The 4th Guangzhou Triennial-The Unseen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jiang Zhi’s new painting series, A Thought Arises, began in
2010. These images are neither the artist’s own expression
based on a personal aesthetic relationship to the real
world, nor are they his digital productions or manipulations;
instead, they are generated by the computer screen itself,
by a system error or delay resulting in the display of an
interrupted interface. As the artist notes, these visual
results “form another spectacle that derives from an inner
and abstract world of the computer. It is a stimulated
momentary world that can be easily changed and reshaped,
and seems to be even more vulnerable, accidental,
unreliable and transient.”
Through a pre-set mechanism within the computer
display, lines and colours propagate and extend in endless
succession following a system error, appearing as abnormal
fragments of digital visualisation. The original screenshots
should not be seen as ‘images’ as per our common
understanding. They are ‘corrupted images’ or ‘faulty
images’, but not ‘false images’; not misrepresentations,
but rather imperfect extensions of something very real
occuring behind the screen. Though the resulting paintings
look abstract and expressive, they are produced through a
realistic method, imitating what was actually displayed.
This series is a new and somewhat democratic
collaboration between computer and owner. The former
is no longer merely a digital ‘assistant’, but acts as an
independent ‘creator’, whilst the latter ‘sees’ its ‘creations’
and transforms them into ‘images’. During this collaboration
‘images’ are produced spontaneously from digital data
and then found and captured by the artist, who ultimately
endorses them through his oil painting reinterpretations.
Now true or false, abstract or realistic, digital or substantial,
copied or invented, artificial or natural have all lost their
boundaries.

 

from The 4th Guangzhou Triennial-Catalogue- p188

 

蒋志自2010 年的最新作品系列《一念》是以绘画的形式呈
现的。这些图像既不是艺术家基于现实世界及其审美经验的
绘画性表达，也不是假借数码技术的生成或处理，而源自于
显示系统出现故障和滞后时继续操作电脑在屏幕上留下的痕
迹，一种随“机”生成的、偶得的图像。如艺术家自己所说的，
“它们进而形成了一个景观，像是来自一个内在的、有抽象意
味的世界。这是一个被瞬间激发而现的世界，也是一个随时
都可被更改和另建的世界—它更脆弱，更偶然，更无常，更
短暂。”
那些线条和色彩被不停拖动的鼠标延续和繁殖，按着电脑自
身预先设置的显示机制而形成一个个失常的数码视觉片断。
这些截屏本来都不会被称为是正常的“图像”，从人们的习惯
阅读角度来看，它们是一种“坏败之像”，或者可以说是一种“错
像”，但非“假象”，真实地存在于屏幕的背后。而这些绘画，
尽管在形式上是抽象的表现的，其实践方式却是一种严谨的
写实—即对电脑屏幕所显画面的写实。
在这个系列中，艺术家和电脑达成了一种全新的、似乎更加
平等的合作模式。电脑在这里不再是通常意义上的数码工具，
而是有“独立思考”的“创作者”；与此同时，艺术家真正地“看
见”了这些“创作”，并要称之为“图像”。在这个合作中，“图
像”被反复转译，从最初的数字到电脑屏幕的视觉显示，从艺
术家的阅读、发现和捕捉，最后再到以传统油画媒介为背景
的绘画写实，一定要从方法上“弄假成真”。此时，错误的还
是正确的，抽象的还是写实的，数码的和实在的，仿制的还是
创造的，人工的还是天成的，全都失去边界。