纽约中国艺术展以多样性超越地域标签

Museums of modern and contemporary art like to talk a big game about globalism, and their big-tent discourse challenges the old assumption that artists can be naturally grouped together by geography. Yet the fact remains: Western artists get the solo shows, while audiences usually discover art from beyond the United States and Europe through exhibitions with a geographic focus — which lump together diverse and sometimes unrelated artists under a national or regional banner.

现当代艺术博物馆喜欢谈论关于全球化的宏大项目，它们无所不包的话语在挑战一个陈旧的观念：艺术家是可以根据地域归为一些自然的群落的。然而事实依然是：西方艺术家能够获得个展，而美国和欧洲之外的艺术则通常是通过以地理区域为主题的展览展现给观众——它们把各不相同甚至毫不相干的艺术家按照国家或区域混合到一起。

The reason is in small part a matter of habit and in large part financial. While curators and artists may be skeptical of geographic frames, donors love them.

习惯问题只是次要原因，资金来源才是主要的。虽然策展人和艺术家可能对地理框架有所怀疑，但捐款人很喜欢这些概念。

At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, three recent exhibitions showcased new acquisitions from South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, which were harshly criticized in some quarters for eliding differences and segregating non-Western art. (The acquisitions program was paid for by the Swiss bank UBS, which told The New York Times in 2012, “we are refocusing our strategy to reach emerging markets, and this project seemed like a perfect fit.”)

所罗门·R·古根海姆博物馆(Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum)最近的三场展览展示的是新近从南亚、东南亚、拉美和中东购得的作品。有些人尖锐地批评它们忽视差异，对非西方艺术进行隔离(该购藏项目由瑞士银行瑞银[UBS]资助。2012年，该银行在接受《纽约时报》采访时称，“我们正在重新关注面向新兴市场的战略，这个项目似乎与我们的战略非常契合。”)

Now a new show, “Tales of Our Time,” presents contemporary art from China. Though it, too, makes some doubtful implications about geography as destiny, it is better than its regional predecessors. The works here, by seven artists and collectives from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, were all commissioned by the Guggenheim, with a better than average hit rate. Unlike the three regional shopping sprees, desperate to ascribe unity where little was to be found, this is a more open-ended exhibition that, in its diversity, implicitly rebukes its own reason for being.

现在，一场名为“故事新编”(Tales of Our Time)的新展览展示了来自中国的当代艺术。虽然它也做出了一些地域即宿命的可疑暗示，但要优于之前关于该地区的那些展览。这次展出的作品来自中国大陆、香港和台湾的7名艺术家个人或团体。这些作品都是受古根海姆博物馆委约创作的，命中率要高于一般水平。不同于那三场地区艺术大扫货——拼命给毫无共同之处的东西贴上统一的标签——这场展览更具开放性，它通过自己的多样性隐晦地谴责了自己存在的原因。

The artists in “Tales of Our Time” — all born between 1970 and 1980, many familiar from the biennial circuit, several new to me — were chosen by Xiaoyu Weng, an associate curator at the museum, and Hou Hanru, director of the Maxxi museum in Rome who also is a consultant curator to the Guggenheim. (Mr. Hou is also advising the museum on a much bigger, and more promising, exhibition of Chinese art in a global context, “Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World,” which is to open next October.)

“故事新编”的艺术家们都出生于1970年至1980年，其中很多人是我通过双年展早已熟悉的，还有几位对我来说比较陌生。他们是博物馆的助理策展人翁笑雨和罗马21世纪国家艺术博物馆(Maxxi)馆长侯瀚如挑选的。侯也是古根海姆博物馆的顾问策展人(他正在为该博物馆在全球背景下探讨中国艺术的一个规模更大、更具雄心的展览提供咨询，也就是将于明年10月开幕的“1989年之后的艺术与中国——世界的舞台”[Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World])。

The lingua franca of “Tales of Our Time” is video, but there’s one giant sculpture: a crazed industrial robot equipped with a squeegee, installed in a room-size see-through chamber. Programmed by the Beijing artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, a husband-and-wife duo with a reputation as Chinese enfants terribles, the robot mops up liquid, with the viscosity of molasses and the color of blood, according to a set of rules: When a sensor detects that the liquid has flowed past a certain boundary, the robotic arm swoops down and cleans it up off the floor, and splashes the white gallery walls with the red fluid, like in a slasher film. It’s a legible, if forced, metaphor for the societal hazards of algorithms and automation. It’s also a rather expensive piece of Snapchat bait.

“故事新编”以录像作品为通用语言，但也有一座巨大的雕塑：一个装备着擦刷器的疯狂工业机器人，被安装在一个房间大小的透明小室里。这个项目是北京艺术家夫妇孙原和彭禹创作的，他们被誉为中国版的“口无遮拦的孩子”(enfants terribles)。那个机器人按照一套规则，把有着糖浆的粘性和血液的颜色的液体拖干净：感应器探测到液体流过某个界线时，机器人手臂猛扑下去，把液体从地板上擦干净，溅到白色的画廊墙壁上，就像一部砍杀电影。它显然是在略带牵强地暗喻电脑算法和自动化潜藏的社会危险。也是一个相当昂贵的Snapchat诱饵。

Subtler and better is the art by Chia-En Jao, from Taiwan, who interrogates that island’s history, and the ways nationalism can obscure it, with sly humor and an easy hand. In “Taxi,” a rewarding video completed this year, Mr. Jao sits in the back of several cabs en route to Taipei landmarks, like the presidential palace or a memorial to Chiang Kai-shek, and the drivers animatedly kibitz about geopolitics and their own pasts. Abstract discussions about the meaning of nationhood sometimes slip into current events. (“I see the British pound fell today,” Mr. Jao says. “That’s Brexit,” the driver responds. “The U.K. was never very involved in the E.U. anyway.”) Journeys to military sites dredge up memories both painful and playful, prompting one driver to sing an old army ditty: “Take back, take back, take back the mainland!” The taxi drivers’ narratives offer a more plural and personal map of Taiwan, as does a nearby work by Mr. Jao: a flag whose coat of arms incorporates Chinese, Japanese and indigenous Taiwanese fabrics.

台湾艺术家饶加恩的艺术要更微妙和优秀，他用狡猾的幽默和轻松的手法审视台湾的历史，以及民族主义对历史的遮掩。在今年完成的一部令人愉悦的录像作品《计程车》中，饶加恩坐在几辆出租车的后座上，前往台北的一些地标建筑，比如总统府或中正纪念堂，司机们热烈地谈论地缘政治和自己的过往。关于国家地位的意义的抽象讨论有时会转向时事(“今天我看到英镑下跌了，”饶说。“那是因为脱欧，”一位司机回应说，“反正英国从来没有深度参与欧盟”)。去往军事地点的旅程充满痛苦而有趣的回忆，一位司机唱起了一首军中的老歌：“反攻，反攻、反攻大陆去!”这些出租车司机的描述提供了一个更多样化和个性化的台湾地图，就像旁边饶加恩的另一件作品：一面旗帜，上面的纹徽包括中国、日本和台湾原住民的元素。

Two artists, Sun Xun and Zhou Tao, use video to explore China’s industrialization and environmental degradation. Mr. Sun’s “Mythological Time” is a surreal, at times overweening animation set in his northern hometown, Fuxin, which was once home to the largest open-pit coal mine in Asia. Scenes of tanks, miners, fossils and mountains give way to compelling dream sequences, one of which features fishermen hauling a colossal carp beached like a whale. Disconnected vistas scroll across the long screen, recalling the axonometric compositions of Chinese landscapes, though the gruff, energetic paintings that line the walls of the darkened gallery recall the vigorous work of William Kentridge even more than the literati style of classical Chinese art.

孙逊和周滔这两位艺术家用录像探索中国的工业化和环境恶化。孙逊的《通向大地的又一道闪电》是一件超现实主义作品，某些片段是他的北方故乡阜新的夸张动画场景，那里曾是亚洲最大的露天开采煤矿。货箱、矿工、化石和山脉的场景过渡为扣人心弦的梦境，其中一个展现的是渔夫们拖着一条像鲸鱼那样搁浅在沙滩上巨大鲤鱼。没有关联的场景沿着长长的银幕展开，让人想起了中国风景画的轴侧构图，虽然沿着画廊灰暗墙壁排列的充满活力的粗线条绘画更多地让人想起威廉·肯特里奇(William Kentridge)的犀利，而非中国传统艺术的书卷气。

Mr. Zhou’s disquieting two-channel video “Land of the Throat,” by contrast, is shot in the south of China: specifically, the Pearl River Delta, the first region of the country oriented to hypercapitalist production in the era of Deng Xiaoping. “Land of the Throat” roams abandoned or sullied sites around Guangzhou and Shenzhen, avoiding character and plot in favor of wordless, melancholy shots that cohere into a lurid dreamscape. A barefoot man trudges across acres of mud; a turtle bobs up out of brackish water. A parched brown landscape is bisected with red-and-white caution tape, and hills have been eroded so badly they appear like wrinkled skin. Mr. Zhou’s Pearl River Delta is a sci-fi dystopia with no need of special effects, an update of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville” for a century of ecological crisis.

而周滔令人不安的双屏录像《咽喉之地》则是在中国南方的珠江三角洲拍摄的，那里是邓小平时代第一个转向狂热资本主义生产的地区。《咽喉之地》漫步在广州和深圳周围被抛弃或破坏的地区，没有人物和情节，只有无声、阴郁的镜头，而后过渡为可怕的梦境。一个赤脚男人在广袤的泥地上艰难跋涉;一只海龟在污水中上下浮动。干裂的褐色土地被红白警戒线一分为二，小山遭到严重侵蚀，看起来像起皱的皮肤。周滔镜头下的珠江三角洲是不需要任何特效的科幻地狱，经过一个世纪的生态危机，它已经成为让-吕克·戈达尔(Jean-Luc Godard)的《阿尔法城》(Alphaville)的升级版。

If “Tales of Our Time” and its bank-backed predecessors serve as initial maneuvers to broaden the museum’s collection, then I’m prepared to see these shows’ geographic straitjackets as necessary evils. And the Guggenheim is indeed planning to present a more global cross-section of modern and contemporary art — in Abu Dhabi, where its controversial planned satellite museum, 12 times the size of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral museum in Manhattan, will place art from after 1960 in a worldwide framework.

如果说“故事新编”以及之前的三场由银行资助的展览是博物馆拓宽馆藏的初步行动，那么我已打算把它们的地域束缚视为必要的牺牲。古根海姆博物馆的确正在筹划推出更全球化的、跨领域的现当代艺术展——规划中的那座引发争议的阿布扎比分馆，面积是曼哈顿这座弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特(Frank Lloyd Wright)设计的螺旋形博物馆的12倍，将把1960年之后的艺术置于全球框架内。

As for New York, “Tales of Our Time” and the museum’s coming China megaexhibition offer a welcome opportunity to reckon with art we still see too infrequently. I hope, though, that we start to see more solo shows by the likes of Mr. Zhou, as well as thematic exhibitions that let us appreciate him as more than just a national ambassador.

至于纽约，“故事新编”和该博物馆即将开幕的特大型中国展览给我们提供了难得的机会，去思考依然不太常见的艺术。不过我希望，我们能够看到更多周滔这样的艺术家的个展和主题展，让我们能够不只是把他当作一个国家大使去欣赏。