南京《2×二》中德艺术展时间、地点、门票价格
1、时间：2023.11.20 - 2024.2.1
2、地点：海尚艺术
3、门票价格：39
南京《2×二》中德艺术展详情
2×二
展览策划｜Exhibition Planning
海尚艺术
Haishang Art
学术主持｜Academic Host
迪特尔·罗斯曼（Dieter Röschmann）
(德国艺术批评家，artline撰稿人，编辑)
(German art critic; Artline author, editor)
展期 |Exhibition Date
2023.10.14- 2024.2.1
周二- 周日 9:30 – 17:30
10/14/2023 – 2/1/2024
Tue - Sun 9:30 - 17:30
艺术家｜Artists
谭平（TanPing）
李迪（LiDi ）
马丁·魏玛尔（Martin Wehmer）
本·胡布希（Ben Hübsch）
（排名不分先后）
地点｜Location
海尚艺术中心
南京市鼓楼区中山北路346号老学堂创意园1号楼
Haishang Art, Bldg 1, No.346 ZhongshanN. Rd., Gulou Dist., Nanjing, China
在当代全球化背景下，艺术作为一种跨越国界和文化的语言，不断推动着不同地域和背景的艺术家之间的对话与合作。《2×二》中德艺术家作品展则是这样一次富有学术性的跨文化对话的重要展览。《2×二》中德艺术家作品展是海尚艺术中心建馆一周年举办的国际艺术项目的第二单元。此次展览旨在通过中德两国艺术家的交流与互动，促进两国艺术界的互学互鉴，推动多元文化的融合与拓展。特别邀请德国著名艺术批评家Dieter Röschmann担任学术主持，使本次展览具备了较高的专业性和学术性。
In the context of globalization, art, as a language that transcends national boundaries and cultures, continues to promote dialogue and cooperation between artists from different regions and backgrounds. "2×2” exhibition of works by Chinese and German artists is such an important exhibition of academic cross-cultural dialogue. "2×2” exhibition of works by Chinese and German artists is the second unit of the international art project held on the first anniversary of the establishment of the Nanjing Haishang Art Center. This exhibition aims to promote mutual learning between the art circles of the two countries through exchanges and interactions between artists from China and Germany, and promote the integration and expansion of multiculturalism. The famous German art critic Dieter Röschmann was specially invited to serve as the academic host, making this exhibition highly professional and academic.
抽象的潜力
文/学术主持 Dieter Röschmann
我很高兴与您分享关于展览《2x二》的一些想法。在这里，中国和德国的抽象绘画代表——谭平、李迪、马丁·魏玛尔和本·胡布希进行了一场开放式对话。正如标题所预示的那样，这不仅仅是关于对抽象主义艺术观点的简单积累，而是关于其多样性——即建立关系，展示相似之处、差异之处和潜力。从这个视角来看，这个展览可以被理解为一种通过绘画来实现的文化交流。因为这也显而易见：抽象绘画并不是在文化真空中发展起来的，无论是在东方还是在西方，它都有不同的源头。在欧洲，抽象艺术致力于探索视觉习惯，而美国的极简主义艺术则作为一种反流之势确立了自己的地位，与之相反，中国当代抽象艺术则从书法和绘画的长期互动中汲取养分，这又同时激发了许多西方艺术家的灵感。如果没有亚洲艺术的影响，欧洲和美国的现代艺术就不会发展成今天我们所知道的样子。反过来，在20世纪80年代初期，中国的艺术家们开始越来越多地研究西方艺术，其理论基础和各种形式，以便与日益全球化的当代艺术建立联系。一些人前往德国学习后返回中国发展自己的艺术事业，反之亦然。
本次展览的艺术家们也是如此。谭平于 1989 年至 1994 年在柏林艺术大学学习绘画，毕业后成为克劳斯-傅斯曼（Klaus Fußmann）的硕士研究生，是当今中国当代抽象艺术最重要的代表人物之一，他对中国抽象艺术的发展产生了持续性的影响。他是北京中国艺术研究院副院长。李迪，最初在北京中央美术学院学习油画，1990 年前往德国攻读第二阶段艺术课程，1995 年在布伦瑞克美术学院阿维德-D-戈雷拉（Arwed D. Gorella）门下完成硕士学业。20 年后，即 2010 年，李迪回到北京。如今，他在两个国家和两种文化中生活和工作。
谭平TanPing
谭平在本次展览中展出的绘画作品从根本上体现了这一点。艺术家将自己的绘画实践描述为直觉。他写道：“对我来说，绘画每次都是一次偶遇，从开始到结束，无论花费多长时间。”他写道：“每根线条都起源于一个随机的起点，在没有预先定位的情况下任由其发展和扩展，直到到达我们相遇的特定地点，并'定格'在那里。”谭平故意对此问题的结论留白，因此，这个问题是开放的，即结果是否是好的，或者我们是否只是因为它符合我们的期望或观看习惯而觉得它是好的。不仅如此，他还保留了这种开放性，通过一次又一次地在画布上涂抹这些 "凝固 "的状态，将其作为想象的潜力封闭在画面中。因此，他的覆盖物具有夜幕笼罩世界的效果，使事物在肉眼面前消失，即使我们知道它们仍然存在。
谭平谈到了 “画布的对立面”，但这只是事实的一部分。谭平让画面的边边角角从浓重的、往往是深色的套色下露出来，让观众得以窥见这些惊人的绘画作品的舞台空间的深处。与此同时，通过在可见部分上绘画，他为新事物的诞生做好了准备。”谭平说：“吸引我的是新的开始。” 消失与出现、结束与开始不谋而合，并在潜在的无限运动中创造出一种张力，这对画作对观众的影响极为重要，因为画作为观众打开了思考、休息和想象的空间。谭平的画作也可以被描述为画家的 “重写本”（palimpsests），是对自身的回忆，其中刻有绘画过程、不在场的艺术家身体的存在以及流逝的时间，既是最终的，又是暂时的，可以改变，在某种程度上是暂时停滞的连续性。或者正如他自己所说 “碎片填满碎片，时间覆盖时间”。
谭平《覆盖一号》200×200cm 丙烯 2018
谭平的绘画是在意义的置换、交换和叠加过程中出现的，它在前影像和后影像的共存、挪用和擦除的同时性中展开，从而同时为我们的可见性秩序提出了一个系统：在通过画笔的蜿蜒和颜料的层叠形成影像和影像饱和的过程中，以及在观众的部分，通过自己的投射或想象的经验让影像再次出现在自己面前。
谭平《覆盖二号》200×200cm 丙烯 2018
马丁·魏玛尔Martin Wehmer
在谭平深度自省的绘画背景下，值得留意马丁·魏玛尔的双联画作《星空的背面》。在这幅作品中，两个十字架将画面空间划分为四个色域，每个色域的赭色和黄色渐变不同。其中一个十字架让人联想到窗户十字架——可以从中看出莱昂·巴蒂斯塔·阿尔贝蒂（Leon Battista Alberti）将绘画比喻为 "窗外的世界"（finestra aperta）——由艺术家框定的世界观，这一比喻塑造了欧洲从 15 世纪到现代对绘画的理解。另一个十字架让人联想到圣安德鲁十字架（警告危险）和字母 "X"，"X "通常用于在选举中为候选人画十字、勾选已完成的事情或覆盖已失去效力的文字。这些十字架是用木板条拧在画作表面的，因此有多种可能的解释。它们是稳定画面还是横跨画面，是保护画面还是擦除画面，是技术辅助还是绘画标志？"星空的背面 "是这幅双联画的标题，既诗意又冷静，围绕着可见性和隐蔽性的问题。它将我们的视线引向我们在这幅抽象作品中可能看到的东西，即纸板色的、并不华丽的星空背面，我们习惯于将我们的梦想和欲望投射到星空背面。
马丁·魏玛尔《Raute》120×90cm 布面油画 2017
马丁·魏玛尔的绘画复杂的意义层和恬静而常常令人惊奇的幽默是其绘画的典型特征。他以大规模的圆形和弧段抽象画在德国广为人知，受到了1910年代罗伯特·德劳内（Robert Delaunay）的奥费立体主义的启发，并以把握空间的姿态一跃成为当代艺术家。移居北京后，随着教学生涯的开始，他在中国找到了自己的绘画之路，在对艺术史参照物以及时尚、美和流行文化的表面刺激的研究中，他将画家的感觉带到了画布上，只用颜料就创造出了最美丽的欲望火花。本次展览中展出的油画《橙色裤子》就是这种色彩欲望释放的一个很好的例子：油画布上的油画颜料丰富而花哨，在明黄色的底色上，橙色、紫色和群青蓝形成鲜明对比，构成了一条游泳短裤的缩小图。在这里，魏尔玛用强有力的动作将绘画表现为姿态抽象与颜料的结构物质性之间的平衡，颜料的结构物质性将画布的表面延伸到浮雕空间中，并以这种方式在绘画的对象性存在和绘画性特质之间创造出一种闪烁的张力。
马丁·魏玛尔《he》160×220cm 布面油画 2015
对于马丁·魏玛尔来说，抽象决不意味着对形象的放弃或拒绝，而对他来说，抽象只是一种借口，让绘画遵循自己的规律，寻找自己的节奏、自己的色彩和形式的经济性以及自己的模糊性。平放的文件夹对应一个浅灰色背景的简化视图，这使得它在非具象的色彩场绘画与象征着文件夹所代表的秩序的暧昧的静物之间摇摆不定。而《德国抽象》这两幅绘画则以微妙的讽刺暗示了德国价值观的刻板印象，这种观念很容易被当作可靠性、功能性、持久价值和创新精神来推销。这些绘画暗示着，抽象绘画并非形而上学的对象，而像木工一样是一种工艺。用隐喻的方式来说：绘画是一堆木板和护墙板，通过螺栓拧紧成合理的结构，做到言之有物。马丁·基彭贝格或许会以类似的方式来看待这一点。在1984年，这位声名显赫、活跃于西德新表现主义绘画场景的艺术家画出了作品《我竭尽全力完全无法辨认出个卍字》，这幅作品是由不合逻辑地交错在一起的梁木组成的紧张构图，其实它并未真正描绘一个“卍”字，但这个标题让每个看到的人寻找它，这幅画可以被理解为对德国罪行和对国家施行者来说复杂历史的一种聪明而讽刺的评论。
李迪Li Di
马丁·基彭贝格尔（ Martin Kippenberger）与沃尔特·达恩（Walter Dahn）是朋友，后者是约瑟夫·博伊斯（Joseph Beuys）的学生，后来成为李迪在布伦瑞克美术学院的老师。达恩和基彭贝格尔共同致力于具象和绘画自由，以摆脱自 20 世纪 70 年代以来主导西方艺术话语的极简艺术的严谨概念。这对李迪并非没有影响。在2016年与方振宁的访谈中，他将瓦尔特·达恩（Walter Dahn）视为早年在德国受到的最重要影响。即使是李迪 2011 年回国后在北京今日美术馆展出的画作，也明显受到德国新表现主义以及中国传统水墨画的影响。此后不久，他说：他开始寻找减去的方法，以获得一种更自由、更简单的语言。” 他也说：”抽象是对语言本身的回归。"如果绘画不回归其本身的语境，它就只能是肤浅的吸引人的形式的集合"。
李迪《留白系列》
对李迪来说，作为在绘画行为中实现思想的艺术过程成为了他作品的中心。"这个过程既是个人经验的沉思和表达，也是绘画研究和形式元素的体验"。2015年，李迪花了一个月的时间，在一面25米长的墙上用铅笔画了成千上万条线，这是他最激进的作品之一。与他使用的材料--800 支中华HB 铅笔--相比，这件作品所需的脑力和体力是无法计算的。这给人留下了深刻印象，也极富诗意地证明了一个事实，即图像永远不会等同于所用材料的总和。身临其境的绘画装置让观众不仅看到了创造这一图像的创作过程，而且还切身感受到了这一过程。同时，它还消解了图像与墙壁之间的界限，让两种空间状态相互扩散。在概念艺术、行动绘画的实体性和中国传统水墨画的象征性虚空的交汇中，李迪在东西方期待的文化领域中进行实验的非凡乐趣在这里得到了展现。
李迪《留白》90×65cm 纸上碳素 2023
李迪的作品 "中华HB "虽然充斥着各种符号，但其周围却是一片寂静，就像刚下过的雪覆盖了一切，改变了事物的形状和声音，使其化为阴影，让人难以相信自己的感官。韩裔德国哲学家韩炳哲（Byung-Chul Han）创造了 "远离"（being away）一词，用来形容这种事物变得模糊不清的过渡空间，并将其与西方的 "存在"（being）概念进行对比，后者蕴含着包含、意义和满足的含义。在《论远东的文化与哲学》一文中，韩炳哲写道："缺席就是冷漠。它具有液化和划界的效果。没有任何东西强加于自己，没有任何东西划定自己的界限"。通过这种方式，缺席使空间具有渗透性。"它拓宽了空间，一个空间为另一个空间提供了空间，而另一个空间又为更多的空间提供了空间。概念性将世界封闭在西方思想所熟悉的线性、赋予意义的叙事中，与此相反，禅宗思想认为在空虚中获得自由。
李迪《留白》140×120cm 布面丙烯 2023
李迪目前展出的两个系列作品都提到了这种空，一个以布面绘画为媒介，另一个以纸本绘画为媒介。这两个系列都以 “留白" 为题。所谓 "留白"，是指中国书法和绘画中常用的一种技法，即故意留出空隙，给人以想象的空间，使整个作品更加和谐、优美。在该系列绘画的五块画布上，每块画布都涂有不同的底色，数十条银灰色的短线无序地排列着。虽然没有两组顺序相同，但它们似乎都遵循着一个共同的原则。在每个集群中，线条之间的距离都是相似的，就像李迪在演练一种理想的多人组织，他们在条件允许的情况下相互给予对方足够的空间。这些画面透着体贴与尊重、关怀与集体。手写的笔画节奏及其界定的空白空间是漫无目的漂移的结果，但这种漂移并不自由，而是遵循自我设定的规则，如笔画的粗细或图像格式。线条的数量略有不同；密度不同的印象通过画面底色的变化得到补偿。纸上系列作品遵循同样的形式原则，同样名为 "留白"，结合了炭笔画和蚀刻这两种技术，对时间和身体的使用要求可以想象是不同的，并且结合了自发性和惰性。这些作品简洁优雅，情绪高昂，同时又有节制，为沉思创造了极具吸引力的空间。
本·胡布希Ben Hübsch
对于本·胡布希来说，吸引力和抽象性也并非对立。在他的作品中，艺术家将漫画和流行文化、设计和装饰艺术的符号系统与受欧洲和美国影响的非具象绘画相结合。他注重色彩和对比的和谐，以及对表面的鲜明兴趣。“你所看到的就是你所看到的，”美国画家弗兰克·斯特拉在上世纪60年代中期与唐纳德·贾德共同撰写的一篇文章中如此断言。这个声明长期以来被视为极简主义艺术和分析绘画的形式主义信条，是对抽象表现主义进行有意义抽象、剥离其旧有价值的纯视觉对象的结果，正如斯特拉所写：“反人道、工业化和没有表情。”
本·胡布希《Iris》140×120cm 丙烯酸树脂 2018
本·胡布希也努力将他的绘画摒弃一切手势的因素。个体手写风格的中立化与他对装饰作为秩序原则的兴趣相一致，后者建立在绘画的一个中心基本元素之上：将表面划分为两个平面的线条。本·胡布希的绘画长期以来就处于几何抽象表面与虚拟的空间自然主义之间的边界。他这样做并不没有幽默感。他的画作结合了具体绘画和硬边细节元素，但始终颠覆了这些概念的纯粹原则。这里的形象的清晰度旨在情感上的而非理性上的——与李迪不同的是，它的放大倍数更高。本·胡布希从锐利轮廓的彩色带开始，让它们在画布上波动扩散，编织成密集的对角网格，用模糊的黑白照片般的图像遮盖它们，或者用类似模板的上绘将其分解成个别部分，使它们像被炸飞的图像构思的碎片一样漂浮在空间中，他的绘画充满了艺术史的饱和度，然而又仿佛是数字美学的共鸣室。他的画作的辉光部分源于强烈的、常常是霓虹色彩和其闪烁对比的一部分。同样重要的是他长时间进行实验的色彩渐变。起初，只是在带子网格之间填充细腻的由刷子绘制的渐变色彩，从而将他的画作扩展到一个想象的空间中，而现在所有这些元素都在闪亮的色彩谱中振荡。
本·胡布希《Buy and sell》45×45cm 丙烯酸树脂 2021
最近，写作已经渗入他绘画的符号系统中，常常具有让人惊叹的伪装倾向。这次展览中的作品《买卖》和《再见》就是其中的例子。字母的曲线、轮廓和内部色彩交织、锁紧，并与明亮的背景形成对比，以至于它们传达的含义在层叠形式的形态丛林中难以辨识。它们伪装了他们的信息，拒绝清晰传达，但又像信号一样闪耀。本·胡布希说，他的字体围绕着艺术的本质展开。它们探讨能见度和感知、制作和接受、画布和绘画转化为文化和经济资本的问题。在这样做的同时，它们也同时提出了一个问题：在数字时代，还能否想象到阿德·雷因哈特（Ad Reinhardt）所说的抽象艺术的存在。
本·胡布希《Augen》40×55cm 丙烯酸树脂2018
“艺术就是艺术本体，其他一切就是其他一切”，这位美国画家曾说过。他以他自己称之为“冥想面板”的“黑画”而闻名，那些画被剥去了符号、内容、陈述、风格和构图等据称与其本质无关的元素——“非具体的，非再现的，非形象的，非意象的，非表现主义的，非主观的”。在西方艺术讨论中，这些画作早就被解释为绘画史的消失点，作为其“最后的绘画”。然而，从东方的观点来看，黑色的画布并不意味着结束，而是为一个新的开始铺平道路，这暗示了抽象绘画的潜力仍然是无穷的。
Potentials of Abstraction
I am pleased to share with you some thoughts about the exhibition "2x2". With Tan Ping, Li Di, Martin Wehmer and Ben Hübsch, four representatives of abstract painting in China and Germany enter into an open dialogue here. As the title already announces, this is not about the mere accumulation of artistic perspectives on abstraction, but about its multiplication - it is about establishing relationships, making similarities, differences and potentials visible. Seen in this light, this exhibition can be understood as a lived cultural exchange with the means of painting. For this is also obvious: abstract painting did not develop in a cultural vacuum, neither in the East nor in the West, but its sources are different. While abstract art in Europe was devoted to exploring visual habits, and American Minimal Art established itself as a countercurrent to the gestural, contemporary abstract art in China feeds on the long interaction between calligraphy and painting. This in turn inspired many artists in the West. Without the influence of Asian art, modernism in Europe and the United States would not have developed as we know it today. In turn, starting in the early 1980s, artists in China increasingly studied the art of the West, its theoretical foundations and various forms, in order to find a connection to the increasingly globalized contemporary art. Some went to Germany to study and later returned to pursue their careers in China - or vice versa.
This is also true of the artists in this exhibition. Tan Ping, who studied painting at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1989 to 1994 and graduated as a master student under Klaus Fußmann, is one of the most important representatives of contemporary abstraction in China today, whose development he has had a decisive influence on and continues to drive forward. He is vice president of the China National Academy of Arts in Beijing. Li Di first studied oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts CAFA in Beijing, before moving to Germany in 1990 and taking up a second course of art studies, which he completed in 1995 as a master student of Arwed D. Gorella at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig. After 20 years - in 2010 - Li Di returned to Beijing. Today he lives and works in both countries and cultures.
Martin Wehmer went the opposite way. He studied painting in Germany, worked for a long time as a freelance artist in Freiburg, where he founded the "Goldjungs" group of painters with Ben Hübsch, before moving to Beijing in 2008 on a studio grant from the Swiss Christoph Merian Foundation and deciding to stay. Wehmer curated the German section of the 798 Biennale there, taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), among others, and now lives and works as a painter in Beijing. Ben Hübsch graduated from the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe as a master student of the influential German painter Peter Dreher, who had intensively studied Zen-Bhuddism and questions of difference and repetition. Hübsch lives and works as a painter in Freiburg and teaches as a professor of painting at the Macromedia Hochschule there.
What connects these four artists and their painterly positions beyond the experience of their artistic training in 1990s Germany? The French philosopher and phenomenologist Jean-Luc Merleau-Ponty wrote in his influential 1961 essay "L'Œil et l'esprit": "In whatever civilization a painting originates, whatever beliefs, motives, ways of thinking, and ceremonies surround it, even if it seems destined for something else, whether pure painting or not, figurative or non-objective painting - from Lascaux to the present day it celebrates no other enigma than that of visibility."
Tan Ping
In a radical way, this is evident in Tan Ping's paintings on view in this exhibition. Created in 2016, the artist describes his painting practice as intuition. "Painting for me is a chance encounter every time, from beginning to end, no matter how long it takes," he writes. "Each line originates in a random starting point and is allowed to develop and expand without pre-orientation until it arrives at a specific place where we meet and is 'frozen' there." Tan Ping deliberately leaves unanswered and thus open the question of whether the result is good or whether we find it good only because it conforms to our expectations or conventions of seeing. More than that, he preserves the openness, encloses it in the painting as an imaginary potential, so to speak, by painting over these 'frozen' states of the canvas again and again. His coverings thus have the effect of night settling over the world, making things disappear to the naked eye, even though we know they are still there.
Tan Ping refers to this as the "negation of the canvas," but that is only part of the truth. By allowing the corners of the picture field to peek out from under the strong, often dark color of the respective overpainting, he allows the viewer a glimpse into the depths of the stage space of these astonishing painting productions. At the same time, by painting over the visible, he prepares the ground for the new. "It is the new beginning that attracts me," says Tan Ping. Disappearance and emergence, end and beginning coincide in this painting, creating a tension in a potentially infinite movement that is enormously important for the effect of the paintings on the viewers, to whom they open up as spaces for thought, rest and imagination. Tan Ping's paintings could also be described as painterly palimpsests, as memories of themselves, in which the painting process, the presence of the absent artist's body, the elapsed time are inscribed, final and provisional at the same time, open to change, in a sense continuums in temporary standstill. Or as he himself says "fragments filled with fragments, time covered with time".
Tan Ping's painting emerges in a process of displacement, exchange and superimposition of meaning, it unfolds in the coexistence of pre-image and after-image, the simultaneity of appropriation and erasure, and thus at the same time proposes a system for our orders of visibility: in the process of image formation and image saturation through the meandering of the brush and the layering of paint, but also on the part of the viewers, who allow the image to emerge once again for themselves in contemplation through their own projected or imagined experiences.
Martin Wehmer
Against the background of Tan Ping's deeply self-reflexive painting, which intensively explores its own conditions, it is worth taking a look at Martin Wehmer's diptych "Back of the starry sky". Here, two cross connections divide the pictorial space into four color fields each in different gradations of ocher and yellow. One cross is reminiscent of a window cross - one could see in it an allusion to Leon Battista Alberti's metaphor of the painting as finestra aperta - as a view of the world framed by the artist - which shaped the understanding of painting in Europe from the 15th century to the modern age. The other cross recalls the St. Andrew's cross, which warns of danger - and the letter X, often used to make one's cross for a candidate in elections, to check off things done or to overwrite writing that has lost its validity. The crosses are screwed to the surface of the paintings with wooden slats, which opens up a variety of possible interpretations. Do they stabilize or thwart the painting, protect or erase what is painted, are they technical devices or painterly signs? "Back of the starry sky" is a title as poetic as it is sober for this dipthych, which revolves around questions of visibility and concealment. It draws attention to what we might see in this abstract composition, namely the cardboard-colored, unglamorous back of the starry sky onto which we are accustomed to project our dreams and desires.
The complexity of the layers of meaning and the quiet, often surprising humor of these paintings is typical of Martin Wehmer's painting. He became known in Germany with large-scale abstractions of circular and arc segments, schooled in the Orphic Cubism of Robert Delaunay of the 1910s and catapulted into the present with space-grabbing gestures. After moving to Beijing and beginning his teaching career, he found himself in China painting in a manner that, in an exploration of art historical references and the surface stimuli of fashion, beauty, and pop culture, brought painterly sensations to the canvas that created the most beautiful sparks of desire out of nothing but paint. The painting "orange pants," on view in this exhibition, is a good example of this unleashed lust for color: lush and garish, the oil paste sits here on the canvas, sorting itself out on a bright yellow ground in clearly contrasting fields of orange, purple, and ultramarine blue to form the reduced view of a pair of swim shorts. With powerful movement, Wehmer celebrates painting here as a balancing act between gestural abstraction and the structured materiality of paint, which extends the surface of the canvas into space in relief, thus creating a shimmering tension between the object-like presence of the painting and its painterly qualities.
For Martin Wehmer, abstraction by no means means the renunciation or refusal of the figure - but for him it is rarely more than a pretext for painting that follows its own laws, in search of its own rhythm, its own economy of color and form, its own ambiguity. The formally reduced view of a lying file folder against a light gray background thus tips between nonrepresentational color field painting and an allusive still life as a metaphor for the ambivalence of order that the file folder represents. The two paintings "German Abstraction", on the other hand, allude with subtle irony to the stereotype of German Wertarbeit, which is readily marketed as reliability, functionality, lasting value and innovative spirit. Abstract painting, these paintings suggest, is not an object of metaphysics, but a craft like carpentry. Metaphorically speaking: The painting is a bundle of boards and battens, screwed together into plausible constructions that deliver what they promise. Martin Kippenberger would probably have seen it similarly. In 1984, the vociferous artist and star of West Germany's neo-expressionist painting scene had painted the picture "Ich kann beim besten willen kein Hakenkreuz erkennen" ("I can't for the life of me recognize a swastika"), a nervous composition of illogically interlocking beams that did not actually represent a swastika, but made everyone who read the title look for one. The painting could be understood as a commentary, as clever as it was ironic, on the complex history of coming to terms with the crimes of National Socialism in the country of the perpetrators.
Li Di
At the time, Martin Kippenberger was friends with Walter Dahn, a student of Joseph Beuys and later Li Di's teacher at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig. Dahn and Kippenberger shared a commitment to figurative, painterly freedom in order to escape the conceptual rigor of Minimal Art, which had dominated artistic discourse in the West since the 1970s. This did not remain without effect on Li Di. In a 2016 interview with Fang Zhenning, he cited Walter Dahn as the most important influence of his early years in Germany. Even the paintings Li Di exhibited at the Today Art Museum in Beijing after his return in 2011 clearly showed influences of German Neo-Expressionism, as well as traditional Chinese ink painting. Shortly thereafter, he said, he then began to look for means of reduction in order to arrive at a freer and simpler language. "Abstraction is a return to language itself," he says. "If painting does not return to its own context, it remains nothing more than a superficial collection of appealing forms."
For Li Di, the artistic process as the realization of thought in the act of painting moved to the center of his work. "This process is at once contemplation and expression of personal experience, painterly research, and the experience of formal elements." For one of his most radical works, Li Di spent a month in 2015 drawing hundreds of thousands of lines in pencil on a 26-meter wall. Unlike the material he used to do it - 800 Chung Hwa HB pencils - the mental and physical commitment to this work could not be calculated. It was an impressive and exceedingly poetic testament to the fact that an image is never identical to the sum of the materials used. The immersive drawing installation made the creative process of creating this image not only visible, but also physically tangible for the viewers. At the same time, it dissolved the boundary between image and wall, allowing both states of space to diffuse into each other. In the confluence of conceptual art, the physicality of action painting, and the symbolic emptiness of traditional Chinese ink painting, Li Dis' extraordinary joy in experimenting in the cultural field of expectation between East and West was demonstrated here.
Although overflowing with signs, Li Dis wall drawing "Chung Hwa HB" surrounded a silence like freshly fallen snow produces when it covers everything, changing the shapes and sounds of things and reducing them to shadows so that one can hardly trust one's senses. The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han coined the term "being away" for this space of transition in which things become ambiguous, contrasting it with the Western concept of "being" with its implications of containment, meaningfulness, and fulfillment. In his essay "On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East," Han writes: "Absence is indifference. It has a liquefying and delimiting effect. Nothing imposes itself, nothing delimits itself." In this way, absence makes space permeable. "It widens it, one space gives space to another space, which in turn opens up to further spaces" - without ever aiming at final closure. Han derives his concept of absence from Zen Buddhist thought, which, contrary to the conceptual enclosure of the world by the linear, meaning-making narrative familiar to Western thought, sees in emptiness a gain in freedom.
Two current series by Li Di refer to this emptiness, one in the medium of painting, the other in that of etching. They both bear the title "Liu Bai." "Liu Bai" refers to the frequently used technique in Chinese calligraphy and painting of deliberately leaving blank spaces and in this way room for imagination to make the whole work more harmonious and beautiful. On the five canvases of the painting series, each primed in different colors, dozens of short, silver-gray lines sort themselves out in disorderly regularity. Although no two sequences are alike, they all seem to follow a common principle. Thus, the spacing of the strokes from one another is similar in each constellation, as if Li Di were rehearsing here an ideal organization of the many, who give each other as much space as circumstances allow. These images breathe consideration and respect, care and community. The handwritten rhythm of the strokes, as well as the empty spaces defined by them, are the result of an aimless drifting that is nevertheless not free, but follows self-imposed rules, such as the thickness of the strokes or the image format. The number of lines varies slightly; the impression of varying density, in turn, is balanced by the varying coloration of the image grounds. The series on paper, which follows the same formal principle and is also titled "Liu Bai," combines charcoal drawing and etching, two techniques that require a conceivably different use of time and body and link spontaneity with inertia. The simple elegance of these works coupled with a high yet controlled emotionality creates attractive spaces for contemplation.
Ben Hübsch
For Ben Hübsch, attraction and abstraction are also not opposites. In his work, the artist combines sign systems of comic and pop culture, design and decorative art with those of non-representational painting of European and American influence. His focus on color and the harmony of contrasts is evident, as is his vivid interest in surface. "What you see is what you see," the American painter Frank Stella had asserted in a joint essay with Donald Judd in the mid-1960s. The statement was long considered the formalist credo of Minimal Art and Analytic Painting, the result of a deliberate de-Romanticization of Abstract Expressionism - the image as a purely visual object, stripped of its old values, "anti-humanistic, industrial, and expressionless," as Stella wrote.
Hübsch, too, had long striven to banish everything gestural from his painting. The neutralization of individual handwriting corresponded to his interest in ornament as a principle of order, based on one of the central basic elements of the painting in general: The line that divides the surface into two planes. It is no coincidence that Ben Hübsch's painting has thus long moved on the border between the geometric abstraction of the surface and a virtual naturalism of space. He does not do this without nhumor. His paintings combine elements of concrete painting and hard edge, but consistently subvert the pure doctrine of these concepts. Here, too, the clarity of the images aims not at rationality but at emotion - unlike Li Di, however, with the amplifier turned up. Starting with sharply contoured bands of color that Hübsch lets pulsate in waves across the canvas, weaving them into dense diagonal grids, obscuring them with blurred black-and-white images in a photographic look, or breaking them down into their individual parts with stencil-like overpaintings, so that they float through the room like the debris of a blown-up pictorial idea, the artist has developed a painting that is saturated with art history and yet seems like a resonating chamber of digital aesthetics. The glow of his paintings owes only in part to the intense, often neon colors and their shimmering contrasts. Equally important are the color gradients with which Hübsch has been experimenting for a long time. While at first it was only the empty spaces between the ribbon meshes that he filled with delicate gradients painted with a brush, thus expanding his paintings into an imaginary space, by now all the elements oscillate in shimmering color spectra.
More recently, writing has now seeped into the sign system of his painting, often with a remarkable penchant for camouflage. Examples of this are the paintings "Buy & Sell" and "Re se voir" in this exhibition. The curves of the letters, their outlines and inner surfaces of color intertwine and interlock against luminous backgrounds in such a way that the meanings they convey are difficult to discern in the thicket of layered forms. They camouflage their messages, refuse to communicate clearly, and yet shine like signals. His typefaces, Hübsch says, revolve around the essence of art. They negotiate questions of visibility and perception, of production and reception, of the transformation of canvas and paint into cultural and economic capital. In doing so, they simultaneously pose the question of whether abstract art in the sense of Ad Reinhardt's famous dictum is still conceivable at all in the digital present.
"Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else," the U.S. painter had said, who was known above all for his "Black Paintings," which he himself called "meditation panels," emptied of all elements supposedly foreign to their essence, such as symbol, content, statement, style, and composition - "non-representational, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagistic, non-expressionistic, non-subjective." In Western art discourse, these paintings have long been interpreted as the vanishing point of painting history, as its "last paintings." The fact that, from an Eastern perspective, the black canvas, on the other hand, does not mean the end, but again and again prepares the ground for a new beginning, suggests that the potentials of abstract painting are still inexhaustible.
关于艺术家
About The Artists
谭平
TanPing
艺术家、教育家，1984年毕业于中央美术学院，八十年代末留学德国柏林艺术大学，获硕士学位和Meisterschule学位。英国金斯顿大学荣誉博士。曾任中央美术学院设计学院院长、中央美术学院副院长，中国艺术研究院副院长，现任中国美术家协会实验艺术委员会主任，中国艺术研究院国家当代艺术中心主任。作品被中国美术馆、上海美术馆、波特兰美术馆、路德维希博物馆、亚利桑那州立大学美术馆等国内外重要机构收藏。
Tan Ping, artist and educator, graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1984. He then studied at the Berlin University of the Arts in Germany in the late eighties and obtained a master's degree and a Meisterschule degree. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Kingston University in the United Kingdom. He has served as the Dean of the School of Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Vice President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Vice President of the China Academy of Art, and currently serves as the Director of the Experimental Art Committee of the China Artists Association and the Director of the National Contemporary Art Center at the China Academy of Art. His works are collected by important institutions both domestically and internationally, including the National Art Museum of China, Shanghai Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Ludwig Museum, and Arizona State University Art Museum.
近期展览：
《纸上·谭平作品展》，灿艺术中心，中国，北京，2023；
《再问——谭平绘画》，广州，广东美术馆，2022；
《谭平：内循环》，北京，誌屋北京，2022；
《谭平：绘画是什么1984-2021》，北京，当代唐人艺术中心，2021；
《2020：谭平场域创作》，深圳，雅昌艺术中心美术馆，2020；
《双重奏：谭平回顾展》，上海，余德耀美术馆，2019；
《……》，北京，元典美术馆，2017；
《谭平》，丹麦霍森斯现代美术馆，2017；
《彳亍——谭平个展》，美国，坦佩，亚利桑那州立大学美术馆，2015；
《画画——谭平作品展》，北京，今格空间，2015
……
LiDi
1986年毕业于中央美术学院油画系，1996年毕业于德国布伦瑞克美术学院自由艺术系获大师生学位。现为中央美术学院表现与抽象艺术研修班导师，天津美术学院实验艺术学院研究生导师，宁波大学科技学院设计艺术学院特聘教授。2001年获德国艾茵堡艺术工作奖金；2002年德国北德银行与公开基金会工作奖金等奖项。曾在北京白盒子艺术馆、德国纽伦堡-埃尔兰根孔院艺术空间等地举办个人展览。
Li Di graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1986 and obtained a Master's degree in Free Art in the Brunswick College of Fine Arts in Germany in 1996. He currently serves as a mentor for the Performance and Abstract Art Research Program at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, a mentor for graduate students at the School of Experimental Art of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, and a distinguished professor at the School of Design and Art at College of Science & Technology Ningbo University.His works are collected by Personal Collections andimportant institutions both domestically and internationally, including the National Art Museum of China, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Long Museum, Art Museum of Ningbo, andYuan Art Museum.
近期展览：
《留黑见白-李迪》纽伦堡素描双年展，德国纽伦堡-埃尔兰根孔院艺术空间，2023；
《重见-李迪/Meet-Li Di》宁波出入艺术，2022；
《中华HB，对冲·空间的再造》，北京元典美术馆，2015；
《李迪作品》，法国马赛欧洲文化首都年，2013；
《心起----李迪绘画展》，宁波美术馆，2012；
《借景·李迪个展》，北京在3画廊，2012；
《在内心中奔跑---李迪二十年归国汇报展》，北京今日美术馆，2011
……
马丁·魏玛尔
Martin Wehmer
1966年出⽣于德国哈廷根，2009年曾798北京双年展策展⼈和组织者之⼀。先后在中央美术学院、中国美术学院与柏林艺术⼤学联合硕⼠项⽬和天津美术学院担任教授。作品被瑞⼠银⾏、巴塞尔艺术信托、巴塞尔教育部、缦合·北京（合⽣创展集团）等重要机构收藏。
Martin Wehmer wasborn in Hattingen, Germany in 1966.He was one of the curators and organizers of the 798 Beijing International Art Biennale in 2009. He has served as professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, theMA program between China Academy of Art and Universität Der Künste Berlin, and Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts.His works have been collected by important institutions across the world, such as the Union Bank of Switzerland, Art Basel Trust, Basel Ministry of Education, and Manhe Beijing (Hopson Development Group).
近期展览：
《马丁·魏玛尔》，北京艺术咨询有限公司，北京，中国，2022；
《其他｜他们》，Anja Knoess画廊，科隆，德国；2022；
《美丽的脚、长鼻子、性感的唇》，Anja Knoess画廊，科隆，德国，2020；
《小旗帜》，Baumgarten画廊，弗莱堡，德国，2019；
《星空的背面》，李安姿当代空间，香港，2018；
《气》，北京艺门画廊，北京；2018；
《ZTEN》，Anja Knoess画廊，科隆，德国，2017；
《画=盒》，狮语画廊，上海，2016；
《望京公园的邻居》，颖画廊，北京，2016；
《画=盒》，狮语画廊，上海，2015；
《盒子里有只吃彩色裤子的羊......》，北京艺门画廊，北京，2015；
……
本·胡布希
Ben Hübsch
1963 出生于德国弗莱堡，1991年硕士研究生毕业后，自2012 年起担任弗莱堡 hKDM 美术教授， 2018 年起担任弗莱堡 Macromedia 应用科学大学美术教授。德国艺术家协会、巴登符腾堡州艺术家协会、巴塞尔艺术协会和弗莱堡艺术协会会员，2020 年弗莱堡艺术博览会创始人和 2021 年弗莱堡双年展创始成员。作品被弗莱堡当代艺术博物馆、蒂罗尔州政府等机构和政府收藏。
Born in Freiburg in 1963, BenHübsch graduated with a master's degree in 1991. Since 2012, he has been a professor of fine arts at hKDM Freiburg; since 2018, he has served as a professor of fine arts at Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Freiburg. He is a member of the Association of German Artists, the Association of Artists of Baden-Württemberg, the Art Basel Association, and the Freiburg Art Association. He was the founder of the Freiburg Art Fair in 2020 and a founding member of the Freiburg Biennale in 2021. His works are collected by institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art inFreiburg and the Tyrol State government.
近期展览：
《WHO,WHERE,WHAT,WHEN》，3000 CH-Bern画廊，2023；
《文本》，布雷萨赫拉德布鲁嫩艺术圈，2023；
《Ben Hübsch，绘画》，Podium Art，Schramberg，2023；
《13》，弗里德里希斯堡布尔，2019；
《Andiamo》，纽伦堡Annette Oechsner 画廊，2018；
《Dwabifaga》，FAQ 画廊，CH-巴塞尔，2018；
《Djeziri-Bonn》，F- Paris画廊，2017；
《莱茵河上游概况》，杜尔巴赫当代艺术博物馆，2017；
《快乐在一起》，莱茵河畔威尔市艺术协会，2016 ；
《在一条线上》，纽伦堡 Annette Oechsner 画廊，2015；
……
关于学术主持
About The Academic Host
迪特尔·罗斯曼
Dieter Röschmann
1965年生于德国汉诺威，艺术评论家。现居德国弗赖堡。他是Artline Kunstarmin的编辑，于2001年共同创立了该杂志，该杂志由欧盟资助，是一个跨国界项目，旨在连接德国南部、法国和瑞士的当代艺术场景。自2005年以来，它已在网上和印刷出版。除了为目录和其他出版物撰写文本外，他还定期为各种德国和瑞士媒体撰写关于当代艺术的文章。自2023年起，他在弗赖堡大学教授艺术批评。
Born in Hanover in 1965, he is now an art critic in Freiburg. He is the editor of Artline Kunstarmin, a magazine he co-founded in 2001, funded by the European Union as a cross-border project to connect the contemporary art scenes of southern Germany, France and Switzerland. It has been published online and in print since 2005. In addition to writing texts for catalogues and other publications, he writes regularly on contemporary art for various German and Swiss media. Since 2023 he has taught art criticism at the University of Freiburg.
南京《2×二》中德艺术展观演指南
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