Category: installation

“Study for a Light Breeze in a Darkened Room” (2014) by Chinese artist Yiran Yang seems at a first glance to gracefully retrace the footsteps of Richard Serra’s early monoliths and as such to function as a monument of sorts. Hid away in a small backroom of the industrial Chongqing Air exhibition space, Yang’s work however does much more than to emphasize human scale, the specificity of the space, or the piece’s self-reflexive monumentality. The wall, measuring some 4 by 4.5 meters, betrays itself first as being not of a solid state – not build out of or for eternity as monuments often claim to be – but more of a flexible construct, which could be imagined to fill any space at any given moment, continuously. Its solidified eternity in this sense is not of a material or formal nature, but of a purely humanistic one. The constituent bricks, each adorned by fabrication with a highly individual pattern and color scheme, unite and merge unevenly, betraying the organic nature of the builder – a human vivacity and playfulness, which strikes one as deeply melancholic when opposed to the apparently hard surface of the piece. Turning our backs to the work, looking at the opposite wall, we discover a simple black and white photograph, documenting two birds flying in the space where our own self-reflexive nature now stands. The title becomes clear: in the twilight of the greyish room, a breeze was made by pairs of flapping wings, now disappeared. Their flexibility, their departed aliveness, is what constitutes the nature of the installation, together with the simple observation Yang elegantly offers us: if “Study for a Light Breeze in a Darkened Room” is indeed a monument, than it is tribute to its viewer, and monument to the the one who stands in front of it.

中国艺术家杨伊然的作品《把光带入黑暗房间的练习》（2014），如同对Richard Serra大型纪念碑性质作品的优美追溯。这件作品隐藏在由工业厂房改建而成的艺术中心展厅后方一个密闭的小房间内。杨的作品远远不仅止于强调人的尺度、空间的特殊性、或是作品自反性的纪念碑性质。作品的墙体约4*4.5米，不论是建筑材料还是建筑方式，作为一个不稳固的固定物，它首先背叛了其自身；其具有所有纪念碑式建筑所要求的不朽性，但其更是一个具有灵活性的建筑——你可以想见其可填充任何空间，在任何时刻，延续不断地。其凝固的永恒性并非就材料或形式属性而言，却是就一种纯粹的人文主义而言。构成墙体的每一个砖块都装饰着非常独特的图纹和色彩，不均地联合统一在一起，揭露了建造者的本质——人类善感肆戏的魂魄与冰冷坚硬的表像相系相对。让我们转身背对作品，看看其对面的墙体，一幅简单的黑白照，记录了两只在空间中飞翔的鸟，我们自身的自反性便由此显露。现在作品的标题清晰起来：在浅灰色房间的昏暗光线中，拍打的翅膀吹起了一阵微风，现在已经消失。它们的灵活性，它们一去不复返的活力，构成这件作品的属性，也是杨优雅地供奉给我们的朴素视角：“把光带入黑暗房间的练习”当然是一个纪念碑，更是献给观众的一个礼物，一个献给站在其跟前的观众的纪念碑。