View "Pang Maokun: 2022 Copy" has a feeling
When art is like a bullet flying
About Pang Maokun
Born in Chongqing in 1963, he studied at the Affiliated Middle School of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts from 1978 to 1981, and from 1981 to 1988, he studied in the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts and obtained a master's degree in oil painting.
Over the years, he has been insisting on exploring the expression and presentation of classical oil painting language in the current cultural situation, and casting his personal artistic creation into social reality. While constructing a personalized language style, it also continuously enriches the spiritual character of Chinese oil painting, and derives the value and significance of oil painting art in the culture of the times. His works have participated in many art exhibitions at home and abroad, and have been collected by many art institutions and private collections at home and abroad. Representative works include "Apple Ripe", "Rainbow Quietly In the Air", "A Golden Summer", "Blur Series", "Virtual Time Series", "Coincidence Series", "Guangyao Series", "Tour Series", "Folded Portrait" series, etc.
CHAPTER 01
Section 1
The famous Chinese painter Pang Maokun has been in a hurry over the years, and even though he is the president of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts and has a very busy administrative work, he still has not let his studio be in the shadows of time.
Therefore, in 2020, he was able to hold a large-scale solo exhibition "Pang Maokun: 2020 Copy" at the Shanghai Long Art Museum, and in 2021, he held a solo exhibition "Viewing, Gazing and Presence" at the Chengdu Thousand Plateaus Art Center... At the beginning of 2022, on January 1, he toured Chongqing and held a large solo exhibition "Pang Maokun: 2022 Copy" at the Long Art Museum (Chongqing Pavilion) in Jiangbeizui.
Chongqing finally waited for Pang Maokun to come back, and there was no need to watch the waterfall hanging in front of the river...
The good feng shui in the area of Jiangbeizui can be seen as the river flowing slowly in jialing in winter, and the most sloppy light rail in Chongqing crosses the mountains and mountains on the rock cliffs, through the buildings and holes. The Long Museum of High Walls and Wide Windows, with its spacious space, is indeed a place where very thick art can be held.
However, if we look at "Pang Maokun: 2022 Copy" with the traditional art appreciation, we will face serious aesthetic challenges. Do you dare to fight? It's like Hamlet asking himself over and over again: To survive or to perish?!
This is the cruel and hopeful choice we must make in the face of a new era! We thought we could go all the way to the black, and suddenly someone drank: this road is not working, you have to find a new way. And artists are often like prophets, who will tell us about the mountains and rivers of doubt and crisis, and will also tell us about mysteries and hopes...
An art history is actually the history of human beings solving themselves again and again, with survival and development, the rolling of the times, and the turmoil of the soul.
Therefore, to see "Pang Maokun: 2022 Copy", it is indeed not to see which painting is beautiful and not beautiful, good and bad, it has long gone beyond that category. You have to go with your brain, you have to burn your brain with all your might. What's so bad about burning your brain? In an age when we are increasingly handing over our wisdom to machines, the burning of our brains proves that we are advanced animals! If our literature and art are all silly white and sweet entertainment to death and so on, sooner or later we will be killed by the intelligent guys we have created.
Is this the most important message that the "whistleblower" Pang Maokun wants to inform us? Here comes the wolf! Wolves are no one else, wolves are ourselves...
CHAPTER 02
Section 2
The existence of the so-called "copy" is all due to our attachment to the original, the fear that the original will eventually die. The various means and technologies of reproduction invented by human beings are just an attempt to make the original for generations. However, can it really be achieved?
The exhibition is called "Copy" and is said to have been inspired by the British writer Richard Scott. K. Morgan's 2002 science fiction novel Copy. The novel is probably about some time in the future, when human beings can store and restore and transplant consciousness, so that people can get a new life.
What will happen to the human beings in the future, it is really difficult to say, does he or she really need to constantly copy and regenerate the individual life of today? Is it fair? Human nature? Can't think about it.
But the unavoidable question is that we do stand at the threshold of where humanity is headed. While we are too lazy to create people, we are enthusiastically inventing and creating intelligent robots that can write poetry, paint, play chess, calligraphy, sing, and even understand love... Will we be making our own substitutes, or even enemies?
Pang Maokun did not give an answer in his solo exhibition "2022 Copy", but only gave him the path of thinking - the most striking of which is the "tampering" of classical famous paintings, even including implanting himself into many famous paintings...
For example, "The New Servant of Judi", the original work is "Judi Kills Holofani" by the Italian 16th and 7th century realist painter Caravaggio. What I never expected was that the founder of the Baroque school, the passionate, rebellious and wild caravaggio of his life, was "copied" by Pang Maokun, and there was even more disturbing, secret and complex passion and rebellion... The servant in the original is a dry old man who carefully cooperates with his master's killing. He used his gaze and body language to articulate his absolute loyalty and obedience. In the painting, Pang Maokun, the "new servant", twisted his face in another direction. He was having two minds: glasses that were about to fall off, nervous eyes that made him more like a rabbit ready to escape from that picture at any moment, and another of Caravaggio's works, Narcissus, was "tampered with" by Pang Maokun into The New World of Narcissus, adding a pair of huge VR glasses to the Narcissus man who was gazing at his reflection in the water. That modern fashion thing almost covers half of the beautiful man's face, so his attitude of looking down and worshipping himself has become so funny, incomparably funny...
Caravaggio "Judi Kills Holofloni"
Pang Maokun,"The New Servant of Judi"
For pang Maokun's "tampering", you may understand it as a deconstruction of classical classical art, with a certain "playful" deconstruction, like the painter Marcel. Duchamp had the famous painting Mona Lisa grow two upturned beards. And I don't think it's that simple, because I see the tension, anxiety and antics of modern people and modern society in the "new servant" eyes and the "VR mirror" that I add... See a modern disease! Too much of our desires, too many of our tricks, often become serious diseases that we cannot heal, and we give others a laughing stock. Especially when we rely too much on technology and consume technology madly, we will indeed be farther away from real life, real life; we will gradually lose our sense of smell for beauty, the pursuit of love instinct and physical practice. Even, we will gradually forget all kinds of human beings and be controlled by various machines we create, including biological robots. This is by no means appalling, and now, aren't too many of us controlled and occupied by cell phones?! Occasionally looking up, I don't know that there are just skinny birds in the sky running away, and there are fat fish lazily raising fat under the water.
This feeling was especially strong when I saw Pang Maokun "tampering" with Botticelli's Birth of Venus. No one can explain why Botticelli in the fifteenth century painted a beautiful god who had just been born out of the water and was about to create a brave new world so melancholy, as if she had come to the shore not to receive praise, to enjoy the love and worship of the gods and the masses, but to become a savior like Jesus, to endure endless suffering for the masses. Why does Lao Bo understand that beauty is a phantom with a sad temperament, and love has become a cause for people to torture each other?! The reason why I like Botticelli's Venus is that she is a joyless, unassuming mortal woman, completely unaware that she is so beautiful and alone. She only cares about her own sorrows, where she can fly up to get rid of the entanglement of all kinds of pain in the world. And Pang Maokun added a neck hoop, chest hoop, knee hoop, ankle hoop made of metal to this melancholy beauty god... Venus was completely heavy, and was also dismembered by some device from technology, just like a patchwork god was placed in an awkward position by someone, full of blood, unable to move, and the nuclear submarine not far away was still quietly approaching her...
What is Pang Maokun going to say? All that was more than the original painting was what he was going to say. And what we want to explore is why there are more metal-made, hard and firm hoops, and nuclear submarines, rather than lighter and playful beards and the like...
CHAPTER 03
Section 3
At the exhibition, I also carefully watched Pang Maokun's new work "Extended Series" unveiled this time. They are indeed as the media introduced: "Borrowing from the classic oil paintings of the West that have been used for hundreds of years as a base, and then partially grafting subtle elements such as the future, technology, and artificial intelligence." On the one hand, the picture itself contains hundreds of timelines, which is a constantly rewritten history of images and a true portrayal of the development of mankind. The work itself is a conflict and intersection of the past and the future. On the other hand, Pang Maokun and classical oil painters have completed the cooperation through time and space on the same canvas, which is also the most direct collision, confrontation and integration of Chinese and Western culture and art. ”
These introductions are introduced directly because they are already fairly accurate. Comparing the original work, you will wonder how Pang Maokun extended the famous paintings of hundreds of years ago? Is it just an extension of glasses, metal neckbands, mobile phones, artificial intelligence... These gadgets with industrial civilization, contemporary civilization...
In fact, if you look at it a little harder, you will find that those women who are "extended" by seemingly modern gadgets have a sharp change in their looks, and their eyes even have the sharpness and strength of contemporary women. And for a moment, you have felt that they are cold, cold everything, no soul and emotion, just posing as a person. Of course, the imagery of the painting has also changed sharply, and it has become another kind of art that tells... Such an "extension" is strange and magical, it produces a chemical reaction, turning one substance into another, just like the extension of clouds to seawater!
CHAPTER 04
Chapter 4
After watching the solo exhibition "Pang Maokun: 2022 Copy", it is obvious that an artist will see the uneasiness and thinking of an artist in the face of the surging and gradually powerful technological hegemony.
Every time a revolution in science and technology knocks on the door of humanity, astute artists are always selected to act as gatekeepers and resistance fighters on behalf of the masses. But the final result is often that they personally open the door, shake hands with the scientific and technological revolution, and rely on each other. Art will even use the wings of science and technology to fly forward a long way: a scientific and technological revolution will always lead to society entering a new era, and will always produce a new art form and art genre. For example, the birth of the camera in that year, while smashing the jobs of many painters, also gave birth to an era of brilliant Impressionist masters in the history of art. The long road ahead of art is always staged in the great drama of artists and technology loving and killing each other, love and hate.
Technology is not necessarily all about evil, and many times it is helping human beings to survive better and civilizations to become more mature and vast. However, the premise is that mankind must choke its throat and be its master, and cannot be countered by it. In particular, most of the technologies invented and created by human beings in the past are extensions of human limbs, and the extension of the senses such as vision and hearing: such as the function of the car extending the human leg, the camera extending the function of the human eye... However, this technological revolution seems to be extending or replacing our brains, thoughts, and souls, that is, we are creating a force that can completely replace ourselves. Will we still have the same luck as we used to be, riding on the horse of technology and running without worrying about it making us bad, falling us down and crushing us to pieces? Can we still expect that on a certain mountain peak, art and technology will meet happily, telling each other that we are all fellow travelers?! ...... Pang Maokun's worries are not unreasonable, and his thinking is also timely!
This is also the reason why "Pang Maokun: 2022 Copy" shocks us: each of his works is a philosophical proposition and a realistic proposition, like a bullet flying over, hitting our sensitive parts, awakening the same worries lurking in our hearts, and we have to concentrate on answering the questions!
True artists are philosophers, whether they do it intentionally or unintentionally. The same is true of Pang Maokun. As the academic director of his exhibition, the renowned German scholar of art analytic philosophy Carl Heinz Lüdjen, commented, he was "not only a talented painter, but also an artist who could always propose new ideas".
The exhibition begins on the coldest january 1 and ends on March 27, which seems to tell us the route of the breakthrough: we must think carefully in winter to pass through the time ropeway, lead to the other shore, to a warm and safe zone...
(Friendly reminder: The exhibition is closed on Mondays, and the rest of the time is held.) Take the kids and challenge your IQ and U.S. business. We are not worried about the ancients, but for the future of the children, know thyself and know each other, in order to win! ）
This article is written by Wu Jingya
Writer, senior media person, director of the Prose Creative Committee of Chongqing Writers Association, vice chairman of the Western China Prose Literature Association, mellow consultant, winner of the Bingxin Prose Award.