their reflections on its history. The art of firecrackers, manipulated by Cai Guo-qiang, is a typical “light of the nation.” I, its praising grammar is applicable to all celebrations of nationalism that can be the vibrant laces decorating the heyday. Only a few are observant of the complex nature of light. Jiang Zhi’s narrative on the light provides evidence to this regard. In China’s indigenous cultural context, Jiang Zhi dared to state skeptically, “The light is omnipotent enough that it could definitely simulate a violent act,.” wWhich then led him to follow with the se questions, “Is what’s suddenly given true happiness? Or is that masked misery?” This is his profound statement on the logic of light and violence. I, in other words, it is a type of reversed knowledge that completely negates the meaning in the Bible in an attempt to reveal the omitted reality from the itBible. The unusual relationship between light and violence founds the beginning of Jiang Zhi’s work.

Narration on Rainbow 

In Jiang Zhi’s logical chronology of conceptual photography, the flame appears in the form of a flame – the ultimate form of a flame in the system of agricultural civilization. It consists of chemical formulas that transforms to vivid and exuberant flowers displayed and rises to the sky according to one’s physical will. On the snow- covered ground inof the winter, such a flame canould not be used for its warmth, but it is adequate to define insignificant lives, and draws the momentary contour of happiness. This is a narrative similar to Anderson’s Match Girl, by approaching the actual truth with satire. At the chilling location where the toys are curled up and lodged, the flame emits to myriads of fine rays with extended exposure,  and are curvinged due to the wind effect,, that wavinges into certain elegancet and softness expression.

 The bonfire in the snow is the weakest among all flames, not only because it is fragile in terms of time., Mmoreover, it does not produce emit enough any heat that would provide the necessary tenergy to those in need. Its only value resides in showing certain laughable hope. And this is the Chinese version of the “Anderson effect.”, Iit is the inception point of criticism in Jiang Zhi’s “Light Series.”, I it dances on the anonymous land covered with snow;, in other words, it dances on a completely fictional site, that formings the seamless  congruent logic of in the cruel reality – the  of the dark brick factory.  

 Compared to the flame, the rainbow seems to play a more important role in Jiang Zhi’s spectrum of lights. It is light itself, but also the effect of illumination, as well as being a decorative imagery that happens after the storm. As it is said in the Old Testament, it represents the merging of heaven and earth, yet has always been understood as a promise from the sky (spirit) by the masses, moreover, was often further extended to the glamorous symbol of utopia. The meaning of the rainbow is scattered;, it opened up a broad path for legendary narration on ideology.

 Jiang Zhi’s Post Rainbow is manifested in the ose monochromatic Old Photograph series, as well as in the video installation of the Worldly Rainbow in 2008. In those group photos taken during the Cultural Revolution expressing loyalty, there are curved, colorful lines of explanations that , they look like seem like certain kind of natural rainbows, which dislocates with the monochromatic history (of reality), implying the spiritual characteristics of the Chinese masses from the1960s to the 1970s. The people iin the photograph are placed in a two-dimensional monochromatic world of monotony, frugal attires, naïve expressions filled with hope, yearning into the empty sky. The rainbow Jiang Zhi added precisely filled the visual void of those photographed. They are the happy slaves of the Utopian rainbow captured by the legend in the sky that in turn, made them the young believers of political rhetoric. Even though both the legend and the rainbow eventually disappeared into oblivion, but the masses wereas not enlightened by it. They are doomed to be perpetually held up by other rainbows, flames, or blinding lights. In my view, Jiang Zhi has not purposefully constructeding the new utopia, but a restoration of the concept in totalitarianism. 

 Jiang Zhi’s Present Tense Rainbow has tampered with a completely different subject. They swoops over the skies of the metropolis that are metaphorsical of both the capitalist materialistic desire and emotional longings. They are It is an illusion of the consumption era overlapping on the blue print of this nation’s heyday. Those modernized communities and high rises are growing at large that are becoming the main visual focus of the urban landscape, whereas the rainbow is a political emblematic that hovers over  in the sky of the urban space andthat renders the contours of this new life. Contrastingly to Past Tense Rainbow, Present Tense Rainbow consists of mixing the bits and pieces of the cities’ neon lights (a kind of electronic rainbows)., Tthey are the mathematical square of the rainbow, and that doublyes the deciphersing of the cult of consumerism. How  we are we wrapped inwith the reality of materialistic civilization that seems to be more illusory than the Mao era?, Bbecause it is almost a reality within our reach.

  Jiang Zhi’s “Rainbow over Tian’anmen” is the transcendental combination of the imperial architecture and people of the twenty- first century. In this work, entitled Rainbow No.3, the rainbow was embellished such that it raises from the topic of palace-like street lights, sweepsing over sharp staffs, hovering over the city gate  unsaillably in elegant hemispherical curves, as a seal of the spirit, proclaiming its grandeur, brightness and righteousness. TWhere the people looking up, cheers, photographs and murmurs among themselves. Remarkably, over the last century and a half, people haves always been the basis for this immanent utopia.

 The visual narrative ofn Tian’anmen had transgressed over the history of last hundred years. FromSince the patriotic march of the May Fourth Movement, to Mao Zedong’s meeting with the mass red guards, to the political reassessments in the ’80s, to conceptual photography of the twenty- first century, this chain of narratives will continue to extend. Time will not dispel the narrator’s infatuation withon this architecture. , iOn the contrary, as the system extends itself, new narratives will emerge.

 We have already witnessed, the crimson power of utopia has makde peace secretively with that capital iist Present Tense Rainbow. This is an unquestionable satirical phenomenon. These fragments were once marks of capitalist desires that haves now becoame a metaphor for new nationalism. TheyIt exemplifyies various intricate political transformations; , mmoreover, they underscores the duality in Chinese society -: on the one hand is trying to sustaining its effective post-totalitarianism and, on the other hand, to closely collaboratinged with the global capital, and b based on which compiling a kind of an unprecedented image of new-utopia. As for the vigilant and skeptical artists, this is nothing but an opportunity to unveil the truth through examining the intrinsic essence of this heyday.

Narration on Blinding Light

 In close response to the narrative of rainbow over Tian’anmen, Jiang Zhi is also reporting to us on the new “urban illumination.”. The illumination on the Bund in Shanghai produced an urban capitalist illusion, whereas Jiang Zhi’s narrative on light shiftsed from the rainbow to illuminating the night sky. On August 8, 2007, over hundreds of singers sang the theme song We Are Readydy, momentarily as, beams of light emittedting from the back of the gate of Tian’anmen; the , rendering a scene calls to mind a risings if the red sun is raising. According to news reports, the entire spectacle of light exhausted more than 4350 kilowatts of energy -, the annual energy provision for a enough for a small city of two hundred people population’s annual energy provision.

 As the “Beijing Olympics One Year Countdown” celebration performance proved to us, nationalism is indeed “ready” for this great light, they shine wantonly on the faces of the city, and wished to transform the latter into enticing windows of the world. The fan- shaped array of lights behind the gate of Tian’anmen is a stereotypical narrative of the sun, that is to direct imposing itse the haloo of the sun onto the architecture of Tian’anmen. Such creative ideas by the light engineers projects a type of historical replicates on the structure of Mao’s statue during the Cultural Revolution period. As it is revealed in the twenty first century in China, theyit seems to be a testimony of post-Cultural Revolution essence. Under this radiant symbolism, are hidden  with the cultural secrets of Maoism.

 What is fervently rendered by this blinding light is not only the immense architecture, but also the individual lives at insignificant positions. They are coerced into accepting the gospel of this light, and offer the necessary responsed to such gospel. In Jiang Zhi’s video work, Let T there Bbe L light, as the emphatic light strikes, people responded in various nameless emotions, such asamong them are rejections, fear, numbness and joy. Nevertheless, theseose multiple emotions arewere dispersed into disillusionment. Faces are melting away under the such radiation, and expressions becoame indistinct., Mmany details begian to vanish, leaving the viewers to use theirwith space for imaginations.

 Jiang Zhi’s video has also shown the effect of bouncing off in midair after once a blinding light is shone on a person is shone by a blinding light, as if being struck by a large bullet that, not only erodes his face would erode, often  and dismember the entire head. would began to dismember. Only the body maintained distinctive details – it remains standing or flying off, embodying the beautiful disposition of man. Moreover, it is precisely characterized as the body revels, as well as an analogy for the violence of this blinding radiance. (Thing Wwould T turn Uunbelievable Oonce I it Hhappens. Pphotographs, 2007)

 Under this totalitarian era, the violent philosophy of the blinding light has been completely exposed: on the one hand it wishes to re-sculpt the body, on the other hand, it obliterates the existence of the mind. Theseis is are the multiple metaphors for the Chinese circumstance. According to Jiang Zhi’s narrating images, it has first meltsed away the surface and appearances, then into the mindhead. The former is used for our distinction of distinction of different individuals, whereas the latter is whatthe actual evidence to determines their existence.

 The erossionveness of the blinding light on the individual and individuality areis the optical metaphor for this totalitarian system that accurately portraysed the vulnerability of people under the violence of such blinding force. To endure the most scortching light is the most severe intellectual cruelty people need to confront. This blinding light is so bright that itwould not only causes blinding, but it would also crumbles people’s individual awareness and their souls. The blinding light is the physical symbol counterings utopia, and the metaphysical relationship between the sun and people is more or less as is.

Narration on Darkness 

We have already traced into the ultimate origin of the sacred light in the past. It comes from the most ancient religion that in the end evolved into the powerful weapons of totalitarianism and autocracy. It forced people to look at designated objects while preventinged them from reaching for objects of truth. At the same time, the objects light can on which light may shine on are also limited and preselected, and concealing the rest under darknessit only selects those that need illumination, and conceal others in the dark. This is the principle of light rhetoric and, also the nature of floodlighting. The light is not only used to distract our vision, but it also purposefully conceals objects beyond its illumination. These floodlights popular in China’s urban landscapes, have covered all ugly, old and impoverished matters while it flauntinged itself. Light is the most treacherous conspirator of darkness. 

Without a question, the most self-apparent objects under the light is would be dust. Those Llight weight, dustt floating builds into a fantastic yet undetermined phenomenon. Dust is the lowliest object, but receives the most majestic illumination. The most dignified light and the lowliest dust have reached an alliance of discourse – an unspeakable physical phenomenon. The current cultural reality can testify that the blinding light always shines first on the floating dust of culture provoked by society, and salutes to meaningless matters. This is the most shameless dialogue between light and dust. They have collaboratively toppleds the core value of the human axial era. 

However in another context, the philosophy of the violence of this blinding light exposes its own schizophrenia;. On the one hand, i produces violent instruments and, on the other hand it reveals themese instruments. This is entirely depends on the one who manipulates the power to emit the blinding light. Politicians can exercise tyranny with it, and artists canould also create spiritual revolt. From Jiang Zhi’s diaries, the act of photographing itself is a severe cultural bantering. The artist takes advantage of the darkness and the guard’s negligence, spots (prospect), designs, installs, waits, works and then escapes, in order to complete the entire process of conceptual photography – that seems to be a visual game between the mousice and the cat. Precisely based on the birth of such antagonistic images, China’s movement on maintaining legal rights and interests have just received a new visionual version. 

Jiang Zhi’s Things Wwould Tturn Nnails Oonce I t Hhappens is a work in his Light series. As a unique operation of the blinding light, it is not a repetition of violence, but an optical praise on resisting violence. Of course, it is also a momentary illumination on the darkness by choosing to become blind. In March 2007, when the law on property rights passed by the People’s Congress in, Chongqing harbored the “most courageous held out household” in Chinese history. , Tthe couple’s insistent resistance to the government’s relocation policy caught on the fervent the nation’s attention of the nation. Right bRight before the building was to be demolished, Jiang Zhi rushed to the scene, and set up powerful lighttings, projecting a beam of  proclaiming blinding light on the two- storieds red brick building sunkank into the pit, by which completed the absurd and quirky artistic illumination. 

       This is an illumination worthy of our re-interpretation because it has transcended the boundariesorder of conceptual photography. The contesting story of such light and darkness is the artist’s optical experiment in the dark reality.y, Mmoreover it is determined to be deciphered by sociologists as enhancing the maintenance of citizens’ rights and interests. The key to this situation also resides in the eternity of darkness, as well as the irreversibility of the corrosion by this blinding light. What the artist could achieve is theo search for the fragments of light at the center of darkness, and unravel certain annotations for it. Unlike writing or speaking, images offer the mostt direction enlightenment. Jumping over the visual barrier, it is screamsing  out the truth behind the darkness.