酵母

酵母是一种能引起发酵的真菌，被广泛应用于农业、医药、酿造、食品及化工等方面。它是一种催化剂，其工作的原理是使生命体在一定条件下不断进行化学反映和生理变化，根据本身所具有的遗传信息不断分解合成，以取得能量来维持生命活动的过程。而最终发酵的产物就是在这个反映 的过程中或反映终点所产生的能够调节代谢使生命体达到平衡的物质。将“酵母”作为展览的主题，源于对当代艺术创作和呈现以及个体经验突破方面的探讨和思考。

艺术创作是一种计划到变化的转变过程。计划是现象、经验与知识的总和。艺术家的创作过程往往是寻求一种经验外的突破，寻求一种变化。艺术家不可能在计划中成长，独特的经验是艺术创作难能可贵的品质。酵母在此次展览中被诠释为突破艺术表现形式和个人经验的催化剂，希望提升分解合成的动力，创造艺术新体验。

参展的艺术家中，陈天灼以辉煌的历史事件为载体，通过对宗教符号巧妙的挪用和重组，进而对既有的历史图像进行加工覆盖，篡改出一个“当代宗教”图景， 以此来佐证和反讽现实商品社会的不和谐之音。时间性是董大为作品的鲜明特征，无论是500张“孤独的树”，还是色粉堆积的天然图像，都体现出艺术家对过程体验价值的重视。他的作品摒除了主观情感因素控制，以“主随客便”的方式为观众呈现出多义性的开放语境。韩小焓具有宗教意义的天然种子微雕在“生命无常”的证据面前虚拟了一种无限的意义。徐志洋选择水墨动画作为绘画自由出走的方式，以求消除困惑达到随意而为的境界。他擅长绘画，最终以每张绘画为原点，利用影像拼接的方式使绘画“流动”，打破传统观看角度，使原有绘画概念得以延伸，呈现多重或是截然不同的意境。于艾君自创的推移描绘方式，将既定图像细分成众多单元，然后以遮盖方式排除各自的干扰，通过单纯的色块描摹来完成图像。他利用另一种的经验力图得到与传统经验相同的结果，并希望通过这一途径寻找到新的语言逻辑。朱新宇搭建了一个具有用无数细分结构的割裂空间，在这个空间中，事先将一个完整的信息分成若干部分，让不同的人阅读并加以陈述，并将整个过程纪录下来，呈现于空间之中。断裂的信息让每个人获取各自不同的经验。这犹如一个“盲人摸象”的游戏，为空间附注了更多不确定的情感维系。

今天，艺术已经在这个时代扮演了极其的重要的角色。全球化日益显现，世界走向一致，艺术早已突破了单一领域、地域性、个人化的概念，其功能性、创造性、价值体现都一再被扩张和延伸。如何应对这个高速运转的世界，并寻找某种感性的关联，成为当下艺术创作的一种使命。在这次展览中，艺术家通过对原有的艺术观念和表达方式进行新的思考，呈现更多的艺术探讨方式，这就是“酵母”的意义。

曾臻

Yeast

Yeast is a kind of bacterium that causes a foaming action, and is widely used in agriculture, medicine, brewage, food and chemical productions.  It is a kind of catalyzer which triggers under certain circumstances life forms to undergo constant chemical reactions and biological transformations: inherent genetic information is disassembled and composed so that energy can be obtained to continue the process of life. The ultimate product of leavening is a substance that is produced to adjust metabolism and balance life form, in or at the end of the reaction processes. The choice of “Yeast” as the title of the exhibition stems from exploration of and reflections on contemporary art production, art presentation and breakthroughs in personal experiences.

Art creation is a transformative process that turns an idea into imagery. The idea or the plan is the combination of facts, experiences and knowledge. The artistic production is often a quest for transcendent breakthroughs, a quest for change. Artists cannot possibly grow with ideas only and unique experiences are an invaluable asset in the production of art. Yeast is interpreted in this exhibition as a catalyst that breaks through artistic expressions and personal experiences, and is endowed with the hope that it heightens the decomposition and composition process, and creates a novel artistic experience.

Among the participating artists, Chen Tianshuo uses the magnificent historical events as a carrier and, through the ingenious appropriation and reassembly of religious symbols, overlays existent historical images, resulting in a scene of “contemporary religion”, which corroborates and ridicules the absence of harmony in contemporary market-oriented society. Timeliness is a vivid feature of Dong Dawei’s works; both the 500 pieces of “Lonely Trees” and the natural images piled up by powders demonstrate the attention the artist gives to values derived from experience. Subjective emotional controls have been exempted in his works as they present the audience with a lingual context with multiple meanings that is open to viewer discretion.  Imbued with religious significance, Xu Xiaohan’s natural seed carvings generate a sense of infinity, based on the idea that life changes and nothing lasts. Using ink cartoons as a means of free movement of paintings, Xu Zhiyang seeks to dispel bewilderment and to be free at will. Adept at painting, Xu ultimately uses every painting as the starting point and through collocation enables the paintings to flow. He thus breaks the traditional viewing angle, extends the original painting concepts and presents multiple or entirely different imageries. Yu Aijun pioneers a shoving technique of painting: dividing a picture into many units, he covers them up so that sections would not interfere with each other, and draws by focusing on the pigment in each unit.  The artist makes use of another kind of experience so as to achieve the same result as with traditional experience, hoping to find new lingual logic in the process. Zhu Xinyu builds a dissected space with infinite sections in which information is divided up. Different people are asked to read and narrate the space and this process is recorded and presented in the space.  Fragmented information leads to different experience, which is quite like “The blind men and an elephant” story, where uncertain emotional entanglements are woven into the space.

Art has an extremely important part to play in the world today. As globalization deepens and the world becomes one, art has long crossed the regional and individual barriers, and its functionality, creativity and values have been continuously extended and widened. It has become a mission of contemporary artistic production how we cope with this volatile world and find some kind of correlation. In this exhibition, artists give some new thinking to existent artistic concepts and expressions, and present more ways of artistic creation --- that is what we mean by “Yeast”. 

Adele Zeng