验阈第五展：涌现／Emergence

                
                
LAB 47空间非常高兴地迎来艺术家任瀚的个展。
任瀚是新晋留法归来的艺术家，其毕业于尼斯阿尔松别墅造型艺术学院。其作品发端于对装饰的思考，进而上升为对装饰与艺术、对文化与自然造物界域的探究。
什么是艺术？什么是装饰？艺术起于何时？终于何时？
装饰一直被视作一种家庭生活中的艺术：一种美化家庭生活的途径。无疑，它常常是一种表面化的美，一种点缀的艺术，其功能仅仅是满足视觉的愉悦。由此伴生的是多样的形式、色彩和材质，它们所构成的符码。
任瀚在其由探问装饰为起点的作品中，使用了一种如同镜面的符码，耀眼的石墨灰色，或是对有机物的拓仿。它们好似一种光的美学，艺术家创造了一种艺术与其关注客体间新的关系。
任瀚的作品中，有相当部分是装饰物与艺术物之间的转换。装饰物是一种被动的、自发的接受，一种本能的自我愉悦，它与思考无关；而当代艺术的造物则恰好相反，它引导我们进入独立思考的疆域。艺术家的实践无疑是对此两种基于视觉创造的边界的打通。或者说通过强化装饰的作用，悬置两者，让人们身处作品之中，而思考却模糊困顿。在似是而非之中，体味艺术边界的浩广。
一个因素在任瀚的艺术实践中非常重要，就是对镜面效果的制造。由铅色涂绘的厚度构成一个模糊镜面，通过它，人们能够看到零星的自我。艺术家用镜面既体现装饰性也表达一种符号意味：一个物的通路，通向“界线”，它使我们面向自身。任瀚的镜面是石墨的密布的涌现：石墨的银灰色反射了光自身，镜面的功能性与装饰性同时失效，此刻其倒映的是光亮与黑暗，或是欢愉与阴郁的媾和，它连接其两个世界或两种状态。
任瀚的作品还关注人与风景的关系，这当然与装饰（常常以自然物为图样）密不可分。同样是用重复性的石墨效果，他通过在墙面上的涂绘或凿击直接制造出一个场域环境。同样是构境的行为，它用一种冷静的、抽离意义的黑色调创造一种风景，这或者可以说是风景与我们的联系。有意思的是这些镜面反射，散乱的、弥漫的、零星的，它们构成了山与水，一个孕育中的世界，疏朗的形式让它们从混乱黑暗的环境中涌现出来。在深黑色的夜晚，银色的光亮让风景澄明。
最终，可以说，任瀚的冷酷黑白，这种强烈对比与装饰性大相径庭。但再反过来看，悖论性地，它的确创造出一种新的美学，一个凝视与冥想的世界，既是艺术的，又可能是装饰的。
LAB 47 is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Ren Han. The exhibition will be on view from May 16 to June 18 at the hutong of 30 Dong Si Qi Tiao. An opening reception for the artist will be held Saturday, May 16 from 4 to 6 p.m.
Ren Han is an artist who has studied art in the Villa Arson, Ecole des Beaux Arts of Nice, France. His work explores the dialectic of art and decoration, of cultural and natural objects.
What is art? What is decoration? When art begins? When does it finish?
The decoration seems to be a kind of art for the people’s home: it’s a way for everybody to make a home “sweet”, to make an environment more beautiful, more as we want it to be. But it is also one of very superficial beauty: as an art of ornament, its function is just to be nice looking. In that way, it responds to a lot of codes of forms, colors and materials. What Ren Han uses in his work are some of codes like the volutes of mirror, the shining grey of the graphite, or the imitation of some vegetal object: as an aesthetic of lightness, Ren Han creates a new relationship between art and its objects.
In fact, Ren Han makes decoration objects to become art objects. When the decoration object takes us to a passive seeing and a “self-satisfaction”, the object of art lets us to enter in a world of open thinking. The decoration object doesn’t need any thinking to be understood.
The mirror is one of them: it’s an object, which lets us in a fascinated state. The mirror reflects our image, as a clone of ourselves, but that is never the same of us. The image of the mirror is like a double human being, which becomes to be reality only because the light is reflected by the object. Ren Han uses the mirror for its decorative function but also for its symbolic meaning: it’s the object of passage, of “threshold” and in that way, it makes us facing our own. But Ren Han’s mirrors are emerging from the lines of graphite: the light of the grey silver reflects the light itself. The mirror looses its decorative function because it can’t be use as well. The mirrors reflect what they are: a dialogue of light and darkness, a game between brightness and obcurity, which always stays between two states or two worlds.
The work of Ren Han is also questioning the relationship between human being and landscape. The other works also use the graphite in repetitive lines, but they take a bigger dimension. As frescos, Ren Han draws directly on the wall of the place of exhibition in the purpose to create a new environment, a new relation to landscape. As the works of the mirrors, the graphite makes appear the elements of a landscape of mountains or rivers. As a new world in gestation, the forms are emerging from the darkness of a state of chaos. In the night of the black colour, the light of the graphite gives birth to the natural objects of landscape.
The ornament feeling is denied by the minimalism of the dualistic colours in black and white. But as a paradox, it also creates a new kind of aesthetic, which takes us to a contemplative trip in the world of thoughts.