Ma Liang's Portrait of Mr. World
Chengdu Contemporary Video Museum recently presented Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Myths", which includes a total of 7 series of works created by the artist since 2010, of which the photographic work "The Way You Are" and the video collage work "The World" are exhibited for the first time. This exhibition integrates a variety of media such as theater, video, and installation, showing the artist's cross-border and diversified comprehensive artistic expression ability.
Ma Liang
Born in Shanghai in 1972, he studied fine arts since childhood and graduated from Shanghai Huashan Fine Arts School and Shanghai University School of Fine Arts. After graduation, he worked as an art director and director for advertising films.
He started photography in 2003 and has held more than 30 solo exhibitions around the world, participating in more than 100 major group exhibitions of photography and contemporary art.
In 2012, he created the art project "Mobile Photo Studio", which loaded the photography studio into a truck and a station wagon, traveled through 35 cities across the country in 10 months, built a temporary photo studio for 1600 strangers for free, and took more than 30,000 photos of wedding photos and family portraits. The number of project applicants exceeded 20,000. From 2010 to 2014, he published two collections of essays, "Confession Book" and "Undercover in the World", which attracted wide attention.
From 2014 to 2017, in tribute to his father, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, a former theater director, it took three years to complete a large-scale stage play "Daddy's Time Machine" featuring a puppet of equal height, becoming the first Chinese work to be selected for the drama unit of the International Association for the Performing Arts (ISPA) in New York.
In the second half of 2017, he returned to the field of photography creation and continued to create with video media.
In 2020, the documentary "Time Machine", which recorded his theatrical creation, was nominated for the Gotham Award for Best Documentary.
In 2021, "Time Machine" was nominated for the American Emmy Award for Best Cultural Documentary.
The exhibition begins with "Sonnets of Life and Death", two worlds inside and outside the mirror tell the poetry of life in the drifting hesitation and misjudgment; "Moment" uses the incense pillar as the medium to record the light track and scale of time, so as to recall the lost innocence and the love that was once chased... The exhibition takes Romanticism to the extreme, trying to collage and interpret propositions such as "who am I", "what is the world", and "how to communicate with the world" through video.
Chengdu Contemporary Video Museum, Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Myths" G exhibition area
Curator Zhong Weixing said, "The whole exhibition is like a labyrinth, he only told you a clue to interpret the "Private Myth" and some vague starting points, the final end point needs to be explored by the viewer himself, but no matter how profound, I firmly believe that everyone will find their own exit, perhaps this is the charm and charm of Ma Liang's works." ”
Artist Ma Liang said, "Sometimes it's like facing a vast sky or an empty valley, shouting and saying what you want to say, but the world is vast, you don't know who will hear it, but fortunately there will always be a little echo." ”
Ma Liang,"All Things In One"
Q What do you mean by "Private Myth"?
A The name comes from a quote by the American scholar Joseph Campbell about Freud: "Dreams are private myths, and myths are public dreams." I quote half of this sentence as the subject of this exhibition, because I want to say that this work is sometimes like a big dream, it seems to be free to come and go freely, but in fact the shackles are everywhere, so the author needs some kind of illusion, feels as if he is creating a myth, everything has meaning, of course this must be just an illusion, but when an author explores independently, finds himself in the dark, this illusion is a necessary support.
Q The exhibition features a total of 7 series of works you created since 2010, which involve video collage works, drama, video, installation and other media, these cross-border and diversified expressions are what you have been pursuing? Do you think that there is a "boundary" in the matter of artistic creation?
A is a subconscious behavior, positioning yourself as a photographic author or a theater author, a video director or a crossover, in fact, is a self-limiting behavior, and there is no need for positioning to have freedom. All media seem to be just a tool, and it is important to complete the narrative, to complete the author's telling, and it is of course good to use a medium skillfully, but sometimes the jerkiness generated by a novice using a completely new means is also fascinating, and even the error itself may be the beginning of an innovation, but also a possibility, may be closer to the truth of this flawed world, and it is impossible to be perfect.
In terms of creation, the boundary itself is one of the goals to be broken, and the sense of freedom or failure we gain is very meaningful.
Q Looking at the exhibition site, there is a very strong sense of theater, watching your previous interviews, sitting in the theater as a child and watching the movie over and over again is like "Paradise Cinema", what impact does the movie and the theater bring to you?
A Indeed, I know that drama is particularly important in my work, and this is not a special pursuit, it is a life instinct, it is subconscious, and drama is the gift of fate to my life. I was born in a family of drama workers, in the 70s there was no nanny, so after school, a lot of time, are spent in the theater rehearsal hall or backstage, so my childhood has an inseparable connection with the drama, like the sentence in the Tang poem, with the wind sneaking into the night, moisturizing the fine silent, in fact, I did not know at the time, did not know that those days and nights are like a fixed prelude of life, and then they all play their own lives on this basic song. Speaking of influence, it is that he has become your favorite, you like this thing, you feel that only this thing is right, I really like drama, like the sense of conflict in the picture. When I was creating, this was a kind of intuition that guided me, and I could only follow my intuition.
Q Now look at your work is a bit like Alice in Wonderland, what is the wonderland in your heart? How did your wonderland come about?
A My current work is gradually less whimsical, but it is true that many years ago my work was full of dream absurdity, which became a certain creative hallmark of mine. You ask me how it was built? In fact, it is difficult for me to answer accurately, in this mountain, the clouds are deep and unknown.
Ma Liang's Sonnets of Life and Death
Q Is photography your way of communicating with the world? What does the world look like in your eyes?
A well, yes, photography is one of the most important languages I can speak with the world, but I don't know if the world can understand me. You ask me what the world is like? I don't know, in this exhibition I used a video work "The World" to explain my confusion, and I also hope to get the answer, but in fact there is no, or because the world is too rich and vast, it is impossible to have an ultimate answer. "The World" uses more than 400 videos, five or six hundred people's text answers, all about explaining "what is the world". Perhaps, this work is also an answer to my answer to your overly vast question, although the answer is still full of ambiguity and vagueness, but because it presents the same characteristics as this world, beautiful and full of contradictions, moving and desperate, this seems to be close to some kind of answer.
Ma Liang's "World"
Q Curators say that photography is not peeping but insight for you, who and what are the things that attract your attention the most now?
A thank you curator for this sentence, very touching, I have indeed been trying to do this, but I do not know whether to do it, I always feel that the basic beauty of image or art, is a trap, let humanity simplification, flat, an author should pursue some things that dive under the surface, explore some problems. Of course, it may be a very personal artistic concept, or it may be just a private philosophical view, which does not necessarily have universal value, but it must be more worthy of consideration and scrutiny than the superficial glimpse. I am now nearly half a hundred years old, at the central point of life, looking forward, there are aging parents, looking back, is a young child, I am like in the middle of a scale, I must open my arms, carry and balance the weight of both sides of life, but also thus present a gesture of embrace, not confrontation. I hope that the current works are more of a sincere life experience, my own simple emotions as a person, these are a spiritual core of my recent years of creation, although not necessarily the works are talking about this, but there is no doubt that the years have given me a certain tenderness and compassion, like the creeping eyes, my eyes can now see a lot of things that I could not see.
Ma Liang, "The Last Knight of Shanghai"
Q How has technology changed your creations?
A As creators, technology is constantly changing the tools in our hands at a rapid pace. Just like the camera is a typical example, how complicated it was to take photos, how convenient it was after having a digital camera, and after having a mobile phone, many documentary photographers lost their jobs, in those emergencies, nothing can enter the central scene more than mobile phone photography, closer to the truth. These technological changes must have promoted the pattern of art creators, changed the working methods, and even subtly and secretly changed the creator's way of thinking, which is inevitable and has been confirmed. But these things are also double-edged swords, everything is relative, and all the progress in the world is actually a regression of an opposing position. So convenience is not necessarily a good thing, too close, not necessarily. People must be sober, we are human beings who use tools, we must be vigilant against being eaten by science and technology and becoming its slaves, which may be an important proposition that human beings will inevitably face later.
Ma Liang, "The Way You Look"
Wen Zhangna
Edited by Han Haha