毛同强个展 - 工具(图)

 

策划               Curator： 艾未未  Ai Weiwei

展览时间         Period： 2008.6.21 – 8.10

开幕               Opening： 2008.6.21 @ 3:00 pm

开放时间 Gallery Hours： 2:00 -- 6:00 pm  (周二Tues. — 周日Sun.) 

 

 

 

毛同强将那些被普遍放弃使用的镰刀与斧头堆积、陈列在这里，熟悉历史的人会感慨万千。

看着那些被时间磨损的工具，人们很容易将它们在历史中的辉煌与今天的衰朽进行对比。

通过对这些历史的物品的观看，每个人都会因为自己特殊的经历与知识背景对之给予解读。

不会有人再去产生那些镰刀斧头或者锤头了，毛同强将它们变成了今天的艺术。

 

这些陈旧的东西脱离了它们的历史和现实语境，被集中在一个当代社会的“艺术空间”，观众很容易就将它们看成是一种新的东西。如果我们对杜桑的话给予适当的修改——尽管这样的修改充满着意识形态的惯性，可以这样表述：

 

镰刀斧头是不是艺术家亲自制造出来的，这并不重要。艺术家选择了这些东西。他拿了这些普通的生产工具，将它们放在另外的地方，在新的标题和观点下，它们原来的使用功能已经没有了，新的标题和观点赋予了它们新的思想。

 

 

 

Mao Tongqiang puts piles of abandoned sickles and axes in the space, which will inevitably stimulate the imagination of people familiar with China’s modern history. While looking at these time-worn pieces, people naturally compare their glorious past with their decline today. Everyone will have their own interpretation of these historical objects based on their individual educational background and experience.   

 

No factory is ever going to produce such kinds of sickles and axes (or hammers). Mao Tongqiang has transformed them into a piece of artwork. These old objects have been devoid of their historical and present context and are put together in an “artistic space” of the contemporary world, so the viewers tend to consider them to be new things. This, I believe, can be expressed in a more comprehensive way if I may alter Duchamp words slightly into the following paragraph (even though such alteration may reveal traits of my ideology): 

 

Whether Mao Tongqiang with his own hands made the sickles and hammers or not has no importance. He CHOSE them. He took ordinary articles of life, placed them so that their useful signification disappeared under the new title and point of view—creating a new thought for these objects.