兩年前還沒聽說過古根海姆的他，在那里辦了一場什么展？
按香港藝術(shù)家黃炳的說法，兩年前，他甚至都還沒聽說過古根海姆博物館(Guggenheim Museum)。這位自學(xué)成才的動畫師用孩子氣的卡通風(fēng)格表現(xiàn)令人不安的主題，在網(wǎng)上吸引了眾多追隨者。他幾乎沒什么辦展記錄。一位畫廊總監(jiān)建議他在紐約時(shí)去古根海姆看看，當(dāng)時(shí)他對國際藝術(shù)界的運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)還一竅不通。他的第一反應(yīng)是，“這名字挺有意思的”。
Now Mr. Wong, who is 34, is the youngest of five Chinese artists, including Cao Fei, Samson Young, Duan Jianyu and Lin Yilin, featured in the Guggenheim’s exhibition “One Hand Clapping,” through Oct. 21.
34歲的黃炳現(xiàn)在是參加古根海姆“單手拍掌”(One Hand Clapping)展覽的五名中國藝術(shù)家中最年輕的一位，其他藝術(shù)家有曹斐、楊嘉輝、段建宇、林一林，展覽將持續(xù)至10月21日。
“One Hand Clapping” is the last of three shows sponsored by The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative, a program that allowed the museum to commission and acquire new works. With a virtual reality piece featuring the basketball star Jeremy Lin and a sound installation using imaginary instruments, this iteration will be the most playful. Its theme, as Xiaoyu Weng, the museum’s associate curator for Chinese art, put it, is: “how we can come up with more imaginative ways of envisioning the future.”
“單手拍掌”是何鴻毅家族基金會中國藝術(shù)計(jì)劃贊助的三場展覽中的最后一場。該計(jì)劃使博物館得以委托并購入新的作品。展覽收入了一件有籃球明星林書豪的虛擬現(xiàn)實(shí)作品，以及一件使用想象樂器的聲音裝置，將是三場展覽中最為活潑的一場。正如古根海姆中國藝術(shù)助理策展人翁笑雨所說，它的主題是“我們?nèi)绾斡酶呦胂罅Φ姆绞饺?gòu)想未來。”
As opposed to the increasingly homogenized visions of sci-fi movies, Mr. Wong imagines his own future in an animation, “Dear, can I give you a hand?,” about a sexually frustrated elderly man and his seductive daughter-in-law. Inspired by an encounter the artist had with an 80-year-old man throwing away a stack of X-rated VHS tapes, this account of a perverted, yet ineffectual father figure, rendered in bright colors and naïve design, could be read as a metaphor for Hong Kong and its precarious, often humiliating relationship with the alluring yet authoritarian power of China. “He is the butt of the joke,” according to Ms. Weng.
作為對越來越千篇一律的科幻電影的抗議，黃炳用一部動畫片《親，需要服務(wù)嗎?》幻想了自己的未來。作品講述了一個(gè)在性方面存在困擾的老年男人和他性感撩人的兒媳婦的故事，藝術(shù)家有一次遇到一個(gè)在丟棄一堆限制級錄像帶的80歲男人，從而啟發(fā)他創(chuàng)作這件作品。這個(gè)用明亮的顏色和幼稚的造型表現(xiàn)出來的好色卻無能的父親形象，可以被解讀為一種比喻，象征著香港和誘人卻又施加強(qiáng)權(quán)的中國之間并不穩(wěn)定且常常令人蒙羞的關(guān)系。“嘲笑的對象是他自己，”翁笑雨說。
The curator said she was struck by Mr. Wong’s “sharp, pungent, intelligent sense of criticality and humor” from the first time she encountered his work at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2016. “He acutely responds to his surroundings on a micro level but also speaks to the social and political reality,” she said.
策展人表示，2016年12月第一次在邁阿密海灘巴塞爾藝術(shù)展(Art Basel Miami Beach)上看見黃炳的作品時(shí)，她當(dāng)即被那“鋒利、尖銳、聰穎的批判和幽默感”所打動。“他不僅敏銳地從微觀層面上對他的周圍環(huán)境作出了回應(yīng)，還觸及了社會和政治現(xiàn)實(shí)，”她說。
The exhibition is his second appearance in New York this year; he was featured prominently in the New Museum’s 2018 Triennial, “Songs for Sabotage.” There, in a single surreal animation starring zany anthropomorphic animals, the artist offered three fables that imbue details of everyday life in Hong Kong — music clubs, military service, and public transportation — with a profound sense of social awkwardness. Even without the sexually explicit canoodlings that are evident in much of his work, this animation still managed to make viewers feel uncomfortably intrigued.
這個(gè)展覽是黃炳今年在紐約的第二次亮相。在新美術(shù)館(New Museum)的2018年三年展“破壞之歌”(Songs for Sabotage)中，他擔(dān)當(dāng)了重要角色。展覽中，藝術(shù)家用一部滿是滑稽擬人化動物的超現(xiàn)實(shí)動畫講述了三則寓言，其中有大量香港日常生活的細(xì)節(jié)——音樂俱樂部、兵役、公共交通，帶著深刻的社交障礙感。這里沒有他的許多作品中有的露骨性場面，但依然給觀眾有一種不自在的刺激。
Holland Cotter of The Times cited the video as “one of the few pieces with obvious digital roots and with politics that feel as much existential as circumstantial.”
時(shí)報(bào)的霍蘭德·科特(Holland Cotter)稱此作是“少數(shù)幾個(gè)帶有明顯的數(shù)碼根源的作品之一，還有給人帶來同等的存在感與情境感的政治”。
Gary Carrion-Murayari, co-curator of the New Museum’s Triennial, met the artist just over a year ago in Hong Kong, upon the recommendation of virtually every local curator, even though Mr. Wong had had only two gallery exhibitions. “We talked about the economic anxieties that are bound up in Hong Kong at this moment, the way they affect his generation most strongly and how they can fracture and isolate individuals,” Mr. Carrion-Murayari recalled. He was very surprised by the meeting, saying there was a “disconnect” between this shy, soft-spoken young man and the often bizarre videos he was creating.
就在之前一年，新美術(shù)館三年展的共同策展人加里·卡里翁-姆拉亞里(Gary Carrion-Murayari)在當(dāng)?shù)貛缀跛胁哒谷说耐扑]下，在香港與黃炳見過面，盡管他當(dāng)時(shí)只辦過兩場畫展。“我們談了香港目前所面臨的經(jīng)濟(jì)焦慮，這種焦慮對他這一代人產(chǎn)生的最大影響是什么，以及這會如何撕裂和孤立個(gè)體，”卡里翁-姆拉亞里回憶道。那次會面讓他很意外，稱這個(gè)模樣害羞、說話溫和的年輕人，和他制作出常常有些古怪的影像之間存在“脫節(jié)”。
This double dose of museum exposure is a bit intimidating for Mr. Wong, whose first brush with the mainstream art world was only in 2015, with the inclusion of one of his animations in a group show organized by the M+ museum in Hong Kong.
這種雙倍劑量的博物館曝光，對黃炳來說有些嚇人。他在主流藝術(shù)界的初次亮相是在2015年，當(dāng)時(shí)他的一個(gè)動畫被納入了香港M+博物館組織的群展中。
“I had no idea what I was expecting because I didn’t know what curating means,” Mr. Wong said in an interview in March in Hong Kong, speaking in flawless English. “I never heard of this term. What does installation mean? I don’t know.”
“我完全不知道會怎樣，因?yàn)槲叶疾恢啦哒故鞘裁匆馑迹?rdquo;黃炳三月份在香港接受采訪時(shí)說，他說著一口流利的英語。“我從沒聽過這個(gè)詞。裝置是什么意思?我不知道。”
Self-effacing in his delivery, he is a one-man operation, writing short stories that he turns into scripts and then animates, without assistants. He seems reluctant to don any mantle, most especially “representative of Hong Kong youth,” though he said he identified strongly with the sense of diminishing opportunities and increasing encroachments on freedom that many his age share.
這個(gè)談吐謙和的年輕人一切都是親力親為。他撰寫短篇故事，轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)閯”驹僦瞥蓜赢?，不用助手。他似乎不愿?dān)上任何名頭，特別是“香港青年的代表”這個(gè)頭銜。盡管他說自己對他這個(gè)年紀(jì)很多人所感受到的機(jī)會減少、自由受到更多侵犯有著強(qiáng)烈認(rèn)同。
By his own admission Mr. Wong was a lackluster student in Hong Kong when his parents — a cook and a homemaker — shipped him off to Perth, Australia, for high school and college. Even there, he preferred playing video games to attending classes. He managed to graduate with a major in multimedia design at Curtin University, in 2005, and later taught himself editing software to secure a postproduction job at a local television station on his return to Hong Kong. It was boring work requiring him to retouch images.
黃炳的父母是廚師和家庭主婦，他承認(rèn)，在他們送他去澳大利亞珀斯上高中和大學(xué)前，他在香港是一個(gè)表現(xiàn)平平的學(xué)生。即使在珀斯，他也寧愿玩電子游戲，不去上課。2005年，他從科廷大學(xué)(Curtin University)多媒體設(shè)計(jì)專業(yè)畢業(yè)，后來自學(xué)了編輯軟件?；氐较愀酆螅诋?dāng)?shù)匾患译娨暸_找到一份后期制作的工作。這份工作的內(nèi)容是修圖，無聊乏味。
As an escape from the tedium he began writing short stories that he posted on his blog and later tried to animate using his limited skills in Photoshop and After Effects software. He posted his first animation on YouTube in 2010. Titled “Lin Pink Pink,” it depicted a bald middle-aged man commenting on his wife’s nipples. Soon local bands spotted his postings and asked him to make music videos, charmed by the way the low-tech look of his cartoons heightened the perversity of his adult-only psychosexual dramas.
為了擺脫這種單調(diào)，他開始寫短篇小說，并且發(fā)表在自己的博客上。后來，他又嘗試用有限的Photoshop技術(shù)和After Effects軟件，把它們做成動畫片。2010年，他在YouTube上發(fā)布了自己的第一部動畫片，名叫《乳粉粉》(Lin Pink Pink)，內(nèi)容是一個(gè)禿頂?shù)闹心昴凶釉u論妻子的乳頭。很快，當(dāng)?shù)貥逢?duì)發(fā)現(xiàn)了他的作品，并請他制作音樂視頻。他的動畫片是少兒不宜的性心理劇，但是看上去技術(shù)含量很低，因而顯得更加變態(tài)，正是這一點(diǎn)吸引了那些樂隊(duì)。
In 2011 the Hong Kong band No One Remains A Virgin, commissioned Mr. Wong to animate their song, “Under the Lion Crotch,” a reference to a poor neighborhood situated below the Lion Rock mountain in Hong Kong. He created a graphic nightmare, alternatively cute and vicious, with school kids wearing I Heart Hong Kong T-shirts jumping rope until their heads explode. With lyrics like “Our land is brutally torn apart by conglomerates, their thriving business had left us homeless,” the video was seen as a direct rebuke to a popular phrase, “Lion Rock Spirit,” embraced by politicians to boost Hong Kong’s work ethic and promote urban development.
2011年，香港樂隊(duì)No One Remains A Virgin委托黃炳把他們的歌曲《獅子胯下》(Under the Lion Crotch)做成動畫片。這首歌和一個(gè)地處香港獅子山下的貧窮社區(qū)有關(guān)。他設(shè)計(jì)了一個(gè)逼真的噩夢，交替著可愛與殘忍。學(xué)童們穿著印有“I?HK”字樣的T恤在跳繩，直到被爆頭。歌詞唱道：“四周酷刑收購，劫匪豐收我卻無力自救。”這段視頻被認(rèn)為是對“獅子山精神”這個(gè)流行口號的直接駁斥。很多政客用這個(gè)詞來宣傳香港的職業(yè)道德和城市開發(fā)。
Winning awards in Hong Kong, the video brought the artist his first national attention and the impetus to quit his job. Mr. Wong has been posting his animations online ever since.
這部視頻在香港獲獎無數(shù)，讓他第一次在全國引起關(guān)注，并促使他辭去了工作。自那以后，黃炳不斷把自己的動畫片發(fā)到網(wǎng)上。
Like many young people in Hong Kong, Mr. Wong and his friends were galvanized by the 2014 protests of the Umbrella Movement. They joined thousands who took to the streets, frightened by explosions of tear gas and thrilled by the energy of the crowds.
和香港的很多年輕人一樣，黃炳和朋友也受到2014年雨傘運(yùn)動的鼓舞。他們和成千上萬人一起走上街頭。催淚瓦斯的爆炸聲讓他們感到害怕，人群的活力又讓他們感到興奮。
“It made us stronger, I believe, even though in the end the revolution kind of failed,” he said, adding that many of his friends have since moved abroad and he is considering joining them. “In the society, we all have doubts now and people have less emotional reactions to the politics. We are really disappointed and we are feeling powerless.”
“我認(rèn)為它讓我們變得更堅(jiān)強(qiáng)了，盡管最后革命差不多算是失敗了，”他說，并表示在那之后，他的很多朋友移居國外，他也正在考慮加入他們的行列。“在社會上，我們現(xiàn)在都有疑惑，人們對政治的反應(yīng)不那么激動了。我們非常失望，感到無能為力。”
According to Michelle Yun, senior curator of modern and contemporary art at Asia Society, Mr. Wong’s work is “very sophisticated, even though it looks as if it was made by the hand of a sweaty adolescent.” She points out that his retro cartoony style of animation diffuses the somewhat disturbing subject matter, engaging viewers in scenarios from which they may at first wish to recoil.
據(jù)亞洲協(xié)會(Asia Society)現(xiàn)代及當(dāng)代藝術(shù)資深策展人云翠蘭(Michelle Yun)說，黃炳的作品“非常老練，盡管看上去像是出自一個(gè)渾身冒汗的少年之手”。她指出，他的復(fù)古卡通動畫風(fēng)格講述的是一個(gè)令人有些不安的主題，讓觀眾進(jìn)入他們一開始可能想要避開的場景。
“Just as Picasso was shocking in his time, this may feel like it is transgressing the boundaries of art,” she said, “but it makes you question your own boundaries.”
“就像畢加索在他生活的時(shí)代驚世駭俗一樣，這可能會讓人覺得它超越了藝術(shù)的界限，”她說，“但它會讓你質(zhì)疑自己的界限。”
