艺术家作品陈述

艺术家作品陈述：

作品“龙卷风”在悉尼的白兔美术馆展出之后（图3），采访和评论中都谈论到该作品在环保和生态上的意义。作为中国这个人口大国，如果实现每个人都能够像美国人一样的生活方式，对于生态可能是灾难性的，从我们每一天所产生的塑料瓶就可见一斑。尽管作品“龙卷风”的材料我使用了在中国哪里都可以找到的废弃塑料瓶，但这不是一件宣传环保的作品，如果环顾我2010年完成的三件作品就可以看到我的兴趣是材料和环境的关系——找到能够表达今天感受的艺术材料。

我们已经处在一个什么都可以是艺术、任何人都是艺术家的“艺术史终结”的历史时期，无论你是生活在纽约、伦敦、东京或北京的艺术家所面临的问题都是一样的——我们还能够做什么？2010年我共制作了三件作品——“安息”、“绝对秩序”和“龙卷风”（图1-3），这些作品使用的都是废弃的塑料瓶，在这里我感兴趣的是材料本身，因为在中国“废弃的塑料瓶”已经达到了无所不在、随手可得的泛滥状态，加上塑料瓶上的商标，我把它们称为“National Material”（国家材料），我使用这些材料，希望表达明确的具有中国今天特征的当代艺术。应该说“艺术家的创作是自由的”的说法并不准确，因为艺术家的作品所产生的意义还受到很多的外部的制约，其中包括了历史和环境。60年代的安迪•沃霍的作品使用的是图片复制术，因为当时在世界范围内纽约的都市现代化发展的最快，商业广告的需要和泛滥使得广告复制成为纽约的“特色”，所以安迪的作品产生及其意义是符合了历史必然，就如同和他处于同时期德国的博伊斯，各自作品的意义都产生于那个特定的地理位置和时间点，他们之间是不可以置换的。

我的“龙卷风”作品似乎与贫穷和波普艺术都有一定的关系，或者可以说是把这两个完全不同的艺术风格融合在一起，作品使用的都是随手可得的废弃现成品，而且这些现成品是不加以任何加工的直接使用（只是清洗），所以作品材料很受贫穷艺术作品的影响。另外，因为使用的塑料瓶都产自中国，从造型到产品包装的印刷物都体现了具有中国特色的“波普”印记，作品中这些塑料瓶从大到小的排列所产生的“抽象美”与色彩鲜艳的塑料瓶所具有的波普品性相结合，这符合中国在三十年的时间里保持一个“廉价世界工厂”的全部角色特征。

在这里我使用过去已经有的观念而不羞愧，因为，在什么都可以是艺术、任何人都是艺术家的“艺术史终结”的历史时期，我的艺术观念是“再融合”——我们可以使用过去已经创造的任何观念，使之再融合进具体的历史时期、问题和感情，因此我的“龙卷风”作品即不是贫穷艺术也不是波普艺术，而表达了一个中国特有的意义——新廉价物质主义。

王智远 2011年5月6日

（说明：新廉价物质主义——以低廉的工资、低廉的资源、低廉的物质享受极其低廉的没有道德的世俗社会，这些都建立在普遍低廉的物质基础上。新——乃人类从来没有发生过。）

Artist statement:

After the work Thrown to the Wind was displayed at the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney (please see the image above), almost all the comments on interviews and critical articles are related mainly to its implication in environment protection and ecology. Due to such a larger scale of population in mainland China, if every Chinese intended to adopt the American way of living, it might be a disaster in ecology. An example will be the wasted plastic bottles thrown away by us on a daily basis. Although I have used the wasted plastic bottles available everywhere in mainland China as the media for my work Thrown to the Wind, its implication is not solely meant to be environment protection. If to see the three pieces of my work created in the year of 2010, my interest in creating those work could be seen as of the relationship between media and environment, an exploration for a media best expressing my feeling today.

Today we live in a time so titled “After the end of art history” that everything could be art, and everyone could be an artist. No matter where to live, in New York, London, Tokyo or Beijing, we as artists face the same issue – what else we can do in terms of making art? In the year of 2010 in Beijing, I created all the three pieces of work titled Rest in Peace, Absolute Order and Thrown to the Wind (see attached the images). All the materials used to make the work are wasted plastic bottles. Hereby what I am interested most is the material itself. The “wasted plastic bottles” in mainland China is available everywhere together with the trade marks being printed on the bottles, which are entitled by myself as “National Materials”. I have used all these materials hopefully to express what contemporary art is clearly meant to be in relation to China’s context. It is not accurate to say that “artistic creativity is liberal” due to many external elements constraining the meaning of birth for an artist’s work, which include historical and environmental aspects. In the 1960s, what Andy Warhol has used in his work is photocopy. It was the time when urban development in New York experienced the fastest growth than any other parts of the world, a great demand and expansion of commercial ads has made advertising photocopy “unique” in New York. Thus it was a historical necessity for the birth of Andy Warhol’s works and their meaning. Just as of Joseph Beuys from the same time in Germany, his work’s meaning also originated from a geographic location and timing in particular. Both of their works could not be substituted from one the other.

My work Thrown to the Wind seems to evoke a certain relationship both with Arte Povera and Pop Art, in other words, to mix up two diverse styles into one. The wasted ready-mades used in the work are handy here and there and furthermore, all those ready-mades are used directly without being remade (only being cleaned by water). Therefore, the works have been very much influenced by Arte Povera in terms of the materials used. Besides, all the plastic bottles originated in China, their shaping and packaging are all marked with a unique Chinese “Pop Art”. The works intend to combine both the “abstract beauty” out of those plastic bottles being seated in different rows from bigger to smaller sizes and the characteristics of Pop Art brought up by the bottles in rich colours. This is coherent with all the characteristics of “a world manufacturer for something cheaper” that mainland China has kept in its development of the past three decades.

Hereby I am not shamed to have used the already existed concepts in my work, since we live in a time of “Art History after Modernism” when anything could be art and anyone could be an artist. My own art concept is to “remix” -- we might appropriate any concept already made and remix the concept with any historical period, issue and emotion in particular. Thus, my work Thrown to the Wind is neither related to Arte Povera nor to Pop Art, but intends to express a meaning particular to China – new cheap materialism.

Wang Zhiyuan 6th May, 2011

(N.B; New cheap materialism is defined as of living in a rustic society without morality, everyone enjoys something physical at a very cheap rate provided that the salary, resources and all others concerned at a very lower level. All those are built up on the physical basis of cheapness in popularity. The New here is meant to have never happened in the history of human beings.)