TANK 新展｜孙逊：“消失的马戏团”

油罐艺术中心隆重呈现艺术家孙逊全新个展“消失的马戏团”。展览将首次呈现孙逊围绕以油画材料而创作的全新动画短片《马戏团枭雄》及影片的创作原稿和大尺幅油画原作。展览将于2024年3月9日开幕，持续展出至6月9日。

继2019年孙逊开启了他最宏大的项目：长篇动画电影《魔法星图》，一个由不同艺术风格史构成的定格动画。历经漫长的制作过程，孙逊进入到了电影的第二篇章“鲸邦”，由油画构成的奇幻国度。《马戏团枭雄》则是孙逊在构思这部个人史诗级电影时而产生的内核价值思考，以及对于油画材料的探究与完善，而其中的内容也将与“鲸邦”相互呼应。

孙逊的创作总是充满着奇幻色彩，穿插梦幻跳跃的想象，不同媒介的使用也构成孙逊独特的视觉语言。短片《马戏团枭雄》讲述的是一封来自异时空的信件与马戏团中各类动物而产生的荒诞对话。在影片设定中不存在真实的对话过程，片中的动物似乎有了人的行为与思考能力，而镜头内人的场景与行为却变得荒诞怪异，二者似乎相互置换又或是变成了平等，失去了边界…… 在展览中，也将同时展出孙逊至今最大尺幅的12米油画作品，作为整个展览的核心内容。

马戏团枭雄是一部油彩动画短片。面对无限广阔的现实与无限纵深的时空，人类的故事似乎也在无限的缩小，是其小无内的那般渺小，现实在抽离中，历史在坍塌中……尤其是最近几年的全球病毒灾难，世界瞬时成为马戏团般的情形。对于任何人的生命而言，明天就是今天的投影，而今天又是昨天的投影，不断的回溯，直至生命的源头，反之到达生命的尽头……哪一个时刻才是真实的自己？似乎，时空只是影子的影子的影子。在其大无外的时空中，意义失去了意义，非大非小，非短非长，非曲非直，非柔非刚，非厚非薄，非圆非方……只有片中的那封无字信笺才是真实的全部！

孙逊，1980年出生于中国辽宁省阜新。2005年毕业于中国美术学院版画系。次年，成立π格动画工作室。现生活并工作于北京。孙逊的作品通常为手绘而成的动画影片。因此除动画影片本身外，同时可以看到与其动画相关的手稿或运用其他媒介制作一些作品。饱含隐喻的画面细节、暗黑张力的手绘风格、梦幻跳跃的情节设计是孙逊颇具个人特色的视觉语言。近年来，孙逊以新媒体艺术为原点，在更为广阔的视觉艺术领域做出了诸多尝试：探索在报纸、书籍、木刻版画、水墨、色粉等不同创作媒介中的叙事效果，探讨如何展现非线性的时间与空间观念，并结合自身对于社会与社会学理论的理解，探究现实与幻想的表现形式。

孙逊的作品被众多艺术机构收藏，包括白兔中国当代艺术收藏、所罗门·R·古根海姆美术馆、卡蒂斯特艺术基金会、亚洲协会博物馆、香港M+美术馆等。孙逊的电影作品曾经在威尼斯国际电影节，柏林国际电影节，后在香港国际电影节，安纳西国际动画电影节，荷兰动画电影节等以及其他特别放映活动上映。

In English:

In 2019 Sun Xun went on his most ambitious project yet: the feature-length animated film Magic of Atlas, a 120-minute stop-motion animation composed of different artistic styles. After a long production process, Sun Xun enters the second chapter of the film, Jing Bang, a fantasy land made of oil paintings. Shocking Dreams in Circus is Sun Xun's reflection on the core value of Magic of Atlas, and the completion of his exploration and refinement of the oil painting materials. The content of this animation will also echo with Jing Bang.

Sun Xun's creations are always filled with fantastical colors, interwoven with dreamlike leaps of imagination. The use of different media constitutes Sun Xun's unique visual language. The short film Shocking Dreams in Circus tells a story of absurd dialogue between various animals in a circus and a letter from a different time and space. In the film's setting, there is no real dialogue process, as the animals in the film seem to have human behaviors and thinking abilities, while the scenes and behaviors of the people in the frame become absurd and strange. The two seem to interchange or become equal, losing their boundaries... In the exhibition, Sun Xun's 12-meter oil painting, which is his largest to date, will be showcased as the main attraction of the entire exhibition.

Shocking Dreams in Circus is an oil-painted animated short film. Faced with an infinitely vast reality and an infinitely deep space-time, human history is extremely small. Reality and history are no longer real and are on the verge of collapse. Especially with the global viral catastrophe of the last few years, the human world has instantly become a circus-like situation. For any human life, tomorrow is a projection of today, and today is a projection of yesterday, constantly going back and forth between the source and the end of life. Which moment is the true self? It would seem that time and space are only the shadows of the shadows of the shadows. In the vastness of space and time, all meaning is lost, there is no certainty ...... Only the wordless letter in the animation is the whole truth!

Sun Xun was born in 1980 in Fuxin in Liaoning province, China. He graduated in 2005 from the Print-making Department of the China Academy of Art. In 2006 he established π Animation Studio. He currently lives and works in Beijing. Sun Xun's works are typically animated films created through hand-drawing. Therefore, besides the animated films themselves, one can also see related hand-drawn drafts or other works produced using different media. Rich in metaphorical imagery, dark tension in his drawing style, and fantastical narrative designs, Sun Xun's visual language possesses distinctive personal characteristics. In recent years, Sun Xun, starting from new media art, has made numerous attempts in a broader field of visual arts: exploring narrative effects in various creative media such as newspapers, books, woodcuts, ink, and colored powders, examining how to present nonlinear concepts of time and space, and combining his own understanding of social and sociological theories to explore forms of expression between reality and fantasy.

Sun Xun’s works were collected by many art institutions, including White Rabbit Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto, Asia Society Museum, and M+.

Sun Xun's films have been screened at the Venice International Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, as well as at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Netherlands Animation Film Festival, and other special screening events.