站台中国当代艺术机构即将于2024年6月21日呈现代洲个展《海的乌托邦》。此次展览是对代洲新阶段创作的总结与回溯，在精心挑选的作品中，包含2024年香港巴塞尔艺术展个人项目《黄金海岸》与2024年北京当代·艺术博览会个人项目《褶皱》的部分作品。本次展览特邀汪民安撰写评论，展览将持续至7月21日。
在代洲的新作中，孤独的女性形象总是显得格外突出，她仿佛被困于一个密闭的空间中：盘旋的楼梯上、栏杆前、或是画面的某个角落。她的背影默默无言，凝望着远方，心事重重，似乎在孤独中寻觅着某种解脱。然而，在某些瞬间，她与大海融为一体，摆脱了室内空间的束缚。她时而迎风眺望大海，时而慵懒地躺在海滩上沉思，时而被海水的旋涡包裹，时而与波浪嬉戏。
大海之于代洲的绘画，不仅是无边无际的自然景观，更是一片流动的非空间，让女性在其中找到自由与解放。她们在大海的怀抱中获得一种新的存在方式，一种既独立又充满联结的状态。大海成为她们心灵的伴侣，承载着她们的梦想与希望。大海与女性之间的关系不仅仅是简单的对抗和征服，而是相互生成、彼此交织。大海也不再只是自然的一部分，而是通过其自身的变化和解体来展示自身，与女性共同形成一个复杂而美丽的图景。
海的乌托邦
English Version
Utopia of the sea
In Dai Zhou's paintings, there is always a solitary woman. She appears trapped in an enclosed space: either caught on a spiraling staircase, leaning against a railing, or simply standing alone within the frame. She is always shown from behind, never facing the viewer. She gazes into the distance, burdened with silent thoughts, withdrawn and isolated. Her back embodies her solitude.
However, in other moments, she escapes this enclosed interior and merges with the sea. She connects with the ocean in various postures—sometimes facing the sea and gazing into the wind, sometimes lying on the beach in contemplative relaxation, sometimes enveloped by swirling waters, sometimes frolicking with the waves, and at times seeming to be engulfed by the sea, appearing and disappearing. The sea, as a boundless, fluid non-space, places her in a different state: she remains alone, yet seemingly not lonely.
Perhaps the sea is her companion in creation. Indeed, the sea is often personified as feminine. The sea and women are intimately connected, even mutually generative. As Hélène Cixous writes in "The Laugh of the Medusa": "Our seas are what we make of them, whether teeming with fish or not, whether clear or murky, red or black, high or low, narrow or wide, we are the sea, the sand, the coral, the seaweed, the tides, the swimmers, the children, the waves" ("The Laugh of the Medusa," 40). The sea’s playful joy, its subversive pleasure in transgressing order and norms, speaks to a female freedom. Luce Irigaray also remarked that the sea's fluidity, its boundary-destroying force, its rolling waves, tides, and unpredictable rhythms challenge the male-centric authority. The ocean’s movements symbolize the free breath and blood flow of womanhood.
In Dai Zhou's work, women and the sea fold into one another. Both are transformed. This is a sea of black, red, purple, and yellow, but never the typical blue. The sea is in a state of wild color transformation, representing the creation of the feminine—the sea does not present itself in natural hues but in lines, vortices, and intersecting bold colors. These lines, vortices, and color intersections make Dai Zhou's depiction one of a sea-fold or fold-sea.
Deleuze also touched upon the relationship between the sea and folds. After the publication of his book "The Fold", he received many letters, including one from a group of surfers who said that their activity was about creating folds. This is perhaps the most beautiful description of folds. The sea generates its own folds, and the clash between humans and the sea creates new folds—the folds produced by a surfboard slicing through water.
In Dai Zhou's paintings, the folds of the sea are generated by women. How do women create these folds in the sea? Firstly, we observe that men cannot generate folds in the sea; men tend to oppose and conquer the sea. Men and the sea have a binary opposition, just as land and sea are oppositional. If the sea is close to women, then men are akin to the land. Land always resists and confines the sea: "In our culture, reason has long belonged to solid ground, whether island or continent, with expansive lands stubbornly repelling the water, leaving it only the shores; whereas non-reason has belonged to water, or more precisely, to the vast, tumultuous, and ever-changing sea, leaving only faint traces and waves, whether stormy or calm. The sea is always a pathless route." (Foucault) This kind of sea belongs to women. Men, on the other hand, demonstrate their masculinity by conquering the sea: in Hemingway's novels, men muster a lifetime of experience to overcome and conquer the natural power of the sea; in Friedrich's paintings, men exhibit a proud disdain for the raging sea; in Turner's works, men endlessly battle the waves, ultimately calming the restless sea through their avatars, ships. In Charles Vickery's paintings, the rolling waves are merely a playful yet balanced game. This is a game between the sea and the sailboats, the sea and the rocks, the sea and the land. The sea in Vickery's work is dynamic, but not as violently engulfing as in Turner's; it is a recurring play of waves colliding with rocks, boats, and shores.
This is the sea through the eyes of men. The sea, as violent irrationality and as a metaphor for the feminine, is tamed. Once tamed, the sea becomes an ambiance—this is Monet's sea. Here, the sea seems lost, bewildered, drowsy, cloaked in mist at a moment, awaiting the awakening by time and the sun. The sea now does not display its power but its mood, exuding a gentle glow, surrounded and complemented by the sky, sun, breeze, and air. These are tranquil yet extraordinary moments of the sea.
Dai Zhou's depiction is different from all these. He paints a woman's sea. Such a sea is not an object to be conquered; it displays itself. How does it exhibit itself? Through its folds and its disintegration—the water perpetually collapsing and reforming into vortices. Each vortex generates smaller vortices, infinitely so, as if the entire universe were "a pond of matter with various waves and ripples". This is the sea's self-universe. In Dai Zhou's paintings, the sea has no sky, no sun, no turbulence; there are no crowds, objects, or noise. This is the sea's interiority. Its disintegration stems from both cosmic vitality and its internal forces.
The vast sea is composed of the smallest, windowless, and doorless Leibnizian monads. For Leibniz, matter constituted by monads can move and disintegrate because it is intrinsically both fluid and elastic. The fluidity of matter is its mutability—because it flows, it can change. In contrast, elasticity implies the hardness of matter itself—only solid hardness can possess elasticity. This solid hardness gives matter a tight structure. No matter how tiny, no matter how much it is in a state of flow and disintegration, matter still has a stable side, a strong adhesive structure. In other words, matter is both mutable and stable, both flowing and solid. These minute, indivisible, and indestructible parts form a Leibnizian "fold." Thus, the flow and disintegration of matter can be endless, but it ultimately cannot decompose into mere points; it can only break down into infinitely small folds. In this sense, water composed of monads also has a stable side, its own structure. Even if it is not confined by a seawall, it cannot dissolve infinitely, cannot split endlessly, cannot fragment into mere points.
This is why it can fold—not only does it fold upon itself, displaying itself through self-folding, but it also folds together with women. Their folding is their mutual becoming. Dai Zhou depicts the mutual becoming and folding of women and the sea. How do the sea and women fold? There is a way of folding that encompasses life and death: a woman rising vertically from the water symbolizes the birth of Venus, while a woman lying horizontally and sleeping in the water signifies Ophelia's death. As Marguerite Duras said, in the depths of the sea, there is both the certainty of life and the spectacle of death. Life is embodied in the goddess Venus's light step on the waves, while death resembles a mermaid floating on the water. Ophelia's death, as Shakespeare described, is marked by "her clothes spread wide, And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up." The origin of life and the destination of death are both in water. Entering the water and folding with the sea can mean both death and rebirth for women—not just the life-death dichotomy but the death of all that was old and the rebirth of new possibilities; it simultaneously opens and releases, while also closing and burying mercilessly.
The folding of women/the sea in Dai Zhou's paintings is of another kind. It is not the folding of life and death, but the folding of body and water, and consequently, the folding of reality and fantasy. It is real because its folds are tangible, occupied by countless vortices. It is fantastical because these folds, while vortex-shaped, also carry a surreal hue—a dreamlike color. For women, the sea has never been a wild, alien force to be conquered; instead, it is a utopian dreamscape to be folded and generated together. Women in the sea, as Bataille suggested, are like drops of water merging into the ocean, much like an accident merging into fluidity, a dream merging into a utopia.
Wang Min’an
关于艺术家
About Artist
代洲，1991年生于辽宁沈阳，目前工作生活于上海。代洲的绘画跟随着生活中的每一次变化与体验悄然发生着转变，在平面色块的堆叠和褶皱中构造出纵深的、可感知的心理空间，投射着代洲对日常生活与异乡的关注。这种关注已成为自我变化的契机，那种对于未知的拥抱、直面与接纳也在画面中渐渐浮现。代洲的重要个人项目包括: “海的乌托邦”，站台中国，北京(2024)；“褶皱”，北京当代 · 艺术博览会，北京(2024)；“黄金海岸”，巴塞尔艺术展香港展会，香港(2024)；“自然剧场 II”，站台中国，北京(2023)；“自然剧场”，站台中国，北京 (2022)。
Dai Zhou, born in 1991 in Shenyang, Liaoning, currently lives and works in Shanghai. Dai Zhou's painting subtly transforms with each change and experience in life, constructing a profound and perceptible psychological space through the stacking and folding of flat color blocks. This reflects Dai Zhou's attention to everyday life and foreign lands, an attention that has become a catalyst for self-transformation. The embrace, confrontation, and acceptance of the unknown gradually emerge in his works. Dai Zhou's significant solo projects include: "Utopia of the Sea", Platform China, Beijing (2024); "The Fold", Beijing Dangdai Art Fair, Beijing (2024); "Gold Coast", Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong (2024); "Nature Theatre II", Platform China, Beijing (2023); "Nature Theatre", Platform China, Beijing (2022).
