Zhan Rui in his solo exhibition "Data Naturalism" scene Photo / Reporter Sun Lingyu
As a university teacher, Zhan Rui is too reticent. Friends from other places who have known each other for nearly ten years came to Wuhan, a group of people got together, he did not stick to the wine, and when others said and laughed, he always quietly left the table and greeted the dish that had not yet been served. Some people drank too much, and naturally he escorted them home one by one.
Sullen in nature, with a low head, even if the accent is heavy, people around him often do not think that he is a wuhan person who is extravagant. Only when he talks about a local richest man, or a familiar city topic such as the chrysanthemum exhibition that has not changed over the years outside the car window, he rarely catches up with several sentences.
When he is not teaching at Hubei Academy, he basically stays in the studio he designed and transformed. Put on some light music and create rigorously as if you were experimenting. Taking the weather as an example, he has made a series of canvases of 120cm × 120cm evenly divided into 100 squares, each square is subdivided into four small triangles, and every day according to the rain and rain and snow, different shades of yellow or red or other monochrome are selected to be painted, and the generation of a work takes 400 days.
"Weather - 400 Blue Triangles" Acrylic on canvas 120cm×120cm 2016
Still around the weather, he bought different colors and thicknesses of A4 color paper from Taobao, through the folding of different directions to indicate the weather of the day, each fold spread out, scan or shoot in a stable light environment, remove the vignetting angle and then spliced into a 120cm×169cm large picture, the amplitude of each paper spread determines the depth of the crease and the area of the shadow, select the front or back of the paper to shoot will also get a completely different visual effect. There are 7 columns in all directions, and a complete map records 49 days of clouds, and nearly two months have passed.
The title of the work is as delicate as the artist himself, exuding the temperament of the physical examination report: "Weather - 304.2 grams of gold", "Weather - 162.24 grams of blue", in addition to the theme, the number of paper grams, color, there is no other explanation. The audience who came to the second floor of hubei art museum to watch Zhan Rui's solo exhibition rarely can find out what is going on at a glance, and the artist's friends have come, and many of them also think it is a painting.
Unwilling to give up on this, he specially went to consult professionals, and the other party replied with concern, "This is an artistic innovation brought by the computer, similar to computer programming, which is a diagram made by various software after the computer imports data, rather than drawing, which is a new field of visual art." ”
The misunderstandings and confusion stacked day by day drifted between the exhibition halls, the difference was only in "can't understand" and "can't understand", so that every time I met Zhan Rui who accompanied a friend to see the exhibition, the exhibition hall administrator who worked in the art museum all year round couldn't help but come to him to "complain", "The audience has a lot of questions, always ask me!" ”
The most inquired about was Hall 5. Nearly 300 square meters of the exhibition hall at first glance empty, a little more careful, more look around, found that the original wall seems to be covered with a layer of white baffle; and then careful, almost have to lie on this baffle, in order to find many abnormalities, sockets, electrical boxes, fire doors, emergency exit signs, etc. are just camouflaged flat patterns, several "false walls" composed of installation works called "Art Museum", Zhan Rui will be the original wall surface is equal to the shooting, and then use photographic resolution to restore one by one with high definition, Printed out, remounted on the newly built folded wall.
The whole exhibition hall seems to have a layer of skin, and no black dot or crack can escape such a precise reproduction. He once explained his intentions, "The presentation of my works is more critical of the spatial environment of the exhibition, so I will definitely consider minimizing all kinds of interference in the installation, but the hall of "Art Museum" can be said to have carried out a reverse operation, truly restoring and even strengthening all the wall details." If we want to think from the perspective of data, it is actually to dataize the wall and output it, although it may not have thought of this when doing it, but in the end it is closed with the theme, that is, the whole operation is still very close to my individual relationship. ”
Gallery Installation Size Variable 2021
The seemingly futile work took half a year, and there were more than thirty people involved in the project, and in the construction process alone, there were often more than a dozen workers who climbed up and down the folding ladder to work. The audience's confusion and even neglect did not make Zhan Rui feel discouraged, but after the development, seeing that some viewers thought there was no place to see, the moment they went straight through, he felt that this work was successful and achieved the desired effect. "The audience only sees the final presentation, and many of those links are not in the process of presentation. In the creation, I may like to present the movements as lightly as possible, as if nothing has been done, but in fact, the whole process is particularly large. ”
The data determines the final form of the work
The solo exhibition, which opened in September 2021, is titled "Data Naturalism", in which the creators retreat to the corner, surrender sovereignty, and obey the cold and warm weather of the outside world and the rise and fall of the stock market, which determine the final presentation of the work, and have nothing to do with the mood of the person holding the paintbrush. Zhan Rui hopes to use this de-subjecting method to maximize the activation of data and materials, and to exert their own characteristics.
The data is not only the axis of creation, but also dominates everything related to the exhibition: the wall height of the exhibition hall is 3 meters 4, so the middle value is selected when hanging the work, even if it is slightly higher than the conventional 1 meter 6, which is not the most aesthetically comfortable height; the horizontal level is also adapted to local conditions, and the strict equidistance between the works is also adapted; the color selection of the wall does not rely on the paint on the spot, but allocates the value on the computer; the exhibition preface is no longer distributed in a flaky manner, and the line is arranged word by word into a 40-meter-long line, and the audience reads it as if scrolling to read the information.
As early as before the official exhibition, he had manually built a model of the five exhibition halls in proportion, arranged the base color of the walls and the distribution of light sources in each exhibition hall, controlled every detail and the overall effect, and a certain gray wall alone was selected from nearly 30 kinds of gray cardboard.
He is by no means the kind of creator who crosses the river by feeling the stones, and pays more attention to the concept of perfection than to the actual action of the unknown path, and he should not rush to start reading a hundred times before his righteousness is self-realized. In 2004, he graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Hubei Academy of Fine Arts and went to the Art Department of the University of London for further study, and during the two years of studying in a foreign country, what touched him most was that the binding relationship between theory and practice was very obvious in the classroom, "When you do anything, you must have a process of theoretical experimentation, which is very different from China." ”
In 2008, he returned to his alma mater as a teacher, and at the same time began to explore his own creations in the studio near the old campus of the Academy of Fine Arts. After months of thinking, he had the structure in his head. At that time, the consciousness of data was not obvious, but there was already a concept of numbers: 9 was the largest in the singular, but nine-nine was one and formed a void cycle, which contained the Chinese concepts of logic and time.
He spread out his canvas and drew ninety-nine eighty-one squares with red pen, filling one square of gray each day until 81 filled.
More than a decade later, he is still slowly moving on this trajectory, "When we look at the work after it is completed, in fact, it leaves nothing behind." What we see is still a red frame, it is actually a concept of emptiness, this work can have a kind of implicit relationship with my "Art Gallery", right? ”
After the gray grid was painted, he strengthened it again in the form of reading seconds. Paint a pre-ticked number with gray paint every day until 81 days are finished. "This actually emphasizes the concept of time in my works, so these two early works have initially established a system of my entire creation in a sense."
He was like a bricklayer who didn't rush the deadline, adding only one brick at a time. After the completion of the above two works, he began to fill in different colors, gradually injecting information such as weather, stock ups and downs, etc.
In 2016, he turned his attention to the 7278 fixed in the monthly salary text message, drawing 100 rectangular grids of 15.7cm × 7.7cm, filled with different colors and arrangements each month, "equivalent to playing a game".
"Salary - 7278 (August)" Acrylic on canvas 175cm×97cm 2016
The scope of the game gradually expanded, he once used the frequency of sexual life in the 81 days of others as the theme, let the interviewee choose a color, on the canvas of 1 meter 8 × 1 meter 8, fill in one by one, no sex life color block filled in 16 times, sexual life filled in 18 times. The front view only feels that it is a monochrome work, and when it is changed to the side, a slight color difference is revealed. In the end, the frequency and visual structure of each person are completely different. This way of creating is zhan rui's most satisfactory state, "to minimize my subjectivity, I am just a handmade." ”
Stocks of listed companies in nylon pens and bristle pens rose and fell
In recent years, Zhan Rui has begun to experiment with shape changes and pay more attention to tapping the potential of the material itself. In 2020, he used nylon pens, bristles brushes, wolf brushes, etc. to alternately draw the stock rise and fall of listed companies such as ICBC, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, Guizhou Moutai and PetroChina in 180 days, of which "Tencent-related" Internet companies such as Meituan, Pinduoduo, JD.com, Weilai, and Tongcheng Yilong all chose circular picture frames.
Looking closer, 180 threads cut into thin strips. Smoothing represents the stock rising on the day, and drawing a wear-like effect represents falling. In the pure black background wall background, it means that the market value of gold and silver copper Gordon pigment emits a different luster, each of which will be subdivided again according to the company's performance in the stock market, the most dazzling gold is bright gold, copper is divided into copper, brass, bronze, stainless steel color represents the lowest market value.
Works of different "market prices" have been collected at the same price, and this link is still an extension of the work in Zhan Rui's view, "I actually turned the rise and fall of a virtual data into a material thing, entered the gallery and then became a commodity on display, and returned to the currency state after sales, and this cycle is also part of the work." ”
Although it is completed by brushes, this series is more inclined to sculpture in his mind, so when exhibited, they are not hung close to the wall like hanging picture frames, but there is a certain distance from the wall, showing a suspended state, and each work looks like a whirlpool-like space from a distance.
Stock Metal Series Exhibition Site
During his studies in London, he often took advantage of the weekends to work part-time at the Tate Gallery, and after frequent examinations, he had a deep perception of the space, and could clearly remember whether the ground somewhere was gray cement or light oak. "The Tate's renovation plan is led by 'art' rather than 'architecture', and the museum's space avoids too designed spaces on the one hand, and neutralized white box spaces that are too continuous and featureless on the other hand."
Jenru is still shocked when she recalls the installation experiment in 2006 by Belgian artist Carsten Holler, who had a Ph.D. in biology, commissioned to build a giant slide in the Turbine Hall and turn the museum directly into a playground. At that time, he had just finished his undergraduate education of reading a lot of albums, and after coming to the art city of London, he was hungry to absorb the first-hand information he came into contact with, feeling the explosion and seriously thinking about the relationship between the works and works in each exhibition: "One exhibition hall put Roy Lichtenstein's paintings and Umberto Boccioni's sculptures together, and another exhibition hall put Anish Kapoor's sculptures and Barnett together Newman's paintings were put together. In the same exhibition hall, two works of different genres, different media, and more than fifty years apart, I will study the reasons for this. ”
Now that it is time to do her own exhibition, Zhan Rui also pays special attention to the rhythm of space and the distinction between material medium. The colorful exhibition hall is next to the empty "Art Museum", followed by the black dark tone of the image gallery, the visual stimulation is adjusted, and the types of works are as non-repetitive as possible, covering photography, installation, video, painting and sculpture.
"What data I use for each piece, why paper, why metal, there's a lot of personal processing in it. All my works have a long period of thinking and experimentation in the early stages, and I pay attention to the control of the work, or the control of my personal creative system. This means that I am always in my working state, whether it is a single work, or this space, this exhibition, I have obvious personal control over each link. My output is relatively close to what I want to achieve. ”
Part of the "out of control" is that the extremely rational creative process and working methods often eventually give rise to subtle emotions, "even empty art museums have emotional things." This mixed state is the most suitable way for Zhan Rui. "When the artist's subjectivity is particularly strong, it can output the work; but when I press this subjectivity to a very low limit, it can also output the work, and through such a work you can still feel the 'person' behind the work." I am not saying that these two works are good and who are bad, but the level of quality it embodies is different and has different values. ”