DYSTOPIA AND ITS CONTENT(MENT)S – 3 Solo Projects

In his seminal book, Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud enumerates what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individual's quest for instinctual freedom and civilization's contrary demand for conformity. 

The proliferation and currency of information in today’s world has, on the one side enabled certain individual access and plurality of expression, yet on the other side has produced shared identities, homogeneity, and broad conformity. In this new logic the flow of information is heralded as utopian in and of itself, however its conforming and authoritarian force, which controls desire and consumption becomes invisible and dystopian.  

Through three individual perspectives, this exhibition imagines our techno-social, image-orientated reality as dystopian yet posits instances of personal contentment within it.

美满的敌托邦——三个展

弗洛伊德在其影响深远的《文明与缺憾》(1929)一书中阐释了个人精神身陷文明之囹圄的困境，并道出矛盾的关键，在于文明所必需的臣服桎梏了追求自由的人性本能。 

当今的信息传播无远弗届，个人意识的多元表达俨然已被实现；但它同时诱发了大众身份认知的趋同与均质，以及意志服从的泛化。新语境下的信息川流虽予人以乌托邦的遐想，却不着痕迹地篡夺了控制欲望和消费的敌托邦式集权。

面对科技交互、图像至上的社会现实，展览《美满的敌托邦》透过三个独立视角，例证出敌托邦阴霾下欢欣自满的个人净土。

GENG YINI - Bad Form


Geng Yini’s lush, layered paintings and quirky installation work probes the question of collective taste, desire, and the oscillation between what is perceived as good or bad. Her loosely narrative, poetic subjects, and expressive brush work attempts to balance the elegant and the vulgar. Her stream of consciousness images and assemblages are constructed with physical elements of daily life, images appropriated from mass media, and an acute sense of imagination. Text and found objects become a way to bind the work together, to expose the incongruous, inevitable, but tenuous connection between all things.


耿旖旎 《坏体》

通过其层次丰富的绘画和离奇的装置作品，耿旖旎企图探究群体品味，欲望及好与坏之间的认知界定等问题。她的作品叙事松散，主题富有诗意，笔触极具表现力，尝试在优雅与粗俗间求得平衡。其意识流中的图像与人物之集合皆构建自日常生活的物理元素，从大众媒体挪用来的图像及艺术家个人敏锐的想象力。文字与实物成为了作品之间的纽带，以揭示万物间不协调，无法避免却又薄弱的连系。

MA DAHA - Everything which exists is a thought within the Mind of MA DAHA

Everything which exists is a thought within the Mind of MA DAHA is a religious sermon that takes the form of an interactive-installation work. The Changsha based art collective Ma Daha (or scatterbrain in English) has turned their identity into a spiritual force that embodies all aspects of reality. The video There is nothing which MA DAHA is not enumerates the doctrine of this faith. Religion here been conflated with the popular social network WeChat pointing to the omnipresence of this application and the unconditional belief we have in such simulacra. Please scan the QR code to receive Ma Daha’s daily Wechat updates, which forms another dimension to this work.

马大哈 《世间之存在皆自马大哈的一念之间》

《世间之存在皆自马大哈的一念之间》是一场以互动装置为载体的宗教布道。长沙艺术小组马大哈摇身幻化为包罗现实万象的精神力量，借影像《无一物不为马大哈》条举了该信仰的开宗教义。此处与之交融的是时下无所不在的移动社交软件——微信，其同样蒙受大众宗教式的无条件拥簇。请启用微信扫一扫二维码功能添加马大哈为好友，跟进他们的朋友圈更新，以此将作品推向新的维度。

MARC LAFIA – Tumblrroom


Marc Lafia's photography and films are culled and adapted from social network platforms such as Tumblr and Chatroulette. The artist's concentration is not on the autonomy of the individual image but instead in its status as a platform for social exchange and currency as information. The photographs and films are testaments to private desires and disaffection made collective in the image's circulation and ongoing engagement with an often anonymous but networked public.





马克·拉菲亚 《Tumblrroom》

马克･拉菲亚的影像作品题材均截取自社交网络平台，如tumblr和Chatroulette。艺术家关注的点已非个体图像的自主权，而是其作为社交平台和信息化交流的状态。私人的欲望与不快借助图像的传播得以群集，通常匿名的网路公众间持续性的互动亦助长了进程——这些影像作品即其例证。