Editor's Note
Sculpture artist Wei Xiaoming once said that in the current context of sculpture creation, the appearance of sculpture creation has gradually become diversified. In the previous installments of the Qi Hao Young Artists Support Program, we have also seen artists express their artistic views in terms of materials, themes, forms and creative methods. British art theorist Ritter argues that "all artistic genres ... They must meet a simple test: they must continue to exist as objects worth pondering, or they will not become art." In fact, in the creation of modern and contemporary art, the boundaries of "sculpture" are blurring, and the traditional sculpture modeling language, modern sculpture form language, contemporary conceptual art, and installation art all coexist in different forms. When we continue to examine "these objects worth pondering", we need to explore the resonance of art and people with a broader vision. As a result, we invite and encourage art school students, art media journalists, professional curators, etc., to co-write a series of experiences for different art scenes and fields, which will be a sustainable perception creation and cultural thinking from more dimensions.
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Recently, a small group exhibition called Beyond Representation was opened to the public at the Barber Art Gallery in Birmingham, England. Works by avant-garde artists from the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Christopher Nevinson, Kurt Schwitters, Max Beckman, Max Ernst, Naum Gabo and Tess Jaray, are delicately displayed in a small exhibition hall in The Barber Institute of Fine Arts.
Inside the Barber Art Gallery, staff are setting up exhibitions
The entire exhibition consists of 10 works, of which only 1 is a sculpture. Each piece is accompanied by a 100-word tag, which in addition to introducing the characteristics and meaning of the work itself, curator Lucy Gray (an intern of the British Collecting Association) also tries to encourage the audience to participate in the exhibition in a more proactive way by adding specific ways to the label. For example, "walk around the work and see how your shifting perspective transforms it."
Visitors viewing Gabo's sculpture Linear Construction in Space No.1
The label language throughout the exhibition is undoubtedly impressive, they are not cold and throw some unknown nouns to the audience, and the works displayed in the glass are protected in an authoritative and distance-filled way. Instead, Gray uses words in a storytelling-like way, constantly asking the viewer something worth thinking about and understanding, encouraging the viewer to see the connections between the different works in an exhibition.
As Beverly Serrell has always emphasized in her book: Consider visitors, their needs, their motivations and limitations when writing exhibition labels. Every visitor enters an exhibition without a blank slate, they all have their own experiences and backgrounds, and then participate in the exhibition. If an exhibition has a mediocre response, perhaps it is possible to consider whether there is still room for improvement in the label? In Beyond Representation, the Gabo sculpture is making an excited voice to the viewer through its own label: "I have found my own material!" ”
Labels in the Beyond Representation exhibition
As the viewer entered the exhibition space, Gabo's Linear Construction in Space No.1 directly broke into our sights. For some viewers who didn't read the label, the plexiglass, surrounded by nylon monofilament, was as confusing as the other images in the room.
Linear Construction in Space No.1 on display at the Barber Museum
"I saw five pieces of glass wrapped around the silk thread, and then what?"
This sense of ignorance is not a pleasant experience, and some people will choose to hurry down the shutter to take a photo, or skip the exhibition hall directly, naturally missing the exciting announcement from the 20th century.
The 2nd century is a period of great changes for human beings, and studies have shown that 80% of human technology was created in the 2nd century. The Chinese Academy of Sciences has posted that this is "miraculously". The invention of X-rays and the concept of the fourth dimension have led many artists to think newly about form, space and perspective; the emergence of new materials such as stainless steel, nylon, PVC and so on has stimulated various industries, including art.
Gabo has found the most suitable new material for himself to explore space, time and movement in the rapid changes of the times. "Because space and time are the only forms of life", Gabo elaborated on his approach to creation in his Realistic Manifesto( Manifesto), published in 1920, "so art must be constructed". He wanted to abandon static, decorative colors and lines, as well as the traditional use of volume and solid mass. For Gabo, there is no difference between the so-called illusory space and the real real space, space is just a visual element. This constructive approach to translating the "perception of space into sculptural terminology" has long formed the basis of many of Gabo's subsequent works, and Linear Construction in Space No. 1 is one of them.
Linear Construction in Space No.1, 1942
In Linear Construction in Space No.1, Gabo creates a "concrete" volume in an infinite space with nylon wire, and the plexiglass frame becomes a solid skeleton. These two transparent materials are liberated in subtle light and shadow, from the closed solid form of the previously heavy and traditional marble or bronze sculpture, and extend in time and space. The critic Herbert Read, writing about Gabo's work, said that it hovered "between the visible and the invisible, between the material and the immaterial," becoming "the crystallization of the purest sensuality"; Read unheedly praised Gabo's other work of a similar period, The Spiritual Theme (1941), as "the highest point reached by human aesthetic intuition."
Spiral Theme, 1941, Tate Gallery
So as you walk around Linear Construction in Space No.1, you'll find that your perspective is constantly reinventing it.
View Linear Construction in Space No.1 on display at the Barber Gallery from all angles
This also seems to be a suspicion of human vision among artists at the time. Objects seem to move when you close your left and right eyes respectively; the advent of photography surprises people to find that the posture of a horse running is very different from the way it has been commonly presented in paintings in the past, and people's understanding of space has been greatly impacted. It is conceivable that these works by Gabo could not have appeared before the 20th century, whether limited by materials or cognition. These factors also seem to have made Gabo a key figure in the subsequent development of sculpture in the 20th century.
Théodore Géricault
The 1821 Derby at Epsom (1821 in Epson's Derby), 1821
Horses in Motion, 1878
Naked Lady Number Two downstairs
Nude descending a staircase n° 2
Marcel Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp)
Linear Construction in Space No.1, 1950
Linear Construction in Space No. 1, 1942-43
According to Gabo, they should all be treated as stand-alone works. He stated more than once: "I cannot mechanically reproduce my own work", partly because of the complexity of the construction process, and on the other hand, he wants to constantly create new works and pass on his new experiences, rather than stop at the past. Constant thinking and breakthroughs in space in an era of intense change is Gabo's lifelong interest.
So have we considered the new impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the perception of society as a whole after 2019? We need to be as far apart as possible in physical space to prevent contagion; before we think about anything, the epidemic becomes a certain yardstick for us to measure. "How will the global pandemic affect your way of thinking?" Gray wants the audience to think positively about this. We are undergoing some kind of upheaval, for better or worse, and new experiences are reshaping our perceptions, just like in the 2nd century.
This article is written by Liu Yujie
He is currently studying Art History and Curatorial Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK
The graphics in this article are all from the author
This article is an article exclusively invited by Qi Hao to publish articles
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