The Tell-tale Heart

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泄密的心 参展艺术家：程然、Martha Colburn、冯梦波、李明、Hiraki Sawa、Apichatpong Weerasethakul、张鼎 策划：许宇

展览时间：2010年2月27日至4月11日 开幕酒会：2010年2月27日，周六，晚6-8点

上海James Cohan画廊将于2010年2月27日至4月11日呈上一场录像群展──《泄密的心》。 该展览汇集了来自中国、美国、日本、泰国等地一批活跃在录像实践前沿的艺术家们的近作，以期在展厅的"黑匣子"间一窥近年录像艺术创作叙事手法的多样性。1843年，美国小说家艾伦•坡的同名短篇作品藉由诡异的叙事铺陈了一则迷离的哥特小说。"叙述"，在字里行间被赋予迷一般的魅力。而这种陈述也是蛰伏于本此展览的幽灵。

两度折桂戛纳电影节的泰国电影导演、录像艺术家 Apichatpong Weerasethakul的录像装置《莫拉克（翡翠色）》 延续了Weerasethakul《正午显影》、《热带疾病》等电影对个体记忆、体验的魔幻现实主义般的陈述。短片以20多年前泰国经济起飞、柬埔寨难民涌入为背景，舞台即是莫拉克这家位于曼谷市中心的开业于1980年代目前已遭荒废的旅店。在满目飞絮、人去楼空的房间里，艺术家的镜头扫描着空间与静物的每一寸。三位旁白轻声细语，呢喃着少年往事，回忆的苦楚与等待的酸涩随着镜头与对白的平行推进而弥漫着这个被一盏微绿孤灯点亮的陈年空间──讲述故事的三颗孤独的灵魂就像Karl Gjellerup小说《The Pilgrim Kamanita》里的双星，互述心事几个世纪，直至陨落不再。

《泄密的心》里另一则秘密来自日本艺术家Hiraki Sawa静谧的黑白双频录像《出乎意料》。 这部录像充盈着东方的禅意，氤氲的黑白画卷里故事是无言。素来以营造轻盈的剧场感见长的Sawa在这部短片里徐缓地交代了两个远近相错的视野，一厢以黑影斑驳的鸟笼开篇，以静物为主角捕捉了时间的消逝；而另一厢则铺开一副旷野悠悠人影渺渺的空间图景。

同是静默的剧场，来自杭州的年轻艺术家程然其作品《野鸽》亦以暗房中鸟禽为故事的源头。在漆黑空落的棚里，一屋鸽子栖息于日光灯光之上。随着光线介入，惊诧的鸽群纷纷振翅飞舞，戏剧地导演了一出怪诞的现代舞。《野鸽》淡化了程然先前作品里对生活和青春年少的刻画，代以鸟的行为表演对人际周遭作了一场内省、拟人化的剖析。同样来自杭州的年轻艺术家李明用镜头记录了一段青春动人的行为表演（《XX》）：两名男孩背对背地坐在郊外田间，两人如粘连的双胎一样被衣物纠缠在一起，通过漫长的蠕动般的肢体表演，两人不为人察觉地互换了上衣，而感性的交流却是跃然纸上。

现居于上海的艺术家张鼎在其多频录像装置《雅布莱之梦》中构筑了纷繁庞大、充满野心的叙事。作品把电影植入了雕塑，其造型精巧、充满神秘图示的木制台架暗示了社会盘根错节的繁复结构属性。而故事以猴戏为轴心，通过猴儿传授道具的荒诞场面将从八个不同的当代个体置入各自角色，埋藏了对神谕以及社会角色设定的戏谑挪谕。八个剖面呈放射状层层展开，在这八个个体的线索里，艺术家或以史诗的基调，或藉以末世悲情，或浪漫，或荒诞，勾勒了一个当代微观社会的剖面，试图提炼疆域的测量、定理的界定以及焦点、资源、能量、诗歌、崇拜、抗争等构建起历史的元素。

除此之外，展览里另外两颗倾吐之心则逃逸进了动画的世界里。来自北京的冯梦波是中国新媒体艺术领域的代表人物。其近作《重启》一方面可以看作是对其早年《游戏结束：长征》的一次续写，另一方面又把《智取Doom山》时期确立的革命样板戏融于电子游戏的创作推进入了复古纷繁的像素世界。《重启》领游戏者进入了一个朋克式的唐吉科德征途，其间经典游戏符号与现代社会戏谑并置。对一个浸淫在游戏文化以及像素图像世界的创作者来说，《重启》是对昨日英雄主义、战争电影的缅怀和拆解。

纽约的动画艺术家Martha Colburn的《一加一即生活》以一个万花筒式的视角重新读取了神奇女侠（Wonder Woman）、好莱坞式的车祸、骑警等诸多电影符号，以轻柔忧伤诠释了暴虐不安的片刻。这些角色呆板的肢体语言，穿行在镜面的折射里，充满了对现实的无力感，最后故事随着画面里逃逸的心而画上了休止符。

更多信息，请联系 许宇 lxu@jamescohan.com或+86-21-54660825 x 602。

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The Tell-tale Heart: Cheng Ran, Martha Colburn, Feng Mengbo, Li Ming, Hiraki Sawa, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Zhang Ding Curated by Leo Xu

February 27 through April 11, 2010 Opening reception: February 27, 6-8 p.m.

James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is pleased to present The Tell-tale Heart, a tribute to the classic short story by American 19th century novelist and poet Edgar Allan Poe. The exhibition showcases recent video works by artists from China, America, Japan, and Thailand that explore the diversity and possibilities of narrative forms.

Morakot (Emerald)(2007), a video installation by the award-winning Thai filmmaker-video artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul, intertwines memory with intimate experience. Morakot is a derelict hotel in the heart of Bangkok that opened in the 1980s when Thailand experienced accelerated economic growth and Cambodians poured into Thai refugee camps after the devastating conflict between Vietnamese and Cambodian forces. The setting is a dilapidated hotel room filled with floating feathers and haunted by ghostly figures in bed. Inspired by the Danish writer Karl Gjellerup's 1906 Buddhist novel, The Pilgrim Kamanita, the protagonists are reincarnated as two celestial stars who re-tell their stories to each other until they no longer exist. Morakot revisits fictitious memories bound to the history of the hotel through three voiceovers, each whispering their sorrows and eternal wait for love.

Mysterious stories continue to unfold in the dreamscapes mapped by Japanese-born, British-trained artist Hiraki Sawa. Known for artificial landscapes and displaced worlds, shifting between domestic and imaginary spaces, Sawa has ventured outside the confines of his home that have provided settings for his well-known earlier pieces like Spotter and Hako. Out of the Blue (2008), a projected diptych, is shot in natural settings—where a Ferris wheel exists in a desert oasis, or a tiny house with electric light nestles in the root of a tree. In a shadow-filled room an empty birdcage sways. On the adjoining screen, people incrementally accumulate and descend from a massive white sand dune. The viewer is jostled between two worlds. By meticulously combining images both fabricated and from real world elements, Out of the Blue engages the viewer's imagination to question a sense of place and discernible reality.

Rock Dove (2009), a short video by Hangzhou-based emerging artist Cheng Ran, begins with a flock of doves roosting in the dark inside a factory building. This five-minute work is a subtle and unsettling dance enacted by the flock. The video reaches its dramatic peak with the birds' eruptive and chaotic response to the sudden illumination of the factory's fluorescent lamps. Another emerging artist from Hangzhou, Li Ming, brings us the celebration of youth and intimacy in his video XX (2009), where two boys, seated on a rock, cling to each other while exchanging their T-shirts. The slow and painstaking process becomes a seemingly innocent physical dialogue, addressing both the ambiguity of their relationship and sexuality.

Experimental narrative modes are notable in the ambitious nine-channel video installation The Dream of Yabulai (2008) by Shanghai-based Zhang Ding. This work has been re-orchestrated as a site-specific work and is situated under the gallery's staircase. The supporting structure of the work is an open wooden lattice framework suggesting unfinished architecture. Within the framework are the nine video screens. The central screen shows a monkey assigning identify-specific props or costumes to eight actors who then assume their new roles on one of the individual screens. The subsequent eight different role-plays depict various themes, unveiling a composite of new behavior in a "micro-society" while attempting to visualize key ideas or events in human history, such as mapping territory, the creation of theory, science, energy, art, religion and war.

Two other tell-tale hearts inhabit the world of animation. Beijing-based Feng Mengbo is a Chinese video-new media veteran. His recent video game installation Long March: Restart revisits his earlier piece, Long March: Game Over. The artist pushes his experiments further by integrating the elements of Chinese model operas with late 1990's pixel aesthetics. Appropriating 1980-90s vintage video games (Super Mario, Contra, Street Fighters, etc), Long March: Game Over relates a Don Quijotesque odyssey in a punkish manner.

New York and Amsterdam-based animation filmmaker Martha Colburn offers a kaleidoscopic view of modern life in her recent animation One & One is Life (2009), where Hollywood stereotypes as Wonder Woman, car crashes, and policemen are seen in a montage of conflict that drives a violent and uneasy world. Unfolding in a precise, deliberate pace—and accompanied by its melancholy soundtrack—One &One is Life tallies up its tale of grief, culminating with symbols of hearts fleeing away.

For Further information, please contact Leo Xu Lxu@jamescohan.com or +86- 21-54660825 x 602.

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