In the real sense, Ma Liang's first photographic work was created in 2004.
When he first touched the camera, he did not start with the most easy to use humanistic and landscape photography, grew up in a family of theater directors and film actors, and he used a bit of playfulness and absurdity to shoot a group of portraits of his partners who worked together at that time. This group of photographic works "My Circus" was later posted on the Internet by Ma Liang, and it was quite popular for a while.
It was the first time Ma Liang had spent more than 7,000 yuan to buy a digital camera, and it was also the first time he had touched the "photographic feeling" he wanted—taking a path that could better express himself, rather than a disciplined documentary path. This kind of dramatic set photography has become a clear label for his artistic development.
"Reproduction of the 2016 Shanghai Studio" was exhibited in Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Myths" at chengdu Contemporary Image Museum.
Over the next 17 years, Ma Liang traveled around in photography, theater, film, writing, and more, leaving his own distinctive mark in each field. He said that from the youth who created hormones in adolescence to the middle-aged man who was polished by time to face the world and be gentle, life brought him many gifts, especially the daughter born at the age of 46.
He felt happy and contented, and his conversion to warmth gave him a richer source of artistic creation. After repeated attempts, he found that photography was still the most convenient and effective medium of expression to use.
Because of the epidemic in the past two years, he has a lot of time to create, and sometimes even his assistants are isolated, so he is alone in the studio, repeatedly pondering the scenery and exposure for a long time, pressing the shutter, and watching the negatives. Most of the works in the solo exhibition "Private Myths", which opened at the Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum on October 30, were born during this period.
The exhibition space of "Private Myths" is displayed in Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Myths" at Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum.
Ma Liang flew to Chengdu on October 10 to start the exhibition, which set a record for his longest exhibition time, which shows the complexity of the entire exhibition and the effort he spent.
Private Myths, presented at the Chengdu Contemporary Video Museum, includes seven series of works created by Ma Liang since 2010, of which the photographic work "The Way You Look" and the video collage work "The World" are exhibited for the first time. The exhibition integrates various media such as drama, video, and installation, showing Ma Liang's outstanding cross-border and diversified comprehensive artistic expression ability.
"The Way You Look" was exhibited in Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Myths" at the Chengdu Contemporary Video Museum.
"The World" was exhibited in Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Myths" at the Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum.
Ma Liang is very grateful to Zhong Weixing, the founder of Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum and the curator of this exhibition, who said: "In the 20 days of chengdu contemporary image museum, I not only learned a lot of professional lighting skills, but also felt the high cohesion of this team. Special thanks to curator Zhong Weixing, who gave me many pertinent suggestions during the curatorial process. ”
This cooperation, countermeasure exhibitor Zhong Weixing, is also a new attempt in life, he went to Shanghai from the beginning to visit Ma Liang's studio, to the later stage of the exhibition framework to select works, he and Ma Liang in order to cooperate to present a good exhibition has paid a lot of time and energy. After repeated communication, this exquisite exhibition finally opened.
Dialogue with Ma Liang
When did you and Mr. Zhong Weixing start curating this exhibition?
Ma Liang: In 2019, Mr. Zhong Weixing founded the first Golden Panda Photography Award, and I was one of the 10 photographers nominated for a group exhibition together. Later, by chance, Mr. Zhong Weixing and I met and chatted in Shanghai. He said that I almost won the grand prize by one vote that year, which was a pity.
He later analyzed for me that the only flaw in the exhibition was that there were some problems in the set-up, otherwise it would probably be mine in the first place. "Let me give you an exhibition and tell you how to make the set-up better." It was then that we discussed an exhibition together.
At first, I only wanted to show photographic works, but Mr. Zhong Weixing suggested: "Be sure to show your versatility, you have created plays, films, installations, other photographers may not have such characteristics, you must show more." "Mr. Chung's knowledge of me makes the final exhibition present a very rich medium, not just photography.
Around the beginning of this year, I submitted a preliminary plan for the exhibition to Zhong Weixing. I drew very detailed drawings for the entire exhibition, including the location of each exhibit. This is probably the most serious exhibition in my creative career, in the process I learned a lot about the lighting of the exhibition from Mr. Zhong Weixing and his team, and good light can revitalize the work.
Why is the name of the exhibition "Private Myth"?
Marlene: The name actually comes from the American cultural scholar Joseph Campbell, who said in his description of the famous psychoanalyst Freud, "Dreams are private myths, and myths are public dreams." When I heard this sentence, I was particularly moved, life is actually a dream, and creation is not a fool's dream? All creators who explore in solitude need to believe that what they are doing makes sense.
I think the four words "private myth" are also particularly similar to a state of mind that a person engaged in artistic creation will have. Just think, if people like us don't believe that what we create is a "private myth", how can we have the courage to live in this state all the time?
Posters in the Private Myths gallery are available to the audience.
In fact, I felt that my creation should have an idealistic color, and I should maintain this state of seeming to treat everything I do as a myth, so these four words deeply touched me at that time. After I told Mr. Zhong Weixing, he was also very moved, and we decided on the name of the exhibition.
The exhibition presents a total of 8 units, including 7 groups of works and 8 documentaries, one of which is "The King of absurdity" is relatively early, and the other is recently created.
Ma Liang: The King of Absurdity is a work from ten years ago, and it is true that it is not the same as other works. But this group of works is rarely exhibited. In 2008 and 2009, Chinese contemporary art received more attention in Europe and the United States, but I think Westerners only learned about China with curiosity and light.
At that time, I often traveled abroad and participated in various artistic activities, and I felt like a "clown", encountering a lot of absurd things, so I completed this group of "kings of absurdity". This group of works is a bit "jumpy" in the context of today's exhibition, but this feeling is the same as the feeling of the work itself, and it is good to suddenly break the heavy environment.
"The King of Absurdity" was exhibited in Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Myth" at chengdu Contemporary Video Museum.
The creation of "Sonnets of Life and Death" is based on a story that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, when the pandemic was severe, I learned that an Australian curator I knew had died of COVID-19. When I went abroad to do exhibitions more than ten years ago, my English was not good, but he gave me a lot of help.
This was the first person close to my circle of life to die of COVID-19, which caused me a very strong shock. At that time, my assistant was also isolated in the field and could not come back, so I began to create this work in the studio myself. I made a small installation, placed above the mirror, reflected in the mirror. What I want to express is that there is a relative between life and death, because there is death that makes sense to our lives, and death is all around us all the time, but don't be afraid of death. It's a hint – we should live more seriously.
"Sonnets of Life and Death" was exhibited in Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Myths" at the Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum.
"The Way You Look" and "The Last Knight of Shanghai" both use armor. In the former, I shoot the armor as a portrait of a person, using an old-fashioned large-format camera frame as an imaging frame, and what I want to express is that people are estranged from each other because of the COVID-19 pandemic, vigilance.
And there are also many struggles between countries, and various conflicts can break out at any time. The flesh that medieval armor once protected had long since decayed, and the armor still existed, and man was still as fragile as ever, still shameful, still morally upright, and hopeless. Those helmets, which have no contents, are empty, and they are the eternal portraits of human beings.
"The Last Knight of Shanghai" was filmed in my family's "ancestral home". In June 2020, my cousin's old house in Shangjifang, located at 418 Xinzha Road in Shanghai, began to be demolished due to urban construction. The "Shangjifang" named by his cousin himself is not a lilong building complex, and there is only one three-story building in the lane archway.
The disappearance of this building, which has lasted for nearly a hundred years, will take away the name "Shangjifang" from the map, and will also take away the only material memory of my matriarchal family in Shanghai. When I went to hang the old house before filming, I had this picture in my mind: a knight in shiny but bulky armor, inexplicably appeared, trapped in this space, also trapped in memory and time, he had no specific opponent, no weapon, like a trapped beast in the sunset in front of the window, full of tragic colors.
"The Last Knight of Shanghai" was exhibited in Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Mythology" at chengdu Contemporary Video Museum.
Three days before the start of construction, I photographed the work in the old house that was about to disappear, and I accurately recreated the picture in my mind. All the once glorious knights who resisted the death of romance will eventually lose to time and to the endless consumption of life. This is the fate of man, but also the destination of the city and memory. Finally, I photographed the whole old house up and down and gave it to my cousin, and everyone missed the house.
Other works have been unfolded one by one, welcome to the exhibition site to watch and experience.
The image in "The Last Knight in Shanghai" is a bit like Don Quixote, do you like Don Quixote?
Marlene: Actually, my favorite character is Don Quixote's little heel, Sancho. Because he was happy all day and firmly believed that what he was doing was meaningful. I also admire Don Quixote, who has always challenged the impossible, and this romantic and stupid temperament is not art in itself?
But I've always felt that it's hard for people to fight the times. For example, when I first took pictures, the first photo that entered the auction market was taken by a digital camera, at that time digital cameras were still rare, I felt like I had created an era, but the technology developed too fast, the original director was edited on film, and now everyone uses mobile phones to shoot images, vibrato, clipping app have very professional editing functions.
So for a while I was lost, and I had been entrusted with photography all my time and emotions for almost a decade, but this so-called professional "photographer" seemed to have no meaning. So I went to do a play, and it took me about three years to complete a work. During this time, I deliberately did not touch photography at all, just to find out how else I could shoot. Is there any point in my approach of handing over my life to photography?
Gradually, after I finished the drama, I especially missed the feeling when I was doing photography, and I still liked photography very much. So I wanted to understand that the medium should not be taken too seriously. The medium is not important, the most important thing is to return to this level of oneself as a person to create.
The installation of 8 chests presented in the "Moment" work unit is all the props that have been used during the filming of this work.
After a short period of confusion, what are the most common questions you have been thinking about in recent years?
Ma Liang: What I think about the most in the past two years is that I want to live gently and treat the people I love most around me gently. At the age of 46, I had a daughter and my parents were older. My parents are very interesting people, they are also artists, two people who love to travel all year round, always talk and laugh, I love them very much.
When I was young, I was particularly rebellious and felt that there was nothing particularly worth cherishing in life. But I am not angry at all in these two years, one day you will feel that your parents are so cute, your family and children are so cute, I must not waste time with them.
The famous photography theorist Gu Zheng once wrote an article "Enjoy Fiction", which described your work as "image fiction", how do you think about the relationship between reality and fiction?
Ma Liang: Actually, I have never thought that my creation is particularly fictional. From the perspective of photography history and the entire photography culture, Gu Zheng believes that my works belong to fiction, because I use fictional creative means and creativity, and I absolutely agree with this view.
But as an author, I feel that I did not deliberately invent something, but expressed my confusion, trepidation, fear, and various strong emotions, so this part is very real. All my creations are based on the desire to use all kinds of means to get close to my heart and present my own thinking.
Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum Ma Liang's solo exhibition "Private Myth" exhibition site.
Wen / Natha
Editor-in-Charge / Zhang Danyu