“无阻”伍伟个展

理查德·桑内特在《肉体与石头：西方文明中的身体与城市》一书导言中曾描述，高速公路的工程师创造了“无阻挡的自由”——让人开起车来无需花费气力、投入精神的“无障碍”道路系统，以及由此创造的地理学，令旅行者深陷“被催眠状态”里被动地感受世界。这类现代麻醉术，是伍伟个展“无阻”的引子——面对当今的城市规训机制，我们如何让身体免除困顿，重获活力？

本次展览中，伍伟为作品注入了比以往更富表现力的视觉形式。《提丰》以希腊神话中的巨神命名，此位敢与宙斯较量的失败者曾诞下了许多可怕的怪兽。在该组作品中，伍伟承袭了以往创作里把剪切纸张处理成类似于动物皮毛的手法，将附着的基底转换成为报废汽车的外壳和零配件。覆盖“皮毛”之后，历经磨损的黑色轿车车身像一块长角的动物头骨。它内外不规则的线条被展示，原本以实用为目的构造设置显现出了美学意义。同样的制作手法体现于该辆汽车的零配件上，它们分有着车身“母体”的基因。具备强烈工业感的线条间，有机的纸质弧线“生长”出来，连接着比工业文明久远的原始时代。

与旧作另外的不同之处是，具体的汉字和图形并未出现在“无阻”中，艺术家也随之放弃了图像和语言所圈定的思考框架。伍伟将在手机上偶然绘制的图案放大为三米乘六米的绘画装置《分裂与聚合》。艺术家对生命直觉性的强调，对某个瞬间时刻的确信，奠定了作品的动机。看似封闭的个人意志表达却体现着对普遍命运问题的追问——那些自由的线条，像在测算着依靠程序运行世界内部不可知领域存在的概率。

Tang Contemporary Art is proud to announce the opening of “Freedom from Resistance,” an all-new solo show for Wu Wei curated by independent curator Yang Zi, in the gallery’s Beijing Space I on December 19, 2020.

In the introduction to Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization, Richard Sennett describes how highway engineers created “freedom from resistance,”[] which allowed people to move without expending any effort and thereby become invested in this resistance-free road system. This created geography lulls travelers into a hypnotic state in which they passively perceive the world. Wu Wei’s solo show “Freedom from Resistance” references this modern anesthesia. When confronted with today’s urban planning mechanisms, how can we free the body and regain our vitality?

In this exhibition, Wu Wei infuses his work with more expressive visual forms than in the past. Typhon is named for a god in ancient Greek mythology, a fearsome monster who failed in his attempt to overthrow Zeus. In this series, Wu Wei continues to use a technique from his past work, in which he cuts paper to resemble animal fur. However, he has changed the surface to which the “fur” is affixed, using the discarded exterior pieces and interior parts of a car. After being covered with “fur,” the worn parts of a black sedan look like long-horned animal skulls. The irregular lines on the inside and outside are revealed, and structures that once had a practical function now have aesthetic significance. Wu applies a similar creative method to several parts of the car, all of which carry the genes of their “mother” vehicle. The organic curls of paper “growing” amidst these intensely industrial lines connect to a primitive era distant from industrial civilization.

Another difference from his previous works is that specific Chinese characters and symbols do not appear in “Freedom from Resistance.” Here, Wu Wei abandons circumscribing intellectual frameworks of imagery and language. He enlarges some of the patterns that he had painted on his phone into Fission and Fusion, a painting installation measuring 3 x 6 meters. Wu emphasizes living intuition and belief in a moment, thereby establishing the motivation for the work. The seemingly closed expression of individual will embody an examination of universal fate - those free lines are like calculating the probability of an unknowable realm running inside the world based on a program.