亨利・柯桥德
Henry Curchod
Opening: Friday, November 8, 4–7 PM
About the Exhibition
“鱼之乐”展现了柯桥德不断变化发展的绘画语汇，以粗粝而摇摆的笔触与油画棒浓郁稠密的色彩相融合，使整个叙事画面既富有生命力，又充满亲和感。他的作品将绘画中的线绘和涂绘巧妙结合，凸显绘画内含的即时性和通俗化的表现力。伴随着灵动的绘画技法，这些讨论人类与非人类题材的画作体现出艺术家对具象表现的持续钻研和兴趣。
亨利・柯桥德
听海，2024
布面油画棒、水粉、炭笔
Henry Curchod
Orders from the sea, 2024
Oil stick, gouache, and charcoal on linen
170 × 100 cm (66 7/8 × 39 3/8 in)
本次展览中，柯桥德细致地将他近期在帕克西岛海边的生活和他在悉尼海岸的童年回忆相连，在那里他了解了海上生活的方方面面：捕鱼、行船、游泳、冲浪，并且第一次将大海视为灵感之源 。展览标题糅合了“水”与“乐”，隐喻海洋生活的双重性：游戏与劳作并存，既充满坚韧勇敢的英雄主义精神，又时时面临着一场场风雨飘摇的“豪赌”，最终的结果不成功、便成仁，若不能迎来胜利的荣耀，便会遭遇惨烈的海难。正如J.M.W透纳在蒸汽时代通过海景画所传递出的感官体验，柯桥德的绘画生动地展现了在当代视角下，大海依然“多变”、“狂野”、“无常”。
在艺术家表现海难的作品《慈爱》（2024）中，海水的形而上特性融汇成统一的视觉表达，汹涌的白浪翻腾着海面，威胁着人类和非人类的一切，令渺小的人类陷入狂乱。柯桥德以笔触迅捷的纹理线条凸显骇浪惊涛；同时以阴沉的绿和深邃的蓝形成明暗对比，表现人们挣扎求生的绝望。在《帕克西岛的热情》（2024）等其他作品中，柯桥德笔下的大海则像是一名冷漠的见证者，冷眼旁观两艘拖网渔船撞向黑色岩石的惨剧。大海目睹人们因恐惧而咒骂，疯狂地抓向船只残骸，断裂的木条、残破的木板与遇难人员的尸体一同漂浮在海面上。这种强烈而彻底的毁灭感，正呼应了约瑟夫・康拉德（Joseph Conrad）的名言：“大海从未善待人类”。
亨利・柯桥德
慈爱，2024
布面油画棒、水粉、炭笔
Henry Curchod
Mercy, 2024
Oil stick, gouache, and charcoal on linen
200 × 230 cm (78 3/4 × 90 1/2 in)
但柯桥德也提醒人们，大海有其优雅与仁慈的一面。艺术家从人类中心视角出发，展示了海上的生活：海员的皮肤被落日余晖映红，孩子们在海边嬉戏，渔民捧着新鲜渔获，这些画面都洋溢着某种奇特的浪漫感。有时，这些叙事线索中穿插着更深沉、古老的弦外之音。在《咸蛋风暴》（2024）中，被视为催情美食的牡蛎肉化作一颗颗光滑粉嫩的婴儿头颅，使得食用牡蛎显得格外扭曲、令人不适。而《捡到宝》（2024）中，渔夫因对一个水生形象的痴迷，最终奔向大海。
艺术家对神话形象的当代描绘游离于二元身份模式之间：它既是女人、情人，又是一条鱼。每件作品中对海妖的表现形态各不相同，但都旨在颠覆我们对“人类”的理解。有时，这些海妖几乎完全是鱼的形象，如《帕克西岛的激情》（2024）中带有人类后臀的海豹；有时，它们又化身为拜占庭风格的海妖，就如作品《妈妈不在乎》（2024）中孩子们正在奋力抢救的一只尾巴长着双足的不明生物。柯桥德将海妖作为熟稔与未知二元对立之象征，更是暗示了自身在海上人群中格格不入的感受。
亨利・柯桥德
雾中的讨海人，2024
布面油画棒、水粉、炭笔
Henry Curchod
Men in the mist, 2024
Oil stick, gouache, and charcoal on linen
200 × 170 cm (78 3/4 × 66 7/8 in)
海洋的不可知性不仅在于它的广阔，还在于它的深邃。展览的最后，艺术家通过描绘水下世界的寓言完成了这场海洋之旅。作品《水世界》（2024）和《再会》（2024）中，存活于深海处的生物与非生物静静地躺在它们的栖息之地，远离现代世界的喧嚣，成为时间的遗迹。通过他的海洋叙事，柯桥德鼓励我们超越身体的感知，像帕克西岛民一样，珍惜与大自然共存的神话、美与情感纽带。
亨利・柯桥德
童窑网事，2024
布面油画棒、水粉、炭笔
Henry Curchod
Kid-in-a-net-napping, 2024
Oil stick, gouache, and charcoal on linen
70 × 100 cm (27 1/2 × 39 3/8 in)
Waterplay surveys the evolving vocabulary of his drawing practice, as raw, teetering gestural markings merge with the vibrant chromatic density of oil sticks – both vigorously and intimately. Employing an idiosyncratic fusion of drawing and painting, Curchod fundamentally underscores the immediacy and expressive vernacular that drawing affords. In tandem with the dynamism of his technique, the new works on view, characterized by crowds of humans and non-humans alike, demonstrate his sustained affinity for figuration.
亨利・柯桥德
我们的身心终将坠入空茫，2024
布面油画棒、水粉、炭笔
Henry Curchod
We fall, along with our voices, into the abyss, 2024
Oil stick, gouache, and charcoal on linen
200 × 200 cm (78 3/4 × 78 3/4 in)
In the exhibition, Curchod carefully binds his recent experience by the sea of Paxos to memories of his coastal upbringing in Sydney where he was ensconced in every aspect of aquatic life – fishing, boating, swimming, surfing; and first gravitated toward the sea as a source of inspiration. The title, a portmanteau of water and play, considers the metaphorical duality of maritime life, fuelled by notions of play and toil, the heroic spirit of daring and endurance, and the precarious gamble that ends in either victorious glory or violent death at sea. Much like J.M.W.Turner’s work conveying sensory experiences through seascapes during the steam age, Curchod’s paintings offer a compelling portrait of how the sea remains “changeful”, “wild” and “recklessly incoherent” in our contemporary era.
The metaphysical aspects of water coalesce into one unified vision in his cataclysmic work Mercy (2024), where an enraged sea crashes its white, pyramidal waves upon the masses–humans and non-humans–in menacing multitudes, setting the paltry crowd to act in frenzy. Curchod accentuates the sea’s muscular volatility with swift texturing lines, while simultaneously expressing the men’s desperation for survival in a chiaroscuro interplay of somber greens and deep blues. In other cases, such as Paxos Passion (2024), Curchod alludes to the sea as a witness, though a cold and indifferent one to the tragic collision of two trawlers into the black rocks. It observes the men cursing in fear, hurling frantically to the remnants of their boats as splintered planks and smashed wood drift amongst the dead. An intense and total loss of being that echoes the words of Joseph Conrad, “the sea has never been friendly to men”.
But Curchod also reminds us that the sea has its grace, and benevolence. Harkening to an anthropocentric perspective, the artist collects his gaze onto the seaward way of life: the seafarer’s skin flushed by the searing hues of sunset, children playing at the water’s edge, and fishermen cradling their catches in a bizarrely romantic way. At times, these narrative threads are woven with darker, ancient undertones. In Violent, fertile, salty (2024), the oyster’s aphrodisiac content is shaped as a baby’s smooth pinkish head, which makes its consumption uncomfortably twisted. Meanwhile, the fisherman’s infatuation with an aquatic figure in Surprise access (2024) leads to his demise at sea.
Here, Curchod’s contemporary vision of the mythical figure lies in a liminal realm: a woman, a lover and simultaneously a fish. His representations of sirens vary between works, always aiming to destabilize our understanding of what it means to be human. At times these mermaids are almost entirely piscine, depicted as a seal with a human posterior such as in Paxos passion (2024), and at other times as in Mum doesn’t care (2024), we see an atypical Byzantine-era siren, with feet emerging from the tail, as children work to keep them aqueous. As a dichotomy between the familiar and the unknown, the siren hints at the artist’s own sense of out-of-placeness amid the men at sea.
亨利・柯桥德
水世界，2024
布面油画棒、水粉、炭笔
Henry Curchod
Alien 2024
Oil stick, gouache, and charcoal on linen
70 × 100 cm (27 1/2 × 39 3/8 in)
The unknowability of the sea goes not only beyond its vastness, but also into its depth. Concluding the maritime journey of his show, the artist delves into parables of the underwater world. In this silent depth, reprieved from the madness of the modern world, animate and inanimate marine life forms in Alien (2024) and Goodbye again (2024) lie inert in their final resting place, abandoned to the test of time. Through his watery visions, Curchod prompts us to expand on our bodily knowing and to cherish, as the people of Paxos have, the myth, beauty and bond with nature.
关于艺术家
Curchod’s solo exhibitions include: OH FORTUNA!, CLEARING, New York, 2024; Safe Spaces, Gallery Vacancy at Paris Internationale, 2023; Hugging a tree is like kissing a dog, Shoot the Lobster, New York, 2023; Trouble on the Event Horizon, MAMOTH, London, 2023; Rice is god’s dandruff, Chauffeur, Sydney, 2022; Set Your Friends Free, MAMOTH, London, 2021; Sharing the Sky, Sumer Gallery, Tauranga, 2021; Inside Head, Outside Head, Martin Browne Gallery, Paddington, 2021. Recent group exhibitions include: X Collection 202: Portrait of a Man, X Museum, Beijing, 2024; Glad Rags, Jan Kaps, Cologne, 2024; Vacation II, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, 2022; In Between, Spurs Gallery, Beijing, 2022; Distance is Comfort, Chauffeur, Sydney, 2022; Of Foxes and Ghosts, MAMOTH, London, 2022. He was the recipient of the R&F Residency, New York, 2023; the PPP/Oostmeijer Residency, Amsterdam, 2023; and finalist for the Ramsay Art Prize, 2023; the Sulman Prize, 2023; and the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, 2021.
更多关于艺术家
More about the artist
周二–周六
Tuesday to Saturday | 10:00–18:00
200021 上海市黄浦区云南南路261号6楼
6F, No.261 S. Yunnan Rd., Shanghai 200021
+86-(0)21-62411239
info@galleryvacancy.com
www.galleryvacancy.com
