Shang Hai Tan 上海滩
SHANG HAI TAN [ PDF Version ]
CHOW Chun Fai's solo show
-----------------------------------------
GALLERIA DELL'ARCO ( Shanghai ), opening 14 June 2008 h.18:00 pm
"The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual's or the collective unconscious." -- ITALO CALVINO
This famous sentence by Italo Calvino is a strong inspiration to Chow Chun Fai’s artistic research. For Calvino, of all the books read in a lifetime, only few are capable to deposit silently in the reader’s mind. They highlight, permanently, a concept, a message, or just a simple passage. Each of us has a personal selection of classics that contribute in the shaping of our identity. Like an invisible baggage, but weightless and handy, the classics keep coming up to the surface, affecting our daily way of communicating and even our most shallow gestures.
Whereas in Calvino’s sentence, a classic is a book capable of opening new horizons and stimulating a new interpretation each time it is read, for Chow Chun Fai, a Hong Kong artist in his early thirties, the word classic is manifold: its nuances take shape in the films that he dissects and works upon.
Contaminating pictorial and cinematic languages, Chow Chun Fai, after having extracted a still from the movie, applies a dense, coagulated materia with a vigorous gesture. He opts for conveying the rugged irregularity of the transposed medium, avoiding hyper-realistic solutions that attempt to capture the movie still’s truth. This stylistic option stems from the artist’s fascination with cinema: not only is he captivated by the image – with its internal visual dynamics –but more specifically by the spoken word. The exchange of dialogue among actors is broken into fragments that represent the thematic and auditory essence of the scene. These highly ironic phrases, always endowed with subtle and conceptual twists, consitute a key to reading the images that they accompany.
In the series presented at the Galleria dell’Arco, a group of previously unreleased canvases feature scenes taken from movies that portray or evoke the city of Shanghai: the birthplace of Chinese cinema, whose industry, dramatically flourishing in the 20s and 30s, later contributed to the development of Hong Kong’s cinema, nowadays an impressive economic reality. By highlighting the striking diversity between the two cities, Chow Chun Fai investigates the vision that Hong Kong has of Shanghai and explores the ways in which the former imagines, narrates, and represents the latter.
Key to this investigation is the relationship between reality and simulacre: does what emerges from the movies – convictions and conventions, clichés, folk culture – match China self-perceptions? The same question arises from the captions of a scene taken from the film Love in a Fallen City (which is also the title of a novel by Eileen Chan, a Chinese author who lives between Hong Kong and Shanghai); the captions read: «You’re an authentic Chinese, so naturally you're not like the Shanghainese she mentioned.» The question of cultural roots and ethnic identity is indeed at best controvesial and articulated and is not passable of a clearcut definition.
If over the last century the cinema industry has been exerting a great influence on generations of ‘movie-customers’, often providing standard models to be absorbed by a massified public, can the critical spirit of the individual film-goer subvert the rules of the game without actually breaking them?
If a classic is tradionally considered a collective heritage, and thereby a universal model, can it become, through an arbitrary choice, a means to affirm one’s own individuality?
GALLERIA DELL'ARCO
Via Siracusa 9 90141 PALERMO tel. +39 091 6261234
2/F, No. 1 Building, 50 Moganshan Road, SHANGHAI tel. +86 21 52527164
www.dearco.it
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
上海滩 [ PDF 版本 ]
周俊辉个人作品展
上海艾可画廊 2008 年 6 月 14 日下午 6 点开幕
“经典是具有特殊影响力的作品，一方面，他们会在我们的想象中留下痕迹，令人无法忘怀，另一方面，他们会隐藏在层层的记忆当中，成为个体或集体的潜意识。”——卡尔维诺
上述卡尔维诺名言，一直是周俊辉艺术探索中的重要灵感。对于卡尔维诺来说，在我们一生看过的书本当中，只有寥寥可数能够静静地在读者脑海中沉淀升华，历久常新，无论这只是一个理念，一个信息，或者只是一个简单的段落而已。我们都以个人选择的经典作品来塑造自己的身份，就像一件看不见的行李，没有重量，随身而行，经典作品却总会一直从心底涌出，影响我们日常沟通的方式,甚至最浅浮的姿态。
一如卡尔维诺所言，经典能够令人大开眼界，每一次阅读都可以激发新的诠释，对于年近三十的周俊辉来说，经典一词可谓多式多样：从电影中体现细微差别，经过精细研究才进行创作。
周俊辉从电影择取画面，再凭浓厚凝结的物料、强而有力的姿态，尝试把绘画及电影语言杂染。他选择表达转换用媒介（即由电影至绘画）其粗糙及不规则的特性，避免用过于写实的方法来捕捉电影画面蕴含的真理。这种精雕细琢的选择来自艺术家对电影的沉溺——不单对影像在内的视觉活力而着迷，更甚是特别钟情于对白。演员之间的对话交流断裂，成为代表画面主题及听觉要素的碎片。这些极具讽刺意味的断章，往往先天就是诡异与概念性的转折，成为了阅读伴随断章出现的影像的关键。
此次于艾可画廊展出周俊辉的一系列作品，当中六张从未展出的画作，都是以描绘或召唤上海城市风貌的电影画面为题。上海作为中国电影工业的发祥地，在二、三十年代尤其繁荣兴旺，其后更影响香港电影业的发展；时至现在香港电影工业蓬勃，有目共睹。透过突出两地明显的差异，周俊辉着力追寻香港视野中的上海情怀，探索前者臆想、叙述及再现后者。
了解现实与影像彼此关系的关键是：从电影浮现的信念、约定俗成、老生常谈及民间文化是否符合中国人的自我认知？同一个问题也在《倾城之恋》（改编自游走于香港及上海之间、中国作家张爱玲的同名小说作品）电影其中一场的字幕中出现：“你是个道地的中国人，那自然跟她所谓的上海人有点不同。”这个关于文化根源及民族身份的问题，既表达清晰又具争议性，却不容易找到一个斩钉截铁的解释。
如果过去一个世纪，电影工业对不同年代的电影消费者发挥了一个巨大的影响力，经常提供标准既模范让大众全盘接收，拥有批判思考的独立电影先行者又能否在不破坏原有模式下，颠覆游戏规则？
如果传统认同经典是集体文化遗产，从而成为一种普遍模式，那么经典又能否通过个人反复多变的选择，成为确认一己独特性的方法？
GALLERIA DELL'ARCO
Via Siracusa 9 90141 PALERMO tel. +39 091 6261234
上海莫干山路50号1号楼2楼 tel. +86 21 52527164
www.dearco.it