PAM预告｜深圳当代艺术家系列之二｜周力：桃花源·迹

坪山美术馆位于坪山文化聚落北区，是深圳重要的公共文化设施。坪山美术馆以创新的体制机制，推动传统公立美术馆与民间美术馆的资源融通，汇聚各方能量，办一个专业化、品质化、国际化的“正而酷”的美术馆，成为集活力、包容、创意、互动为一体的新时代新都市美术馆新标杆，为市民群众带来新鲜、多元的文化享受和体验。

直至1997年，深圳同一年建设和开放了何香凝美术馆和关山月美术馆，深圳的当代艺术由此呈现出了日渐明朗的学术定位和版块性的崛起和活力。而2005年，由黄专先生参与发起的OCAT在深圳正式成立，标志着深圳当代艺术的主体意识的觉醒，可以说中国当代艺术的深圳立场和独立工作，助推了中国当代艺术的学术梳理和价值建构。深圳的当代艺术在这个阶段，也经历了空降式和事件型艺术的兴奋期，涌现出了数目惊人的双年展。客观而言，这一系列实践松动和培育了深圳当代艺术的土壤，也推动和塑造了今天的深圳当代艺术发展的基本面貌。

坪山美术馆的成立，便是在此背景下的应时而生和顺势而为。在过去两年多的工作中，我们始终强调以历史的眼光、当代的支点和审慎的判断来介入当代艺术的现场和地方艺术的建设，此次推出的深圳艺术家个案系列，也是基于深圳当代艺术的现实情境和发展阶段，期望以激发、助力和沉淀的行动推动深圳当代艺术的主体建构。我们希望通过个案的梳理来呈现深圳当代艺术的结构与肌理，肌理越饱满，城市也会更有精神的厚度和潜能。

深圳当代艺术呈现出个体迁徙、频繁流动的状态，我们对“深圳当代艺术家”的界定也因应这种特质。他们中既有深耕二三十年的艺术家梁铨、周力，也有在深圳开启其艺术的重要岁月后又北上的蒋志，还有新生代的80后艺术家李燎；既有近几年离开学院迁徙到深圳的薛峰，也有处于候鸟状态、将深圳作为“落脚城市”的沈少民。我们都将他们纳入到深圳当代艺术家的范畴进行考察、梳理和展览呈现。我们当然深知其判断本身一方面会推动地方艺术生态的基础建设，同时也意味着这个工作会充满挑战和艰辛。但我们坚信，发展到今天的深圳当代艺术，亟需对自己过去短暂而丰富的历史进行回顾、梳理和审视，并对此时此地的现场形成观察和判断。深圳当代艺术要继续靠前走，就需要有一些自我的审视和冒险。

记得已故的深圳当代艺术的重要推动者、艺术评论家黄专说过一句话：“不是什么时代都能进入历史，只有那些真正改变了我们的生活价值的时代才能进入历史；不是任何人都能进入历史，只有那些真正具有创造能力的人才能进入历史。” 坪山美术馆就是在寻找那些“改变”和“创造”，并将其编织到当代艺术的深圳叙事之中，我们希望以此为深圳、为中国南方当代艺术生态搭建出一些牢固和有时间重量感的“基础设施”。

坪山美术馆馆长 刘晓都
深圳当代艺术家系列读本策划 钟刚

 Foreword 

It’s often difficult to precisely convey one’s emotional journey objectively. For artists, feelings and emotions are necessary motivations for their practices. In Zhou Li's work, we can also see that the artist’s central practice revolves around translating the feelings and emotions of the present into tangible forms.

In recent years, Zhou Li has expanded communicating her emotional experience on a personal level to broader social and historical dimensions. This solo project "Tracing Peach Blossom spring" at the Pingshan Art Museum draws on Tao Yuanming's "The Peach Blossom Spring" from the Eastern Jin Dynasty as a fulcrum to "trace" emotional experiences in the course of history with a "visionary" concept. The artist designates a specific color tone – pink, for this series of works that bring together "personal experience and ideal realm" at the same time, without limiting to this scheme. Nurtured by traditional Chinese art from a young age and her lasting habit of practicing calligraphy, Zhou Li translates the monochromatic variations known as "the five shades of ink" into her most used colors on the canvas to feature "multiple usages of a color tone" in her works.

Should we revisit Western art history, it would be easy to notice that the color pink intended to soothe pain and bring hope in many classic artworks coincides with the tonality Zhou Li set for the Peach Blossom Spring series, initially conceived to convey her grief of losing a family member and the experience of bringing a new life to the world. "Tracing," in the exhibition title, a verb left in its active tense, differentiates Zhou Li's artworks from scenic representations depicted in Tao Yuanming's text. Meanwhile, the term alludes to the way in which reality and the ideal realm connect through the footsteps of the Wuling fisherman despite the story’s inconsequential retracing of such a trail. From which, we may compare the story to one's emotional journey, which is unique and non-replicable, resonating with Zhou Li's idea of the "heart's trace."

In the past, Zhou Li conceived her self-portrait to look at the world with one eye open and the other shut, to embody a simultaneous perspective of introspection and outward view. This time, the site-specific installation consists of mirror images of two worlds connected with a visible path, eliminating any one-directional sense of time and space. Furthermore, it creates a gate between The Peach Blossom Spring and reality through its “seemingly radiant light,” opening up two dimensions with a minimal approach. On the occasion of this exhibition, Zhou Li invites the viewer to join her on a journey to envision The Peach Blossom Spring through the various perceptual experiences of her works of art. Let us step into this expanded site of affects by bringing this literary text into the context of what we are experiencing.  

 Fiona He 

An independent curator, art writer and seasoned translator. She graduated from McGill University with a degree in Art History and Asian Studies. She worked as a researcher for the Asia Art Archive and as an editor for the Chinese online edition of Artforum magazine. Her recent research and writing focus on medium of painting, while exploring ways of looking and practicing art in the condition of overlapping artistic medium and ideologies. She has been a long-time contributor to many renowned art publications in China and abroad, including ARTFORUM, Art Newspaper.cn, Art-Ba-Ba, Flash Art, Leap, Art Review Asia, and others.

 Zhou Li  

Graduated in 1991 from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Department of oil painting. Lived and worked in France during 1995-2003. Former titles: Guest Artist of Shenzhen Art Academies; Guest Professor in Art Design College of Shenzhen University; Artistic Consultant of Shenzhen Airport. Current titles: Director of the Institute of Abstraction and Contemporary Arts, in the Centre of Research on Artistic and Cultural Innovation and Development, Sun Yat-sen University since 2015; Guest Professor in Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Department of oil painting since 2013; Art Director of Boxes Art Space of OCAT Shenzhen since 2015; Art Director of Boxes Art Museum since 2017; Director of No.5 Studio in the Department of oil painting of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts；Academic committee member of  Pingshan Art Museum since 2019.

Latest solo exhibitions:  December, 2020 - January, 2021，”Lost in Green”,Guangdong Museum of Art；

2019, “Standing in the middle of the window” , White Cube Bermondsey (London);2017,“The Ring of Life：Zhou Li Solo Exhibition”,   Hive Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing)；“Shadow of the Wind”, Yuz Museum (Shanghai).Collectors of her works include museums, groups and individuals.

 About PAM  

Situated in the north district of Pingshan Culture Quarter, The Pingshan Art Museum (PAM) is an important public cultural institution in Shenzhen. It is a major force for resource fusion from conventional public art museums and private art institutions, fueled by its institutional innovation. Aiming to build an art museum that is “positive and cool”, PAM actively explores professional development with high-quality in an international scope. The Pingshan Art Museum dedicates to be a new landmark in our time by bringing fresh and diverse cultural enjoyment and experiences to its citizens and celebrating vitality, inclusion, creativity, and interaction.

Shenzhen Contemporary Artists Series |
Prelude | Making History and Making Endeavors

The development of contemporary art in Shenzhen can be traced back to as early as 85 New Wave period. At that time, as a burgeoning and imaginative city, Shenzhen gave birth to some sporadic art movements and individual practices. However, Shenzhen then was obligated to undertake the mission of conducting experiments and thereby working miracles in the economic and political fields. As a result, culture and art were emerging, with dramatic growth yet to come. 

Until 1997, Shenzhen witnessed the building and opening of He Xiangning Art Museum and Guan Shanyue Art Museum in the same year. Contemporary art in Shenzhen has shown an increasingly clear academic positioning, while demonstrating the rise and vitality of Pearl River Delta in the contemporary art context. In 2005, OCAT, initiated by Huang Zhuan among others, was formally established in Shenzhen, marking the awakening of the subjective consciousness of contemporary art in Shenzhen. It can be concluded that Shenzhen position and its independent efforts concerning Chinese contemporary art have helped facilitate the academic research and value construction of Chinese contemporary art. At this stage, the contemporary art in Shenzhen has also witnessed the sprouting of non-indigenous and events-based art when a surprising number of biennales came out. Objectively speaking, the series of practices loosened and cultivated the soil for contemporary art in Shenzhen, while promoting and shaping the basic appearance of the development of contemporary art in Shenzhen today.

Against this backdrop, Pingshan Art Museum was established as the times demanded. Over the past two years of work, we have been emphasizing historical perspectives, contemporary pivots and prudent judgment, which should play a role in the construction of contemporary art scenes and local art. Based on the realistic situation and development stage of contemporary art in Shenzhen, the Shenzhen Contemporary Artists Series is expected to promote the major construction of contemporary art in Shenzhen by means of inspiring, assisting and inheriting acts. We hope to present the structure and texture of Shenzhen contemporary art through the analysis of individual cases. The richer the texture, the greater intellectual thickness and potential the city will have.

The contemporary art in Shenzhen presents a state of individual migration and frequent movement, which prompts the definition of "Shenzhen Contemporary Artists". Among them are the artists Liang Quan and Zhou Li who have been involved into the field for 20 or 30 years, Jiang Zhi who went north after the momentous years of starting out a career as an artist in Shenzhen, as well as Li Liao born in 1980s. Besides, the said artists also include Xue Feng who has left school and moved to Shenzhen, and Shen Shaomin, who treats Shenzhen as a temporary place of lodging like a migratory bird. We categorize them as Shenzhen contemporary artists for inspection, sorting and exhibiting. Certainly, we are aware that the judgment itself will promote the infrastructure construction of the local art ecology on the one hand, which also means that this work will be full of challenges and hardships. However, we firmly believe that the shenzhen contemporary art today needs to be reviewed, sorted out and examined concerning its short yet rich history, thus resulting in observations of and judgments on the scene here and now. Should the contemporary art in Shenzhen advance, it needs some self-examination and adventure.

I recall that the late Huang Zhuan, an important promoter of contemporary art in Shenzhen and an art critic, said: "Not all times can go down in history. Only those times that have truly changed the value of our lives can make history; not everyone can go down in history. Only those who are genuinely able to produce creations can pass into history.” Pingshan Art Museum is looking for those “changes” and “creations”, while weaving them into the narrative of Shenzhen contemporary art. We hope to build some solid and time-honored “infrastructure" for Shenzhen and for the contemporary art ecology in southern China.

Liu Xiaodu, Director of Pingshan Art Museum
Zhong Gang, Planner of Readers of Shenzhen Contemporary Artists Series

 统筹｜唐煜婷

编辑｜李语湉

审校｜刘晓都 李耀