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“ Misting the Hillsides ”
丘 陇 软 雾
June 29 - August 18, 2024地址｜Address
中国上海莫干山路50号6号楼105
Rm 105, Bldg 6, 50 Mo Gan Shan Rd, Shanghai
文 / 任越
麦海士·辛格以冷峻而含情的目光和笔触“扫描”外部与内心的多重自然。在冷色调的统摄下，海浪上的孤筏、峭壁间的明月、夜窗外的石碑与云层，蕴有古典与哲思意涵的自然风物都是他的常见表现对象。与之形成有趣的、或也是恰如其分的对照，王玮珏以羊毛毡为主导材料的平面作品乍看之下明艳跳脱，橙粉色主色调充满了欢快的波普气息，而一经细察，难以时时示人的感性即流露出来。
“丘陇软雾”在字义和展览呈现的维度上试图挖掘麦海士·辛格与王玮珏作品中的互文面向。它首先表现为展示与隐藏的关系：我们知道一种普遍的美学原则，这在中国古典诗歌中曾被精炼地表达为“山色有无中”（王维《汉江临泛》）。“有”的部分当然是山体本身，也包括观者经由山的形态、纹理、色泽而得到的感官体验；而让这种审美体验达到圆满的并不是、或者并不仅仅是山的存在，而是一种注意力的转换，即“从有到无”，或“（山色）往返于有无之间”。从普遍的审美经验出发，“无”的部分几乎顺理成章地对应了遮挡山体的雾气。
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"丘陇软雾" 展览现场 Installation ViewⓒBROWNIE Project
此次展览中，麦海士·辛格延续对自然、冥想与神秘主义的兴趣，带来两件新作《解耦》(2024）及《远方,于内》（2024），前者似截取了一帧海湾景象，暮霭、波浪与滩涂上的无名纪念物构成令人玩味的景深关系。后者则通过画面边缘层叠的圆角矩形来构造从舷窗或洞穴向外凝望风景的视角，画面主体则被大片云朵和同样不具名的纪念碑占据。这是雾气隐于山中的时刻，山丘、海洋、树木等具体的物相，在麦海士·辛格的绘画中指向更隐秘却也更普遍的心灵体验，即对灵性与层次丰富的能量的感知。如果说感官与其对象的互动仅是表面，那么艺术家通过画作展现的则是自然景象背后的内在力量与平衡——“心灵如无风处的灯火般坚定不移”，满含超验与喜悦。
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麦海士·辛格 Mahesh Singh
远方,于内 Far Away, Within, 2024
布面丙烯Acrylic on canvas
170 x 190 cm
某种程度上王玮珏则反其道而行之。她首先展现的并非场景，而是边缘模糊的、流动的、处于拉扯之中的情感，这既与她长期使用的创作材料——羊毛毡的特质相关，也更在策略维度上表现为女性在制度性压力下生存与思索、并由此锻造出的独特声调。艺术家将普通人对欲望的观看与想象转译为柔性材料所经受的无数次针刺（既隐喻重复和微细的暴力，也在大尺幅作品的事实前提下表征艺术家的密集劳动），让日常一贯被压抑的部分变为我们眼前所见：显露性征的局部身体、神情介于痛苦和狂喜之间的面孔、家居织物的纹理——它们的力量潜于唯美之下。如果企图以技法或形象分析入手，欲望与暴力等等事实上格外复杂强烈的情感必然会对之加以阻隔。浓雾笼罩了群山。
一些于智识中存在的事物，常在视觉上被抹去；相反，视觉上明确浅显之物，可能仅仅是启动认知的一掷虚锚。可以说，除了作品主要色调的互补（蓝与红）、水彩/丙烯绘画与毛毡展现出的略带颗粒与刺点的相似平面肌理、主客“身体”在其各自创作中的角色之外，麦海士·辛格与王玮珏作品中的“丘壑”与“雾气”，恰好在它们互为参照的展露方式上构成隐与显、表与里、刚与柔的拼嵌，这让内在于二人作品的上述辩证格式构成向外的又一循环，也让观众对其作品的比较和细读形成了双向的注意力转换路径。这同样是一种青涩的英雄主义：或许尖锐的个人感觉，变成了可被膜拜的、有着温柔面貌的对象。但艺术家的工作仅仅是持续作出转译私密经验的尝试，“分享”的动作则如雾气一般温软——顺着他们各自如山丘伏延的美学底色，麦海士·辛格与王玮珏的作品将踏入其中的人包裹起来。
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王玮珏 Wang Weijue
窗帘 Curtain, 2024
针毡羊毛毡 Needle felted wool
40 x 30 cm
Text / Ren Yue
Mahesh Singh “scans” the external and internal multifaceted nature with a cold yet affectionate gaze and brushwork. Under the dominion of a cool color palette, the solitary raft on the waves, the bright moon between the cliffs, and the stone monuments and clouds outside the night window, all imbued with classical and philosophical implications, are common subjects of his representation. In an interesting and perhaps fitting contrast, Wang Weijue's flat works, predominantly made from wool felt, appear bright and lively at first glance, with an orange-pink dominant hue full of a joyful pop atmosphere. Upon closer examination, a sensibility that is not always on display emerges.
“Misting the Hillsides" attempts to delve into the intertextual aspects of the works of Mahesh Singh and Wang Weijue in terms of semantic meaning and the dimensions of the exhibition presentation. It first manifests as the relationship between display and concealment: We are familiar with a universal aesthetic principle that has been eloquently expressed in Chinese classical poetry as "the mountain's hue is in the midst of being and not being" (from Wang Wei's "Gazing at the Han River"). The "being" part is, of course, the mountain itself, encompassing the sensory experience the viewer gains through the mountain's form, texture, and color; yet, what brings this aesthetic experience to fulfillment is not, or not solely, the existence of the mountain, but a shift in attention, that is, "from being to non-being," or "(the mountain's hue) oscillating between being and non-being." Drawing from common aesthetic experiences, the "non-being" part almost naturally corresponds to the mist that obscures the mountain.
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麦海士·辛格 Mahesh Singh
解耦 Decoupling, 2024
亚麻布面丙烯 Acrylic on linen
210 x 170 cm
In this exhibition, Mahesh Singh continues his interest in nature, meditation, and mysticism, presenting two new works: Decoupling (2024) and Faraway, Within (2024). The former appears to capture a frame of a bay scene, where the twilight, waves, and the nameless memorials on the tidal flats form an intriguing depth of field. The latter constructs a perspective of gazing out at the landscape from a porthole or cave through the overlapping rounded rectangles at the edges of the frame, with the main body of the picture occupied by large clouds and similarly nameless monuments. This is the moment when the mist hides in the mountains, and concrete objects such as hills, oceans, and trees point to a more secretive yet universal spiritual experience in Mahesh Singh's paintings, that is, the perception of spirituality and richly layered energy. If the interaction between the senses and their objects is only superficial, then what the artist reveals through his paintings is the inner power and balance behind the natural scenery—"the mind is as steadfast as a lamp without wind," full of transcendence and joy.To a certain extent, Wang Weijue takes the opposite approach. What she first presents is not the scene itself, but the emotions that are blurred at the edges, fluid, and in a state of tension, which is related to the characteristics of the material she has long used for creation—wool felt, and also represents, on a strategic level, the unique tone forged by women's survival and contemplation under institutional pressure. The artist translates the ordinary people's observation and imagination of desire into the countless needle pricks endured by the flexible material (which both metaphorically implies repetition and subtle violence, and also, under the premise of large-scale works, signifies the artist's intensive labor), allowing the parts of everyday life that are usually suppressed to manifest as what we see before us: partial bodies with exposed sexual characteristics, faces with expressions between pain and ecstasy, and the texture of home fabrics—their power lies beneath the aesthetic surface. If one attempts to start with technical or image analysis, emotions that are in fact extremely complex and intense, such as desire and violence, will inevitably obstruct it. A thick fog envelops the mountains.// Slide to view more //
王玮珏 Wang Weijue
她,她的 She and Her, 2023
针毡羊毛毡 Needle felted wool
120 x 240 cm
Some things that exist in knowledge are often erased visually; on the contrary, visually clear and simple things may just be a throwaway anchor to initiate cognition. It can be said that in addition to the complementary main colors of the works (blue and red), the slightly granular and punctate similar flat textures shown by watercolor/acrylic painting and felt, and the roles of the "bodies" of the subject and object in their respective creations, the "hills and valleys" and "mist" in the works of Mahesh Singh and Wang Weijue just constitute a collage of hidden and revealed, surface and depth, rigid and soft in their mutually referential display methods. This allows the aforementioned dialectical format inherent in the two artists' works to form another cycle outward, and also forms a two-way attention shift path for the audience's comparison and close reading of their works. This is also a kind of green heroism: perhaps the sharp personal feelings have become an object of worship with a gentle face. But the artists' works are just to continue to try to translate private experiences, and the "sharing" action is as soft as mist - following their respective aesthetic backgrounds like undulating hills, the works of Mahesh Singh and Wang Weijue will envelop the people who step into it.
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王玮珏 Wang Weijue
描述视频 II Described Video II, 2024
针毡羊毛毡 Needle felted wool
60 x 85 cm
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麦海士·辛格
Mahesh Singh
麦海士·辛格(b.1985，波卡罗，贾坎德邦)出生成长于印度，他本科与硕士毕业于新德里的国 立伊斯兰大学，同时获得了中国美术学院当代艺术专业的油画国际硕士 (IMFA) 学位，目前为上海大学博士候选人。受东方宗教和哲学中转变、超越和神秘的观念影响，他的绘画呈现出内观的体验，并带有一种真空般的静止和永恒。他倾向于使用或明晰或晦涩的元素来构建画面，用一种充满暗示的方式引人深思，而画面主体通常为某种景观，来充当意识、梦和记忆的载体。从自身身心灵的经验出发，麦海士试图让他的绘画可以在不同的维度被审视与解读。空间与身体，视觉与心理，艺术家与画布，这些链接与对话引领观者以直觉进入超越之旅，引发片刻的沉思与冥想。
Mahesh Singh (b. 1985, Bokaro, Jharkhand) was born and brought up in India. He got his BFA and MA degree from Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi and holds an IMFA from the China Academy of Art, specializing in oil and acrylic painting. Influenced by the notions of transformation, transcendence and mystery in eastern religions and philosophies, Singh’s paintings present an inner experience with a sense of vacuum of stillness and eternity. He tends to use distinct or obscure elements to build a picture, which is full of indications to arouse people’s deep thinking. Landscape usually serves as his subject, the carrier of consciousness, dreams and memories. Drawing from his psycho-somatic or psycho-spiritual experiences, Mahesh tries to suffuse his work with an awareness that allows the work to be contemplated and considered on multiple levels. Space and body, vision and psychology, artist and canvas, these connections and dialogues lead the audience to enter the journey of transcendence with intuition and trigger a moment of meditation.
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王玮珏
Wang Weijue
王玮珏(b.1993，中国南京) 2015年获美国圣约翰文理学院学士学位，2017年获美国旧金山艺术学院纯艺术专业硕士学位。王玮珏的作品展现的并非场景，而是边缘模糊的、流动的、处于拉扯之中的情感，这既与她长期使用的创作材料——羊毛毡的特质相关，也更在策略维度上表现为女性在制度性压力下生存与思索、并由此锻造出的独特声调。艺术家将普通人对欲望的观看与想象转译为柔性材料所经受的无数次针刺（既隐喻重复和微细的暴力，也在大尺幅作品的事实前提下表征艺术家的密集劳动），让日常一贯被压抑的部分变为我们眼前所见：显露性征的局部身体、神情介于痛苦和狂喜之间的面孔、家居织物的纹理——它们的力量潜于唯美之下。Wang Weijue (b.1993, Nanjing, China) obtained a Bachelor’s degree from St. John’s College of Liberal Arts in the United States in 2015, and a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in the United States in 2017. Wang Weijue presents not the scene itself, but the emotions that are blurred at the edges, fluid, and in a state of tension, which is related to the characteristics of the material she has long used for creation—wool felt, and also represents, on a strategic level, the unique tone forged by women’s survival and contemplation under institutional pressure. The artist translates the ordinary people’s observation and imagination of desire into the countless needle pricks endured by the flexible material (which both metaphorically implies repetition and subtle violence, and also, under the premise of large-scale works, signifies the artist’s intensive labor), allowing the parts of everyday life that are usually suppressed to manifest as what we see before us: partial bodies with exposed sexual characteristics, faces with expressions between pain and ecstasy, and the texture of home fabrics—their power lies beneath the aesthetic surface.
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