Art historian Linda Nochlin once asked in 1971 "Why have there never been great female artists? ”(Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?) Under art, a pyramid constructed by patriarchy since ancient times, the development of women has always been the tip of the iceberg. Those simple and crude, typed, vassalized, secondary, labels are updated in history, in layers of overlays; The creations of women who have always been invisible have a tenacious vitality, and no matter how narrow the gaps, they can break through the ground, and return to the viewer with softness and rigidity. Just like the extremely soft toys in artist Sun Yidan's paintings, through the repeated construction of brushes, it is as indestructible as a monument of old times; Just like Zhu Yujie's new exhibition "Softness Chengcheng", every repetition of softness is a heavy hammer repeatedly lifted against the stereotype of femininity.
Like a diptych presented in the first issue of ELLETALK's Art Special, Sun Yidan and Zhu Yujie's dislocation perspective mimics different sections of contemporary art. The all-encompassing connection of reality should be seen from far and near to see how the curator uses delicate vocabulary as a medium to balance and dispatch the five senses; The layers of abstraction that strip away the senses and when the focus is properly pulled back to see, so that the artist's sharp and accurate expression can be incorporated into a larger space for reverberation. Under the juxtaposition, mutual hope and dialogue, the gap has never existed only between the creator, but also between the creator and the viewer. In the corridor of art history, identity, gender, intelligence, skill, etc. were once included in the judging system, and although these variables are now invisible in the increasingly efficient online platform that wants to be removed, is art really free? At a time when freedom of expression and freedom of viewing are within reach, the mainstream that once formulated standards and rules will also flow into the flow pool, and where will the boundaries of art be?
Facing the unknown, when the second cooperation between the two was launched, they faced the inevitable and undisappeared gaze and scrutiny with their gentle and most sincere selves. When countless lights came, they and their response were never loud, "Don't build walls, build bridges."
Follow this viewing guide to participate in our topic in this issue:
【00:20-01:57】
Recalling their acquaintance, it is necessary to start with the first collaboration between the two - the group exhibition "Future Departure: Medium, Form and Vision" at the Changjiang Art Museum. At that time, Zhu Yujie was poked by the "lost childhood" in Sun Yidian's works, those seemingly soft and cheap toys that Sun Yidan hoped to become eternal toys through the canvas, which are irrevocable times under the rapid change of social development, and are also monuments to collective memories.
【01:58-03:02】
After talking about it this time, I learned that "Future Runaway" was Sun Yidian's first group exhibition for women, but unfortunately he could not arrive at the scene due to the epidemic at that time, so Zhu Yujie paid special attention to the audience's reaction to Yidan's paintings. One of the exhibited works, "When She Comes", attracted a lot of attention at the scene, and before that, this work reminded her that Chinese artists in the past also used the measurement relationship between the body and the world to make works, and in Yi Dian's painting, the body is replaced by a feminine object such as high heels, which is another feeling, which is more intuitive for the audience, many male viewers feel that they are provoked because of the male head on the heel, and many female viewers have repercussions to this. Unlike many contemporary works that are "too polite", Yi Dian's paintings are not content to be in a safe zone and do not please the audience.
But in Ichidan's own view, as with many of her other works, some expressions are unconscious at the time of creation, simply hoping for a more interesting dialogue between the elements.
When she came
When She Comes By
230 cm × 230 cm × 2
Acrylic on canvas
Acrylic on canvas
2021
Image from the artist
【03:02-03:27】
Similarly, group exhibitions for women are the most things Zhu Yujie has done since she entered the industry, partly because she is also a woman, and more because in the past, most of her time as an exhibition viewer, she often saw all-male group exhibitions, and it was clear that there were more suitable female artists under the same theme, but they were "invisible". Now that this phenomenon has improved, it is already a change in the field: the space for female artists is growing.
【03:27-04:46】
Soon, the two will collaborate on a second women's group exhibition, "Softness Becomes Inheritance". This time, Zhu Yujie hopes to re-interpret softness and the definition of softness from different angles and works by revisiting the "softness" that belongs to femininity in everyone's stereotype, whether it is from the level of material or subject matter.
#真实的自我是温柔的棱角 #
The status and evolution of women's creation in art history may be regarded as the epitome of art in the history of human civilization. As an "imported product", art inevitably enters the context of the old Western capitalist society when looking back at history, and the production value advocated by the industrial age and Foucault's "disciplined society" emphasize the control and restraint of the individual. At that time, thinkers had proposed to express their "inner experience" (l'expérience intérieure), and at the same time distinguish it from "automatic writing" without any ideological infiltration, in order to critique homogeneous society. When new technologies swept the world again, "neoliberalism" appeared, shifting from restrictions on individuals to emphasizing "self-decision-making" and "self-responsibility", and the flood of individual freedom once again reached another homogenization, and the "self" became more likely to become an illusion and illusion in the spiral of silence. But fortunately, in any era, there are people who dare to make different voices, which is especially rare in the Chinese civilization that adheres to "politeness" and "etiquette", and what should be optimistic is that an environment that accommodates different voices is also being established, so that those true self-edges will not be smoothed.
【04:57-05:44】
As mentioned above, Ken in the "When She Comes" work, as one of the protagonists in Yidan's creation, is often powdered, changed, and degendered in his paintings, which is very in line with the faces of people we will see today. When placed in the longer-term coordinates of art history, gender traits are always in a flux that is also reflected in Sun Yidian's painting forms, which she prefers to form diptychs, usually one as a figurative object and the other as a part of the former prominently. "I would like to explore where the boundary between abstraction and figuration lies."
Ken wearing a pearl necklace
Ken with the Pearl Necklace
45 cm × 54 cm
Wood plank acrylic
Acrylic on wood panel
2022
Image from the artist
In addition to changing her creative perspective, she began her doctoral study in humanities this year, and she also hopes to jump out of the "painter's perspective" and re-enter artistic creation by experiencing more diverse work and life.
Dionysus
Dionysus
205 x 158 cm
Acrylic on canvas
Acrylic on canvas
2022
Image from the artist
【05:44-09:06】
Perhaps because the paths to the art industry are diametrically opposed, the two men have different views on the idea that everyone can be an artist. In Sun Yidan's view, artistic expression such as painting requires long-term training, both aesthetically and technically. Zhu Yujie, on the other hand, believes that art has a rich variety of categories, and if conceptual art can raise a question that has never been thought of, it must be called great. In contrast, art practitioners have more thresholds, because the work of art needs to be placed in the process and rules of art history for its significance to appear. Although he entered the art field from a nearby department, Zhu Yujie, who outsiders thought was xenophobic, did not feel too much, "xenophobia is still ranked in the market circle, collector system, market system."
【09:06-10:42】
For her part, Yi Jun, who has always been in charge, has some exposure to the usual mode of operation in the field, she knows that the invaluable art market is built on this relationship of poor information and trust. However, in the past few years since entering the art field, Zhu Yujie has found that the collector system is different from the art circle, and there seems to be a more obvious trend of popularization, and the popularity of "trend art" and "meta-universe" is undoubtedly proof. She observed that this generation of young collectors is breaking the traditional way of collecting, and the trend of value evaluation is no longer the decisive factor, replaced by personal aesthetic purposes, and they do not follow the traditional systematic and complete collection routine, but achieve wider dissemination and more added value in newer and more diversified media. At the same time, it is not difficult to find that more and more audiences are beginning to enter the museum. For creators, "art to the public may really be a double-edged sword". In the face of viewers whose needs and preferences are completely unknown, the counter-effect of their audience power is also immeasurable. Art should break away from the closed-loop art circle, and it is still in the process of matching each other.
#在错位视野中定位自己 #
Just as some audiences will presuppose their lack of knowledge and understanding before entering the art museum, and "do their homework" in advance, practitioners in the art industry also have their own presuppositions. Everyone is the first to find a set of standards, as if with those rules and restrictions, they can have a safe zone, can test themselves, and everyone forgets that art or aesthetics are the most intuitive and instinctive judgments. The intervention of a wider public group may be able to find "instinctive" judgments in the completely unpredictable audience response.
Of course, we will not forget that at present, we are half of the generation that inhabits the "network world", and we are also more or less processed on the assembly line of the "consciousness industry" represented by mass media, and too many factors act on the viewer, making it an audience commodity, a part of digital labor to produce audience power, in order to reverse shape the consciousness of individuals and groups. Whether as a creator or as an audience, you should be wary of this reverse audience force shaping and position yourself in a misplaced perspective.
【10:57-11:51】
As a curator, Zhu Yujie somewhat assumes the function of art criticism, often having to retreat farther, whether at the vertical historical or horizontal group level, to make more comprehensive and objective judgments. In her view, the so-called generational intergenerational between artists is not an overall behavior, but depends on the individuality and choice of the artist, as one scholar replied to a similar question: "It is not that we choose the times, but the changes of the times choose us." "Such as Xu Bing and Zhang Huan have been trying space art and NFT in the past two years, and have never stopped exploring; Liang Shaoji, for example, chose to focus on one kind of creation for decades, and diligently carried out his own artistic language to the extreme. As a more "typed" post-90s artist, Sun Yidan does not think that this generation has too clear era attributes, although the era always carves a few marks on everyone, such as her creative objects, such as in the early days of her creation, it has been found that everyone hopes that artists can present more diversified creations, but she jokingly calls herself "more classical", or has the deepest love for traditional shelf painting, which is her language.
【11:51-13:16】
Of course, Sun Yidan does not resist trial and change, at the shooting site, that is, at the door of Sun Yidan's studio, there is a potted "cactus", which is her experimental art sculpture "Let Me Hug", in addition to her collaboration to launch printmaking installations and so on. When she watches as things worth pennies return to the market as commodities through her creations, this circulation and closed loop becomes part of her work, "In fact, it is also about consumption, which is a real consumption scene." ”
Compared with the experimental creation of being molded into "toys", Sun Yidian's paintings are inevitably materialized into "commodities" when they enter the art market, and they are especially "best-selling". Consumerism has always been neutral as a theme in Sun Yidan's work, but when repeatedly asked how she sees the "best-sellers" of her works, "a little unpleasant" may feel like a kind of stress response, as a kind of slice of her life, a baby-like existence born from herself, rather than just a cargo waiting to be distributed and traded.
If you can hug, you don't speak
Shut Up and Hold Me
230 cm × 183 cm
230 cm × 230 cm
Acrylic on canvas
Acrylic on canvas
2019
Image from the artist
Let me cuddle
Let Me Hold You
200 cm × 133 cm
Acrylic on canvas
Acrylic on canvas
2015
Image from the artist
Let me cuddle
Let Me Hold You
23 cm × 13 cm × 43 cm
resin
Resin
2022
Image from Inner Flow
【13:16-14:25】
The double materiality in Sun Yidan's work is difficult not to think of Andy Warhol, another master of art history. When the desire for fullness is constantly reproduced in cheap screen printing until it is distorted, it is instead embraced by capital and audience. He also dresses himself up as a label, an era icon, or an object of consumption, and this objectification and shaping never seems to stop, as they are sitting next to each other in front of the camera, "Are we still ourselves?" Or are we portrayed and need two women to be in front of the camera? ”
#不造高墙建桥梁 #
In the face of the penetration of consumerism, there is no shortage of critics who flatter and speculators who welcome and take advantage. Zhu Yujie has provided a more figurative and realistic perspective on this, that is, no one wants the artist to be without food, not everyone is as lucky as Van Gogh, with a younger brother to help life, most people are like Baudelaire, although he always seems to hate this kind of thing, that is, to be a useful person", and often succumb to the law of survival and decide to make money, although he tries to delay this need as much as possible. In addition, as the two have been practicing, to devote themselves to creation——
As a painter Sun Yidan, her basic requirements for her own creation are first of all the painting "good-looking", she has seen a phenomenon in the industry, that is, artists need to use a lot of language endorsement to construct their own context or game rules, but she does not want to use the words of "what they like" outside the painting to explain the work, but in her opinion, the place where the painting arrives is not the same as the place where the language arrives, which should be left to the viewer to feel. As a curator, Zhu Yujie described his work as a film director, and each work has its own rhythm, and for the curator, it is to experience this rhythm from the perspective of the audience, so as to realize the arrangement of the route. The last stop of most of her exhibitions is actually a reading room beyond the artwork, which is based on her personal experience of visiting the exhibition for many years, and establishes a buffer between art and the real world.
Take off at dusk
Take off Only
When the Shades of Night Gather
200 cm × 150 cm × 2
Acrylic on canvas
Acrylic on canvas
2021
Image from the artist
Minerva
Minerva
205 cm × 158 cm
30 cm × 20 cm
Acrylic on canvas / acrylic on board
Acrylic on canvas/
Acrylic on wood panel
2021
Image from the artist
Curator Zhu Yujie at the exhibition site of the Qiandu Yangtze River Art Museum
View of the exhibition "Future Runaway: Media, Form and Vision"
In the face of three decades of neoliberalism sweeping the world, the "freedom" bubble it created gradually burst. We seem to have no way of expecting the dissolution of difference, and we cannot escape the fate of being objectified and becoming part of it for the time being. But perhaps one can expect a new freedom in art, a more inclusive freedom, on all borders, without building walls and bridges.
If you want to know more details about Sun Yidan Zhu Yujie's "Inheriting Gang with Rou, Return to the Viewer", you can also follow ELLETALK Douyin & Xiaohongshu platform at the same time, more wonderful content, to be continued!
Executive Producer: Shu Xiumeng
CURATOR: ELLETALK Editorial Team
Edited by Anson
Directed by Ovelar
Director of Photography: Tang Zixuan
Handheld: Liu Aqiang Zhu Gengfeng
Sound engineer: Liang Yuanzhuo
Lighting group: Liu Jichen, Zhang Lei
Later stage: Ren Jie
Styling: Yan Danni
Makeup: YIN
Hairstyle: Yansong
Graphic photography: Yu Lu (Sun Yidan), Zhou Qi (Zhu Yujie)
Operation: Xiao Wen, Lu Jun
Visual Design: Huangshan
WeChat design: Zhang Yan