ARTIST 艺术家
EXHIBITION 展览
SUPPORT 支持
Three Stories
Cui Cancan
Huang Yishan tells stories. He makes art historical allusions, referencing Michelangelo’s Night, the snakes curled around Laocoon, and Beuys’ overcoat. Sometimes, he directly utilizes pictures so that history appears vividly in the work; sometimes, he is not faithful to the original work, making various alterations to gradually distance it from historical experience. Even in cases of direct appropriation, he always provides an entirely new context, which makes the information both familiar and strange.
The stories are determined by the content, but also by the storyteller’s perspective, skill, and context provided. In his images, there are multiple spatial narratives, and the perspectives and methods of realization are very diverse. Therefore, the context for Huang’s work is not immediately obvious, and viewers must engage with “the gaze,” constantly pulling closer and pushing away, finding clues and feelings, and hovering between similarity and dissimilarity, large and small, presence and absence.
(I)
The exhibition begins with three works, representing three stories. The first story relates Huang Yishan’s dissatisfaction with the painting principles he learned in school. In the work, he is a person encircled by walls, with Vincent van Gogh’s famed painting Prisoners Exercising hanging nearby. The painting expresses an emotion, and when paired with this mood, the enclosed spaces and painting-within-a-painting become resources for Huang’s later work.
In these later pieces, the painting-within-a-painting becomes an increasingly rich motif, and the scenes created around it are more complex. The original paintings come from different periods and mediums and have different roles and functions in Huang’s paintings. In Unfinished Portrait of an Old Man, Huang Yishan attempts to complete one of Li Tiefu’s unfinished portraits. Obviously, this choice suggests deeper meanings, as Huang creates a dialogue across time with Li, a pioneer of Chinese oil painting. However, this dialogue is dislocated and fabricated. Huang relies on his own imagination and techniques passed down for one hundred years, perpetuating the shortcomings or regrets in painting history. The fabricated painting-within-a-painting motif is also present in Self-Portrait of Picasso. Based on a picture of Picasso, Huang imitates Picasso’s Cubist style and “helps” him to complete a self-portrait that did not previously exist.
In Huang’s work, the fabrication sometimes stems from creative juxtaposition, which is best represented by Two Coats. There are two pieces of clothing in the image; one is the overcoat that Beuys often wore, and the other was a women’s style that Huang Yishan created based on it; they are hanging in opposite corners of the room. Strange juxtapositions and different scenes make the semantics of this painting more mysterious. The painting is set within a confined space and we cannot find a way out of it. A painting-within-a-painting is extended and given new life in many of Huang’s works; the painting draws us in, but it is also isolated in space. Therefore, an encircled person and an enclosed space are always hovering at the beginning of this story.
(II)
The second story begins with a question. Huang Yishan often depicts floor tiles in his work and imagines presenting lawns from a parallel perspective. This method means that progress is very slow; he can only paint three or four centimeters per day. Over a long period of time, the grass is meticulously arranged using repeated motions, reflecting his later working methods.
Thickness, material, technique, labor, and intense texture are the most notable traits of Huang’s works. These narratives of materiality can only be achieved through a lot of effort, requiring significant time and energy. Huang’s work is slow, and his methods are akin to a construction project or shaping an exquisite piece of stone. He has established rigorous steps in his production; he draws a sketch, creates a computer model, and re-calculates the structures and modules. Developing the texture and deploying or adding various materials is just one-third of the project.
Sometimes, in order to achieve the perfect texture, he will replace a painted section with real materials. This is a production requirement, but it also establishes a conceptual intention. In Huang’s work, this part-real, part-fake materiality is ubiquitous; on the one hand, this complex production attempts to imitate a real presence, and on the other hand, real materials and fabrications have a philosophical relationship. In Falling No. 2, composite board is cut into different shapes to make a decorative space that can accommodate classical sculpture. When we stand before the work, we can start to differentiate fiction from reality.
While he was painting lawns, Huang also attempted to depict the sea, but it was only many years later that Sea Level emerged as the culmination of this vision. Its composition and methods reflect the increasing refinement that comes with practice. The three framed images of the sea are increasingly slanted; these paintings and the actual floors beneath them are partly real and partly artificial. The visual illusion of the rectangle guides us toward a logical paradox. We waver between the materiality and symbolism of the painting; therefore, the content is temporarily suspended until we begin to look back, doubting and reflecting on our visual experiences.
(III)
The third story takes place in a corner. Huang Yishan imitates a scene from Freud’s studio, in which oil paints are hung on the walls. The half-open door makes the story feel unfinished; it covers the artist’s figure in the first story and incorporates the lawn from the second story to create a painting-within-a-painting. The first two stories are layered here, and this layered accumulation of experience creates an all-new story through the constant fabrication of the self and reality.
The third story is a composite image in which the story and the self are both being depicted and constantly created. Galloping is one of Huang Yishan’s largest works to date, covering multiple stories and creating intersections and parallels in artistic practices from different eras. Goldfish is its predecessor, a work that utilizes M. C. Escher’s tessellation method to create a visual confluence of goldfish and horses. The creation of this composition has many elements, including developing geometric shapes, using geometric groupings, considering shapes in multiple ways, and making gradual changes based on tessellations. The figure of the horse in the image comes from a painting-within-a-painting that Huang made in 2017; it is a combination and adaptation of Théodore Géricault’s Horse Racing at Epsom and Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion. This complex process creates a responsive relationship. In Galloping, a humorous and hypothetical method is used to place these past works into a solo exhibition for an unknown artist. This artist used a Pop method to paint multiple images of horses galloping, presented in a blue space.
Moving a Sofa became the best metaphor for this story, mixing together narrative and materiality in one work. A thickly-painted Freud painting is squeezed into a narrow crack, leaving open the possibility of an extrusion. Here, we witness an accident, and with the suspension of narrative and the presence of material evidence, the viewer is abandoned as he is leaving. How will the story happen? Where does it end? A painting that is about to vanish draws our vision beyond the painting and toward what happens before and after the story.
Huang Yishan’s stories constantly invite and create commentary, and the commentary itself becomes another story. This new story includes art historical allusions and intellectual creations, but it is also the sum total of his definition of the self, his own artistic practice, and the time he has experienced. These fluid paintings also suggest Huang’s classic style, space and perspective, appropriation and layering, material and technique; they are a painting-in-a-painting and a story-in-a-story.
Cui Cancan
12 July 2019
故事三则
文/崔灿灿
Cui Cancan
Huang Yishan tells stories. He makes art historical allusions, referencing Michelangelo’s Night, the snakes curled around Laocoon, and Beuys’ overcoat. Sometimes, he directly utilizes pictures so that history appears vividly in the work; sometimes, he is not faithful to the original work, making various alterations to gradually distance it from historical experience. Even in cases of direct appropriation, he always provides an entirely new context, which makes the information both familiar and strange.
The stories are determined by the content, but also by the storyteller’s perspective, skill, and context provided. In his images, there are multiple spatial narratives, and the perspectives and methods of realization are very diverse. Therefore, the context for Huang’s work is not immediately obvious, and viewers must engage with “the gaze,” constantly pulling closer and pushing away, finding clues and feelings, and hovering between similarity and dissimilarity, large and small, presence and absence.
(I)
The exhibition begins with three works, representing three stories. The first story relates Huang Yishan’s dissatisfaction with the painting principles he learned in school. In the work, he is a person encircled by walls, with Vincent van Gogh’s famed painting Prisoners Exercising hanging nearby. The painting expresses an emotion, and when paired with this mood, the enclosed spaces and painting-within-a-painting become resources for Huang’s later work.
In these later pieces, the painting-within-a-painting becomes an increasingly rich motif, and the scenes created around it are more complex. The original paintings come from different periods and mediums and have different roles and functions in Huang’s paintings. In Unfinished Portrait of an Old Man, Huang Yishan attempts to complete one of Li Tiefu’s unfinished portraits. Obviously, this choice suggests deeper meanings, as Huang creates a dialogue across time with Li, a pioneer of Chinese oil painting. However, this dialogue is dislocated and fabricated. Huang relies on his own imagination and techniques passed down for one hundred years, perpetuating the shortcomings or regrets in painting history. The fabricated painting-within-a-painting motif is also present in Self-Portrait of Picasso. Based on a picture of Picasso, Huang imitates Picasso’s Cubist style and “helps” him to complete a self-portrait that did not previously exist.
In Huang’s work, the fabrication sometimes stems from creative juxtaposition, which is best represented by Two Coats. There are two pieces of clothing in the image; one is the overcoat that Beuys often wore, and the other was a women’s style that Huang Yishan created based on it; they are hanging in opposite corners of the room. Strange juxtapositions and different scenes make the semantics of this painting more mysterious. The painting is set within a confined space and we cannot find a way out of it. A painting-within-a-painting is extended and given new life in many of Huang’s works; the painting draws us in, but it is also isolated in space. Therefore, an encircled person and an enclosed space are always hovering at the beginning of this story.
(II)
The second story begins with a question. Huang Yishan often depicts floor tiles in his work and imagines presenting lawns from a parallel perspective. This method means that progress is very slow; he can only paint three or four centimeters per day. Over a long period of time, the grass is meticulously arranged using repeated motions, reflecting his later working methods.
Thickness, material, technique, labor, and intense texture are the most notable traits of Huang’s works. These narratives of materiality can only be achieved through a lot of effort, requiring significant time and energy. Huang’s work is slow, and his methods are akin to a construction project or shaping an exquisite piece of stone. He has established rigorous steps in his production; he draws a sketch, creates a computer model, and re-calculates the structures and modules. Developing the texture and deploying or adding various materials is just one-third of the project.
Sometimes, in order to achieve the perfect texture, he will replace a painted section with real materials. This is a production requirement, but it also establishes a conceptual intention. In Huang’s work, this part-real, part-fake materiality is ubiquitous; on the one hand, this complex production attempts to imitate a real presence, and on the other hand, real materials and fabrications have a philosophical relationship. In Falling No. 2, composite board is cut into different shapes to make a decorative space that can accommodate classical sculpture. When we stand before the work, we can start to differentiate fiction from reality.
While he was painting lawns, Huang also attempted to depict the sea, but it was only many years later that Sea Level emerged as the culmination of this vision. Its composition and methods reflect the increasing refinement that comes with practice. The three framed images of the sea are increasingly slanted; these paintings and the actual floors beneath them are partly real and partly artificial. The visual illusion of the rectangle guides us toward a logical paradox. We waver between the materiality and symbolism of the painting; therefore, the content is temporarily suspended until we begin to look back, doubting and reflecting on our visual experiences.
(III)
The third story takes place in a corner. Huang Yishan imitates a scene from Freud’s studio, in which oil paints are hung on the walls. The half-open door makes the story feel unfinished; it covers the artist’s figure in the first story and incorporates the lawn from the second story to create a painting-within-a-painting. The first two stories are layered here, and this layered accumulation of experience creates an all-new story through the constant fabrication of the self and reality.
The third story is a composite image in which the story and the self are both being depicted and constantly created. Galloping is one of Huang Yishan’s largest works to date, covering multiple stories and creating intersections and parallels in artistic practices from different eras. Goldfish is its predecessor, a work that utilizes M. C. Escher’s tessellation method to create a visual confluence of goldfish and horses. The creation of this composition has many elements, including developing geometric shapes, using geometric groupings, considering shapes in multiple ways, and making gradual changes based on tessellations. The figure of the horse in the image comes from a painting-within-a-painting that Huang made in 2017; it is a combination and adaptation of Théodore Géricault’s Horse Racing at Epsom and Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion. This complex process creates a responsive relationship. In Galloping, a humorous and hypothetical method is used to place these past works into a solo exhibition for an unknown artist. This artist used a Pop method to paint multiple images of horses galloping, presented in a blue space.
Moving a Sofa became the best metaphor for this story, mixing together narrative and materiality in one work. A thickly-painted Freud painting is squeezed into a narrow crack, leaving open the possibility of an extrusion. Here, we witness an accident, and with the suspension of narrative and the presence of material evidence, the viewer is abandoned as he is leaving. How will the story happen? Where does it end? A painting that is about to vanish draws our vision beyond the painting and toward what happens before and after the story.
Huang Yishan’s stories constantly invite and create commentary, and the commentary itself becomes another story. This new story includes art historical allusions and intellectual creations, but it is also the sum total of his definition of the self, his own artistic practice, and the time he has experienced. These fluid paintings also suggest Huang’s classic style, space and perspective, appropriation and layering, material and technique; they are a painting-in-a-painting and a story-in-a-story.
Cui Cancan
12 July 2019
故事三则
文/崔灿灿
黄一山是个讲故事的人。他描绘着各种艺术史的典故，米开朗基罗的夜，拉奥孔缠扰的蛇，博伊斯的大衣。有时，他直接引用图像，历史跃然于纸上，有时他并不忠于原作，进行各种方式的改编，历史的经验逐渐远离。即便是直接挪用，他总会给其一个全新的语境，让信息变的既熟悉，又陌生。
故事不仅取决于内容，也取决于讲述者的立场、技巧和给予的情景。在他的画面中，空间的叙事是多重的，视角和实现的手段也十分多样。于是，黄一山作品的语意都不是一目了然的，观众需要进入更多的“凝视”时刻，不断的拉近、推远，寻找线索和情绪，在似与不似、大与小、在场与缺席之间来回游走。
（一）
展览以三张作品，亦是三个故事开始。第一个故事，讲述了黄一山在读书时对绘画原理的苦闷，画中他把自己扮成在墙角环绕的人，墙上挂了一幅梵高的名作《围绕的囚徒》。这张画显得有些抒情，空间的角落，画中画在这样的情绪下成了黄一山日后创作的起源。
画中画在之后的创作中变的越发丰富，围绕它的情景也日益复杂。这些“原作”来自不同的时期和媒介，在画面中设定成不同的角色和功能。《未完成的老人像》中，黄一山尽其所能的完成了李铁夫的一张未完成的肖像画。显然，这样的选择暗示了更多的深意，黄一山在画面中主导了与中国油画的开创者李铁夫的一次隔空对话。但这个对话却是错位的，虚构的，他凭自己的想象和百年后传承的技艺，延续了绘画历史中的某种缺陷或是遗憾。虚构的画中画同样存在于《毕加索的自画像》，黄一山依据毕加索的一张肖像照，并模仿毕加索立体主义的语言，“帮助”其完成了一张并不存在的自画像。
虚构有时也源于创造性的并置，《两件大衣》是其中的代表。画面中有两件衣服，一件是博伊斯常穿的大衣，另一件是黄一山依据它创作的女款，它们对应的悬挂于房间的角落。陌生的并置，不同的情景，让这张画的语意，变得更加神秘。它被置于一个幽闭的空间中，我们寻找不到画面的出口。我们意识到，在黄一山许多画作中，被延续的，获得新生的画中画，吸引住我们，但它随即又被空间隔绝。于是，在这个故事的开始，那些围绕的人，禁锢的空间，始终游荡。
（二）
第二个故事开始于一个疑问，热衷刻画地砖的黄一山，想象着用平行透视的方式描绘草坪。这样的方式导致进度非常缓慢，每天只能画出三、四厘米的厚度。在漫长的时间中，一根根的草被周而复始的排列着，细致而又全面，成了他之后工作方式的写照。
厚度、物料、工艺、劳作、超质感，是黄一山作品的显著特征。这些颇费周折才能达到的物料性叙事，需要消耗巨大的时间和劳力。黄一山的创作是缓慢的，他的方式接近于工程施工，或是“直人”打磨一件精湛的石器。他为制作设置下严谨的步骤，勾绘草图，电脑制作，再进行结构和模数的测算。然后，铺就肌理，调配添加各种材料，这才只是完成进度的三分之一。
有些时候，为了接近质感的完美性，他会直接选择使用真实的物料来替代。这既是制作的需求，也是观念意图的设定。“半真半假”的物料感在黄一山的作品中比比皆是，一方面复杂的制作试图模拟真实的存在，另一方面真实的物料与虚构之间有着颇为哲思的关系。在《掉落-2》中，不同形状的复合板，切割成一个容纳古典雕塑的装饰性空间。我们止步于画前，开始分辨哪些是幻象，哪些是事实？
在反复描绘草坪时，黄一山曾试图描绘过海面。许多年后，《海平面》完成了这个想象，但它的构思和方式在实践积累中，越发锤炼。三张带框的海面，愈发倾斜，它和下方的实物地板亦真亦假。矩形四边形引发的视错觉，将我们引向逻辑的悖论。我们在绘画的“物质性”和“表征性”之间徘徊不定，于是，表达的内容被暂时悬置。直到，我们开始回观自身，对自身视觉经验开始怀疑和反思。
（三）
第三个故事，也发生在角落。黄一山模仿了弗洛伊德工作室的场景，墙壁上挂满油画颜料。半开的门让故事显得并不完整，它遮掩了第一个故事中艺术家的形象，嵌入了第二个故事中的草坪，变成画中画的存在。前两个故事在这里完成了叠加，经验的层层累积，自我和现实不断地被虚构，形成全新的故事。
于是，第三个故事变成了故事的群像，在这幅群像里，故事和自我都在被描摹，也都在被不断创造。《奔腾图》算是黄一山迄今最大尺幅的创作之一，它涵盖多个故事的存在，也将各个时期的艺术实践交叉并行。《金鱼图》算是它的前身，画中利用“埃舍尔镶嵌图形”的方法，生成了金鱼和马互补图形的视错觉。这个构思过程包含几何形状的演变，几何群组的运用，形状的多重思维，在镶嵌图形基础上的渐变等多个步骤。而图形中马的形象，则源于黄一山在2017年的一件画中画的作品，它是籍里柯的《埃普索姆赛马》和迈布里奇拍摄的《奔跑中的马》的结合变体，改编而成。这样复杂的过程，接连不断的回应关系，在《奔腾图》中以一种戏虐和假设的方式呈现，它将这些过往作品虚构成一个不知名艺术家的个展，这个艺术家用类似波普的手法绘制了多张奔马图，在一个的蓝色空间中展出。
《搬沙发》成了这个故事最好的隐喻，它将作品的叙事性和材料感糅合在一起。一幅画得很厚的弗洛伊德画作被挤入一个狭窄的门缝，留下了偶然挤压的效果。在此，我们目击了一场“事故”，随着叙事性的中断和材料物证的在场，它将观者遗弃在一个即将离去的中途，故事如何发生？又在哪里结束？即将消失的“画作”，将我们目光引向画布之外，引向故事发生的前后。
于是，我们发现，在黄一山的故事中，故事不断邀请评论，创造评论，而评论本身也会变成另一个故事。这个全新的故事，既包含艺术史的典故、思维的创造；也定义自身，自身的艺术实践、所经历时间的总和。这幅流动的绘画，也暗示着出黄一山的典型风格，空间与透视、挪用与叠加、物料与工艺、画中画和故事中的故事。
崔灿灿
2019-07-12