昊美术馆（温州）十分荣幸的宣布，将于2019年11月29日至2020年3月29日在特别项目空间举办艺术家黎晓亮的个展“北京公寓/Peking Apartments”。展览以黎晓亮自2015年至2019年创作的长期摄影项目《北京公寓》为名，为公众首次呈现这一荣获国际摄影奖 Fine Art Photography Awards（FAPA）的系列作品，和由昊美术馆支持的全新装置。
黎晓亮在过去的十多年中与主流时尚、艺术杂志合作记录了银幕上的绝大多数中国演员、艺术家、导演和好莱坞巨星、摇滚歌手；于此同时，他也在长期实践具有持续议题性的个人艺术项目，其个人项目曾获马格南主席马丁·帕尔（Martin Parr）评审的摄影样书奖、参加与法国摄影大师弗兰克·霍瓦特（Frank Horvat）的双人展。黎晓亮在他的影像创作中不断探索新的摄影媒介，并活跃在动态影像领域。
《北京公寓》聚焦时尚行业中外籍高薪模特作为群租公寓房客的个人生活。她们大多来自东欧或俄罗斯，由于签证时限和忙碌的商业活动，在北京短暂生活并离开。与工作肖像一同遗留在这个城市的，是她们在群租公寓中留下的生活痕迹——贴满剪报的墙壁、缺少螺丝而倒转的门牌号、散落内衣和眼影盘的床铺…
《北京公寓》，2015-2019黎晓亮致谢艺术家
时尚工业内部有着复杂的运作机制，其中的消费关系使许多仍在职业早期的模特身处行业层级的底层，黎晓亮将个体从依附于职业的刻板印象中拆解，以幕后的视角揭发了操纵着市场生产机制的社会权力系统。作品指涉在经济至上的当下，模特这一职业所代表的“美学经济”和物化早已渗透到日常文化中，通过大量的信息传播媒介强调其价值。艺术家观察到消费主义下单一意识形态的畸形现状，使我们得以从被同化的理解中挣脱，在讶于反差的作品中寻求一瞥真相。
《北京公寓》，2015-2019
黎晓亮
致谢艺术家
公寓这一特定地点也代表着人在高度曝光下的行为痕迹，物品的特殊性和个人意义在此被一窥究竟，画面中有关身份和隐私的探讨使人联想起法国艺术家苏菲·卡尔（Sophie Calle）的《The Hotel》系列。不同于1981年潜入酒店客房的窥探，如今手机的GPS定位、人脸识别系统同城市中密集的CCTV一起制造了一个群体监视的环境，社交网络的高度曝光也令人们习惯性的相互约束。时代特有的群体监视机制在艺术家的镜头下转换成电影般的场景叙事，被模特失焦的眼神填满了画幅。
在此次个展中，黎晓亮从作为“时尚符号”的个体切入，提供了有关社会运作机制的新的思考路径，其中对于私人和公共的边界、个体和群体的关系的探讨即时有效的介入当下，给人们重估现状的选择。
昊美术馆届时亦将于美术馆咖啡厅开启为期一年的特别项目，向公众呈现黎晓亮的《孤独星球》系列作品。这个全部由手机拍摄的长期摄影项目自2015年启动，2016年9月出版的摄影样书获得了马格南主席马丁·帕尔（Martin Parr）评审的摄影样书优胜奖。除去已收录在样书中的作品，美术馆咖啡厅还将呈现艺术家特定场域的互动性装置，邀请观众进入预先设置的镜头之中。
《孤独星球》样书及封面作品，2016
致谢艺术家
黎晓亮将方形的取景框对准在世界各地不同的环境中低着头，沉浸于屏幕世界中的人们。在样书的序言中艺术家写道：“设计样书封面时，我正在看迈尔斯·戴维斯(Miles Davis)的传记，他那标志性的吹着小号的剪影让我突然觉得这个时代的人们也正在拥有着自己的经典动作：低头，注目。”[1]
《孤独星球》，2015至今黎晓亮致谢艺术家
是的，就如约翰·伯格在《观看之道》中所言，“历史上也没有任何一种形态的社会，曾经出现过这么集中的影像，这么密集的视觉信息。”[2] 从20世纪70年代广告的大量覆盖至今，互联网世界极大的拓展了视觉语言的再现形式，时代以手机为主要媒介、以摄影为图像再现的主要手段，将“15分钟的成名”许诺给每个人。媒体和广告掌控着文化霸权，这一自上而下的、无差别的数字化使我们所见的图像愈发相似、所听的声音也愈加统一。于是我们看到人们以无差别的姿态出现在黎晓亮的作品中，“低头，注目”不仅是时代的表象，更指涉了当代社会中群体同质化的现状。
艺术家通过手机取景框注视着看手机的人，更邀请观众加入到这个无法停止的循环中，个性消失了，人们的精神交往被公共透明的机械连接取代。在这个自我共振的孤立世界中，我们只能听到键盘的敲击声。
参考文献：
[1] 黎晓亮，《孤独星球》，2016
[2] 约翰·伯格，《观看之道》，企鹅出版集团，1972
关于艺术家
黎晓亮
黎晓亮，摄影师，生于1984。黎晓亮的影像创作工作主要包括摄影、动态影像、多媒介实践和议题性艺术项目。其个人艺术项目作品曾受邀在不同机构和画廊展出。2015年，黎晓亮的摄影画册《Lonely Planet》在连州国际摄影节获马格南主席Martin Parr评审的摄影样书优胜；2016年6月，《北京公寓 Peking Apartments》获Fine Art Photography Awards；2018年9月，黎晓亮受邀与法国摄影大师Frank Horvat在Leica Galley 举办双人展(PHOTO Shanghai)。
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Exhibition：Peking ApartmentDuration：2019/11/29 - 2020/3/29Artist：AlexviCurator：Zhang LiAssistant Curator：Wang ZiyaoVenue：No.1, East Jiangbin Road, Wenzhou (ONEHOME H.S ART HOTEL)
HOW Art Museum Wenzhou is proud to announce Alexvi's solo exhibition Peking Apartment will take place in the special project space from November 29 to March 29. The title of the exhibition comes from the long-term thematic art project that Alexvi has been engaged in since 2015. It is the first time this award-winning series will be presented to the public, along with a new installation commissioned by HOW art museum.
Over the last decade, Alexvi has collaborated with mainstream art and fashion magazines working with major Chinese actors, directors and artists as well as Hollywood celebrities and rock singers. At the same time, he has been continuously working on his personal art projects, winning Photobook Awards curated by Martin Parr, the president of Magnum Photos International and holding a joint exhibition with Frank Horvat, a guru of French photography. With his visual arts practice, Alexvi relentlessly challenges conventions of photography as a medium at times venturing into the domain of video.
Peking Apartments documents the everyday life of foreign fashion models, the majority being of East European and Russian origins, in their shared apartments. Although visa restrictions and busy work schedules often make their stay in China quite short, their modelling portraits remain in the city and so do ephemera of their lives as tenants in rented dormitories: magazine clippings pasted on the wall, door numbers turned upside down, beds strewn with underwear and eyeshadow palettes…
Peking Apartments, 2015-2019AlexviCourtesy of the artist
A tangled web of clandestine operating principles animates the machinery of the fashion industry. Its intrinsic schema of economic relations ensures that aspiring models exist at the very bottom of the internal hierarchy. Alexvi separates the individual from the stereotyped image attached to this occupation and exposes social power dynamics that control the market production mechanisms from a behind-the-scenes perspective. This artwork addresses the political economy of contemporaneity, the so-called “aesthetic economy” of which fashion models are the main representatives has already seeped into every aspect of our daily lives; its values propagated and amplified via mass media. The artist investigates one of the defective manifestations of consumerist ideology, urging us to abandon the assimilated understanding of this issue and search for the grain of truth in the spectacle of contrasts found in this artwork.
Peking Apartments, 2015-2019AlexviCourtesy of the artist
The peculiarity of the site itself - the shared apartments, spotlights the traces of everyday acts, the specificity of objects and individual meanings reveal themselves in full. This portrayal of the dilemmas of identity and privacy is reminiscent of The Hotel series by French artist Sophie Calle. Sneaking into private apartments in 1981 was a far cry from today’s cellphone GPS tracking and facial recognition systems working along with the city's dense CCTV networks to create the environment of public surveillance; meanwhile, over-exposure through social networks nurtures the habit of mutual restraint. Observed through the artist’s lens, this era of public surveillance is transformed into a cinematic narrative, each scene punctuated by the models’ absent expressions.
With this exhibition, Alexvi starts with the fashion icon, pondering over the functioning of the social apparatus, seeking new ways to approach the subject. Scrutinizing the relations between public and private realms, individuals and collectives creates the possibility of immediate and effective intervention into the contemporary condition, giving people a choice to reevaluate the current state of affairs.
HOW Art Museum will also present a special project in the museum's cafe - a year-long public exhibition of Alexvi’s Lonely Planet series. Shot on a cellphone camera in its entirety, this long-term project was initiated in 2015. In September 2016, the photobook was published and shortly after won the Photobook Awards curated by Martin Parr. Apart from the images included in the photobook, HOW museum's cafe will present a site-specific interactive installation inviting the audience to enter pre-arranged scenes.
Sample copy and cover work of Lonely Planet, 2016
Courtesy of the artist
In a square frame of each image there are people from different parts of the world slouched over their phones, immersed in the world on-screen. In the preface to the album Alexvi writes: “While working on this photobook I’ve been reading Miles Davis’ biography; looking at the iconic silhouette of him holding a trumpet suddenly made me think about this classic posture of our generation: head down, eyes fixed.” [1]
Lonely Planet, 2015-ongoing
Alexvi
Courtesy of the artist
Indeed, as John Berger pointed out in Ways of Seeing: “In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.”[2] From the surge of mass advertising during the 1970s to modern days when the internet has profoundly changed the mode of representation of visual language. For the generation whose primary medium is a cellphone, photography is the crucial agency of visual representation with its promise of “15 minutes of fame for everyone”. Media and advertising establish the cultural hegemony and in the situation of total, undifferentiated digitization all images we encounter look the same and all sounds are in unison. This is why the repeated “head down, eyes fixed” posture of Alexvi’s models not only represents the image of our generation but points to the homogenization of contemporary society.
Through the lens of the phone camera, Alexvi observes people on their phones but most importantly invites the audience to join in this unbreakable loop. All individuality disappeared, the spiritual connections are replaced with transparent public mechanical links. In this self-resonating world of isolationism, all we can hear is the sound of oneself hammering away on a keyboard.
References:
[1] Alexvi, Lonely Planet, 2016
[2] John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books Ltd, 1972
About Artist
Alexvi
Alexvi, photographer, born in 1984.His art practice spans photography, video, multi-media practice and thematic art projects. His work has been exhibited at a variety of major art institutions and galleries.In 2015, Alexvi’s photobook Lonely Planet won the Photobook Awards Martin Parr Edition of Lianzhou International Photography Festival; In June 2016, Peking Apartments won the Fine Art Photography Awards; In September 2018, Alexvi was invited to PHOTO Shanghai for a joint exhibition with French photographer Frank Horvat at Leica Gallery.