Sun Yi: Sidelines

SIDELINES

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SIDELINES

旁觀

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PrefaceVisions Subtle in the MindComing to Shape in the Light

Xiao Xiang Deng Ying (Subtle Visions in the Light) is the title of the collected verses I composed during my stay in Barcelona four years ago. Too shy to publish it, I have since never mentioned this work, still less its title. Now, however, it suddenly dawns on me that this title might as well be a fit to this work of mine.

It has been over two years since I came to Britain. In order to make a personal account here, I have finally ventured to edit part of my work into collection and have it published. Gratitude shall be mine should any defect be exempt from your most observing criticism.

As I see it, the root of arts lies in intention and creation. Intention precedes creation; it stems mostly from personal sentiments, based on which one begins to imitate, and later he acquires the techniques and masters the principles, and makes personal adaptations and alterations. Quite by contrast, creation in art leaves no traces for others to follow—it is unspeakable, unteachable and unlearnable—it manifests itself silently in its own right. Referring to aesthetics, the western philosopher Immanuel Kant holds that art should be

detached from any concept, disinterested from any concern and divorced from any purpose, so that it will attain the ideal ‘zweckmassigkeit ohne zweck’ (purposiveness without purpose). Such idea is in fact echoed with the Chinese artistic notion which pursues a state of freedom both in the mind and the hand, and which values aesthetic harmony but not without difference and artistic challenge without violation, so as to reach a free and unfettered realm of mind.

Deriving from human nature, such a realm of mind is a spirit aspiration. He who fulfills it transcends himself and outlasts his artworks. He who does not, brilliant and appealing as his art might be, is after all but repeating himself and equals himself with the mediocre.

I became keen on writing since childhood and learnt to paint when getting older, and it has been more than twenty years. During these years I have never dared to stop studying and working on perfecting my art. Thanks to all my teachers, I have been trying my utmost to keep emptiness and serenity in the mind and hoping to nurture purity, genuineness, refinement and righteousness in myself.

As ancient people put it, ‘What attracts man? The apricot flowers in February and osmanthus blossoms in August. Who urges me? Lamp light in the midnight and cockcrow at the break’. What makes art art—the virtue lies in what is subtly abstract and what seems to be readily specific. Everything is backed up by their own underlying rules, and exists between extremes. And what is between extremes is what art is capable of.

Qu Yuan, an ancient Chinese poet, wrote ‘the way ahead is long and has no ending, yet high and low I’ll search with my will unbending’. As I ponder, in such an awkward age of mine, my longing for an artistic tongue never deserts me, but only sometimes words do fail me.

By Hong ZhiSpring 2015London

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自序心有小相遇燈成影

小相燈影，這本是我四年前在巴塞羅納時所作的小詩集的名字，因羞於將詩集示人，便連同這名字也未再提及過。今不知怎的，忽覺得它作為這作品集子之名倒也頗為合適。來英國二年有餘了，為給自己做個總結，便也壯著膽子將部分作品編輯成冊，出版成集。不足之處還望方家勿哂。余以為，作藝之則有因有創。因在創之先，然其因者多生於感悟，而初從於效仿，得其跡曉其法，再加之編排變化；惟創者，無實跡可循，不興說，不可教，不能學，默而成之也。縱有西人康德言審美，提倡不可秉據任何概念，不可涉及任何利害關心，不可依於任何目的，意在求得無目的之合目的性；恰吾人看重心手雙暢，和而不同，違而不犯，以達悠遊自在之境。

境者，自是生於心性，精神之所向耳。能得此者，縱使筆墨不存，也故有我在，如若不然，再是何等繽紛羨人，亦是陳陳相因，同槁木死灰無異耳。

吾自幼執筆伏案，稍長學畫，草草算來已是二十個春秋有餘。讀書臨池，不敢有廢，蒙諸先生教誨，以力求致其虛極，守之靜篤，望能獲些許清真雅正之氣。

正所謂古人嘆曰：何物媚人，二月杏花八月桂，有誰催我，三更燈火五更雞。藝之所以為藝，貴在其虛，也於難明其實。然物皆有理，存於兩極，兩極之間便是藝事之所能成。

屈子言：路漫漫其修遠兮，吾將上下而求索。定神自審，正是處此青黃不接之年，偏偏是愛上層樓，卻也欲說還休。

乙未嘉月弘之記倫敦鬥室

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Unravelled Connections

… ‘as lowly as mere objects’

You might ask the question: ‘what is an artwork?’

Start with an everyday object, something you barely notice - a free newspaper left on the tube, a bench, a packet of cigarettes, nails or pieces of debris: wood, wire and string. Small insignificant things that form the backdrop of life as we pass through it on a daily basis constitute the central component of Sun Yi’s work in the past couple of years, running through the materiality and form of his practice. Drawing is at the heart of his practice as well, as a fundamental aspect of cultural expression connecting low and high art, East Asian and Western cultural traditions. The works are under-played, almost whittled down like a rough piece of wood, worked on and yet left barely discernible as aesthetic objects/art works in their execution and presentation. They are subtly laid out below the surface, striking a bass note beneath the main tune.

Sun Yi has practised calligraphy since the age of five and more lately trained in ink painting in China. As a child, he was requested to learn, initially in order to ‘sit still’. With this background, his discipline is embedded in different aspects of

Chinese culture, such as the constant search for a kind of ‘imperfection’ that is philosophically in tune with Daoism or Chan Buddhism. Humility and acceptance are valued above any outward display of ego or spectacle, current values in our age of late global capitalism and neo-liberalism. In London, these values have fused with other philosophical thinking and in conversation, Sun frequently mentions philosophers such as Kant, Wittgenstein and Agamben, amongst others, showing a wide range of intellectual engagement in issues of taste, value and language.

In London, his practice has evolved out of this background, accumulating understandings of liminality, tensions and paradoxes that are the push and pull of forces and structures in society and culture. Formally, his work pursues a dialogue across different artistic vocabularies from China and the West, making connections with drawing, painting and sculpture as integral aspects of cultural production across time and space. Sun Yi’s series of newspaper works manifest in a variety of ways as drawings, sketches, sculpture and objects posing questions about knowledge systems, and society’s propensity for story-telling through visual messages in the contemporary world of throw-away media.

Extraction

On the surface of it, they are simple: sketches in black ink are formed by drawing through, small visual segments are extracted and traced, pulled out as little tableaux vivants, set against a plain white ground, with gesso brushed in broad strokes whereby all other contextual information is erased in a painterly gesture. The materiality of this background is significant: gesso is used to prepare the canvas but it is also a sculptural material and in this work it seems to be a deliberate play across media and function, a subtle yet traceable mark of artistic legacy lying below the surface as a platform for the images. As sketches they can be perceived as extracts, in that they are redrawn from the ‘real’, becoming reanimated as universal, non-specific figures, with overlapping functions of capturing the subject in the classical European sense and capturing the idea in the Chinese tradition of literati painting. In this case the drawing is perhaps connected to the idea of ‘Xieyi’ (寫意) in Chinese painting, literally ‘write meaning’ but with the sense of ‘inscribing the essence’, connecting the mind or the imaginary with the formation of a visual image as the expression or translation of an idea.

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What is left takes us back to drawing itself and visuality, as though the process has been undone - deconstructed, simultaneously produced and de-produced as it were. They connect to the hand (off the printed image and back), and the head: are they in the artist’s mind and how do we ‘read’ them? As contemporary meditations, these works combine a sort of classicism with a take on contemporaneity and media information saturation. At this moment, print media is free precisely because its value has been reduced to nothing with the rise of digital. Perhaps print itself reverts to a classical status in the 21st century as an outmoded form of modernity.

The flip side of the paper is also interesting: showing both sides allows them to become sculptural objects that you need to walk around. Hung suspended, they cut across into our vision physically intervening in space. We are shown pages of everyday, often sensational or horrific stories with headlines and photographs: street protest, murder, suicide, domestic violence, but sometimes simply the banal face of bald consumerist capitalism, showing advertisements of smiling, product-bearing figures. Again the page is pulled out of context, yet there is a sense of currency, of fresh news that is due to become

historical at some point in time (when does ‘history’ begin?). It is one part of a whole, usually embedded within a format that is designed for quick consumption by anyone while on the tube or bus, to be discarded or thrown away until another appears the next day, and so on and so on. Sun’s process of extraction might be random, but like the news, there is process of selection and patterns emerge, as images somehow take on epic narrative-forming roles in their production of our shared contemporaneity, answering to Anderson’s reflections on ‘imagined communities’ borne out of mass vernacular literacy.

The pictorial selection signal a bigger political framework through which we form global communities of shared response, such as the episode of a black man being shot down cruelly by a policeman in America as he runs away unarmed. His only crime to have a missing taillight on his car. His fate is shockingly revealed in the appalling capture on camera that seals the fact permanently in our eyes and imaginations. Sun Yi takes this into the work, but it is part of the daily ritual, it is the response and understanding of it is what magnifies its significance. Whilst this episode is echoed with many others ( jihadist youth leaving the UK for Syria, children who have been murdered), through

the series of images extracted on a daily basis over a period of two years a broader picture emerges and is also simultaneously erased in the drawing. What do we know? How much do we understand? How do we process our world?

In his use of the everyday over time, Sun also deals with the aspect of time as a central part of his practice. Units of time are measured - a day finishes, another begins. Executed over a period of two years, the work is framed through real time experience as an everyday habit, discipline even, of how we live our lives, via this reading of the news. News itself becomes a framework, the framework even. A ritual marking time and our connection to the world, as we switch on the radio, or TV, pick up the paper, to browse through and share the daily horror. Part of the modern world, these little rituals are ubiquitous, transcending cultural difference. In Eagleton’s words, ‘aesthetic intersubjectivity adumbrates a utopian community of subjects, united in the very deep structure of their being’. Calligraphy is echoed here in a daily, meditational, inward practice. As a practitioner, Sun is utilising these patterns of habit in his own process as an artist, engaging the casual acts of reading, viewing, sitting, which lies between the visible, the invisible, the taking in and the leaving

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behind, in a subtle interplay of our relational world and the very structures that bind us together. The cyclical nature of time in Chinese culture is key to this process and in Sun’s view of the world.

Questionable objects

In his sculptural and other object-based works, drawing is still present. Lines, composition, material are pulled around, extending the act of drawing into three-dimensional space. Nails and wire filaments are placed, again casual/not-casual, whether by chance or deliberate placement, we are not quite sure. The benches are disarmingly simple. Public furniture normally placed for convenience, to be sat on while you eat your lunch, wait for your friend, and so on, are upturned illogically and strewn minimally with ribbons, as though ‘wrapped’ but ineffectively, as a signal of difference, or in Derridean terms ‘différance’, in which a small alteration causes a shift of focus or meaning. How are we meant to understand them? Function is denied in favour of a philosophical and aesthetically positioning as sculptural form. Space is called in, transformed through this misplacement, calling the ‘natural’ placement as an unnoticeable landscape to attention. In other works, there is a playful back and forth of form and function: a library is completely stripped of its book spines, as all the books are turned sideways, or wrapped in plastic, rendering their contents unreadable. A chair is photographed suspended halfway up a wall attached to a bookshelf in a simple visual trick of perception. Large rectangular blocks of ice are laid to rest inside a hole in the ground, the solid freezing object due to melt and fuse back into the land as water,

Exchange

The One Cent project is a group of objects or paintings presented in a group as a proposition for exchange. The objects and the coin (also an object) become interchangeable in a value system that levels the field of values to a nominally flat plane. Here the art market is subtly invoked in a wry lowering of the stakes, as the question of materiality and culture is called in, in which artworks are shown up as exchanged in a distorted value system of cumulative capital and market forces.

Ultimately Sun’s works are an exploration of value (as much as) aesthetic/cultural, social, economic, in the Bourdieuan sense of ‘habitus’, our very existence in a society is threaded together through value systems; a news story cheaply narrating a life lost sometimes in appalling circumstances, but the story itself and the image is also dispensable, disposable, to be cast away until the next comes along. Equally ‘high art’ is set aside in Sun’s work, for small seemingly insignificant sketches that give back value through a small retrieval. The sketches, as meditational crossing and unravelling of connections, the daily act of calligraphy touches the surface lightly, allowing them to hover into view - to linger, reflect and reconnect.

Sun’s is the opposite of spectacle or the often heightened language of contemporary art vocabulary in the mainstream art world. Perhaps in response to an earlier generation of forceful gestural work or giant-scale installations, he looks towards Twombly, On Kawara or Anastasi whose works made different kinds of connections through drawing or marking time, as modes of touch,

sensibility, sensory experience or acts of memory.

He works back into the underbelly, retrieving and considering what runs through society, manifesting itself in barely visible form, yet revealing disturbing ideologies and questionable modes of consumption. In a stratified economic value system, lowest common denominators are brought in such as pieces of wood, nails, string (dyed with ink), penny coins, scratching the base of our environment, showing a deep understanding of the ‘ordinary’ as essential and sustainable aspects of life. Sun calls drawing ‘an inexplicit and attractive object’ and perhaps this neat phrase describes his mode of practice. There is a kind of existentialist formalism to his works, as they seem to stand as understated ‘facts’, poised between an abstract geometry and a more specific everyday reality. The lines he draws, both literally and metaphorically, intervene in space in dialogue with languages of art and our spatial existence (difficult to understand). To finish, we might consider one of Sun’s simple, disingenuous works: an asymmetrical white frame - a found object - upended, placed in the middle of a narrow, empty side street in London, interrupting the space between the tall, Victorian buildings producing vertical and horizontal lines of connection. In the words of Ackbar Abbas, it presents: ‘not the new but the old as unfamiliar: this is one of the paradoxes of any-space-whatever’. This work is deceptively simple; it draws together many of Sun’s interests: performativity, material, geometry and formalism, positioned in a random ready-made place, redolent of time, culture and history.

By Katie Hill

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如梳如理，所系為開

……“如單純之物一般卑微”

你也許會問這樣一個問題：“什麽東西算得上是藝術品？”

日常物件，那些你幾乎不會注意的東西——隨手擲於地鐵上的免費報紙、板凳、一包煙、鐵釘或木屑、電線、繩子等等雞毛蒜皮。這些構成我們每天生活背景的不起眼物品就是孫毅過去幾年藝術創作的中心素材，貫穿了他整個藝術創作的選材和形式。同時，繪畫也是他藝術實踐的中心元素，作為一種文化表達的根本手段，聯繫著低俗藝術和高雅藝術、東方和西方文化傳統。他的作品含蓄克制，幾乎就像是一段粗糙的木頭，雖然加工過，但從技法和外觀上幾乎看不出來是被賦予了審美觀念的藝術品。這些作品微妙地扮演著和光同塵的角色，彈奏著襯托中心旋律的低音部。

孫毅自五歲起練習書法，而後學習中國水墨畫。孩提時的他首先被要求學會“靜坐”。有著這樣的背景，他的紀律性便根植於中國文化的各個方面，比如，孜孜不倦地尋找“不完美”這種與道家和佛教禪宗哲學相吻合的特質；更注重謙遜和逆來順受，而不是追求自我的外在展示或誇張的表演，而後者恰好是當下後全球資本主義和新自由主義的價值觀。對於現身處倫敦的孫毅來說，這樣的價值觀已和其他哲學思想相融合。在談話

中，孫毅經常提及康德、維特根斯坦、阿甘本等哲學家，這體現出他對品味、價值和語言等智識領域有著廣泛的涉獵。

在倫敦，孫毅的藝術實踐已經不再局限於傳統，他增進了關於閾限、張力和悖論的知識，這些概念正是推拉社會和文化進程，也是構築其結構的力量。形式上，他的作品是一場中西藝術話語的對話，其中涉及的素描、繪畫和雕塑是他穿越時空進行文化生產的重要一環。孫毅的報紙作品系列以諸如素描、速寫、雕塑和物品的形式呈現，針對的正是當下這個“隨手丟棄”媒介充斥的世界，對人們的知識系統和社會對於采用視覺信息進行敘事的偏好發問。

精揀

表面上看，這些作品很簡單。藝術家用黑墨描畫成速寫。小的視覺元素被精揀出來，然後進行描畫，組成一系列“ 小活人畫（Ta b l ea u x Vivant）”，背景則是平淡的白底，用石膏大筆塗抹，用繪畫的方式擦除背景信息。這種背景處理的用料是很重要的：石膏用於預制畫布但同時也是雕塑原料，在這組作品裏，石膏的選用似乎是故意地在媒介和功能中玩謔，這個元素是包含藝術蘊含的，它處於表層元素的底層，起到襯托圖像的平臺作用，從而給整個作品增加了微妙卻有跡可循的藝術味道。這些速寫也可以被

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看成是“精揀”之作，因為它們是從“真實”中萃取的，然後重新賦予它們生機，而成為普遍的、非特異的個體，而這其中恰好體現了兩個重合的藝術觀點——歐洲古典主義的寫物傳統，和傳統中式文人畫的寫意傳統。從這個角度來說，這些作品或許確實是有中畫的“寫意”味道的，“寫意”這個詞除了“傳達意義”，還有“抓住精華”之意，即把心靈或虛構之物與視覺圖像相結合，傳達或傳譯某個意義。

孫毅的畫近乎可以說是未完工的——解構的，創作和反創作同時進行，而畫面上剩下的東西把我們帶回到了繪畫和視覺性本身。它們讓我們聯繫起“手”（不接觸圖畫和背面）和“頭”：這些東西是否存在於藝術家的心裏？而我們怎麽去“解讀”？作為一種當代觀照，這些作品結合了某種古典主義和當代性以及媒體信息飽和。現今，印刷媒體之所以免費，完全是因為數字媒體的得勢而使其變得毫無價值。或許，印刷本身在21世紀的今天確實回到了其“經典”的地位，只不過是作為過時的現代性“經典”。

作品的背面也一樣有趣：正面和背面同時展示使其成為雕塑物件，因而參觀者必須前後走動才能欣賞整件藝術品。懸掛而下的作品阻斷了空間，闖入了我們的視野。展示在我們面前的，是刊登在報紙上的日常報導，通常是帶著大標題和照片的轟動或聳人聽聞的故事：上街遊行、謀殺、自殺、家庭暴力，但有時也只有赤裸裸的消費資本主義的乏味面孔，廣告上微笑的臉蛋、帶著各種數字的產品等等。這裏，這些頁面都被抽離出上下文，但還是有一種“時效”的感覺——新出爐的新聞總會在某個時間點成為歷史（“歷史”是怎麽開始的？）。這些只是整體的一部分，它們經常有著固定的模式，它們就是為那些乘地鐵或者公車的人的快速消費設計的，就是要隨手扔掉，因為明天很快就會有新的出現，如此往復。孫毅的

精揀過程也許是隨機的，但就像是新聞，總還是會有選擇的過程，總還是會有模式的出現，因為不管怎麽說，圖像總是能夠帶來一種史詩般的敘事——在它自身的產生過程中形成與我們共時存在的角色，回答安德森對於大眾本土文化所擔負的“想象的社區”的思考。

圖片的選擇也示意了一種政治框架，我們正是憑借此形成一種全球社區，對某些事件有著共同的回應，比如說，在美國手無寸鐵的黑人在逃跑途中被警察殘酷擊斃，他唯一的“罪”便是車的尾燈掉了，而他被擊斃的駭人聽聞的命運便被攝像機固定下來，同時永久地封印於我們的視野和想象裏。孫毅也把這個事件帶進了他的作品裏，但這只是日常例行公事的一部分，對作品的回應和理解才是顯示作品重要性的元素。這個事件和其他事件雖然有著呼應的關係（伊斯蘭年輕聖戰士離開英國前往敘利亞，被謀殺的孩子等等），隨著兩年間每天都有圖像被抽取出來形成一個系列，一幅更大的圖景便出現了，同時很多圖景也被擦除了。我們到底知道什麽？我們能理解多少？我們該怎樣理解我們的世界？

盡管在藝術實踐中，孫毅青睞長期使用日常的東西，但是時間本身也是他創作的一種中心元素。時間的單位測量——舊的一天結束，新的一天開始。作品實施了兩年，已經被真實的時間經歷帶上了烙印，就如同是一種日常習慣、紀律，甚至是通過這種閱讀新聞的方式生活一般。新聞本身甚至成了一種框架。當我們打開收音機、電視機，取報紙，瀏覽和共享駭人聽聞的新聞時，它成了一種標記時間以及我們和世界聯繫的儀式。這是現代生活的一部分，它是普遍存在的，獨立於文化差異。用艾靈頓的話說“美學主體間性勾勒出主體的烏托邦社區，在其存在的深層結構中聯合”。書法，在這裏以一種日常、冥想、內省的實踐呼應著。我們的世界是個關係世界，同時，把我

們聯繫在一起的卻確有一個結構，在這兩者的微妙相互影響中，作為一名書法從藝者，孫毅正是在他的藝術實踐中使用了這些習慣模式，他隨意地閱讀、觀看、閑坐，介乎可見和不可見，攝取和摒棄。中國文化的時間循環觀是孫毅的創作和世界觀的關鍵。

值得懷疑的對象

在孫毅的雕塑和其他以藝術為基礎的作品中，繪畫依舊存在。線條、構圖、材料都被結合起來，使得繪畫的藝術擴展到三維的空間。作品中放置著鐵釘、電線和燈絲，隨意地刻意地，隨機擺放地或故意而為，我們無從得知。凳子看起來友善而簡單。一般便民使用的公共設施——吃午飯時、等朋友時你都可以坐在公共座椅上——卻被孫毅打破正常邏輯顛倒過來，稀稀拉拉地撒上帶子，仿佛椅子是被糟糕地“打包”起來，以此來暗示 “差異”，或者說是德裏達的“延異”——細小的改變引起焦點或者意義的轉變。我們理應怎樣去理解這些作品？作為一個雕塑形式，其功能被否定了，取而代之的是哲學和美學的立場。空間的概念引入了，在他的誤置下產生了轉變，使得不起眼景觀的“自然”裝置獲得了關注。在他其他的作品裏，形式和功能的關係總是調皮地變動著：在一所圖書館裏，書脊全部不可見——書本都是橫著擺放，或用塑料包裝起來，這樣一來讀者完全讀不到書裏的內容。略施一點視覺小詭計，便把一把椅子拍攝成連著書架懸掛於半墻高的地方。大大的長方形冰塊放置於地上挖開的洞中，可這冷冰冰的東西總歸要化成水溶進地裏。

交換

所謂的《1分錢計劃》是一組物件或者繪畫作品，旨在鼓勵交換。物件和硬幣（也是作為物件）可以進行互換，在這樣的價值體系裏，價值被校準到

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同一水平。由於物質性和文化問題的引入，藝術市場以不正常的低價向買家卑躬屈膝——藝術品在累積的資金和市場力量所致的扭曲價值系統中以交易的形式出現。

歸根結底，孫毅的作品是對價值的探索，也是對布迪厄意義上的美學、文化、社會、經濟“習性”以及由價值系統交織的社會中我們存在的探索；一個描述生命隕落的新聞事件經常廉價地裝扮得聳人聽聞，然而報導本身、連帶著圖像都是可有可無、一次性的，新的一到舊的就可以置之腦後了。同樣地，“高雅藝術”在孫毅的作品中還是留有地位的，因為那些看起來無足重輕的小速寫實際上通過小小的交易重獲了價值。這些速寫，作為日常書法冥想的交織和意義聯繫的澄明，輕輕地跳躍於作品表面，盤旋著進入我們的眼界——流連著、反思著、重構著。

孫毅是當今主流藝術世界宏大高調話語體系的反面。也許是為了回應力度氣度非凡的前代身體作品（Gestural Work）和巨型裝置藝術，他看齊的對象是托姆布雷（Twombly）、河原溫（Kawara）或阿納斯塔西（Anastasi），這些藝術家的作品通過繪畫或標記時間造成了各種聯繫，作為觸覺模式、感性、感官經驗或記憶行為。

他的創作有感而發，接收並考慮著社會上發生的事情，他的作品幾乎不可見，但卻揭示著令人不安的意識形態和可質疑的消費模式。在層壘分明的經濟價值體系裏，他引入了最小公分母，如木片、鐵釘、繩索（墨水上過色的）、硬幣，這觸及到了我們生活的基礎，展示了對這些作為生活中重要的可持續一面的“尋常之物”的深刻理解。

孫毅把繪畫稱為“模糊卻又吸引人的對象”，或許這個簡潔的詞匯也精確地描述了他藝術創作的模式。他的作品似乎以輕描淡寫的“事實”存在，

既有抽象的幾何元素，更有具體的日常現實元素，因而有著某種存在主義的形式主義。他畫的線條，憑借藝術的語言和我們的空間存在，或實際或隱喻地介入了對話空間。作為結尾，我們不妨考察一下孫毅簡單而隱晦的作品之一：一個不對稱的白色框架——一個偶得的物件——顛倒放置於倫敦大路邊狹窄的小巷中，打破了高高聳立的維多利亞建築構成的橫平豎直線條的聯繫。如阿卡巴·亞巴斯所言“不熟悉之物非新物，而是舊物：這是所有空間的悖論之一”。這件作品簡單得近乎狡猾，它體現了孫毅的許多藝術旨趣所在：表演性、物質性、幾何性和形式主義，隨機置於現成的場地，發人關於時間、文化和歷史的深省。

何凱特

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Into the Waste Land

Although Sun Yi has just been awarded Master of Fine Arts by Slade School of Fine Art, he has already held many exhibitions in England and Beijing. The footprints of his works are scattered across the world of contemporary art. For instance, with his drawings, he outlined various strange yet familiar images in a sea of news data, they could be it a detail from an area of the world, an expression that can be easily forgot or a plot or an action from a story. The works have a strong visual impact, often mingled with anxiety, excitement or other kinds of mixed feelings. Sun Yi breathed new life into events or information deserted in a corner of the world. In another work, in a winter, he dug a big hole in the open field of his hometown and put a huge ice block into it, as if he was burying a secret, a history or a corpse but with the knowledge that will eventually melt in the spring. Sun Yi has also wrapped parts of the chairs in the audience section with a bandage-like fabric and placed them in disorder so that the disordered and “injured” scene transformed the audience section into a stage. Once, he even wrapped the books in the library in the same way or inversed the books with the chairs, which seemed to announce his intension to prevent people from reading. As his art performance and exhibitions demonstrate, Sun Yi has stepped out of the ivory tower and become

an artist, bravely walking into the scene of modern and contemporary culture and engaged with it. It has not been easy for him to be so stern and calm against the international backdrop in the scene with such cool and smart works. Now, let’s shed some light on the scene.

Human civilization has stumbled along as it has constantly been besieged and constrained by numerous idols and taken great pains to break them. Transformations of ideology in any region, culture, society and in any race are none other than the movement to subvert old idols and shape new ones, with difference only in their degree and frequency. Their common feature lies in the inevitable idolization, that is, the objectification, or vulgarization, of a spiritual goal into object of worship in real life. This is the unavoidable dilemma for human existence. The spirit wants to transcend the flesh but is always constrained by it. Fetishism is the very fundamental kind of idol worship, because others are only camouflaged reproductions. For instance, metaphysics in the West, classical aesthetics and art, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in China, etc. have constructed and laid the foundation for human civilization, but they all share the characteristics of idolization. Therefore, their value only counts in

certain stage of civilization and they cannot serve as eternal and consummate truth. Moreover, the historical constraints imposed by them must be removed. Idols are the objectification of spiritual goals by human beings and go together with the development of civilization. In the face of such an inevitable predicament, modernism emerged with the most profound motivation to eliminate all the strange constraints placed by idols. Firstly, it seeks for liberalization by eliminating idols. Secondly, to avoid the constraints imposed by idolization, all conditions for making idols must be destroyed, which means to abandon the faith in idols and dismantle the world of value and meaning built upon such faith. After that, any meaningful and valuable goals should be crushed through transformation of ideas (in the ways of modern art) so as to kill any attempt to rebuild idols. To materialize it, we will have to pay the price.

Renaissance artists created art with man as the subject and granted God a mortal body with classical aesthetic ideas and methods, and overthrew the deific idols of worldly power in the Middle Ages. Although they initiated and established a world of contemporary and modern humanistic value and meaning, achieving the greatest accomplishment in classical beauty,

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they fell into objects of worship a few centuries later. The movement to subvert idols continued. The religious reform where Martin Luther tried to break the rank order that Catholic Church used to idolize God and the unification of the state and the church, and the worldwide Enlightenment that proposes freedom, democracy, equality, reason and science eventually freed the world from the oppression of idols of superstition and divine right of kings.

Once the old idols were overthrown, disorder in two aspects will occur, namely, influencing social order and shaking ideas and values. Social order is related to political system, which means there are temporary solutions to it. However, as ideas and values are related to the spiritual world, its disorder will lead to serious loss of value and meaning. At the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche claimed that “God is dead”, signifying the collapse of holy idols as well as the traditional metaphysical system. The destruction of the foundation for divine right of kings and authoritarianism symbolized the progress of institution and civilization. However, with the subversion of idols, the traditional world of value and meaning was lost, which gave rise to the barbaric fetishism, as shown through the confusion of morality and ethics and the

termination of classical art and aesthetics. It is never easy to prevent holy value and meaning from possible corruption while subverting idols to maintain the holiness and purity of truth.

T. S. Eliot, great poet of the 20th century, depicted in The Waste Land the world after spiritual disorder. It is a bleak, dirty wasteland with dead silence where the vulgar desire devours everything like seawater and people walk towards death full of despair. The Waste Land is a faithful portrayal of the world, with which Eliot conveyed his worry as a conscientious modern intellectual.

With Avignon Girl, Picasso shows us how a lady had turned into an ugly prostitute and became the tool of desire in the wasteland of death. In Guernica he enables us to hear the terrible howl when people were dismembered by the Nazi’s death machine. Cubism is the subversion of classical aesthetic ideas and experience from structure to the whole. Not only does it smash the idols, but presets a true picture of death imbued with spiritual disorder and loss of value.

Duchamp added moustache to Mona Lisa, mocking the solemn and holy aesthetics and historical significance of humanism. His Fountain,

a urinal, is more a comprehensive and powerful slander to classical aesthetics.

Modern artists subvert classical spiritual idols at all costs and transform themselves and their works into the wasteland where value and meaning are lost. They also have a genuine taste of various sins induced by desire, which seems like they are playing the martyrs. However, they cannot abandon the will of modern intellectuals and the mission of artists. They confront the silent and desperate wasteland and choose to bear the mental stress caused by the overwhelming void due to the loss of value and meaning. Moreover, they constantly resist the inevitable dilemma of objectification and idolization with decentralized, non-value and non-meaning ideas and language—this is the scene of modern and contemporary culture and art.

The possibility for the emergence of new idol worship looms over the destruction of all idols and resistance against everything, which is the fundamental spirit of modern art. A full grasp of this point leads to a thorough understanding of modern art. In the post-war America, abstract expressionism, pop art and other artistic phenomenon were bewildering and beyond

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comprehension. Yet comparing them with socialist art allows us to see the power and role of modern art in the West in keeping modern civilization from objectification and idolization.

Countering objectification with non-meaning calls for the ability to bear the huge stress from spiritual void. Despite his gradual awareness of this point, Sun Yi still unswerving walks into the wasteland with modern artistic methods, which means that he is going to fulfill the mission and social responsibility of conscientious modern intellectuals and modern artists.

He is still traversing the wasteland without hesitation. As a responsible and independent thinker, he bravely and resolutely joins the modern artists. There is no doubt that his methods are modern as well as international. His art will be associated with many people in modern times, although its influence cannot be predicted. There is one thing for certain: his art will never be kidnapped by money or politics. This is shown in his performance art One Cent, which shows his clear stance against fetishism. This mirrors the spirit of a genuine modern artist or a conscientious modern intellectual, which is the basic safeguard for one to counter objectification and idolization. It is rare and commendable for a young Chinese artist to have such spirit. He deserves our attention.

The Wormhole Effect

Under the influence of his father, Sun Yi has been passionate about reading, engaging with Chinese and foreign classic masterpieces from ancient to modern times, since a tender age and

boasts good handwriting. He was no genius, but his rich cultural genes were so engrained that he enjoyed more cultural knowledge than his peers who knew nothing but play. However, it also deprived him of his innocence and purity. His blank sheet has been packed with calligraphy, poetry, classical aesthetics of the West and modern philosophical concepts and historical images, which together integrate him into the net of different value and meaning of history and culture. As a result, his future is destined to be connected to culture and tradition. He will either be a successor or gravedigger of tradition. His study at the Department of Eastern Art of Nankai University has indicated the direction of his future development. As an independent thinker, he gives the least care to immediate interests, which saves him from being a narrow egoist. Instead, he is constantly alive with passion for looking at the stars and shows the basic quality of being a modern intellectual. He is, therefore, bound to be something in modern art. Further study at Slade School of Fine Art unlocked his potential. The study of and research into art in London, an important city in developed Western civilization, meant that he must bridge two unavoidable gaps: the one between China and the West and the other between classism and modernism. These require comparison, criticism and transition between the classical civilizations and modern societies of China and the West. These involve a great deal of academic thinking and analysis, and call for extensive reading, intuition and living cultural conscience. How to bridge the gaps has been challenges confronting modern Chinese culture for one and a half centuries and is a major historical and cultural topic. He who is able to bridge them

will become the elite of our times, which will hence bring along a group of genuine international artists that transcend Chinese traditions.

Owing to his rich knowledge and keen cultural awareness, Sun Yi was able to identify the topic and made it his mission and, during his postgraduate study, he tried to put it into practice. For his first exhibition at Beijing 798 Art Zone, he coated the newspaper with white powder and reproduced the images at the back of the newspaper with drawings, which can be seen as a stately discard of the media. It is a careful presentation of the living details hidden under the white powder, that are doomed to be discarded. This process is absurd and ambiguous, but it “buries” the discourse power of the media with white powder and highlights the cheap aspects of the everyday utilized and manipulated by the media and endows it with rhythmic lines and tender care. The work aims to tell everyone that there is no definite meaning for everything and to reject the authorized or secularized definitions of and behind the media. The work, therefore, conveys humanistic care. In the exhibition he symbolically traded this work for one cent, the intention of which is self-evident—a protest against the money-driven fetishism in the Chinese art market, that is, resistance to objectification.

He never stops thinking and with thinking comes along different works. While bridging each gap, he serves as a vanguard in the modern art of the West and spares no efforts to make a difference in the scene of modern culture and art with modern methods. Sun Yi is realizing a dual traverse with his experience in art and art performance. First, as a journey through the barriers set by various

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idols, modern art bears the pressure from spiritual void to survive the worldly wasteland and aims to keep civilization away from the constraints of objectification. Secondly, it is through two different civilizations and histories.

There is a huge gap between the society in China and modern civilization in the West. It is a gap between barbarism and civilization, between backwardness and progressiveness. Traditional linear thinking indicates the great difficulty in getting rid of barbarism and establishing civilization and the impossibility of completing one-off transformation within a short time, whether in terms of details or the whole. It might be realized with the efforts of several generations. However, with synchronous thinking, it is possible to fulfill a one-off transformation, as simultaneously speaking the switch from one space-time to another is a kind of journey.

According to the notion of wormhole in theoretical physics, the linear space between two separate ends in the universe can be deformed to bring close the two ends and form a wormhole through which man can traverse a far distance within a short time.

So is it possible to build cultural wormholes? The deformation of space is a result of the enormous energy field and the wormholes are synchronous traverse space. For art, its reproducibility, narrative and descriptive language, which are frequently used in classical art, are diachronic. Yet for modern art, the language is conceptual and the concepts are synchronous, which can give rise to cultural wormholes. Having honesty, conscience, cultural

awareness, knowledge, the wisdom and ability to transform concepts and the courage to undertake responsibility and moral strength will form the magnetic field needed for deforming cultural space.

Cultural wormhole is an interesting and positive hypothesis. While historical lessons teach us that idolization is the danger that must be eliminated in a civilization, modern art implicates that it is respectable to have courage and wisdom to traverse the barriers formed by idols with paradoxical logic. Hence, we fully support Sun Yi to walk unswervingly into the wasteland of spirit with modern art. At a time when our nation is facing different cultural challenges that must be tackled, every bit of effort on cultural transformation is the only way and only hope to bridge the gaps. Sun Yi’s experience in education and practice in art reminds me of the hypothesis of the cultural wormhole. I am more than willing to see and firmly believe that Sun Yi will complete the anticipated dual traverse with modern art, for the Sun Yi that I know is well equipped with all the necessary qualities, competence and other conditions. I am convinced that my judgment and expectation is correct, for his recent series of works, art performance, ideas and opinions have constantly proved it. It is also my sincere hope that those who pay attention to Sun Yi try to understand and judge him with the ideas mentioned above and offer him necessary criticism and support.

By Zhao JunDirector of Oriental Art Department,Nan Kai University 1 August, 2015

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走向荒原

剛剛獲得英國斯萊德美術學院藝術碩士學位的孫毅已在英倫和北京舉辦過多次展覽，他的作品已經印入當代藝術的視界：在報紙海量新聞數據中他的線條在勾勒一個個陌生又熟悉的圖像，那是來自世界某個角落的細節，一個或許很快被遺忘的表情、一個故事的情節動作，他的線條在新聞數據視野中衝擊流蕩，帶著焦慮、興奮亦或是某種複雜的情緒，他讓被丟棄在世界某個角落的事件資訊重新獲得了溫度。他在家鄉冬天的原野，把一方巨大的冰塊埋入挖好的土坑，像是掩埋一個秘密，一段歷史或是一具屍體，但那只是春天裏注定要融化的冰水。他把台下看場的椅子全部都用繃帶一樣的織物進行局部包紮，橫七豎八的擺放，失序和受傷的場面把看場變成了舞臺。他把圖書館的圖書包紮起來，或又把書和椅子倒置擺放，他在阻止這個世界的人們正常的閱讀嗎？他的藝術行為和展覽表明孫毅早就以一個藝術家的身份沖出了學府的象牙塔，勇敢地走進並參與了現當代文化藝術發生的現場，他的作品很酷，也很帥，身處這樣國際化的氛圍能表現出如此凜然從容的態度，實屬不易，我們看看這是怎樣的現場吶。

人類文明一直是在眾多偶像的包圍束縛和掙脫束縛與包圍的糾結中蹣跚而行，可以說不論發生在任何地域、種族、文化、社會中的意識形態的變革都無外乎是在重複著打破舊的偶像又重塑新的偶像的運動，區別只是程度頻率有所不同。

其同樣的特徵是精神目標的客體化或者叫庸俗化為現實的膜拜對象即偶像化的必然性是一致的，這是人在世生存的必然困境，精神要翺翔肉體之上，但肉體的束縛卻始終存在。拜物教就是眾多偶像崇拜中最本質的一種，其他只是經過偽裝粉飾後的翻版。再比如西方的形而上學，古典主義美學與藝術，中國的儒釋道思想等等，雖然他們構建了並奠定了人類文明的基礎，但卻都有著偶像化的性質，因此它們只能具備文明歷史過程中階段化的價值而不可以當做永恆圓滿的真理，而且還必須要破除其所造成的歷史性的束縛。偶像即是人類將精神目標客體化的行為，它與文明的步伐相伴相生。面對人在世生存所面臨的這一必然困境，現代主義運動應運而生，其最深刻的動機就是要徹底破除人類生存被種種偶像包圍的怪圈。第一步先是尋求解放，消滅偶像，其次為避免再一次陷入偶像化的包圍必須拆除製造偶像的一切條件，即放棄偶像信仰的同時拆除由信仰建立起來的價值與意義的世界，然後繼續以轉換觀念的方式（現代藝術的方式）顛覆任何有意義與價值的目標以防止伺機重建偶像的企圖，為此我們要付出巨大的代價。文藝復興的藝術家創造了以人為主體的藝術，沿用古典的美學理念和方法將上帝變成了肉身，瓦解了中世紀神化的世俗權利的偶像，開啟並建立了近現代人文主義的價值與意義的世界，在造型藝術領域創造了古典主義之美的最高成就，之後

又成為幾個世紀人們頂禮膜拜的對象。但拆解偶像的運動一直繼續，馬丁·路德的宗教改革試圖打破天主教偶像化上帝的等級秩序和政教合一的制度，席捲世界的啟蒙主義運動宣導自由、民主、平等及理性與科學的思想，最終將世界從迷信和君權神授的偶像壓迫下解放出來……

伴隨舊偶像的破除會出現兩方面的失序，一是涉及社會秩序，二是動搖思想觀念。社會秩序關乎政治制度，可以找到臨時解決的方案，但思想觀念關乎精神世界，它的混亂失序所造成的價值與意義的迷失後果十分嚴重。十九世紀末哲學家尼采聲言上帝已死，標誌神聖偶像的毀滅包括傳統形而上學體系的崩潰。君權神授的基礎被打破了，極權專制的政治紛紛破產，這是制度文明的進步。但伴隨偶像的覆滅，傳統的精神價值與意義的世界也隨之迷失，這更導致野蠻的拜物教赤裸裸的興起，直接表現為道德倫理的混亂和古典藝術與美學趣味的終結，這使我們感到打碎偶像保持真理的神聖性與純潔性，又不丟掉神聖性的價值與意義的立場避免可能的墮落是一件多麽不容易的事情。

二十世紀偉大的詩人艾略特以《荒原（ T h e Waste Land）》為題寫下了精神失序後的世界圖景：那是萬物蕭瑟，骯髒死寂的荒原，卑下的欲望向海水一樣吞噬著一切，人們在絕望中走向死亡……。《荒原》是現實世界的真實寫照，

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艾略特表達了一位有良知的現代知識份子深切的憂慮。

畢加索的《亞威儂少女(Avignon Girl)》讓我們看到女神如何變身為醜陋的妓女成為死亡荒原上欲望的工具，《格爾尼卡(Guernica)》讓我們聽到了納粹的死亡機器肢解生命時恐怖的嚎叫。立體主義就是對古典主義審美理念和經驗從結構到整體上的破壞，它打碎了偶像，直陳了精神失序價值迷失的死亡圖景。

杜尚在“蒙娜麗莎(Mona Lisa)”的臉上畫上兩抹鬍子，重重的嘲弄了人文主義莊嚴神聖的美學與歷史意義，他用小便池製作的作品《泉(Fountain)》更是對古典美學全面有力的詆毀。

現代藝術不惜一切代價打碎古典主義的精神偶像，讓自己和作品本身成為價值與意義迷失的荒原，他們同樣也真切的體驗著欲望羅織的種種罪惡，這像是一種苦肉計，但他們最終不能放棄現代知識份子的意志和藝術家的使命，他們直面死寂絕望的荒原並選擇承擔無意義無價值的巨大空虛所造成的精神壓力，並繼續以去中心、非價值、無意義的觀念語言不斷的抵抗再次客體化偶像化的必然困境──這就是現當代文化藝術的現場。

破壞一切偶像，抗拒一切必然要興起的新的偶像崇拜的可能，這是現代主義藝術根本的精神實

質，我們抓住這一點就真正理解了現代藝術。戰後美國的抽象表現主義藝術、波普藝術等等藝術現象撲朔迷離令人費解，其實把他們與前蘇聯社會主義藝術比較就能很容易看出西方現代藝術讓現代文明社會遠離客體化與偶像化的力量和作用。

以無意義的手段抗擊客體化這需要承擔精神空虛的巨大壓力，孫毅逐漸意識到了這一點，但他還是毅然以現代藝術的方式走向荒原，這意味著他將履行有良知的現代知識份子和現代藝術家的使命與社會責任。

他正繼續義無反顧地在荒原中穿行，他獨立思考，有所擔當，他勇敢果斷地側身現代藝術家行列，他的方式無疑是現代的也是國際化的，他的藝術將會與我們時代的很多人相關，其作用有多大不能預測，但有一點是十分明確的，他的藝術絕不會被金錢和政治所綁架，他的《一分錢(One Cent)》行為藝術就是主動抗拒拜物教的明確表達，這一點顯示出一位真正現代藝術家或是有良知的現代知識份子的精神品質，這是一個人能夠抗擊客體化，抗拒偶像化的基本保障。這一切對於一個從中國出發的青年藝術家的確是難能可貴的，我們必須關注他。

蟲洞效應

孫毅從小在其父親影響下喜歡讀書，寫一手好字，書目涉及中外古今經典名篇名著。他並非神童，但豐富的文化基因早已注入他的生命脈絡，其結果是他比只知玩耍的同齡夥伴更有文化，但也過早地失去了無知者的天真與單純。他早就不是一張白紙，那上面已密密麻麻的寫滿了各種書法詩文、西方古典美學、現代哲學的種種概念意象，這些把他編織進了歷史文化的各種價值與意義的網路之中，註定他的未來命運與文化傳統息息相關，要麽成為傳統的後繼者，要麽成為傳統的掘墓人。他在中國著名的南開大學東方藝術系的學習已顯露出他未來發展的端倪，他喜歡獨立思考，從不在乎眼前利益，避免了成為狹隘的利己主義者，而是時常洋溢著仰望星空的熱情，顯露出成為現代知識份子的基本品質，這註定了他將來會在當代藝術領域有所作為。英國斯萊德大學讀研的機會，令他的潛質得到發揮，在發達的西方文明重鎮倫敦的求學，尤其是學習與研究藝術，意味著他將面對著幾個不可回避的跨越，即中國向西方的跨越，古典向現代的跨越，這其中還要完成中西古典文明的比較批判與轉換，中西現代社會的比較批判與轉換等等，這是大量學術思辨的工作，需要讀書更需要心靈的直覺和文化良知的覺醒。這樣的跨越其實是擺在了一個半世紀以來所有現代中國人面前的難題，如何完成這樣一種跨

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越是歷史與文化的重大主題。誰能應對它，意味著誰就是我們時代的精英，這樣的跨越也意味著時代將造就一批超越中國傳統的真正的國際性的藝術家。

孫毅的知識儲備與文化自覺很快讓他辨識到了這一主題，他知道他屬於這個主題，他勇於接受並在讀研期間就嘗試著承擔它。他在北京798的第一個展覽的情況是：他把報紙塗上白粉，又用線條複現背面的圖像，觀者可以想見這一過程是把堂而皇之的媒體新聞垃圾化處理後，又倍加珍惜地精心勾勒出掩埋在白粉下且終將被丟棄在角落裏的一個個生命的細節。這過程十分悖謬，引發許多的歧義，但總的來說是用粉刷的方式掩埋了媒體的話語權，然後又將被媒體利用和操縱的廉價的生命細節撿起來並給予有節奏的線條和有溫度的關懷。他作品的深意就在於告訴大家一切都還沒有找到確定的意義，以此拒斥媒體和媒體背後各種權威或世俗化的定義，同時傳達出人道主義的關懷。在展會上他以一分錢的價格象徵性的交易他的作品，其意圖倒是十分明確的，即抗議國內藝術市場金錢至上的拜物教潮流——抗擊客體化是他作品的明確意圖。

接下來他的思考連續不斷，作品也不斷出臺，他在繼續著一個一個的跨越的同時保持著在西方當代藝術中前衛的姿態，他以現代方式在當代文化藝術的現場正努力的有所作為，綜合起來看孫毅的藝術經歷與藝術行為正在形成一種穿越，這穿越是雙重的：其一、現代藝術本身就是穿越的，它穿越種種偶像的屏障，承擔著精神空虛的壓力走過世俗的荒原，努力讓文明世界遠離客體化的束縛。其二、是兩個不同文明歷史空間的穿越。中國社會與西方現代文明相比差距很遠，可以說是野蠻與文明，落後與進步的差距，用習慣的線

性思維看，從野蠻邁入文明談何容易，不論從細節還是從宏觀上看在短時間內一次性的完成跨越幾乎是不可能的，至少要經過幾輩人的努力或許可能，但用共時性思維來思考就會不一樣，一次性跨越就是有可能的。在共時性中完成包括由一個時空向另一個時空轉換的事件準確的說應該是一種穿越。在理論物理中有一個蟲洞的理論，即將宇宙中遙不可及的兩點之間的直線空間彎曲，在兩個拉近的極點建立蟲洞，經過蟲洞人類可以在短時間內完成遙遠距離的穿越。

我們設想文化蟲洞該是怎樣的吶？空間彎曲是巨大能量場作用下的結果，蟲洞是共時性的穿越空間。藝術中再現性和敘述以及描述性的語言是歷時性的，這常常是古典藝術使用的方法，現代藝術語言是觀念性的，觀念是共時性的，它會產生文化蟲洞的空間效應。心靈的誠實與良知，文化的自覺，知識的儲備，轉換觀念的智慧與能力，承擔的勇氣與責任心以及道德的力量會積蓄一種能量，構成作用於文化空間彎曲的磁場。

這是一個有感而發的很有趣的積極設想，當歷史教訓我們偶像化是文明社會必須根除的禍患，現代主義藝術啟示了我們在悖論的邏輯中不斷地穿越偶像的屏障是一種令人尊重的勇氣和智慧，我們會更支持孫毅以現代藝術的方式義無反顧的走向精神的荒原。當我們身處的民族正面臨一個個必須跨越的世紀性文化難題的時候，每一個個體致力於文化變革的努力是實現跨越的唯一的途徑和希望。孫毅的求學經歷與藝術實踐讓我產生了文化蟲洞的設想，我也更願意並相信孫毅能以現代藝術的方式完成我們所共同期待的雙重的穿越，因為我所瞭解的孫毅具備了必要的素質與品質及相應的各種條件。我相信我的判斷與期望是準確的，因為他最近的一系列作品和藝

術行為及思想言論在給我不斷提供著可靠的證據，我也希望關注他的人們嘗試著用以上的想法來理解和判斷孫毅，並給他必要的批評與支持。

趙均南開大學東方藝術系主任 2015年8月1日

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Intimate Disengagement

Sun Yi, a young artist from Tianjing, China, an MFA graduate from Slade School of Fine Art, University of London, is a coordinate in the collision between the West and China. In September 2015 his second solo exhibition Sidelines was staged as a summary of his artistic creation during his academic career in Britain, and his unique study and growing-up pathway also gives far-reaching sociological significance to the show—he is a lively sample of the collision between tradition and modernity, east and west, usefulness and uselessness, passage and eternity, forwardness and backwardness, lightness and weightiness.

One is often misled to interpret and understand an artist and his/her works in an intimate yet disrespectful and distorted manner—close examination of the techniques in the works and the interpretation and exploration of a single work may prove to be insufficient in understanding the creative logics as a whole of the artist in question—this is especially true when the artist is a young one. In light of this, what follows in this essay is not an attempt to examine how Sun processes his works as an artist, but only provides a possible perspective to understand and perceive the tension and logics in his art quest.

The first thing to be noted is that ever since a child Sun received Chinese traditional artistic training—a model independent of school system and a model features traditional ‘master-student/apprentice’ teaching. Free from the official educational establishment hence exempt from political and examination elements, Sun developed a much more comprehensive, complete and in-depth understanding of Chinese classical philosophy and culture than his peer thanks to the ‘old-fashioned’ education. It is also because of this long-term training and engagement with tradition that he is able to master and carry on the core values of traditional Chinese culture with precision and proper restraints. On the other hand, almost totally insulated from contemporary art in China, Sun chose to study at Slade School of Fine Art in London, placing himself in an utterly different educational and artistic environment. Such a gigantic logical leap was sure to bring about violent crashes and integration, and at this moment, the isolation from contemporary art during his early days in China became a blessing in disguise, which enabled him to directly access the context of authentic contemporary art. Through large amounts of reading, continuous self-overturn and experience of cultural collision between the east and the west, he nurtured in him a unique

artistic clue—a passion to overthrow the supposed status and property of matters, to examine identity and to reflect and practice contradiction itself.

Secondly, the background in which he grew up is also worth mentioning. The late 1980s when Sun was born was a peaceful development period rarely seen in Chinese history with no political movement, foreign intrusion or civil war. In the 30 odd years till now when political environment has been relatively stable, tremendous changes have taken place in China—rapid development in economy and accumulative material affluence mingled with downsides such as environmental issues and money worshipping. Sun, as well as his generation experienced, witness, benefited as well as suffered from all of the above in a country where everything ranging from financial capital, globalization process to the Internet and high tech has exerted far-reaching influences on the open-up Chinese society. During his study in Britain, Sun was able to see the world from another set of coordinates, which expanded his artistic dimensions, and he began to employ performance and different media to respond to this world. For instance, he shattered the relationship between price and value of artwork through One Cent; reconstructed the connection between timeliness

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of news and timelessness by using throwaway newspaper and satirized the side effects of over-development via trash of ready-made products. His understanding model of the world also decides the preference of his means and materials. A different perception of value results in the use of trash as part or whole of an artwork, and artwork as part or whole of trash. What is useful and useless depends on the viewers, not the objects themselves; all unidirectional vocabularies in fact involve multi-directional choices and interpretation.

Based on these two aspects, it is not difficult for us to conclude that all Sun’s art—painting, sculpture, performance and installation—is a feedback to our current world by fusing Chinese and western cultural logics. Sun Yi is a talkative artist; he can give a hundred reasons for producing a work, none of which, however, can be correct while every one of which can also be correct. Without first informed of the previous two parts, you might think his response is totally inappropriate. However, if we change our stance, you will find such an answer is the only proper one. ‘It HAS no bloody use’ and ‘It HASN’T no bloody use’ could sound differently but express the same idea. The viewer, not the producer, is to decide the meaning of a work; among the 100 answers Sun provided, after all

you pick what you think is right according to your position, just as in Life of Pi, Ang Lee is no more than a storyteller who has nothing to do with the meaning of the story. Likewise, Sun is a narrator of the same sort; he extracts the contradictory concepts from the eastern and western cultures, and brings them to a show in a simple way, and the unsophisticated scenarios with his meticulous arrangement are the episodes we simply pass by every day and conditions we take for granted. He does nothing but re-projects all our familiar things with their status altered to our visions, enabling us to re-interpret and re-understand our world from an opposite point of view.

Disengage, take a step aback, to watch the works of artists—it is the best way to appreciate and study artists. Sun Yi is in his golden period of creation, and the diversity of his works indicates how productive and passionate he is. For the time being, we find it difficult to define his works, but as a researcher, I think he makes a unique case among the Chinese younger-generation artists. He incorporates the classical Chinese philosophical thinking models into his art and at the same time stages his works with western methods and intellectual analysis; such a mode escapes the rigidity of passed-down traditional artistry and

differs from any ‘Chinese contemporary art’ which stiffly borrows western artistic concepts while fails to grasp the essence thereof or any art in the name of contemporary. His artistic philosophy, of such a new generation artist of China, is one that grows out from its own root in the local soil, and shares with the whole world.

By Harry Liu

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遠觀之於褻玩

孫毅，一位來自中國天津的青年藝術家，一位畢業於倫敦斯萊德藝術學院（Slade School of Fine Art, University of London）的純藝碩士，一個中西文化碰撞節點上的座標。2015年9月，他在倫敦的第二次個人展覽《旁觀（Sidelines）》是其遊學英倫期間創作成果的總結性展覽，孫毅獨有的求學經歷和成長歷程使得這次的展覽具有了更為深遠的社會學意義──一個鮮活的傳統與當代、東方與西方、有用與無用、消逝與永恆、進與退、輕與重碰撞的樣本。

對於藝術家的解讀和觀看，人們往往容易陷入 “褻玩”的誤區，對作品技法的斟酌，對單一作品的解讀和探究都很難從整體上了解一個藝術家的創作邏輯，尤其是對一個年輕藝術家而言。於此，下面的文字並不著力於探索作為藝術家的孫毅是如何進行創作的，或是他的創作有怎樣的貢獻和創造，而是僅僅是提供一個路徑，一個線索去嘗試理解和感受他藝術探索中的張力和邏輯。

首先需要提及的是孫毅自幼時起開始接受的中國傳統藝術的訓練過程，最初他所接受的“藝術教育”並不是來自學校，而是一種“師徒”式的中國傳統教育模式，這種模式獨立於官方教育體系之外，而且因為剔除了政治和考學因素的影響，在師徒間心口相傳的長期熏陶之下，孫毅對中國古典哲學和傳統文化的理解要遠比同齡人

更為全面、完整、深刻。而正是基於這種長期的訓練和積澱，使得孫毅對中國文化和藝術的核心價值的把握和傳承更為精准和內斂。而另一方面，在中國基本與“ 當代藝術 ”處於“ 絕緣 ”狀態的孫毅，卻選擇來到倫敦的斯萊德藝術學院學習，將自己置身於一種完全不同的教育方式和藝術氛圍之中，這種大跨度的邏輯跳躍帶來的必然是猛烈的碰撞和整合，而此時在中國期間與當代藝術的“絕緣”反倒成了一個優勢，使得他能夠直接浸入到原汁原味的當代藝術語境，通過大量的閱讀和不斷的“自我顛覆”，在東西方文化邏輯的劇烈碰撞中，促成了孫毅獨特的創作線索──對於“顛覆”事物原有狀態和性質的熱衷；對身份認同的思考；對矛盾本身的反思和實踐。

其二需要提及的是孫毅的成長環境，他出生於上世紀80年代末，正值中國歷史上少有的“和平發展”時期，沒有政治運動，沒有外族入侵，也沒有內戰消耗，在三十年相對平靜的政治環境之下，中國經歷了翻天覆地的變化，經濟的飛速發展，物質的極大豐富，同時也伴隨著環境問題和拜金主義帶給中國社會的各種亂象，而孫毅這一代人正是這一切的親歷者，受益人以及受害者，無論是金融資本、全球化進程、還是互聯網和高科技，都對敞開國門的中國社會產生著深刻的影響。在孫毅留學英國期間，他可以從另一個座標尺度來觀看世界，這也拓展了他藝術創

作的維度，他開始運用各種行為和不同的創作媒介來對這個世界作出反饋，例如運用《一分錢（One Cent）》的形式來瓦解藝術作品價格與價值之間的關係；運用廢報紙來重構轉瞬即逝的 “新聞”與永恆主題之間的關係；用現成品的垃圾作為作品來諷刺過度發展帶來的副作用。這種對世界的認知方式也決定了孫毅對其創作手段和材質的某種偏愛。對於“價值”所處的座標系的不同，“垃圾”亦可以是藝術作品的一部分或者全部，而“藝術品”也可以是垃圾的組成部份或者全部，“有用”或者“無用”僅取決於觀者而不是物品本身，所有單向性的詞語其實都蘊含著雙向性的選擇和理解。

基於以上兩個方面，我們不難看出孫毅所進行的各種創作，繪畫、雕塑、行為、裝置等等都是基於對中西方文化邏輯的雜糅而產生的對我們當下生活的世界的反饋。孫毅是一個健談的創作者，對一件作品的創作原因也許他會給你一百種不同的解釋，這一百種解釋有可能沒有一個是準確的，同時也可能都是準確的，如果沒有前面兩點的鋪墊，那麼大家會覺得他的這種回答方式是極不妥當的，但當我們換一種方式去審視，你會發現這樣的回答其實是更為準確的， “沒有卵用”和“有個卵用”是兩個相異判斷，但表達的是同一命題，作品表達的意義取決於觀者而不是作者，一百種說法中你也無非選取了你自己的維度去作出取捨，也正如《少年派（Life

020

of Pi）》講給觀眾的故事一樣，李安無非是一個呈現者，之於意義已與他無關。孫毅也是一個這樣的搭建者，將從東西方文化中抽離出來的對立概念，通過一種貌似不經修飾的方式展示出來，精心建構一個樸實無華的場景，這其中積澱的就是你我生活中不曾在意的片段或是習以為常的狀態，他只是將這些改變了狀態的事物重新投射入我們的視野，讓我們從對立的角度去重新解讀和認知我們周遭的世界。

抽離出來，退後一步來觀看藝術家的創作和作品，是欣賞和研究藝術家的最佳角度。孫毅正處於藝術家的黃金創作年代，其作品的多樣性表現出其旺盛的創造力和噴薄的創作激情，當下我們還很難給孫毅的創作下一個既定的定義，但從一個研究者的角度，孫毅是青年一代中國藝術家中的一個獨特案例，他將中國傳統古典哲學的思考方法灌注到藝術創作之中，而同時又運用西方的表現手段和思辨精神來完成作品的呈現，這樣的創作模式既不同於因循守舊的傳統技藝的繼承，也不同於嫁接西方藝術概念牽強附會的中國當代藝術或任何一種冠以“當代”為名的藝術，而是新一代中國藝術家根植於本土文化而生長出來的，同時可以與全世界共享的藝術創作理念。

劉競晨

021

Statement

Understanding is never free-floating, but always goes with some state-of-mind.—— Martin Heidegger Art, as far as I have practiced it, seems to me like water, tasteless, but you could never live without it. Whatever forms it takes, I get bored as the excitement fades and as time passes, I even forget it ever existed.

I was born and raised in China. For almost 24 years, I have studied traditional Chinese culture from poems, paintings and literature, which collects the wisdom and thoughts of many scholars. I found it endlessly captivating though it has not brought me any notable ‘success’.

In Chinese culture, ‘non-existence means existence’, ‘existence means Dao (the way)’ and ‘Dao’ can never be literally explained. In terms of this idea, I am relentlessly striving for the ‘non-existence’ of my work. Perhaps ‘being’ and ‘not being’ are of no difference, they are meaningless in the end, nothing but a different way of thinking.

We are a generation that is experiencing the most revolutionary and competitive era of Chinese history. Everything is unbelievably fast

and unsettling. The faster the country develops economically, the faster it degenerates spiritually. This might be one of the reasons that pushes me to ‘understatement’, or, even ‘non-existence’.

My journey in the west was lonely but fruitful. Taking my knowledge of Chinese culture, I left home, I left China, the place that gave me everything, but in the west, somehow I haven’t yet found a ‘community’ that I would like to attach to. Maybe I am not even sure what I want to ‘attach’ to.

For me, time is inevitable. It is lying in front of me, driving me along a fixed track,a persistent dread. Time, the almighty time makes the final judgement, it decides the ‘winner’ and the ‘loser’. Sometimes we might forget the existence of time, but it is there, it must be there, like the chime of the clock, ceaseless, insistent.

For me, reading is irresistible. I enjoy the process of being drawn to another world of imagination, but also I feel anxious about the ever-expanding boundaries. However any ‘over-indulgence’ or ‘anxiety’ I feel will all come to a balance with the witness of time.

‘Objective time’ and ‘spiritual space’ are

impeccably pure, I regard the two as a perfect duo. Regardless of equality, we distinguish things as good and bad, beautiful and ugly, first and second, right and wrong, yin and yang, yes and no.

I don’t resist explaining my works, but I dislike the idea of imposing my interpretation on the audience. Most important is the audience’s connection, otherwise explanation is worth no effort.

Until now, I have not seen being an artist as a career, but rather a process of constructing a man. Either ‘self-constructing’ or ‘being constructed’ is choice or acceptance. What constructs a person in turn determines the kind of art he constructs.

I love a connected world and a world of solitary independence.I love sentimental tears, and indifferent streets.I love seriousness, no less than craziness.I love both the positive and the negative.Existence as much as non-existence.

YiMidnight, 23 June, 2015London

022

自述

Understanding is never free-floating, but always goes with some state-of-mind.—— Martin Heidegger 到目前為止，做藝術的經驗告訴我——這如同每日喝水一樣，沒什麼味道，但是又缺少不得。不論做了什麼作品，有了什麼樣的草稿，平淡下來後興奮也就沒了，時間久了可能也就忘了。

我在中國出生，在中國成長和學習了二十四年，其中近乎二十年的時間都是與傳統的中國文化為伴，詩書畫印義理哲，雖沒有什麼成績，卻也不亦樂乎。

中國文化的精髓，其中一個便是“無”，“無”即是 “有”，“有”便是“道”，“道”是不可說。所以，觀念上來說，我在努力讓我的工作和作品成為 “無 ”。因為总覺得可能做與不做都沒有什麼實際的意義，個人的抒懷而已。

我們這一代人正是在中國歷史上變革最大，競爭最激烈的時代生活和成長的。一切都迅速，不穩定，發展的膨脹和精神的衰退成了正比。可能也是這方面的原因，我才更嚮往平實，或者，走向更加極端，甚至這可能都是對虛無的傾向。

這幾年在西方的遊歷與學習孤獨也豐富，我帶著我的經驗離開了那個給我經驗的地方，離開了

家，離開了中國。但我似乎也並沒有真正地找到我想要融入的西方的人群，甚至自己都不清楚 “我想要融入的”是什麼東西。或者本就沒有什麼是需要去“融入”的，答案也不一定就在哪個地方，不管以怎麼樣的方式和方向，它都在“時間”上行移。

“時間”，這個詞對我來講應該是重要的，就感覺它在我對面平行，有種莫名且繞不開的恐懼，會覺得它的“宣判”與“辯護”都是超越的，最強有力的。有時候也真的會一時間忘了它，但又必須意識到它存在，它也必然會像鐘聲一樣響起，讓你聽見召喚。

“閱讀”，對我來說也應該是有力地吸引。我享受因被對象的牽引而擴大的空間，但也對從而得以延展的界限感到焦慮。“享受”和“焦慮”最終都會在“時間”的籠罩下平衡。

“客觀時間”和“精神空間”，它們是完美的，我總認為它們才是最適合的一體。就像事物雖是平等，但就人來說也總是要分善惡，美醜，主次，對錯，黑白，陰陽，有無。

我不討厭對作品的解讀，但厭煩主動向觀眾去解釋。如果觀者有興趣的話會“問”，如果沒興趣的話還解釋做甚。

到現在我都不認為藝術家是一個“職業”，它更像是一種對人的純粹的塑造。“自我塑造”或“被塑造”也都是對“塑造”的選擇和接受。塑造了什麼樣的人也就有了什麼樣的藝術。

我喜歡鬧市和自己孤獨的世界我喜歡多愁善感的流淚和冷漠的路過我喜歡嚴肅又放蕩我喜歡似是而非我喜歡存在般的消逝。

毅2015年6月23日凌晨倫敦

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USELESS LANDBenches in UCL Main Quad2015UCL Main Quad, London, UK

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CAPSULETwo bottles of water2015Walthamstow Marshes. London

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Charming was the nightEven in a cramped room like thisWindow closed, light blockedRecalling that last yearWorn sofa we satShoddy blanket on our back

Planes ahead, passing One, two, three…Books in hand, listlessArrived the early morningTick tock, tick tock, tick tock…

Asleep she fellI listened to the darkFelt the gleamAnd so came the dawn Sleeping in a dazeWith ineffable delight

One another LonelinessTongueless, transient lonelinessSinking, dying, dissolving…

Sweet words to my little oneLoving, or reassuringThe passion, the warmth, that I have never hadAs miraculous as life As irrational as loveI wished that all could have

In the deep night I shout Smiling to the unknown stars Which twinkle to the strangersShining with compassion Bright with scarlet sympathyUnlike the vast darknessThe massive hole that swallow the tears

For one second, or lessI embrace the darkAs swift as I can I return to the world miles awayAs embarrassed as I amTo peep the Milky way

Meng Chen4:00 am, 25 March, 2015

182

夜晚是迷人的即便是在狹小的屋齋關了窗子看不到另外窗子的光也聽聞不到去年此時

那個我們坐在破沙發披著廉價的被單

數著飛機讀著無心的書也是到淩晨兩點三點四點

她睡了我還在聽著那黑夜漸漸泛著光筆也開始有了黎明這一切都好似熟睡迷迷糊糊莫名地心情好

樹上掉下的不知道那一個許多，許多帶著聲音和立即的寂寞可能已經死了的被阻擋的也只有扔到河裏

和寶寶說幾句貼心的話圖個浪漫圖個踏實從那從未有過的生命的奇跡一樣的息息相關的熱情和失去理智的溫暖

失去理智的溫暖啊我多希望每個人都有

在深夜微笑著大喊偶爾星星也會附和著眨一下它不認識你，不論再怎的介紹只有望著嶄新鮮紅的體恤也不如浩瀚的黑那魔力使所有在黑夜的安靜的愁人湧淚

我置身其中他看著我只有那個一瞬間一秒不足我回頭

我也回望這世界千裏之隔我害羞的不敢再看

孟辰2015年3月25日淩晨4時

Presented by:

Designed by:

SIDELINES

International Edition£20.00 / $35.00 / €30.00

First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by Global

Culture Communication and Development Ltd. on the

occasion of the exhibition “ SIDELINES” at the Candid Arts

Trust Space, London, UK.

Copyright © 2015 Global Culture Communication and

Development Ltd.

Artworks copyright © 2015 SUN Yi

Text copyright © 2015 the contributors

Text by Katie Hill, LIU Jingchen and SUN Yi translated by

CAI Sudong and YU Xiaoyue

Text by ZHAO Jun translated by YU Chang and edited by

YU Xiaoyue

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording

or any other information storage and retrieval system,

without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Global Culture Communication and Development Ltd.

GCCD, Elizabeth House, 39 York Road

London SE1 7NQ, UK

www.artzip.org

Brithis Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A Catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library

ISBN: 978-0-9933800-0-6

ISBN: 978-0-9933800-0-6

Documents

Sun Yi: Sidelines