British artist David Hockney once said that "collage" is "for a bigger picture". In the early 1980s, he began a series of photo collage experiments called "Joiner", trying to reconstruct a Cubist image that showed multiple perspectives and more faithfully restored the subjective feelings of the viewer, in order to break the limitations of the photographic "Cyclops".
In response to Hockney's point of view, "For a Bigger Picture" opened at APSMUSEUM on March 8, the exhibition brings together 12 groups of contemporary artists in China, who either specialize in video, or are known for painting on the shelf, or express ideas with installations, but here they all use the "collage" technique to explore the "bigger picture" in the current vision.
David Hockney believes that the Cubist "collage" technique was an important invention of 20th-century art.
In the view of Gu Zheng, the academic host of the exhibition and a professor at the School of Journalism of Fudan University, "collage" is not only a technical means, but also a new artistic language, reflecting the postmodernist new art visual way of feeling, observing and thinking. "Collage art" is also a breakthrough in the linear perspective law since Renaissance art.
Following a narrow passage with a strong sense of perspective into the exhibition hall, Zhang Enli's group of "Hair" series collided head-on, separating the works and exhibition space like architectural walls. Reading this group of works is quite surprising.
Zhang Enli's "Hair" at the end of the passage
"Collage" is used to establish a new relationship between art and reality
The impression of Zhang Enli mainly comes from those still life paintings. Water pipes, cartons, leather balls, beds, ordinary objects he took out of his daily life and put them into the space created by painting, they are real and "empty", expressionless and full of emotion.
Gu Zheng once joked that Zhang Enli was a "materialist" who, as shown in his paintings, had an obsessive interest in depicting ordinary objects in life. In the field of contemporary art where conceptualism prevails, his attitude of "discovering the poetry of the everyday from the observation of the everyday, rather than transcending the everyday in a way that is detached from the everyday" is particularly valuable.
Enli Zhang, "Hair", Composite Material Collage, 1100x800mm, 2014
In the Hair collection on display, the artist cuts images of hair of different colors and forms from fashion magazines and collages them into layers of "visual swirls" that come together. The gaps in these swirls are filled with scattered lines drawn by pencils, like another depiction of hair. In the artist's view, they not only "break the visual unity of the hair, but also have a dense change". If you look closely at these scattered lines, you may think of the water pipe lines that are intertwined with each other, and then you seem to be able to see the relationship between people and people.
Continuing the artist's concept, painting and "collage" originate in one place and complement each other, and establish a postmodernist new art visual way of feeling, observing and thinking.
At the time of the exhibition, Shanghai was under a round of epidemics, and many participants did not come to the scene because of epidemic prevention requirements. The speeches of academic host Gu Zheng and curator Shi Hantao were read by Zhang Enli, and then look at the small painting "Worshiping the Stars and Moon Slowly" cooperated by Ling Yun and Yang Fudong in the exhibition, which is precisely the creation of the epidemic.
Ling Yun and Yang Fudong, "Worship the Stars and Moon Slowly", oil paint, ink, birch bark, watercolor paper,
Collage Painting 600x400mm, 2021
"Worship the stars and moon slowly" is the name of the Song Dynasty, performed by the Tang Dynasty's jiaofang song, there are ancient women worshiping the moon to send sentiments. When introducing the work, the artist said, "The epidemic seems to have slowed down time, and you can read quietly and concentrate on painting. When the work was completed, the word suddenly appeared in the mind and was captured."
The quiet atmosphere of the name of the word brand is also permeated in Yang Fudong's many video works, the background of which is Yang Fudong's "Infinite Mountain" painted in ink on watercolor paper, on which a small birch bark is collaged, and oil paint depicts a woman looking up, with a bark texture with a hint of religious painting. This is from Yang Fudong's wife Ling Yun. The superposition of the two seems to be a flow and accumulation of personal time and emotions.
At the exhibition site, Ni Youyu's collage photography "Getaway"
The flow of time is also reflected in Ni Youyu's collage photography "Getaway", where the artist collects many old photos of landscapes from different periods from flea markets around the world for tailoring and collage, forming a group of works with the artistic conception of traditional Chinese landscape painting.
Exhibition site
In more of the works on display, the audience sees a relatively unfamiliar work of familiar artists, although these "collages" are not the main body of their creation, and even the sketches sometimes made to create the work, but they all have obvious personal characteristics, allowing people to see a certain connection.
Go back in time to personal and contemporary history with collage
In this exhibition, several other artists are in the United States, including Ren Lingfei. Her work Renovation is selected from the ongoing "From That Day On" series. She collages family photos from different periods into a photo of an empty room to "renovate" the home that carries the memories of her life with her mother but has been vacant for a long time.
Ren Lingfei, Renovation, Collectible Art Micro Spray, 1680x1092mm, 2021
Among the photos in this photo are the wedding photos of her parents, the photos of her mother with her parents when she was young, the photos of her teeth and teeth, and the photos of her mother when she was a teenager. These photos of different time and space bring family members together again through "collage", which seems to reveal the nostalgia of a young man living alone overseas for family and affection. The title of the work is "Renovation", but the house photographed is a state of suspension of renovation, and the reason why it should be the dark line that the work wants to express.
In recent years, Ren Lingfei's works have paid more attention to people's lives and social states after the epidemic, revealing her responses to family affection, love, changes in the social environment and the process of world history through either blunt or metaphorical ways, in order to explore the impact of identity, family, society, and urban life on people's psychological state.
Cai Dongdong, "Night", Gelatin Silver Halide Photo, Acrylic, Mirror, Wood Photography Lens, Cloth, 2000x2000x2000mm, 2018, The Cloud Collection
Another work that goes more directly to the historical scene, "Night", comes from Cai Dongdong. The work consists of an old emerald green quadrangle screen. The original picture of the screen is no longer there, and the artist has connected and woven nearly 1,000 old photos of only 1 inch in his collection to fill in a new picture of the screen. A piece of clothing hangs from the screen, and a vanity mirror embedded in the camera lens is placed on the basin shelf next to it. Thus, the everyday corners and objects of a family's life become containers for a period of past moments, and invisible time flows on concrete objects.
An old photograph of Cai Dongdong in "Night". The Cloud Collection
Look closely, these yellowed 1-inch photos record the stories of different people, there are photos of tourist attractions, there are family photos, there are photos of children's growth, and occasionally the text and names left behind several photos reveal the information at that time, but the people and things in the photos have been dusted. A large part of Cai Dongdong's creation is based on the appropriation and collage of hundreds of thousands of old photos in his collection. These old photographs are both "ready-made" and "now-imaging", and the materiality and imagery of the photographs have been fully displayed in the works. His works also cross the boundary between the two worlds of reality and image, especially for the use of mirrors, and let today's time be collaged into the past images, so that an image space has multiple tenses at the same time.
Cai Dongdong, "The Moving Moon" and "The Cave"
Ren Lingfei and Cai Dongdong's works evoke individual and collective memories of different eras, and Lei Lei also relies on careful collage and coloring to resurrect decades-old family photos or once popular patterns into vivid moments. Although these photos belong to the past, they have a direct or hidden connection with contemporary Chinese social life and even the larger globalized world, vividly reflecting the feelings, emotions and thoughts of contemporary people.
At the exhibition site, Lei Lei's work "Dynamic 9", 1200x1020mm, 2019
For contemporary life, Luo Yongjin divides the "Oriental Pearl" and "Jin Mao Tower" that shine in the night into pieces of light and shadow flowing parts, which seems to be dissolving the sense of oppression brought by the huge urban skyscrapers. At the same time, "collage" is not only to obtain a "bigger picture", but also contains the decomposition of viewing, reflecting the relationship between modern people and the external world.
At the exhibition site, Luo Yongjin's works "Oriental Pearl" and "Jin Mao Tower"
"I became more and more aware that the moment of solidification seemed very unreal to me. Photography is not really alive like painting. Hockney once compared the difference between photography and painting. Today, the problem of photography officially gives way to the problem of images. The "collage" that emerged from modernism has largely expanded more styles. The use of comprehensive materials is one of the appearances of "collage", and the ideas, ideas and spirit hidden behind it go far beyond the material itself, and the exhibition offers new possibilities for "collage".
The exhibition will run until May 8.