萧搏：两种方法

开幕：2018年8月25日（周六）16:00

展期：2018年8月25日-10月13日

今格空间荣幸地宣布，艺术家萧搏的个展“两种方法”将于2018年8月25日正式开幕。此次展览标志着萧搏与画廊的首次合作，届时将呈现他在2018年最新创作的两个系列——“草图” 与“四格”。

作为中生代艺术家的代表人物之一，近些年来，萧搏在绘画的探索上一直以“做减法”的方式向前推进。他的作品从绘画的“边缘”入手，试图找寻更多进入绘画的可能性。艺术家希望通过自身的实践来消解人们对绘画的“凝视”，以弱化绘画所固有的观看方式。 本次展览展出了两个风格迥异的作品系列，展现了艺术家从两条不同路径对绘画所展开的殊途同归的探索。

展览中的“四格”系列，在形式上延续了艺术家早期创作的方法。早期取材于网络视频的历史新闻题材或个人经验的作品，借助影像的时间性来消解绘画的语义和所指。如果说，艺术家的早期作品是他在面对客观线性时间的前提下，对外在世界所提供的一个平实描述，那么他自2016年以来创作的作品，则是把自身作为一个客体，在其中以反观绘画的行为，展现时间中的微妙变化。近期的“四格”系列中，萧搏将画布分割为等大的四个部分，并以复制的方式重复看似相同的图像。同时，艺术家借助于身体在行动中的微妙变化，以达到“内观”的目的。画布上呈现的色彩和画面质感并非提前设定，而是在过程中偶发形成。

正如“四格”系列见证了艺术家在解决绘画问题时，从对具象绘画的依依不舍到逐渐聚焦于绘画动作本身的转变过程，“草图”系列同样摒弃了驾驭自然现象的必要性。借助于隔离胶自然的滴撒和流淌所形成的视觉外形，作品剔除了画面的意象关联，回归到一种更为纯粹的抽象本质。虽然“草图” 和杰克逊·勃洛克的抽象表现主义绘画在“行为”上呈现了惊人的相似性，但是其色彩上的单一性，以及剔除绘画表面的质感，则拉近了这个系列与印刷复制品之间的距离——尽管萧搏在创作该系列时的初衷并不在于要表现视觉上的可复制性。

在“四格”和“草图”这两个系列中， 萧搏的绘画实践经由两种方法实现了从客体到自身的转移。而无论是其采用的复制方式还是他借古问今的行动绘画，它们均有助于消解、转移以及重构人们对绘画的注意力。 这样的工作方式使萧搏回到一种“内省” 的工作状态。如果说抽象绘画拉开了人与物质世界之间的距离，并推动人类向往更高的精神世界，那么萧搏的创作正是在这种摸索中，为我们提供了两种实践方法。

萧搏，1977年出生于杭州。 他毕业于中国美术学院综合艺术系，并一直从事着绘画上的实践。 萧搏的个展包括： “萧搏”, 世界画廊，香港（2018）；“一个另一个 ”，55画廊,上海（2017）； “留下”，55画廊， 上海（2015）；“断片·片段”，站台中国艺术机构, 北京（2008）；“帧” ，站台中国艺术机构, 北京（2006）等。 他的作品曾在诸多重要群展上展出，其中包括： “柳浪闻莺”，谷仓当代艺术空间， 深圳（2018）；“我们何以成为我们”，言午画廊, 上海（2017）； “Take Me Out”, Chi K11 美术馆, 上海 (2016); “日光灯 人群 笔记本”, 杜革艺术空间, 北京(2016); “AAC艺术中国提名展”, 农业展览馆, 北京(2014); “写生”, 站台中国艺术机构, 北京(2013); “不一不异” ,中国美术学院美术馆, 杭州(2013); “亚洲” , 证大朱家角艺术馆, 上海(2012) 等。

Xiao Bo: Two Methods 

Opening: 4pm, August 25th, 2018 (Saturday)

Exhibition Period: August 25th - October 13th, 2018

Gingko Space is delighted to announce Xiao Bo’s first solo exhibition, “Two Methods”, opening on August 25, 2018. This exhibition marks the artist’s first collaboration with the gallery, comprised of two recent seriesboth completed in 2018, “Four Quadrants” and “Sketch”.  

As one of the leading figures among the 1970s generation Chinese artists, Xiao Bo’s has been pushing his painting practice forward by way of “reduction”. His works attempt to discover greater possibilities for the conceptions of painting by exploring its “peripheries”. Through which, Xiao Bo hopes to dissolve the “gaze” commonly adopted in looking at a painting, in order to undermine the conventional way of looking. The two visually disparate series on view in this exhibition, present the artist’s two varying methods to his consistent and lasting practice in painting. 

The “Four Quadrants” series is an extension of the format Xiao Bo had adopted for his earlier practice. Those works, drawn from online footage of historical events, news broadcast and personal experiences appropriated the temporality of the moving images in order to dissolve their pictorial semantics and implications. If we were to consider his earlier works as the rational portrayals of the external world within an objective temporal framework, then the works since 2016 take the self as a conduit, with which the artist examines his attitude towards painting, so the subtle transformations over time would be visualized. In his most recent “Four Quadrants” series, Xiao Bao has divided the canvas into four equal rectangles and paints an image four times that are presumably the same. The layers of painted colors and the textures they render are not necessarily pre-planned but formed randomly in his process of painting, while the subtle differences experienced in the artist’s actions of painting afford him to achieve his goal of “introspection”. 

Similar to the “Four Quadrants” series, bearing witness to the artist’s shift from reluctantly abandoning figuration to focusing on the gestures of painting, “Sketch” series has also relinquished the necessity of straddling its subject matter on natural phenomenon, as seen in his previous works. Rather, it adopts the natural dripping and flow of gelatin on canvas in rendering visual forms. As a result, the works eliminate pictorial associations and truly return to the essence of abstraction. In spite of the “Sketch” series sharing astonishing similarity with Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist paintings, they are however not only differentiated by former’s singularity in color, but also its elimination of texture on canvas, which brings Xiao Bo’s works closer to mechanically reproduced images, even though Xiao Bo’s impetus for this series was not to create visual reproducibility. 

With the “Four Quadrants” and “Sketch” series, Xiao Bo’s adoption of these two methods in his painting practice allowed his focus to shift from the objective to the self. Let it be engaging means of repetition or investigating an established painting gesture, each has equally dissolved, distracted or even reconstructed people’s focus on painting. These kinds of approach led Xiao Bo to restore an “introspective” way of working. Should abstraction be understood as a way of distancing the individual from the physical and material world in order to reach for an ultimate spirituality, then, Xiao Bo’s painting practice has provided two methods on this path of exploration. 

Xiao Bo, born in 1977, Hangzhou, is a graduate of Mixed Media Department of China Academy of Art. Xiao Bo has been the subject of solo exhibitions including, “Xiao Bo” (2018), Galerie Du Monde, Hong Kong;  “One Another”(2017), 55 Gallery, Shanghai; “Stay With Me” (2015), 55 Gallery, Shanghai; “Clips-Segments” (2008), Platform China (2006), Beijing; “Frame” Platform China, Beijing and etc. His works have been the subject of group exhibitions including, “Willow Swallow” (2018), The Barn Contemporary Art Space, Shenzhen; “What Makes Us Who We Are” (2017), Xu Gallery, Shanghai; “Take Me Out”(2016), Chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai; “Daylight Crowd Notebook”(2016), Duge Private Art Space, Beijing; “AAC Art China Award”(2014), nomination exhibition, Beijing; “Sketching” (2013), Platform China, Beijing; “Neither Same Nor Strange”(2013), Art Museum of China Academy of Art; Hangzhou; “Asia”(2012), Zendai Zhujiajiao Art Center, Shanghai and etc.

今格空间2014年在北京创立，作为一家将视野聚焦亚洲艺术生态的画廊，今格空间积极支持艺术家进入更为成熟和前瞻性的创作实践，帮助艺术家走向国际并建立其声望。我们的展览项目植根于对自身文化身份的探索与创新，亦关注艺术家在此领域与评论、策展和观者的深层对话。

Founded in 2014 Beijing, as an art gallery whose vision focuses on the ecosystem of Asia contemporary art, Ginkgo Space's mission is to provide active support to artists’ processes of developing and gaining greater perspectives on their artistic practices. With our collaboration, we hope to build the artist’s reputation and widen their international recognition. Our exhibition program is aimed at exploring and discovering the artistic practices that define our cultural identity, through which we are committed to setting up platforms for profound dialogues between the artists, critics, curators, and audiences of contemporary art.