生活在此时——中国当代艺术家（节选）
作者：杨天娜
相关展览：《生活在此时——中国当代艺术家》，汉堡火车站国家美术馆，柏林，德国，2004
谈到杨勇的摄影作品，那些年轻的中国女人的形象马上浮现在我的脑海里。杨勇在作品中让她们处于一种看似随意的日常生活场景里，一种无聊和令人费解的空虚弥漫在空气中。
生于四川的杨勇，是中国当代艺术里最为年轻活跃的艺术家。就像《纽约时代》杂志驻香港记者赖楚帆(Jonathan Napack)所说的，杨勇属于南方“反文化”一位有代表性的人物。深圳毗邻香港，地处广东珠江三角洲，80年代由特殊政策扶持成为二十年来世界上发展最快的一个现代新都市，中国经济的另一个中心。她最近发展出来的一种“另类”的新都市文化，也越来越对内地的风潮产生潜移默化的影响作用。其中，夜生活、长篇电视连续剧和无聊感伪造的花花世界似的特性，很多方面应归因于珠江三角洲穿家串户二十四小时无休无止的香港电视节目。这些特性在杨勇最早的录象作品《1997年12月27日》和他的摄影系列里得到充分的体现。1999年，陈侗在广州博尔赫斯书店为杨勇举办了他的首次个人展览。这些题为“女人总是美丽的”系列摄影作品专注于从农村流入花花都市要试试自己运气的青春女子。杨使用完全不含专业或艺术技巧的摄影镜头，不给他的凭美丽笑容生活的女孩子摆弄姿势、讲故事，也不管他们的社会背景和地位如何。他的摄影并不是环境的描写，而是当下生活中的写照。杨勇所理解的摄影不是简单的美学距离而是就像南戈尔丁和沃夫冈所说的现实。虽然如此，如果单纯考虑杨勇拍摄照片的方式的话，现实的概念本身就是含糊的。
在摄影系列《青春残酷日记》里，杨勇“以即兴多于导演的方式和主角玩着进入并且制造生活情景的游戏”。广东青年人的生活像是一个电视里的镜头，直接贴裱在墙上的镜头用两种组合来完成：表现单个人的大尺寸照片用来作为想象的主角；以紧密连接式组合放置的小尺寸照片则是一系列生活情景的过程。作品里半明半暗的光线下面，记录着杨镜头下的年轻人无所事事地处在公共广场、立交桥、人行通道、建筑工地和深圳海边，情节内容每次都不明朗。此时，戏剧灯光似的城市里的光和空洞无序的内容形成对比，给这组照片一个特有的诱惑力，这正是这个系列的特点。
Life on the Time – Contemporary Artist China (excerpt)
Author: Martina Koppel-Yang
Related Exhibition: “Life on The Time–Contemporary Artist China”, Hamburger Bahnhof Art Museum, Berlin, Germany, 2004
Thinking of Yang Yong's photographic work the images of young Chinese women immediately come to mind. Yang shows these women in an urban environment, choosing apparently arbitrary scenes from their everyday life. The feeling of boredom and an inexplicable void dominate the scenes.
Yang Yong belongs to the youngest generation of Chinese artists and can be regarded-as Jonathan Napack puts it-as representative of a Southern "counter-culture". Originating from Sichuan Province, he lives in Shenzhen, the new metropolis in the Pearl River Delta, since several years. Being situated near Hong Kong, this city rapidly developed to one of China's economic centres with a special economic status within the last 20 years. The pseudo-mundane character of its culture, reflecting the aesthetics and values of Hong Kong-style soap operas, nightlife and boredom finds its reflection in Yang Yong's early videos, such as his "1997.12.20" as well as in his photographies. "Women are beautiful" a series of colour photographs (1999) exhibited in his first personal show in the Libreria Borges in Guangzhou featured young country girls who try their luck in the Southern Chinese metropolis. Yang portraits these girls who often gain their living as prostitutes with a prosaic approach, not wanting to question their social environment and status but rather trying to define a kind of visual language reflecting the banality of the urban reality. Yang understands photography not as an aesthetic distance but as reality thus referring to Nan Goldin, or Wolfang Tilmans. Nevertheless, the notion of reality itself becomes quite ambiguous, if one considers the way, how Yang Yong stages his photographs.
In "Diary of Cruel Youth" (2001) he played the typical scenes of everyday urban life together with his friends. Also the presentation of his photographies-the employment of light boxes and projections-as well as the luminosity of his works further underline this aspect of ambiguity. The actual stylisation of banality and reality evident here can be regarded as typical of the Cantonese avant-garde, which is recently becoming a trendsetter within the Chinese art scene.
