展期 Period：
2024.5.11—2024.6.8
艺术家 Artist：
刘洋 Liu Yang、李易纹 Li Yiwen、王亚彬 Wang Yabin、余旭鸿 Yu Xuhong、赵博 Zhao Bo
地点 Venue：
索卡艺术 Soka Art（北京）
新闻稿 Press Release：
索卡艺术荣幸宣布群展：“说吧，记忆”将于2024年5月11日开幕，展期持续至6月8日。展览由赵健彤策划，邀请了五位艺术家，包括刘洋、李易纹、王亚彬、余旭鸿和赵博，呈现了他们近年来的艺术实践。展览以记忆为线索，艺术家以绘画之名再现时光深处。
记忆是大脑对客观事物的信息进行编码、储存和提取的认知过程。其不仅作为个人经历的记录，还影响了人们理解和感知世界的方式。于艺术家而言记忆则是创作媒介，回忆本身即是幻想和现实之间某种隐蔽的桥梁。关于记忆的形象是模糊的，具体的线条难以被笃定地记起，只有内心升起的感觉被保存下来。即使非有意提取，也可能随时随地在未知场景弹出窗口播放与过去身体经验产生连结的影像片段，所有现实经历的场景都会成为记忆组成的一部分。随着生命经验多重维度的拉长与面积总和的增长，记忆的质量随之增加，变得愈发厚重，蒙上灰尘，被后来居上的记忆覆过后融入血液，流向身体，塑造成为不同的个体意识。艺术家所处的社会环境、成长背景所带来的文化记忆在无意识间流入作品。
记忆是高级心理活动的基础。亨利·柏格森在《材料与记忆》一书中讨论了记忆在人的意识中的核心地位。柏格森认为，记忆是构成人的意识的一部分，通过记忆，人们能够将过去的知识和经验融入到当前的行为和思考中。莫里斯·哈布瓦赫提出了“集体记忆”理论，认为所有记忆都受到集体、社会框架的影响和形塑。这一理论强调了社会和文化因素在形成个体记忆中的重要性，间接支持了“人是由记忆构成”的观点。此次参展的艺术家也由记忆出发描绘了各自独有的心理空间，重现着不同时代背景下直接或间接产生的记忆，泛黄的光线透过画面，熟悉的气味扑面而来。
刘洋此次展览的作品在绘画手法上有两条脉络：其一是2013年起延续至今在木板儿上所绘的小巧的、安静的绘画。内容都与光的表现有关，刘洋依托温暖的日常景象，描绘了光与时间、尘埃之间的关系——用尘埃表现光，用光凝聚时间，用时间塑造一切。第二部分的油画有一条暗藏的内在线索，它们从不同侧面展示了残酷的，逝去的，美丽表象下的不安景象。这种不安映衬了当代社会的整体焦虑性，同时与过往的共同记忆发生关联。
李易纹的作品表达了其与处身其中的当下社会的关系，尽管作品给观者带来的更多是一种挤压感和无力感，但也正是这种感受铸造了李易纹所有作品的荒凉气息与底色。他希望自己的作品和中国社会这几十年飞速的工业化、城市化进程息息相关，且希望自己的作品能表达从这个社会历史中提炼出来的个人的记忆与对记忆、现实、未来交织的时间性的感悟，和人最基本的情绪、情感。
在王亚彬以“花与石”为题材的近作中，观者能从中感受到艺术家对内心体验与复杂情感的细腻描绘。王亚彬将中国传统文化与艺术实践作为研究的对象，试图重新建立当代艺术语言与本土历史语言的关系，思考和探索中国传统文化在当代文化语境中传承和发展的意义。《说吧，记忆》所呈现的作品是王亚彬近几年来探索中国文化和中囯艺术精神的实践。中国艺术的最高精神源自老子与庄子的哲学思想。老子＂道法自然＂，是追求精神的安定，庄子的＂游＂，是追求精神的自由。从求得精神的安定到追求精神的自由解放，建立精神的自由王国，达到了艺术的最高境界，即＂艺术的人生＂。王亚彬正是沿着这条道路，将东方哲学思想和中国文化精神融为一体，中学为本，西学为用，浑然一体，无谓中西。
余旭鸿通过“钩古”的方式，勾连的形象既非具象描绘，又非模仿古画面貌。而是抽离绘画的内在关系，不刻意追求外在视觉上的相似，他将自我感受和传统滋养融合，在造化和心源中找到一种平衡，从而形成绘画的生成路径。余旭鸿将山水融化于心反刍吐露于笔端，体悟绘画中有情有义的要义。在笔法转承与色层叠透中，遭遇“物”之生长，经历绘画的时间性，恰是此种绘画中时间性与空间性的聚集，切近“自然之象”。
赵博的创作借由强烈反差的象征场景，凸显对现实文明的省思与反馈。他的作品反应出传统地景在急速工业化后的废弃荒凉景象，还有对于商业化发展、消费文化兴起以及资讯大爆炸现象的指涉。他擅长以震撼人心的超现实梦幻自然场景来表现自身对于当代生活种种议题的深度思考，魔幻的末日场景、炫丽狂野的色彩暗喻着现代光怪陆离的社会纷乱及精神上的焦虑不安。通过打破虚拟世界和现实世界的时空界限，并将之错乱地交织起来，使画面叙事呈现出史诗般的宏大感和崇高感。
Soka Art is pleased to announce the opening of the group exhibition "Speak, Memory" on May 11th, 2024 and will run until June 8th. Curated by Zhao Jiantong, the exhibition invited five artists, including Liu Yang, Li Yiwen, Wang Yabin, Yu Xuhong, and Zhao Bo, to present their artistic practices in recent years. The exhibition takes memory as a clue, and artists recreated the depths of time with paintings.
Memory is the cognitive process by which the brain encodes, stores and extracts information about objective things. It not only serves as a record of personal experience, but also influences the way individuals understand and perceive the world. For the artist, memory is the creative medium, and recollection itself is a sort of hidden bridge between fantasy and reality. Images of memory are vague, concrete lines are difficult to remember with certainty, only the feeling that rises within is preserved. Even if one does not intend to recall, it is possible that at any time and in any place, a pop-up window in an unknown scene will show a fragment of an image that is linked to a past physical experience, and all the scenes experienced in reality will become a part of the memory composition. As the multiple dimensions of life experience lengthen, the quality of memory increases, becomes thicker and dustier, and is overlaid by later memories that are incorporated into the bloodstream, flow into the body, and are shaped into different individual consciousnesses. The cultural memories of the artist's social environment and upbringing flow into the works unconsciously.
Memory is the foundation of higher mental activity. Henri Bergson discusses the centrality of memory in human consciousness in his book Matter and Memory. According to Bergson, memory is part of human consciousness, and through memory, people are able to incorporate past knowledge and experience into their current behavior and thinking. Maurice Halbwachs proposed the theory of "collective memory", which argues that all memories are influenced and shaped by a collective, social framework. This theory emphasizes the importance of social and cultural factors in the formation of individual memories, and indirectly supports the idea that "human beings are made of memories". The artists in this exhibition also depict their own unique psychological space from memory, recreating memories directly or indirectly created in different eras, with nostalgic light filtering through the images, and familiar odors coming to the surface.
Liu Yang's works in this exhibition have two clues of painting techniques: one is the small, quiet paintings on wooden panels that have been made since 2013. The contents are all related to the representation of light, and Liu Yang relies on the warmth of everyday scenes to depict the relationship between light, time, and dust - using dust to represent light, using light to condense time, and using time to shape everything. The oil paintings in the second part have a hidden inner clue, they show from different sides the cruelty, the passing away, the disturbing scene under the beautiful surface. This uneasiness mirrors the overall anxiety of contemporary society, and at the same time relates to the common memories of the past.
Li Yiwen's works express his relationship with the current society in which he is living, and although his works bring the viewer more of a sense of compression and powerlessness, it is also this feeling that creates the desolate atmosphere and undertone of all of Li's works. He hopes that his works are closely related to the rapid industrialization and urbanization of Chinese society in the past few decades, and that his works can express his personal memories distilled from the history of this society, and his understanding of the intertwined temporal nature of memory, reality, and the future, as well as the most basic emotions and feelings of human beings.
In Wang Yabin's recent works on the theme of "Flowers and Stones", the viewer can feel the artist's delicate portrayal of inner experience and complex emotions. Wang Yabin takes traditional Chinese culture and art practice as the object of his research, attempting to re-establish the relationship between the language of contemporary art and the language of local history, as well as thinking about and exploring the significance of the inheritance and development of traditional Chinese culture in the context of contemporary culture. The works presented in Speak, Memory are Wang Yabin's practice of exploring Chinese culture and the spirit of Chinese art in recent years. The highest spirit of Chinese art originates from the philosophical thoughts of Laozi and Zhuangzi. Lao Zi's "Taoism and the Law of Nature" is the pursuit of spiritual stability, while Zhuang Zi's "wandering" is the pursuit of spiritual freedom. From the pursuit of spiritual stability to the pursuit of spiritual freedom and emancipation, the establishment of the spiritual kingdom of freedom, to reach the highest state of art, that is, "the life of art". It is along this path that Wang Yabin has integrated Eastern philosophical thinking and Chinese culture and spirit, with secondary school as the basis and Western learning as the use, all in one, without the need for Chinese and Western.
Through the way of thinking of hooking the ancient, Yu Xuhong evokes huge images that are neither figurative depictions nor imitations of thinly veiled ancient paintings. Rather, he abstracts from the inner relationship of painting and does not intentionally pursue external visual similarities. He integrates self-feeling and traditional nourishment to find a balance between creation and the source of the heart, thus forming a unique path of painting. Yu Xuhong melts landscapes into his heart and regurgitates them into his brush, realizing the essence of emotion and righteousness in painting. He encounters the growth of "things" in the transitions of brushwork and the overlapping of colors, and experiences the temporality of painting, which is the gathering of time and space in this kind of painting, and is close to the "image of nature”.
Zhao Bo's works use strongly contrasting symbolic scenes to highlight his reflection and feedback on the reality of civilization. His works reflect the abandonment and desolation of traditional landscapes after rapid industrialization, as well as references to commercialization, the rise of consumer culture, and the phenomenon of the information explosion. He specializes in shocking surreal and dreamy natural scenes to express his deep thoughts on various issues of contemporary life, with magical apocalyptic scenes and dazzling wild colors alluding to the modern and bizarre social chaos and spiritual anxiety. By breaking the time and space boundaries between the virtual world and the real world, and intertwining them in a chaotic way, the narrative of the picture presents an epic sense of grandeur and sublimity.
