Cheng Ran_Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood

程然 CHENG RAN 热血、温血、冷血 HOT BLOOD, WARM BLOOD, COLD BLOOD 《热血、温血、冷血》2011, 6版, 三屏幕HD录像, 彩色 / 有声, 8’08”, 同步循环 “Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood” 2011, edition of 6, 3-channel HD video, color / sound, 8’08”, loop

奇观妙景的新世界 —— 程然的“热血、温血、冷血” 文：丁达韦

“没有哪位哲学家能像犬马一般深刻地理解我们，”赫尔曼· 梅尔维尔在小说《雷德伯恩：初游记》（1849年）中写道， “它们一眼就能把我们看透。” 程然在麦勒画廊的展览“热血、温血、冷血”呈现给我们的正是这种“透视”的微妙可能性。这是一种用眼睛感知隐藏在所见背后的欲望，既迷惑我 们又持久存在着。 在学生时代，沉浸在达 · 芬奇绘画世界中的程然（1981年生于中国内蒙古，生活和工作在中国杭州）就爱上了绘画。从杭州的中国美术学院毕业后，他 为艺术家杨福东做了5年的助手，后者的五部分黑白影像作品《竹林七贤》享誉艺术界，程然也在这部电影中扮演了角色。作为艺术家，他自己的录像 作品多为具有影院效果的多屏录像装置，创作中不时地以西方经典文本为出发点。这些作品并非乖顺地引用，而是通过与引用文本进行诗意的对话而 确立自身。他参照过乔叟的《坎特伯雷故事集》（完成于2008年的作品《成吉思汗去远征》，采用早期飞机飞行试验的图像暗示曾经的探险和远征年 代）、 《少年维特的烦恼》（与歌德小说同名的四声道录像作品，完成于2009年，作品中各式反光的迪斯科球和旋转的彩灯悬挂于大支架上，照亮与此 形成反差的一片黑暗茂盛的森林）；还有僵尸形象的哈姆雷特， “生存还是毁灭”的独白被用于其作品《沃特威尔茨－霍》（2011年）的画外音。 程然还擅长用令人意想不到的方式处理引用的文本并进行视觉转换，这一点可由他对蒙古乌兰巴托附近“Hollywood”标志的重新塑造得到证明 （《冻土幽灵》，2010年）。而这种方式与艺术家对司空见惯之物的执迷分不开，巴黎地铁中碰巧听到的一首歌（《物各有时》，2011年），和一只窗外 飞进的蝴蝶（《圣马怒斯蝴蝶》，2010 年）都可能激发他创作的灵感。这位赋有天分且多产的艺术家，凭借着大量的研究和灵敏的直觉，不断探索新 图像的创作方式。 三屏录像装置《热血、温血、冷血》（2011年）是程然此次在麦勒画廊北京部个展的主要作品，他用马的禀性投射我们对于窥见神秘之物的渴望。虽 然马赋予了艺术家丰富的视觉词汇，然而动物本身并非艺术家的关注所在。程然所关注的是“禀性”这一概念所引发出的相关问题。 “禀性”描述的是 对于某种性情的感知，看不到摸不着，也无法量化。它与不同的物种有关，艺术家用了三种范畴对之定义，以此作为展览的题目。 “这些不同的性情无 法通过马的体温或者血温进行衡量，”艺术家在创作之初的一份文字描述中写道， “它们安然不动，不可捉摸，肉眼也看不到，但我们仍然能以某种方 式感受到热与冷的区别。”1 热血的马尤其让人联想到毛皮光泽发亮的阿拉伯骏马，在人们的想象中，它勇敢而有灵性，但在作品的“热血”部分却被刻画得温顺驯良。作品里金 色马的形象令人联想起费尔干纳品种，现今早已绝迹，只有在唐朝陶瓷中还能发现它的身影。这些马的形象与音乐表演的声音交错在一起 ：一个男 子头绑马的头颅裂骨，有节奏地敲击着低音提琴。演奏者演奏的歌曲和穿戴无不象征了那种驱赶着马的蓬勃而未知的力量，也许艺术家在尝试呈现 那决定着马儿性情的不可见的内在节奏（有意思的是，如果说这里呈现的是马的内在世界，程然却选择了强调听觉维度）。在“温血”部分，一只鹰出 现在干草遍地的马厩中，鹰的无拘无束与马的步步受制形成反差，而一个穿着骑马服的人则正在装鞍勒马。 “冷血”部分最具戏剧性，四匹马沿着宽 阔河流的浅水区隆重地奔驰而来，骑马者身穿一模一样的浅色马裤、深色上衣、马靴，以及头盔。虽然“冷血”这个词通常会用在那些身材庞大、鸣鸣 自得的高头大马身上，而这个录像中的马看起来更适合盛装舞步或者沙场交锋。与人们的预期相悖，通常冷酷迅猛的马儿极易慌乱，最终带来灾难 性的后果。三个录像都流露出一种冷漠的控制感，用跟拍、全景、广角以及细节构图等方式调动和塑造电影的姿态。总体来看，作品塑造了迷人的细 节，揭示出马的禀性是多变而不可知的，无论我们怎么对其进行分类。 从提问方式和选择的主题来看，程然的录像装置深深植根于影像的历史。一百多年前，有人就用马和镜头作为工具探讨视觉的局限性，实验的结果将 人类带进了“电影”的殿堂。他就是爱德华德 · 麦布里奇，他的一组完成于1872年的高速摄影作品呈现了一匹名为“Occident”的快马飞奔的图像，展 现了镜头的机械眼如何揭示人类视觉无法探知的真实。麦布里奇照片呈现的奔跑中马匹的剪影在程然这部作品的“冷血”部分得到呼应，这组照片 还曾帮助委任麦布里奇拍摄的铁路家族后裔李兰· 斯坦福赢得赌注，赌的是马奔跑时四腿是否会同时离地（事实证明马的四腿会在奔跑中同时离地， 不可思议地载着马沉重的身躯向前滑行）。有了斯坦福的赞助，麦布里奇研制了新的拍摄设备。他期待图像动起来的强烈愿望—— 任由其意愿停止 和启动时间，在这一过程中揭示时间的奥密——最终引导他发明了非凡的放映机的前身。麦布里奇飞奔的快马最终飞了起来，步伐飘逸直如空降一 般。依据1883年伦敦皇家协会的描述， 《摄影新闻》作出了如下的报道： “在麦布里奇先生用马的不同步态带给观众离奇而（似乎）不可能的视觉体 验后，他继而天才般地将这些图像串联起来在屏幕上展示，这些照片飞驰得如此之快，观众们眼前真的出现了或疾奔或小跑的马儿。摄影果真打开了 一个奇观妙景的新世界，这并不缺乏惊喜，因为摄影本身就是真理。”2

观众感到惊奇，但并不是所有观众都为之兴奋。正如程然的录像所展示的一样，麦布里奇的马是将观众引向了比感官更为可靠的东西，还是一片假象 的幻景，这些都是值得争论的问题。这幻景受最近的技术魔力之惠，正肆意地铺张出颤动的幻觉阴影。 “艺术家是诚实的，撒谎的是摄影自己，因为 在现实中时间不会停止。”雕塑家罗丹如此写道。3 但谎言揭示的东西不正是它所掩饰的真相吗？ 我们所见与所寻求的东西的断裂被《热血、温血、冷血》以另一种方式再次突出。 “冷血”部分达到高潮时，马背上的骑士们驱马列队走在一片银色 的河滨上，但这幅迷人的图像继而让位于一系列的叠化画面，我们看到骑马者跌落在地，与马匹纠缠在一起。色彩渐渐淡去，这个暴力场景通过数字 处理不断被放慢并重复着，这样的累积和放大加强了令人不安的张力。 程然作品中出现的这些图像可以追溯到达 · 芬奇创作的一幅已经遗失的名作——壁画《安吉里之战》。达 · 芬奇1505年起开始在佛罗伦萨的五百人 大厅创作这幅作品，程然正是从中得到了灵感。鲁本斯后来根据这幅画的复制品创作了另一幅油画，让达 · 芬奇创造的形象保存于世；在达 · 芬奇那些 仍然保存的有关大型战争场景的初稿中也可以发现这些形象：四匹马后腿站起，以令人恐惧的优雅踩踏着、冲撞着，背上的战士挥舞刀剑，在剧烈起 伏的颠簸中砍向敌人。 这幅画于十六世纪中叶神秘地消失于人们视野中，这引发了无数人竭力地找寻。最近的报道显示，这幅画可能就藏于瓦萨里在佛罗伦萨维琪奥王宫 创作的一幅壁画后面。1563年，瓦萨里受到委托，在达 · 芬奇这幅画所在的同一地点再次创作一幅壁画，在他开始创作自己的壁画之前，他在达 · 芬奇 的原作前建了一道隔墙。4 这幅壁画现在正如一个庞大而绘制精巧的面具，阻止我们看到它遮蔽的未知，那副“真实”面孔。尽管如此，人们仍然面临 着一个难题：如何在不毁坏瓦萨里作品的前提下找到《安吉里之战》？这种要看到表象之外的事物的好奇心何时将变得具有破坏力？ 除了录像装置作品，此次在麦勒画廊展出的还有四幅艺术家精心挑选的微喷作品（图像来源于录像作品）。这些作品将《热血、温血、冷血》中的运 动转化成一系列静止的瞬间，观众得以认真的观察和体悟。麦布里奇呈现的在空中奔跑的马儿的图像揭示出迄今为止都仍待探讨的有关运动的涵 义；同样，程然通过从他的录像作品中提取的静止瞬间表达着相似的主题。这些数码作品既凸显了艺术家对构图出于本能的敏锐，又展示了镶嵌在 录像作品中运动的图像相互作用的诗意细节——在“热血”部分，艺术家突出了马儿鼓胀、忧愁的眼睛；在“冷血”部分，我们得以看到马儿狂踢时的 动感剪影及四溅的水花。观众细细审视图像的过程仿佛是在找寻线索。这些静止的美并非一下满足我们的好奇心，而是推动着我们循序渐进地进入 艺术家的世界。 瓦萨里在壁画的表面写下了一条短小的信息： “找吧，你总会找到的（cerce trova）。”这一措辞恰好可以用在程然的展览上：发现图像作为表象既揭 示又掩饰的本体状态，发现看不到的事物所蕴藏的诱惑和危险——程然用碎片般的规则塑造了这种发现形式，令人惊讶的范式转换和出乎意料的对 称阐明了它的形成。

翻译：苏伟

参见艺术家对于项目的描述，未出版。 引自：Rebecca Solnit, “Eadweard Muybridge: Feet off the Ground,” The Guardian, September 3, 2010 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/sep/04/ eadweard-muybridge-exhibition-rebecca-solnit), last accessed on October 8, 2011.

3 引自：Randy Alfred, “This Day in Tech - June 15, 1878: Muybridge Horses Around With Motion Pictures,” Wired, June 15, 2009 (http://www.wired.com/ thisdayintech/2009/06/dayintech_0615/), last accessed on October 8, 2011.

4 参见：Rachel Donaldo, “Looking for Leonardo, With Camera in Hand,” New York Times, August 26, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/arts/design/ leonardo-mural-in-florence-may-be-revealed.html?pagewanted=2&ref=arts, last accessed on October 8, 2011.

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A New World of Sights & Wonders: Cheng Ran’s Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood

by David Spalding “No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses,” Herman Melville wrote in Redburn: His First Voyage (1849). “They see through us at a glance.” It is this elusive possibility of seeing through that Cheng Ran's exhibition at Galerie Urs Meile, “Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood,” confronts us with — that confounded, enduring desire to perceive with the eye what ordinarily remains hidden from view.

As a student, Cheng Ran (born *1981, Inner Mongolia) learned to love the act of drawing by immersing himself in the work of da Vinci. After graduating from Hangzhou’s China Academy of Art, he worked for five years as a studio assistant for the artist Yang Fudong, who is best known for his luminous, black and white, five-part film cycle, Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest , in which Cheng Ran also acted. As an artist, his own video works— often multi-screen installations with a cinematic sheen— have sometimes taken canonical western texts as points of departure.

These works thrive on poetic associations, rather than reverent citations, and include references to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (The Genghis Khan Conquest , 2008, which uses images of early experiments in airplane flight to suggest a previous age of exploration and conquest); The Sorrows of Young Werther (an eponymous, four-channel video work, completed in 2009, in which an assortment of mirrored disco balls and spinning colored lights hang from a large scaffold, incongruously illuminating a dark, lush forest); and a zombie-like Hamlet, whose “To be or not to be” soliloquy provides the voiceover for What Why How, 2011.

Cheng Ran is also partial to surprising quotations and visual transpositions, as evidenced in his re-creation of the iconic Hollywood sign near Ulan Bator, Mongolia (Ghost of Tundra , 2010). This is coupled with the artist’s romance for the quotidian: a song overheard on a Paris subway (Everything Has Its Time , 2011) or a butterfly that slips through an open window (Summanus Butterfly, 2010) are both likely to inspire a work. He is prolific and gifted, drawing on both research and intuition as he finds his way toward new images.

In his three-channel video installation Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood (2011), the centerpiece of his solo exhibition at Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing, Cheng Ran uses the notion of a horse’s temperament to reflect on our urge to see the intangible. While horses offer the artist a rich visual vocabulary from which to draw, Cheng Ran is less interested in the animals themselves than he is in the question raised by the notion of “temperament”— the perception of qualities that we cannot see or quantify, which are associated with each breed and broken into the three classifications that gives the exhibition its name. “These different tempers cannot be measured by either the horses’ bodies or blood temperatures,” the artist wrote in an early statement about the project. “They are unchanging, intangible and invisible, but somehow we can sense the difference between hot and cold.” 1 The hot-blooded horse, typically associated with a sleek Arabian racer, is supposed to be bold and spirited, but is depicted in the projection entitled “Hot Blood” as somewhat docile. Images of a golden horse, evocative of the Ferghana breed, extinct now except in sculpted Tang Dynasty pottery, are intercut with a musical performance that provides the installation’s sound: a figure strums rhythmically on an upright bass, the fractured skull of a horse tied to his head. The musician’s song and costume are emblematic of that pulsing, unknowable condition that drives the horse — an attempt, perhaps, to represent an aspect of that invisible, internal metronome that sets the timing of the horse’s temper (interestingly, if the horse’s inner-world is being represented, Cheng Ran has chosen to emphasize its aural dimension). In the “Warm Blood” projection, an eagle appears in a hay-filled stable, its true freedom providing a counterpoint to the horse’s confinement; a figure in riding clothes saddles and reins the horse. In the most dramatic of the scenes, “Cold Blood,” four horses gallop ceremoniously along the shallow edge of a wide river, their riders wearing matching clothes, boots and helmets. While the term “cold-blood” usually refers to a complacent, heavy draft horse, the horses in this segment seem more suited to dressage or armed battles. Defying expectation, the normally calm cold-bloods appear easily panicked, with calamitous results. All three of the videos exude a cool sense of control, deploying cinematic gestures such as tracking, panoramic, wide-angle shots and careful framing. Taken together, they offer up a striking mosaic, revealing a horse’s temperament to be as varied as it is unknowable, despite the classifications.

Cheng Ran’s video installation— both its questioning approach and its chosen subject— are firmly rooted in the history of photography. Over one hundred years ago, a man used a horse and a camera to address the limits of vision, and the result helped to usher in what we now call cinema.

It was a series of high-speed photographs of a trotter named Occident, taken by Eadweard Muybridge in 1872, which demonstrated how the camera’s mechanical eye could reveal truths otherwise undetectable to human vision. Muybridge’s pictures—equine silhouettes echoed in the “Cold Blood” projection of Cheng Ran’s video installation—helped the man who commissioned them, railroad scion Leland Stanford, to settle a wager about whether a horse’s four legs left the ground while it ran (they did, improbably curling underneath the horse’s lumbering body). With Stanford’s patronage, Muybridge developed new camera equipment. His wish to animate the images— to stop and start time at will, revealing its secrets

in the process— eventually led to his invention of a remarkable precursor to the movie projector. Muybridge’s speeding horses finally flew, visibly airborne between each gallop. Following a 1883 demonstration at London’s Royal Institution, The Photographic News reported, “After Mr. Muybridge had shown his audience the quaint and (apparently) impossible positions that the horse assumes in his different gaits, he then most ingeniously combined the pictures on the screen, showing them one after another so rapidly that the audience had before them the galloping horse, the trotting horse, & etc. A new world of sights and wonders was, indeed, opened by photography, which was not less astounding because it was truth itself.” 2 Audiences were astonished, though not all of them were happy. As in Cheng Ran’s video, it is debatable whether Muybridge’s horses led viewers toward something more reliable than sensory perception, or into a realm of deceptive appearances— the trickery of flickering shadows given life by the latest technological wizardry. “It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop,” the sculptor Auguste Rodin wrote. 3 But isn’t a lie often as revealing as the truth it dissembles?

This disconnection between what we see and what we seek is highlighted again by another reference embedded within Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood . As the video segment entitled “Cold Blood” reaches its climax, riders on horseback parade alongside a silvery riverfront, but the seductive images give way to a series of dissolves in which the horses and their riders are seen tumbling and crashing to the ground. The color drains away as the violence is slowed and repeated through digital manipulation, multiplied and magnified to heighten its disturbing intensity.

One antecedent to these images in Cheng Ran’s work can be found in Leonardo da Vinci’s missing masterpiece, a mural painting entitled The Battle of Anghiari , which Leonardo began in 1505 in Florence’s Hall of Five Hundred and which Chen Ran has cited as an inspiration. Images of Leonardo’s lost work live on in a drawing Rubens made based on a copy of the painting, as well in Leonardo’s surviving preliminary studies for the large-scale battle scene, in which four horses rear, trample and collide with horrible grace, pitching and bucking the sword-wielding soldiers atop them. While the painting’s mysterious vanishing during the mid-16th century has inspired countless quests, according to recent reports, the Leonardo may be hidden behind a fresco created by Giorgio Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio. Vasari was commissioned in 1563 to create a fresco in the same spot; he apparently built a wall in front of Leonardo’s original work before beginning his own.4 Vasari’s fresco now acts like an enormous, elaborately painted mask, preventing us from seeing the unknown “real” face that it hides. Still, the challenge remains: how to search for The Battle of Anghiari without destroying Vasari’s work? At what point does the curiosity to see that which lies beyond appearances become corrosive?

A careful selection of four giclée prints (made from video stills) compliment the installation at Galerie Urs Meile, transforming the action in Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood into a series of moments that invite pleasurable scrutiny. As Muybridge’s freeze frames of horses running in mid-air revealed something hitherto unknown about motion, Chen Ran’s still images beckon with a similar promise of revelation through reverse engineering.

Emphasizing the artist’s strong instinct for composition, the giclée prints linger over details embedded in the installation’s poetic interplay of moving images, lending gravitas to a horse's bulging, troubled eye (Hot Blood , 2011), or the frenetic kick of hindquarters and tangled tail, seen through a spray of river water (Cold Blood , 2011). One scans the stills as if looking for clues. Rather than sating our appetites, the mute beauty of these images only drives us onward.

Vasari’s fresco contains a tiny message carefully written on its painted surface: “cerce trova ” – “seek and you shall find.” Vasari’s turn of phrase could just as accurately be applied to Cheng Ran’s exhibition, where discoveries— about the ontological status of the image as a surface that both reveals and conceals, and about the allure and danger of the unseen— are made with fractal-like regularity, elucidated by surprising scale shifts and unexpected symmetries.

Cheng Ran, describing the project in an unpublished artist’s statement.

Quoted in Rebecca Solnit, “Eadweard Muybridge: Feet off the Ground,” The Guardian, September 3, 2010 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/sep/04/ eadweard-muybridge-exhibition-rebecca-solnit), last accessed on October 8, 2011.

3 Quoted in Randy Alfred, “This Day in Tech - June 15, 1878: Muybridge Horses Around With Motion Pictures,” Wired, June 15, 2009 (http://www.wired.com/ thisdayintech/2009/06/dayintech_0615/), last accessed on October 8, 2011.

4 See Rachel Donaldo, “Looking for Leonardo, With Camera in Hand,” New York Times, August 26, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/arts/design/leonardomural-in-florence-may-be-revealed.html?pagewanted=2&ref=arts, last accessed on October 8, 2011.

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《热血、温血、冷血》2011, 视频截图

“Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood” 2011, video stills

《热血、温血、冷血》2011, 6 版 三屏幕HD录像, 彩色 /有声, 8’08”, 同步循环 麦勒画廊 北京-卢森, 中国北京展览现场, 2011-2012

“Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood”, 2011, edition of 6 3-channel HD video, color / sound, 8’08”, loop Exhibition view at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing, China, 2011-2012

《热血》2011, 6版 艺术微喷 60 x 100 cm

《温血之一》2011, 6版 艺术微喷 110 x 176 cm

“Hot Blood” 2011, edition of 6 giclée print 60 x 100 cm

《温血之二》2011, 6版 艺术微喷 90 x 160 cm

“Warm Blood No. 1” 2011, edition of 6 giclée print 110 x 176 cm

“Warm Blood No. 2” 2011, edition of 6 giclée print 90 x 160 cm

《冷血》2011, 6版 艺术微喷 80 x 100 cm

“Cold Blood” 2011, edition of 6 giclée print 80 x 100 cm

程然 1981

生于中国内蒙古 生活和工作在中国杭州

2004

毕业于中国美术学院，中国杭州

个展 2011 “热血、温血、冷血”，麦勒画廊 北京-卢森，中国北京 “物各有时”，麦勒画廊 北京-卢森，中国北京 “昼夜之渐”，清影画廊，中国杭州

主要联展 2011

Reunion Island Biennial of Today’s Art 2011，法国留尼旺岛 “中国当代艺术之——中国影像展（1988 – 2011）”，民生现代美术馆，中国上海 “破晓”，阿拉里奥画廊，中国北京 、韩国天安 “与我同行”，House of Electronic Arts Basel, LISTE 博览会，瑞士巴塞尔 “Catch the Moon in the Water: Emerging Chinese Artists”，James Cohan画廊，美国纽约 “分分秒秒”，泰康空间，中国北京 “完美世界”，Meulensteen画廊，美国纽约 “End to End —— 新媒体艺术展”，Harvestworks多媒体艺术中心，美国纽约 2010 “The Passage Project #1 Alex: A Tribute to Alexander McQueen”，James Cohan 画廊，中国上海 “蒙古 360°—— 第一届地景艺术双年展”，蒙古国家现代美术馆，蒙古乌兰巴托 3rd i project: compilation of Chinese video art，V2 媒体艺术中心，荷兰鹿特丹 “泄密的心”，James Cohan 画廊，美国纽约、中国上海 2009 横滨电子艺术节，日本横滨 “沉浸与远离”，尤伦斯当代艺术中心，中国北京 首尔实验影像节，韩国首尔 2008 “与后殖民说再见——第三届广州三年展”，广东美术馆，中国广州 “There is No I in Team”，英国纽卡斯尔

Cheng Ran 1981

born in Inner Mongolia, China lives and works in Hangzhou, China

2004 graduated from China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China

Solo Exhibitions 2011

“Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood”, Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing, China

“Everything Has Its Time”, Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing, China

“Circadian Rhythm”, Qingying Gallery, Hangzhou, China

Selected Group Exhibitions 2011

Reunion Island Biennale of Today’s Art 2011, Reunion Island, France

“Moving Image in China: 1988 – 2011”, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China

“Daybreak”, Arario Gallery, Beijing, China and Cheonan, Korea

“Be With Me”, House of Electronic Arts Basel, LISTE, Basel, Switzerland

“Catch the Moon in the Water: Emerging Chinese Artists”, James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA

“Present Continuous Past(s)”, Taikang Space, Beijing, China

“In a Perfect World...”, Meulensteen Gallery, New York, USA

“End to End – New Media Art Show”, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, New York, USA

2010

“The Passage Project #1 Alex: A Tribute to Alexander McQueen”, James Cohan Gallery, Shanghai, China

“Mongolia 360° – 1st Land Art Biennial Mongolia”, Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

3rd i project: compilation of Chinese video art, V2 Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam, Netherlands

“The Tell-Tale Heart (Part 2)”, James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA and Shanghai, China

2009 “CREAM – International Festival for Arts and Media”, Yokohama, Japan

“Immersion and Distance”, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China

Seoul International Experimental Film Festival, Seoul, Korea

2008 The Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China

“There is No I in Team”, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

程然：关于血 “热血”拍摄了一匹金黄毛色马的局部特写以及一个在室内用重复低沉的旋律弹奏大提琴的人。一个西班牙朋友帮我出演了这个角色。在角色中，他头上戴着一副破碎的马的头骨，由 一些绳索固定住，像一个乐手古怪神秘的头饰；同时也隐喻马的另一种状态和身份，像一个附体，以此存在。没有目的和情节的演奏，低沉奇怪的音色，附着马的灵魂。伴随旋律和节 奏，不断切换着马与乐手的镜头，关于生与死。 “温血”是一个简单的故事，关于一个骑师与马的关系。影片以鹰的形象开始，鹰与马在现实中始终会有一些联系。在录像中，如果马象征自由，那么鹰可以是自由的一个阴影，在自由 中的一种威胁；而马厩象征着自由所在的现实。在这部影片中，我希望画面始终处于静止的状态，像一张照片。马厩中漂浮的灰尘能感觉到空气的流动，有一种隐藏的交流在里面。 “冷血”借鉴了电视剧中关于战争的场景拍摄方法。一些特技演员在电影中会控制马，来制造出惊心动魄、激烈的特技动作。我在影片中去除了关于电影的其他元素，如历史背景、场 景气氛，硝烟等，仅仅提取关于身体、残酷性的动作，重新演示一个关于电影中马的特技。摔倒、跌落的技师，当这样情景被重现，在没有故事的情况下，似乎有另一种叙事产生，关于 情感与视觉的变化与刺激。当这些技师骑着马在夕阳和湖中穿梭时，他们没有目的，不知道下一步会做什么，也不知道为什么。我抓拍了这样的镜头插入其中，也像一个故事，仿佛自 己生长。 《热血、温血、冷血》最后作为一个三屏幕同步播放的录像作品，并非一个观念为主的作品。它无法被描述和解释，我希望利用简单的剪辑手段，甚至错误的剪接，来呈现一个不同的 图像，有象征主义感觉的形式，以及美的镜头。三个屏幕同时播放，静止或运动，特写和全景互相影响，来表现一个未知的影像空间。我不知道这组影像会给一个大厅带来什么样的变 化，我希望这种影响是想象力，甚至是没有答案的。 《热血、温血、冷血》暗示和象征了马的三种性格，不可见的，关于情感，精神状态中向不同的方向漂移，并不稳定和确切，却也如人的精神世界，并不可触及，却不可或缺。

Cheng Ran: About Blood For “Hot Blood”, I shot a partial close-up of a golden-haired horse and a person in a room playing a deep and repetitive melody on a cello. A Spanish friend played that role for me.

In the role, he wore a broken horse skull held together with cord, like a strange headdress. He is also a metaphor for another identity of the horse. The aimless performance and the strange, deep music follow the spirit of the horse as if he is possessed. The image continually switches from shots of the horse to the musician and back again, following the rhythm and melody of the music.

“Warm Blood” is a simple story about the relationship between a rider and a horse. The film begins with the image of an eagle. In reality horses and eagles have always been related in some way. In the film, if the horse is a symbol of freedom, then the eagle is the shadow of freedom, a kind of threat. The stable is a symbol of the reality of freedom. I hope that the film will remain static, like a photograph, from beginning to end. The dust floating in the stable gives a sense of the movement of air, which contains a hidden exchange.

“Cold Blood” draws on the filming techniques of battle scenes in television dramas. In the film, stunt actors control the horses to create thrilling action scenes. I have removed all other elements in the film, such as the historical background, atmosphere and smoke, and picked out only bodies and their cruel actions to present anew the stunt technicians and the falls of the horses. Seen again with no background, this seems to create a different narrative about emotional and visual changes and stimulation. When the stunt riders rode the horses back and forth around the lake at the sunset, they were aimless and didn’t know what to do next or why. I have put candid shots of this kind of scene into the film. It is like a story, like growing up oneself.

Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood is a 3-channel video work. It is not primarily a conceptual piece and is neither describable nor comprehensible. I hope that by using simple editing techniques and even editing mistakes I have created a different kind of image that is beautiful and symbolic in form. When the three films are played simultaneously the combined effect of rest and movement, close-ups and full views will show an unknown image space. I don’t know what kind of changes this group of images will bring to a hall, but I hope that the effect is imaginative and even unanswerable.

Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood is suggestive and symbolic of the three characteristics of the horse; they are invisible, the different directional flows of emotional and spiritual states; they are unstable and uncertain, like the human spiritual world, which is untouchable, but also indispensable.

Translated from Chinese: Lucy Johnston

出版：麦勒画廊 北京-卢森为程然个展 “热血、温血、冷血” 而出版, 展出于中国北京麦勒画廊 北京-卢森 2011年 11月5日至 2012年 2月12日 编辑：麦勒画廊 北京-卢森; 文章：丁达韦; 翻译：苏伟（中文）, Lucy Johnston（英文）; 设计：李建辉; 摄影：Eric Gregory Powell © 2011 麦勒画廊 北京-卢森, 程然 未经出版人的书面许可, 本出版物所有内容不可用于任何形式及目的, 包括但不限于图片复印、抄录或其他信息存储及文字转换的复制及传播。 印刷：中国北京 Publisher: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne on the occasion of Cheng Ran’s solo exhibition “Hot Blood, Warm Blood, Cold Blood” at Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing, China, from November 5, 2011 to February 12, 2012 Editor: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne; Text: David Spalding; Translators: Su Wei (C), Lucy Johnston (E); Designer: Li Jianhui; Photography: Eric Gregory Powell © 2011 Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Cheng Ran All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including but not limited to photocopying, transcribing or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Printed in China 麦勒画廊, 北京市朝阳区草场地104号, 邮编 100015, 电话 + 86 10 643 333 93 Galerie Urs Meile, No. 104, Caochangdi, Chaoyang District, PRC -100015 Beijing, China, T + 86 10 643 333 93 Galerie Urs Meile, Rosenberghöhe 4, 6004 Lucerne, Switzerland, T + 41 41 420 33 18 galerie@galerieursmeile.com, www.galerieursmeile.com