S+V=P (sex + violence=profit), 146×152[1].5×7 cm.,mixed media,2009
展览题目Title: 冰冷的快乐-卡瓦扬·德·居雅个展
展览时间Duration : 2009.8.25 - 9.20.
开幕酒会Opening : 2009.8.25 4:00pm
参展艺术家Artist : 卡瓦扬•德•居雅Kawayan De Guia
展览地点Venue : 北京市东城区东四北大街107号天海商务大厦B101-103 索卡艺术中心
联系方式Contact:
T: 86 10 84012377
F: 86 10 8401 3434
E-mail: info@soka-art.com
www.soka-art.com
珍品陈列室——卡瓦扬•德•居雅个展
阿佳妮•阿姆派克
大众偶像的图片已经令人产生视觉疲劳，沃霍尔的时代文物秘藏器也因此而获得了一次短暂的出名机会。那些散发着陈腐气息的盒子都曾是超级明星的物品，如今一件件摆在那里似在诉说昨日辉煌。它们只是经过翻新处理，并不是完全重新建造的。冲破所有禁忌后，我们可以重返属于他们的年代，这间小小的珍品陈列室把我们带到了古老的十六世纪欧洲。
现代画廊风格低调，色彩多以白色为主，单调呆板。其实在很久以前，珍品的真正价值只有它的拥有者本人知晓，它们多被放在私人收藏室中储存。在今天的许多博物馆和画廊中依然可以体会到这种概念。现在鼓励展会把不同类别的物品以并列、对比、类比等不同方式排放在一起，然后再进行讨论究竟哪种方式的效果更佳。
从这些珍品陈列室，可以看到艺术家们所生活的社会的缩影。里面有电视的石膏模型、汽水瓶、水平拙劣的通俗文化宣传单等，它们按照收藏者个人的观点包裹在一起。在公共活动场所之间还有一些带有宗教气息的盒子，充满了各种各样的东西，包括护身符、羽毛、米粒和干燥的果皮、槟榔――这些都是菲律宾北部各部族的祈祷用品。
那些内容杂乱的文字在向着我们大声呐喊，传递着冰冷或快乐的情绪。百分之五十的作品是经过设计的。例如必需的元素、经典任务、零和快乐老人；尽管这些阿斯图里亚斯语是经过处理的后现代商业语言，但文字本身仍然像光栅一样在图片上留下自己的印记，而且始终保持着母语本身的特点。
德•居雅对视觉迷宫有着超乎寻常的热爱，因此他制定了一个像利伯斯金的过程导向一样的迷宫式隐喻。我们看到了一个奇异的没有道路的迷宫。这里没有回廊也没有出口。只有盒子套盒子、或者房间套房间，艺术家的这种理念在他以往的绘画作品中也有所体现。
博物馆在其权力允许的范围内会使用玻璃罩和棉布床单为道具，来体现有民族特色展品的环境化价值。艺术家的博物馆中为我们提供了“视觉”和文本两种游览方式，来重新构建展会之间的范式关系。
在“S+V=P (性+暴力=利益)"中有: 棉布床单中的枪和詹姆斯•邦德，红色、红玫瑰和绯红色的唇；以及许许多多坐着的神。在“冰冷的快乐”中有：铸有符号印记的可乐瓶、四台电视机、华盛顿、宗教头巾和一捆稻子。在“必需的元素”中有：一位赤裸的女性、阿童木、一只乳房、一幅头骨、一朵花和一些玩具、四台电视、以及一些用来庆祝稻米丰收的收藏品。在“零”中有：五台显示接吻画面的电视、一个吸烟的女人和另一个受伤的女人、米老鼠、一朵兰花、一小块用石膏复制的菲律宾伊富高山上的稻米梯田。在“世界是舞台”中：甘地、猫王正指着一支枪、铸造的骨骼中清楚地标写着数字、一位圣人、一包香烟、干枯的嫩枝、甚至还有伊富高地区家庭救助的情况。最终在“快乐，哦”中：“有缝纫机产品公开图片的绘画版、用残缺的标志性语言撰写的对宗教进行讽刺的内容、玛丽莲•梦露、水牛小屋风景图、三台电视机、擦掉思想气球的连环漫画、念力缠绕的神、以及宗教盒中的一些常见内容。”
卡瓦扬•德•居雅坚持按时间和空间把它们分为六个大类，至于展品本身的性质反倒无所谓。虽然这些内容并不完整，只能按碎片处理，但这恰恰是迷宫博物馆的特色所在。这里没有伶牙利齿的导游跟着进行解说。我们的前后左右只是这些碎片，它们多方位、多角度地诉说着事情的全貌。实际上德•居雅邀请我们观看的迷宫有许多可以描述的空间，但他却把一切都弄得很简洁。
做这些东西的时候，艺术家已经为21世纪的时代精神所折服。全世界的大门都在敞开，隔离被彻底打破，人们赖以生存的基础也发生了变化，对于比如宗教和消费主义等观点也不再妄自菲薄。艺术家也与其他人一样喜欢对物品进行分类。在流动的状态下，他能够发现固定的对象。为了配合珍品陈列室的重新启动，艺术家中止了他的一切行程，认真对展品进行分类以期能够体现出它们的价值。正如利伯斯金对于迷宫式博物馆所进行的总结一样，艺术家在非线性的散漫空间移动，最终形成规矩的线性结构。个体在不利情况下是无法战胜系统的。但是他却可以感受到它，并且根据自己的感觉和利益记录下展览中不守规矩的部分。
珍品陈列室里的展品不是在做秀，不是在哗众取宠、更不是通俗艺术，它们是德•居雅的一颗的赤子之心，是真正的“快乐，哦”。
Wunderkummer——Kawayan De Guia Solo show
Adjani Arumpac
The pop icon images are tired and Warhol’s time capsules have had their fifteen minutes of fame. These boxes reek of stale superstardom, copies of copies that once shook institutions. These are a rehash, if not a reboot. Against all odds, we are taken back to where it all started, the 16th century European development that is the Wunderkummer—the cabinet of curiousities.
Long before the creation of stark white modern unobtrusive galleries, there were only the private museums of things whose values only the owners know. The concept, though, remains until today in museums and galleries. By juxtaposing such disparate objects, comparisons, analogies, parallels within, between and among exhibitions are encouraged to create a discourse that ultimately validates the collection.
These artist’s cabinets of curiosities—fragments of a culture he has lived in and within—consist of plaster casts of idiot boxes and soda bottles, and copies of popular culture at their kitschiest, packed together tight under the guiding principle of a personal aesthetic. In between the public spectacles are ritual boxes full of thingamajigs—from amulets, to feathers, to rice grain and dried up bladder, to betel nut—used for rituals of the Northern tribes of the Philippines.
Random texts shout out to us. Ice cold. Happiness. Fifty percent design. Essential component. A typical command task. Zero. Happy om. Words rasterized to become part of the image but still hauntingly speaking its own language, albeit in a postmodern commercial Babel speak.
Drawing upon Libeskind’s process-oriented metaphor of the labyrinth, De Guia’s assemblages strongly conjure the image of a maze visually. We are maze-viewers looking at strange labyrinths without paths. There are no corridors nor exits. What we have are boxes within boxes. Or rooms within rooms, a concept that the artist has been playing with in his past paintings.
Museums in their own rights, complete with glass covers and cotton beds to reinforce the value of decontextualized ethnographic fragments, we walk the artist’s museums’ “active paths” visually and textually, reconstructing paradigmatic relationships between exhibits.
In “S+V=P (Sex+Violence=Profit )": guns in cotton beds and James Bond; red, red roses and crimson lips; and a whole lot of sitting Gods. In “Ice Cold Happiness": casted Coke bottles stamped with some designs; four televisions; Washington; a ritual headdress and a sheaf of rice. In "Essential Component": a naked female; Astroboy; a breast; a skull; a flower; some toys; four televisions; and a collection of things used to harvest rice. In "Zero" : five televisions bearing images of kissing lovers, woman smoking, and another woman slashing; Mickey Mouse; an orchid; and a small plaster relief depicting life in the Rice Terraces up North. In "All The World's A Stage": Gandhi; Elvis Presley pointing a gun; casted bones distinctly marked with numbers; a saint; a pack of cigarettes; dried twigs; and an Ifugao home relief. And finally, in “Happy Om”: painted copy of a publicity image of a sewing brand, with the mutilated tagline satirizing religion; Marilyn Monroe; a relief of a carabao and a hut; three televisions; comic strips with erased thought balloons, a God with some twine; and the usual contents of a ritual box.
It is not the things, but time and spaces, that Kawayan De Guia forcefully puts together in these six assemblages. These are but shards of a shattered whole. Which is precisely the point of labyrinthine museums. There is no grand unicursal narrative to follow. What we have—behind, above, and with these fragments—are a multitude of narratives and wholes and realities irreconcilable. De Guia’s collections are labyrinths wherein we are invited to observe spaces with such narrative potentials, but succinctly without passages.
Doing thus, the artist has rendered visible the 21st century Zeitgeist. With the global gates open and barriers broken, one learns to fuse survival fundamentals such as religion and consumerism without blaspheming. As with everybody else, the artist compartmentalizes. In a state of flux, he finds fixed states. In line with the rebooting to Wunderkummer, the artist freezes all his processes, finds borders and categorizes values. As with Libeskind’s conclusion on the labyrinthine museum, the artist’s movement through the nonlinear discursive space is ultimately, decidedly, a linear one. The individual cannot win against the system. But he can make sense of it and reorder its unruly exhibits according to his own interests and sensibilities.
Beyond show, beyond shock, beyond pop, these Wunderkummer are De Guia’s impenitent yet truly earnest “Happy Oms.”