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郭鸿蔚、Yuko Murata、Karen Seapker：
油画、水彩新作
2010年11月17日至2011年1月28日
地点：上海James Cohan画廊
上海市岳阳路170弄1号楼1楼
开幕酒会：2010年11月20日，周六，晚6-8点
上海James Cohan画廊将荣幸地展出三位年轻绘画艺术家：郭鸿蔚（中国）、Yuko Murata（日本）、Karen Seapker（美国）。他们在国际舞台上已经崭露头角，其创作获得了相当的关注和好评。本次联展以自然历史与自然界为线索来解读他们各自的新作。
郭鸿蔚近期的油画及水彩以自然博物馆的陈列和科技图像的再现为对象，描绘了月球、火焰、骷髅、鸟禽、动物标本、化石以及植物等主题。郭鸿蔚以其独特的绘画技艺为人所知，譬如其水彩常用水破开预先绘制的写实图像从而获得特殊的氤氲与水渍轮廓效果。在最近的油画创作中，艺术家使用了大量上光油，赋予笔下科普图像中呆板的物件神秘、电影感的光晕。郭鸿蔚的绘画里总欲图保持一种开放的、试验性，如其所谓“对于肌理和方法论而非意识形态上更内省”的态度，即便在这套观念鲜明的新作里，仍旧可见一斑。通过其惯常使用的图像结构的手段，对视觉上对绘画的客体和主题进行分类，从而产生了一种缜密研究下的不断重复，即，重复绘画同一事物，每次的演绎却又不尽相同。新作从图像到画面布局以及最终的临场展示都效法了博物馆陈列和科普图像的展示，在静物绘画、传统花鸟之间架设起了一种诙谐默契的联系。
Yuko Murata画了近十年动物与风景。她的图像来自旅游手册、明信片、动物园导览册、野生动物杂志中的的现成图片。在她的绘画过程中，这些二手的图像大多会被简化留下最本质的元素，最终呈现在画布上的是这些图像的残片、剖面。她笔下的动物，譬如，松鼠、兔子、仓鼠、蝙蝠、马、猴子、鹦鹉等，往往单独以肖像的形式出现。不论是对视观众或者眺望画外的某一点，它们看来都神情淡漠，一副不可知的样子，观者全然无法判断究竟是什么在这些动物的视线注视之中。同郭鸿蔚一样，Murata也相当重视绘画的处理，如油料的粘稠度、笔触、画面表面的变化，以此强化她笔下图像不寻常的特点。迄今为止，她的绘画很少大过40x30cm，她尺幅上的偏好流露出她对画面的私密、材料尺寸以及创作者与观众体验之间多重关系的思量。对于她这些乍看即可爱的动物肖像，艺术家如此评述道：“对于那些看到我的作品，然后想‘哦，可真可爱’的人，我想说‘你被我的动物骗了’。”在她风景绘画中，质朴的构图摒弃了田园风光的清纯而更多是受到了18世纪日本绘画的影响，当时的艺术家挑战以精简的色彩和客体创作作品。在Murata看来，绘画就是旅行，不断地搜寻“虚构的地点”。
在Karen Seapker的绘画里，观众可以感受到一个高速运转中的世界。奔放的色彩结合了不羁的笔触激活并加剧了这种行进感。虽然尺幅不大，但这些异常抽象的画作却是能量饱满。艺术家娴熟的技巧令骚动与不安跃然纸上。常有人将Seapker的绘画同暴风中的地景、激浪冲击的地表相联系，她的绘画里颜料如疾风骤雨行进莫测。展览中的《滑动》、《接近》、《后视图》三件作品清晰地表明人们仅仅是过客，世界万物没有永存的。
更多信息，请联系 许宇Lxu@jamescohan.com或+86-21-54660825 x 602。
GUO HONGWEI, YUKO MURATA, KAREN SEAPKER
Recent paintings and watercolors
November 17, 2010 through January 28, 2011
James Cohan Gallery Shanghai,
1/F, Bldg. 1, No. 1 Lane, 170 Yue Yang Road, Shanghai
Opening reception: November 20, 2010, Saturday, 6-8 pm.
James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is pleased to present an exhibition of three young emerging painters, Guo Hongwei from mainland China, Yuko Murata from Japan, and Karen Seapker from the United States. All three artists, having already attained a certain prominence and international following, will be exhibited together for the first time in Shanghai. An informal link connecting the works by these artists for this exhibition is the theme of natural history and the natural world.
Guo Hongwei’s new oil paintings and watercolors examine the idea of the natural history museum and the role of science. His new works feature images of the moon, fire, skulls, birds, animal specimens, fossils, and plant life. Guo is well known for his unique painting techniques, using water to wash the images to achieve delicate watery traces on paper. For his paintings his use of excessive oil and varnish lends his deadpan objects a mysterious and almost cinematic air. While there is a persuasive conceptual premise that often initiates a new body of work, it is always Guo’s desire to remain experimental, more open to the working process, “more introspective—into texture and methodology—as opposed to ideology.” By visually cataloguing the objects or subjects he chooses to paint, a pictorial structuring device the artist frequently employs, it allows for a closely studied repetition in which to paint something but to paint it differently each time. The iconic images in many of these new works could be seen as auspicious symbols in Chinese culture, such as the moon or fire paintings, but they also touch upon the universal fascination with images and subjects as old as mankind itself.
For the exhibitions decade Yuko Murata’s paintings have depicted animals and the landscape. The sources for her images are based on found photographs from tourist brochures, postcards, zoo guidebooks and wildlife magazines. Much of this secondary source material is then pared down to their essential elements, and the resulting paintings feature fragmented versions of these images. Animals such as rodents, rabbits, squirrels, hamsters, bats, birds, horses, monkeys, and parrots are portrayed in solitary portrait style. Whether gazing at the viewer directly or focused on a fixed point outside of the painting, seemingly aloof and unknowable, the viewer has no way of knowing what the animal is seeing. Like Guo Hongwei, Murata is intensely involved with the painting process—the viscosity of oil paint, brushstrokes, surface variation—as a means to emphasize the unnatural characteristics of her chosen images. To date her paintings have rarely been larger than 40 x 30 centimeters, (12 x 15 inches) suggesting a contemplative connection between the intimacy and scale of her source material and experience for the artist and viewer. Murata has commented on the evident ‘cuteness’ of her animal paintings, to which she’s replied, “For people who look at my pictures and think, “Oh, how cute,” I want to say, “You are being fooled by my animals.” As in Murata’s landscapes these modest compositions defy their idyllic innocence and have been said to be influenced by 18th century Japanese paintings, when artists were challenged to create works with a minimum of colors or objects. For Murata it is all about the journey, an ongoing search for “a place that does not exist.”
In Karen Seapker’s paintings one feels the world at high speed. Surges of color combined with sweeping brushwork activate and accelerate this sense of movement. Predominantly abstract and relatively modest in scale, Seapker’s paintings are no less dynamic. There is a balanced authority over their surfaces, but where at any given moment disorder and recklessness could prevail. Other recent observations or comments about Seapker’s work have compared her paintings to windswept landscapes, or cresting waves cascading forcefully across the surface in which to guide the color to its inevitable direction. Titles such as Slip, Almost Where and Rear View provide a bit of stable ground while shrewdly suggesting that we are only passing through and where nothing in this world ever stays still for very long.
For further information, please contact Leo Xu Lxu@jamescohan.com or +86-21-54660825 x 602.
