杨勇：70后的觉醒与在场证明

作者：郑妍

相关展览：《杨勇个展——光景》，尤伦斯当代艺术中心，北京，中国，2010

如果把社会看成是一个多元的大环境多边综合体，那么这个所谓的环境很可能是由无数个“场”所组成。这些不同构成的“场”相互依存、相互影响，并且无时无刻不在相互作用与反作用着，大环境发生的变化直接通过这些“场”作用于每个求同存异的个体。杨勇这位生于上世纪70年代的艺术家，一直以其独特且敏锐的视角关注着与他共同成长的这一代人的生存状态与价值取向，用他的作品给我们递交了一份关于70年代的“在场证明”。

对于沐浴在改革开放春风下成长，参与见证中国都市化进程的这代人，既没有父辈坚定的信念和价值观，又面临着父辈们不曾经历的物质诱惑;既没有兄辈需要悲情缅怀的过去，又充分享受着日潮解放的思想带来的各种宽松环境；既和80后在高科技和动漫包围下优越的成长环境不可同日而语，又因为曾耳闻目睹社会的巨变而不认为当下的一切是理所当然。

这也许可以说是尴尬的一代，各种思潮和观念如飓风般来来往往不断冲击着人们的固有思想和理念，一种价值体系还没有被建立就被新的一种价值所代替，各种学说层出不穷。因此在这种环境下成长起来的70后整体上很难有一个确定的文化价值取向，他们的共同记忆，更多的是关于生活本身的无意义，而不同于为反抗现实的僵化出现的“玩世”或“泼皮”乃至“无聊”，综观大多数70后艺术家的创作，不是陷入对85后出现的种种“玩世”“无聊”模仿的“假无聊”，就是沉迷于一种对只存在于意象中而并不真实的生活细节的“伪关注”。在一个旧的秩序已经打乱，新的秩序尚未形成的年代，或许关于这个阶段的艺术史很难书写。

杨勇却为自己出生在这样一个时代而觉得幸运。既然环境对于人的作用是巨大的，那么历经几种不同的环境也能给人不同角度的思考。大多数人在成长过程中会顺理成章地把周遭的生活看作是天经地义，忽略社会发展的种种必然和偶然，忽略关于体制、传统、度和文化的种种拷问，而极少有人能够超越“身在其中”的这种局限，站在哲学思辨的高度对自己所处的时代进行理性解读和表达，正所谓“不识庐山真面目，只缘身在此山中”，能够以旁观者的理性来看待自己所处的时代，看到时代的发展和局限，最终不走向哲学，即走向艺术，这便是我们所认识的杨勇。

法国著名哲学与艺术史专家丹纳这样为艺术品定义，“艺术品的目的是表现某个主要的或突出的特征，也就是某个重要的观念，比实际事物表现得更清楚更完全；为了做到这一点，艺术品必须是有许多相互联系的部分组成的一个总体，而各个部分的关系是经过有许划的改变的。”杨勇的作品，似乎正是为这个定义做了一个恰当的注解和诠释。 

正如本文开头所释，无论是杨勇的摄影、绘画亦或是装置，所提交的都是一份70后“在场”证明，而这种证明正是建立在一种觉醒的基础之上的理性表达，而这种觉醒，对于70后却并非易事。方面，信息处理技术和互联网的发展和进步使得信息传播的效率大大超出人们的想象，人们的生活正越来越依赖于各种传媒所提供的如万花筒般绚烂多变的信息。另一方面，传统社会体制下媒体所建立的权威犹在，媒体既可以在几天之内造就一个明星或是一个专家学者，当然也同样可以于瞬间把他们打翻在地。这两方面的作用相叠加，最直接的效果就是让人迷惑和不知所措。各种铺天盖地而来的信息，一边加快着都市生活的节奏，一边让人感到无所适从，随之产生现实与幻象之间的混沌和焦虑，身陷其中而不能自拔。在这样一个人们各取所需的、以实用主义的态度仅仅依靠感官而不是理性来快速获得知识或信息的时代，整体很难产生确定的文化价值取向。也正因为如此，杨勇的这种“在场”证明，为我们研究这一代的精神空间提供了最直接的佐证。

在杨勇的创作历程中，多次使用当下流行的“时尚图片”进行再创作。这也是70后所独有的经历，或许将来的某一代人会生活在比今天还要海量的图像信息之中，但是经历这种图像信息从无到有却是70后的专利。这种“时尚图片”被巧妙地点缀装饰在各种物质需要之中，用过之后又被迅速地抛弃，制造它们的人们又开始绞尽脑汁来制造新的图像去刺激已经被过度使用、正在趋于疲倦和麻木的读者的感官，而这种过量的信息所营造的虚拟环境在代替了人类自身思考的同时，又在营造着一种新的引导人们生活方式的消费习惯来满足种种物质生产和消费需要。

在杨勇敏锐地察觉到图像对他这一代人所产生的巨大影响的同时，他也在开始质疑这些作为图像信息载体的大众传媒到底在营造一种怎样的“拟态”环境。当阅读图像成为获取外部信息的主要方式时，人们是否能够获得真实的信息？依靠这些信息所建立起的对环境的认识，是否准确而完整？人们是会不自觉地迷失其中而乐此不疲，还是会对像杨勇一样去思考这种不确定的文化价值带给人们生活的改变？或许正像他的作品记录下的那些生活琐碎片段和本来就毫无意义的时尚符号那样，当感觉从麻木中觉醒后，感受到的就是生活的本真。

杨勇此次在UCCA举办的个展——“光·景”，试图把来自各种时尚媒体的广告、人像、商标LOGO、海报等等超越图像符号的语言绘制在不同样式的灯上，这种对现成图像的再运用借以暗喻泛滥的图像对人们日常生活种种潜移默化的影响和改变。当灯光透过这些绘有不同 画面的灯罩营造出或明或暗的一种“光场”, 这些令人眼花缭乱的时尚图像在构建出一个五光十色展览现场的同时，也再现了一个光怪陆离、亦真亦幻的社会现实。

图像的泛滥或许正是这一代人在成长中所面对的独特问题，图像的大量传播一方面使得人们获取信息更为便利，在另一方面，过量的信息营造了一种完全虚拟的环境。如何从这种环境中得到感官的觉醒，如何把这种觉醒进行一种理性的表达，杨勇的艺术创作在此是对现实严肃的批判，又是这一代人关于自身成长环境的一种“旁观者”的反思。

Yang Yong: The Testimony and Awakening of China’s 1970s Generation

Author: Zheng Yan

Related Exhibition: “Yang Yong Solo Exhibition—Lightscape”, UCCA, Beijing, China, 2010

If we were to regard society as a vast, diverse organism composed of a multiplicity of parts, then what we call our social environment (or meta-environment) must be a collection of smaller microenvironments, an infinite number of settings or scenes. These differently-constructed scenes are interdependent and interrelated, constantly acting on and reacting to each other. Changes in the larger social setting are a direct result of what happens in these smaller settings, where similar but different individual elements interact. As an artist born in the 1970s, Yang Yong has always trained his uniquely perceptive vision on the lives and values of the generation, and his artwork offers us a bit of “onsite testimony” about the things they care about.

The generation who grew up during the springtime of Chinese economic reform and opening lacked the staunch beliefs and values held by their parents. As witness-participants to China’s urbanization, the 1970s generation was confronted with a greater range of material enticements than the previous generation could ever have dreamed of. Nor did they share the painful past of their slightly older brethren, for the 1970s generation came of age in a less restrictive environment and enjoyed a greater range of greater intellectual freedoms. Neither could they be compared to the privileged, tech-savvy 1980s generation: having witnessed such massive societal changes with their own eyes and ears, the 1970s generation could not take the world around them for granted.

Perhaps it would be fair to call them the “awkward generation”: their existing ideologies and ideas are constantly being buffeted about by new notions and trends of thought, with new theories and doctrines emerging all the time; before they can firmly establish a new value system, it is soon overturned, and replaced by another. For these reasons, it is hard to identify any shared cultural values among the people born in the 1970s. Their collective memory seems to revolve around life's fundamental meaninglessness. This differs from the previous generation, whose rebellion against the status quo was expressed through artistic attitudes ranging from cynicism to violent delinquency to sheer boredom. Surveying the work of China’s post-1970s artists, we find the vast majority either mired in circa-1985 Cynical Realism, or feigning boredom, or adopting an attitude of hypocritical concern with works heavy on images and imagery but light on observations of actual life. It seems an impossible task to write the artistic history of an era in which the old order is in chaos but a new order has not yet taken shape.

Yang Yong himself feels fortunate to have been born in the 1970s, a time of great change for China. Because environment exerts such a powerful influence on the way we see the world, a person lucky enough to have lived through great changes and experience different environments naturally has a more diverse perspective on the world. For young people growing up, there is a natural tendency to take one's immediate environment for granted, and to overlook larger environmental or sociological shifts, be they inevitable or accidental. Rare is the individual who manages to analyze his environment from a loftier philosophical height, or to overcome the limitations of his own perspective to regard his contemporaries dispassionately, as a rational observer, and to use this for the purpose of art, rather than philosophy Yang Yong is undoubtedly one such person.

French critic and historian Hippolyte Adolphe Taine defined a work of art in the following way: “L’oeuvre d’art a pour but de manifester quelque caractère essentiel ou saillant, partant quelque idéeimportante, plus clairement et plus complétement que ne lefont les objets réels. Elle y arrive en employant un ensemble de parties liées, dont elle modifie systématiquement les rapports.” This definition seems particularly apropos when examining and assessing the work of Yang Yong.

In all of his work, be it photography, painting or installation, Yang Yong offers us first-hand testimony of his own generation. It is a testimony based on the awakening of rational expression, no simple matter for people born in the 1970s. On one hand, the development of the Internet and the advance of information technology have led to a media boom no one could have predicted, and our lives have become ever more reliant on the vast kaleidoscope of constantly-changing information now available to us. On the other hand, the traditional power structure and patterns of media dominance remain, the only difference is that the media is now capable of launching a new celebrity or opinion-leader in a matter of days, and toppling them just as quickly This combination of factors has led to an information glut that leaves people feeling baffled. The constant barrage of information has sped up the already-rapid pace of our modern urban lives, sowing confusion and anxiety and blurring the boundaries between illusion and reality. Information is a trap from which we cannot escape. An age when people take a utilitarian attitude toward information-picking and choosing what they need, their choices informed more by gut instinct than rational thought-does not favor the emergence of shared cultural values. It is for this reason that Yang Yong’s testimony is so valuable, for it gives us important insights into the cultural mentality of his generation.

Yang Yong’s work is very much “in the moment,” and he often employs fashionable or faddish images in his artwork. This may be an experience unique to his generation: although future generations may display a similar appetite for visual image, this is the first generation to start from scratch and end up with a near-monopoly on images. Fad photography is used to gild our consumer desires and is discarded almost as quickly as the products it promotes. The people who create these images must then wrack their brains to invent new ones to replace those that have been overused, and find new ways to hold the attention of an audience that has grown jaded or fatigued. Image-overload and the information glut have created a kind of virtual reality in which people are discouraged from thinking for themselves, and are encouraged to focus on fads, fashions, material desires and conspicuous consumption.

At the same time that Yang Yong is questioning the enormous influence these images have had upon his generation, he is also exploring the virtual reality created by the mass media that conveys these images. When “reading images” becomes our primary mode of access to outside information, how can we sure that the information we are getting is factual? Can we ever gain a complete and accurate understanding of our environment, if that understanding is based on purely visual information? Will people get lost among all that information and never grow bored, or will they, like Yang Yong, begin to ponder how this lack of defined cultural values have affected their lives? Or will they perhaps awake from their apathy and realize that this is all there is to life, just these fragments and meaningless fashion symbols that Yang Yong records in his work?

For his solo exhibition at UCCA, Yang Yong plans to cover lampshades of different shapes and sizes with images from fashion magazines, posters, designer logos, advertisements and other sources. In past installations, he has superimposed these ready-made images onto bathtubs, furniture and other familiar items, employing them as metaphors for the way the current flood of images has altered and influenced our lives. The play of light and shadow through these lampshades will turn the exhibition space into a dazzling and colorful “lightscape” tinged with a social reality that is both bizarre and surreal.

The proliferation of images may be a problem unique to this generation. The mass dissemination of images certainly makes obtaining information more convenient, but the flip side is that information overload has led to the creation of a completely virtual environment. In such an environment, how do we reawaken our senses? And how do we use that sensory awakening in the service of rational expression? Yang Yong shows us that art can be both a serious critique of society and a dispassionate testimonial to the environment he and his generation grew up in.