16.52㎡ Open Sea |16.52㎡ 公海
Artists | 參展藝術家
Cai Dongdong, Szelit Cheung, Ding Beili, Ding Shiwei, Li Qing, Li Shun, Liu Ren, Ma lingli, Ni Youyu, Peng Jian, Shang Yixin, Shao Wenhuan, Shi Zhiying, Yang Xun, Yang Jinsong, Yang Yongliang.
Gregory Halili(Philippin), Hiroshi Sugimoto(Japan)
蔡东东，丁蓓莉，丁世伟，李青，李舜，劉任，馬靈麗，倪有鱼，彭剑，尚一心，邵文歡，石至瑩，楊勛，楊勁松，楊泳梁，張施烈，杉本博司
Curatorial Note | 策展理念
The sea is history.
Four million years ago the first human ancestors left the sea to live ashore. Two million years ago the earth was stuck in the Pleistocene ice age, with vast amounts of water still enclosed in the continental ice sheet, where sea levels were low and land was connected to land. Ten thousand years ago, ice sheets melted fiercely, the rising tide of water inundated the land between the New Guinea Islands and Australia and engulfed the Bering Land Bridge. Since then, various small civilizations have been trapped in their respective worlds and forgotten for centuries. With the expedition of the "Great Waterway", the dots across the world were reconnected via ships in forms of colonization, trading, monetary flows, and exchange of cultures. And Hong Kong is one of the civilizations derived from such currents.
Evidently, the bond between man and the ocean is not limited to their interdependence of existence.
There is a sub-category in Western landscape painting called ‘Seascape Painting’. Only the manuscript used by Ma Yuan in the Southern Song Dynasty for his apprenticeship has survived. Ma Yuan's flexible lines simulate the movement of sea in different seasons and geographical environments, which on the surface appear to be just curved lines between inches, but in reality are traces of the movement of nature and the earth. It is clear that what Ma Yuan is trying to teach is not only the use of the brush, but also the understanding of the world. Although rarely found in pictures, the sea has been given a rich connotation in literature and faith. Ancient Chinese paintings took the civilization on land as its core subjects of portrayal, and thus, traces of ancient Chinese seascape paintings are rarely found. Ancient Chinese believed that China was a land at the center of the world surrounded by ocean. The vast area of the ocean beyond the land belonged to the immortals who lived in the island called Penglai, Fangzhai, and Yingzhou; as well as the Lord of the Sea, who takes sun and moon as his vehicle, born with a human face on the body of a bird. From the cradle of Chinese literature through the present days, the spiritual image of the ocean is often discussed in contrast with rivers and lands. Zhuangzi adopted the wisdom embodied by the Lord of the Sea to reflect the ignorance of Hebo, Lord of the River. Confucius said, "The Way is not practiced. I shall go ride a raft on the ocean 道不行，乘桴浮於海". And now, the ocean becomes as mysterious as the other side of the planet, free with infinite possibilities of imagination and metaphorical ideas with its freedom, abundance and divinity.
Different from the Chinese culture, the ocean in Japanese paintings has always been an important subject of embodiment across different periods in history. The tales in the classical Japanese chronicle Kojiki (‘An Account of Ancient Matters’) even attributed the birth of the land to the gods who stirred up the sea. Japanese artists portrayed the ocean in everyday context with various media and contemplated the meaning of existence and death while gazing at the sea. Yukio Mishima compared the ocean and the land to life and death: “The debris on the land is swarming, and it is possible to face the eternity here... just like the end of the human being can only face the deadliest in its most filthy and ugly form.” Standing majestically on the soil, the Kinkakuji Temple (Golden Pavilion), with ultimate beauty, looked “as if a beautiful ship that sails through a mass ocean of Time.” The trivial, disappointing reality of the land immediately became insignificant compared to the fine-looking sea. During the period when Shōmei Tōmatsu went to Okinawa to film the series of ‘Pencil of the Sun’, the island of Hateruma was still under the occupation of the US military. He nevertheless put the focus of his camera to the reflection of an interesting looking piece of cloud above the sea. The unspeakable pain of the people there was temporarily dissolved into the peaceful water. When putting it into the post-war context, such a piece of cloud captured by the lens of the Japanese Master of Photography seemed to bear countless metaphorical meanings.
Yet, the sea in Hong Kong is entirely different again. When Hong Kong artists began to examine the abstract meaning of the sea, it was already occupied as a colony for economic and trade exploitations. The waves that surround the island continue to recede, giving way to the newly filled land. The seascape is now only visible to those standing above the city’s skyline. Hong Kong-based artist Szelit Cheung laid layers of thin and refined drawings on paper to depict the sea surface under sunshine. The final works remind us of a faded photo or the shadows of an eternity. Art in the contemporary world could no longer be divided by geographical boundaries. Yet, the significant meanings embedded in the ocean have never been altered. Artists are still making totems of it with works in different forms. In this exhibition, gathering 18 contemporary artists from Mainland China/Hong Kong/Japan will use different media and forms to recreate seascapes and abstractions of the sea.
Yang Yong-Liang, famous for his unprecedented style of video art, adopts modern digital technology to present on multiple screens the scene in the water maps of Ma Yuan from more than a thousand years ago in Song Dynasty. While it may seem intuitive and overly simple to transform the images of the ancient painting into a digital representation, it, in fact, requires exceptional skill and knowledge. Through his video art, Yang hints at the simplicity and eternity of the ocean beyond time and space within the culture of humans, serving as a tribute to history. Shao Wen-Huan paid a similar tribute but with a distinctively different approach. He refers to ancient paintings (such as the "Xiangxiang" of the five generations of Dong Yuan) and used rendering techniques similarly used in blockbuster movies to create a sea of wonderland. It is a form of "anti-photography", a new "painting" of the digital code generation.
Japanese photographer and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto is well-known internationally for his precise and distilled seascape portraits. The seas and terrains in his photographs appeared as if they were in two separate universes that run at different time trajectories and in distinctive ways. He reckons that there is a unique way of measuring time in the sea, and therefore, uses virtual focus and a long-exposure lens to break free from the conventional concept of time and space, looking through the sea in search of the beginning of time when the universe was still merely chaos. More often, the ocean is not depicted as literal and specific but as an abstract symbol, a kind of imagination and ostentation. "Easy Travel" by artist Ni Youyu is a collage series of seascape photographs. NI has collected tens of thousands of old photographs taken by unnamed photographers around the world for many years. He classifies them, cuts, reorganizes and gradually collages them in an "anti-photoshop" way – a subjective seascape. Photography is no longer photography but a fragment of time and space. The sea in Yang Jinsong's paintings is pure in colour, with lines chasing each other across the surface of the painting, deliberately abandoning all metaphors of seascape art and returning to pure painting. Yet Yang Xun's paintings are quiet and deep, extending beyond the canvas. Li Qing cut the film fragments of the sea collected for two years to form the video work "Sea". The interaction between man and sea went from slow to intense, and finally back to the quiet sea level. At the same time, in his painting, he used the classic seascape painting from the history of Western art but deliberately dug the center of the picture. The absent scenery evokes more delusions to complement his video works.
In the book ‘Vertigine Della Lista’, Umberto Eco talks about infinity. He said that the purpose of the frame is to suggest that we have an example of an infinite set in the picture. In this exhibition, the art space of Galerie Ora-Ora shall naturally be suggesting an infinite sea of ‘art’. Each of the artists in Ocean provides pieces of one or a few pieces of the sea, and the fragments were aggregated to form a small open sea. We shall calculate the exact total area of the open sea to formulate the final name of the exhibition.
The exhibition is curated by the curatorial team Xⁿ Office and presented by Galerie Ora-Ora.
海即歷史。
四百萬年前最初的人類離開海洋上岸生活；兩百萬年前地球停留在更新世冰期，大量的海水還被封閉在大陸冰原中，海平面低，陸地與陸地相連；一萬年前冰原融化，海水漲潮淹沒了新幾內亞群島與澳大利亞之間的陸地，吞沒了白令大陸橋。此後，就像巴別塔徹底傾塌了一般，各類微小的文明被困在各自的天地中，在漫長的歲月裡相互遺忘。
大航海打破了僵局，隨著“偉大航道”的開拓，原本歐洲地圖上標有巨龍神怪出沒的空白區域逐漸被貼上殖民地的標籤。全球化就是一個碼頭航行至另一個碼頭的故事，在廣袤的空間中流動的不僅僅是洋流，還有貿易，金錢與文明的各種型態。香港就從這海流之上的海流中生長出來。
當然，人與海的紐帶不止於生存範疇。
西方風景畫裡有一項子類目，稱為海景畫。從古代壁畫開始，一直到16世紀，海景才漸漸脫離神話宗教故事，成為一個值得專門描繪的主題。無論是描繪波濤之中奮勇前進的航船，還是寧靜祥和的海崖風景，畫家都重在表達自然力量的崇高性。19世紀，自弗里德里希與透納開始，海景藝術出现了一種新的可能性，精简的构图與線條，大面積的色块，更準確的再現了大海的偉岸，使觀看者獲得超越宗教的精神性體驗。他們最终成為上個世紀60年代美國抽象表現主義的先師。
以陸地文化為核心的古代中國藝術，罕有海景繪畫的蹤跡可尋，僅有南宋馬遠在用於課徒的手稿流傳至今。馬遠使用柔韌的線條模擬不同季節，地理環境中水的動勢，表面上看只是方寸之間的曲線波紋，實質是描繪天地運轉的痕跡。可以想見，馬遠要傳授的不僅是用筆，更是體悟世界的道理。雖然在圖像上鮮有，但在文學與信仰中，海被賦予了豐富的內涵。古⼈认为中國是⼀块位於世界中心，四面環海的大陆。陆地之外⼴袤的海洋属于居住在蓬莱，⽅丈，瀛洲的仙人，以及人⾯⿃身，腳踏日月的海神。從上古⾄今的文學中，海的精神形象通常都⽤以與河川，⼤陆做對比和參照。莊⼦以海神的智慧广博反襯河伯的愚昧無知，孔⼦稱“道不⾏，乘桴浮於海”；此時的海，就像看不見的月球背面，自由，豐沛，神聖，可以承載無盡的想像和隱喻。
與中國相反，日本与海的关系密切深刻，日本的古代經典《古事记》里甚至将国土的誕生归功于天神搅动大海。日本的藝術家使用各種媒材刻畫日常生活裡的海，也通過瞭望大海深思存在與消亡。三島由紀夫將海與陸地對比生死，“陸上的殘渣蜂擁而來，而得以在此直面永恆...就像人歸終只能以最為髒淤最為醜陋的姿容直面死一樣。”而擁有極致的美與慾望的金閣寺，就像“ 像是一艘渡過時間大海駛來的美麗之船”。陸地滿載的瑣碎的，令人失望的現實，與光潔平整的海面比起來微不足道。當東松照明赴沖繩拍攝《太陽的鉛筆》時，波照間島還在美軍的侵佔之下，他卻將鏡頭對準傾斜海面上的一朵奇趣的雲，人間難以言盡的勞累苦痛倏然湮沒在這空蕩蕩的一片水波中。作为战后日本宗师级的摄影家，这片云朵投影下的海面似乎还有很多隐喻。
香港的海，⼜與前者⼤不相同。當香港藝術家開始審視海的抽象意義時，它已經滿載地域政治，經濟貿易的現實糾葛。環抱這座島嶼的海浪不斷向更遠處退去，讓位給新填的陸地。如果不在城市天際線的高處，難得見到周圍的海景。香港藝術家張施烈用鉛筆一層層描繪阳光下的海面，既像是一幅淡去色彩的老照片，又像恒长岁月的影子。
张施烈
今天的藝術已經無法完全按照地域背景來劃分，但海的意义沒有變，藝術家們仍然以不同形式的作品為它造圖騰。在這個匯聚大陸/香港/日本当代藝術家的展覽中，18位艺术家将使用不同媒材和形式的作品再現海景或抽象的海。
以别具風格的影像藝術聞名的楊泳梁將馬遠的水圖轉化成優美的多屏影像，再現數碼時代的古典美學。攝影藝術家邵文歡將“瀟湘圖”中的山立體化，“移栽”至海中，借用電影特效渲染技術獲得了一幅以太之海的虛擬攝影。雖然將古畫的圖像轉化為數字表現似乎很直觀，也過於簡單，但事實上，這需要非凡的技巧和知識。通過他的視頻藝術，楊泳梁暗示了海洋在人類文化中超越時間和空間的簡單性和永恆性，以此作為對歷史的致敬。
海與陸地如同兩個宇宙，擁有截然不同的時間軌跡和運行方式。杉本博司確知海自有一套計時方式，所以他用虛焦、長時間曝光的鏡頭引導一道脫離時空的目光，透過海面眺望混沌之初的遠古時代。更多的時候，海洋不是被描繪成字面的、具體的，而是一種抽象的符號，一種想像力和炫耀。倪有魚耗費了數年時間在世界各地收集老照片，他從上萬張照片中找出可以通過局部裁切連接起來的圖片，拼贴成了一幅海景長卷。海始終介於瞬息萬變與亙古不變之間，這幅並置不同時空的長卷，也許是一幅最傳神逼真的海的肖像畫。
楊勁松畫中的大海色調單純，線條在畫面上互相追逐，他刻意擯棄海景藝術的所有隱喻，回歸純粹的繪畫。而楊勛畫中的大海靜謐深沉，向畫布之外不斷延伸。李青從西方藝術史中挪用經典的海景繪畫，卻刻意挖去了畫面的中心，缺席的風景是否反而喚起更多對大海的遐想？
Yang Jingsong 楊勁松
Shao Wenhuan邵文歡
Li Qing李青
在《Vertigine Della Lista》一書中，Umberto Eco談到了無限性。他說，畫框的目的是暗示我們在畫面上有一個無限集的例子。每位參展藝術家都提供了一塊或幾塊海的碎片，碎片聚合在一起組成了一片小小的公海。我們將根據最終的參展作品，計算出公海的面積，為展覽定名。安伯托·艾可在《無盡的名單》一書中談到無限，他說畫框的目的在於暗示我們在畫面裡所見到的是無限大集的一個示例。在香港方由美術空間中的一片公海，自然也在暗示無限大的藝術之海。
該展覽由策展小組Xⁿ Office策劃，在香港方由美術呈現。
