艺术家｜张如怡
Artist｜ZHANG Ruyi
Shanghai Palimpsest: Restaging the R.A.S. Library
Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai
23 March 2024 – 25 August 2024
东画廊荣幸宣布张如怡作为特邀合作艺术家参与由上海外滩美术馆举办的“覆写上海：重构20世纪初的亚洲文会图书馆”展览项目。该项目聚焦皇家亚洲文会北中国支会（R.A.S.）及文会二十世纪初在上海的数位重要人物，包括博物学家、上海博物院馆长苏阿德（Arthur de Carle Sowerby），汉学家、亚洲文会荣誉图书管理员爱诗客（Florence Ayscough），汉学家、艺术收藏家福开森（John Calvin Ferguson），医生、慈善家伍连德（Wu Lien-teh），标本制作师唐氏家族（Tang family）以及艺术收藏家罗伯特·斯特林·克拉克（Robert Sterling Clark）（即苏阿德穿越华北考察之旅的出资人）。
艺术家张如怡凭借装置、雕塑、绘画等多元形式将美术馆三楼空间重构为动态文献库，挖掘其物理和隐喻层面的建筑内涵，呈现一幅复杂的覆写，层叠交织地记录着人类历史、记忆和往昔的阴翳。艺术家将空间内的结构立柱与自然博物馆的扶手结合，使其方向从直线变为圆形，形成循环，从而将能量引流到空间内。张如怡用最常见的白色瓷砖装点立柱，让人联想到个人化的私密空间，从而模糊内与外的界限。其标志性的空间语言将图书馆营造为一个空间导管。
《种植-7》将建筑碎石和自然掉落的仙人掌刺并置，构成对建筑和自然历史残迹的凄美意象。作品编织了一段超越有形的叙事，触及记忆和时间的无形残象。如果空气中的灰尘象征我们生活环境中难以察觉的叙事，那么在《灰尘堆积出的暗光》中，艺术家通过水泥粉遇水变成混凝土使粉尘变得可感可见。在《现代化石（管道）-4》中，历史如同水管中流动却不可见的水，随时间流逝干涸。被切开的水管截面上冒出一点点皱巴巴的硬纸板局部，犹如曾经蜿蜒曲折的溪流的遗迹，让人不禁想去切实地触摸、感受并重新展开想象。张如怡的作品邀请观众对自己身处的环境展开反思，不仅仅是有形的物理建筑，还包括其作为集体记忆和文化叙事的载体；换言之，她的作品是充盈着潜藏于过往岁月和生活故事的活档案。
文字来自上海外滩美术馆
Don Gallery is pleased to announce the participation of ZHANG Ruyi as a featured collaborator in the exhibition "Shanghai Palimpsest: Restaging the R.A.S Library" organised by the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai. It is an archive-based exhibition that explores the Royal Asiatic Society and its influential figures such as naturalist and RAS museum director, Arthur de Carle Sowerby; Sinologist and RAS librarian Florence Ayscough; sinologist and art collector, John Calvin Ferguson; physician and philanthropist Wu Lien-teh; the taxidermist Tang family, and the art collector Robert Sterling Clark (who funded Sowerby’s expedition across Northern China), all associated with it in early twentieth-century Shanghai.
Through installation, sculpture, and painting, ZHANG Ruyi re-conceptualizes this exhibition space as dynamic archives, delving into the physical and metaphorical depths of architectural layers and presenting them as a complex palimpsest that intricately documents human history, memory, and the ephemeral shadows of bygone eras. The artist cycles the structural pillars of the space with rounded handrails of natural history museums, altering their orientation from linear to circular to channel energy back into the space. Adorning pillars with ubiquitous white tiles that evoke personal and intimate spaces, ZHANG blurs the line between the internal and external. This approach, characteristic of her spatial vocabulary, casts the library as a spatial conduit.
Her work, Planter-7, crafted from construction debris and natural elements like cactus spines that shed as part of their natural lifecycle, serves as a poignant reminder of the remnants of architectural and natural histories. It weaves a narrative that moves beyond the tangible, touching upon the intangible remnants of memory and time. Dust in the air, symbolizing the undetected narratives ensconced within our built environments, becomes visible through ZHANG's process of solidifying cement with water in Dim Light Buildup by Dust. Similarly, in Modern Fossil (Pipe)-4, water flowing through pipes as frozen streams of history reveals untold stories and voices from the past. The evaporation leaves behind a strip of corrugated cardboard, resembling ruins of a creek and evoking a tactile urge to touch, feel, and re-imagine. Her works invite viewers to reflect on the built environment not merely as physical structures but as vessels of collective memory and cultural narratives, in other words, a living document imbued with the latent stories of past lives and activities.
Text from Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai
“覆写上海：重构20世纪初的亚洲文会图书馆”展览现场，上海外滩美术馆，2024. 图片致谢艺术家 Installation view of 'Shanghai Palimpsest: Restaging the R.A.S Library' at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 2024. Image courtesy the artist
10 April 2024
