L/B "I'm Real"

I’m real - hoe - hoe I’m real - hoe - hoe - I’m the real super bad And there’s nobody out there good enough To take the things I have I’m real - hoe - hoe - I’m the real super bad And there’s nobody out there good enough To take the things I have - ugh James Brown “I’m Real”, 1988

L/B I’m Real

Exhibition Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing, China May 9 - July 12, 2009

Beautiful Carpet #1 carpet / 4.8 x 6.8 m 2009, installation at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne Beijing, China

floor plan 1:200 Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing, China

Flash #2 59 barber poles / 230 x 640 x 930 cm 2009, installation at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne Beijing, China

It’s Real The Knowing, Dreaming Spectator

By David Spalding

“The eyes do not see things but images of things that mean other things,” Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.1 The explorer is narrating his fantastical journey though Khan’s crumbling empire, city by city. In the town of Tamara, “pinchers point out the tooth-drawer’s house; a tankard, the tavern; halberds, the barracks.” As Polo describes Tamara, its semiotic labyrinth grows increasingly complex, sometimes indecipherable: “statues and shields depict lions, dolphins, towers, stars: a sign that something—who knows what?—has as its sign a lion or a dolphin or a tower or a star.”

Prohibitions, possibilities, everything one knows about Tamara is learned by interpreting an array of symbols that may or may not bring us closer to understanding the city, but still spark our imaginations with their strange, outmoded beauty. “The cornucopia, the hourglass, the medusa…the embroidered headband…the gilded palanquin…” are all fragments of visual experience that point elsewhere, but we stop to linger on them for their own sake before choosing between their many meanings.

The collaborative work of Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann (hereafter referred to as L/B) unites the symbolic and the spectacular in a practice that has been defying genre for nearly twenty years. Together they have created installations, environments, public interventions, paintings, games and even a mobile hotel room, often using visual languages that are often reminiscent of Op and Pop-inspired design. In their previous works, brightly-colored patterns run across the walls, floors and windows of art centers, community centers and galleries and even cover a stretch of rural roadway. Elsewhere, giant, inflatable plastic tubes span the windows of a building’s facade, becoming a twisted (but highly regular) latticework of impossible passageways. Shiny, decorative “modules” and light fixtures made of molded plastic are arranged into patterns that bring a set of visual variables into harmony. Throughout L/B’s universe, there is an emphasis on creating new connections between and within existing spaces and sets, and a desire to activate otherwise aesthetically neglected zones of connection (hallways, stairwells, etc.). Visually stimulating, the work highlights the act of seeing while inviting viewers to forge their own pathways toward interpretation.

Diving Platform (2005), first presented in Bern and later at the outdoor exhibition Art en plein air (Môtiers, 2007), is an impossibly tall diving board—thirteen meters high—that has no water beneath it. The work disappoints those who wish to scale it: the ladder

attached to the steel mast is unreachable, its lowest point pitched seven meters above the ground. Other than this shift of scale and location, the work replicates a conventional diving platform one might find at a pubic swimming pool, a utilitarian object (and place) that does not normally inspire contemplation.

Still, a diving platform is a transitional, temporary space that evokes in users an unusually intense combination of feelings: the heightened vulnerability during the ascent (wearing only a bathing suit, perched at the edge of a pool ringed with tile or concrete, one climbs slippery steps with wet feet); the excitement and nervousness that precede the dive; the singularity of purpose when, after a moment of intense concentration, one suddenly rushes towards the board’s edge. A dive must be experienced alone, but takes place in front of an audience of other swimmers. Broken down into its constitutive parts, diving from a platform like the one L/B have extended is akin to doing acrobatics in a shopping mall, but it’s expected, part of the routine, and goes largely unnoticed.

Towering over us and without a pool, Diving Platform, L/B’s simple, poetic addition to the landscape, both suggests and forecloses various possibilities for its use: it might be a place from which to admire the bucolic Swiss countryside; then again, it could be the scene of a dramatic exit, a leaping suicide. Regardless, the associations that the work yields are more important than its potential uses. An elevated, unreachable platform suggests many interpretations, but its meaning centers largely on unrealized aspirations: goals one will never achieve; the desire and inability to find a vista from which one can finally see a situation clearly; the basic necessity to rise above one’s difficulties.

At the same time, the platform has become an enduring (if increasingly questioned) metaphor in contemporary art, particularly since Artistic Director Okwui Enwezor structured Documenta 11 (2002) as a series of five “Platforms” (including the exhibition in Kassel), the first four of which were essentially focused discussions with a strong ethico-political imperative. Held on four different continents, these Platforms (which I did not attend), with topics like “Democracy Unrealized” and “Truth and Reconciliation,” can be seen as an effort to engage both experts and the public in a dialogue about present social/political exigencies. As the material produced by Documenta’s communications team explains: The platforms can be understood then as constellations that open up a critical review of processes of a range of knowledge production. Equally, these platforms perform a second operation in that they allow Documenta11 the opportunity to render transparent the dimension of its intellectual interest and curatorial research. Hence the entire conceptual orientation of the exhibition is decidedly

interdisciplinary, connecting a wide range of scholars, philosophers, artists, and filmmakers, institutions, cities, and audiences.

The locus of Documenta11 is one of debate and contestation, intellectually rigorous; methodologically adventurous more than any exhibition of contemporary art.2 Such hyperbole (“more than any exhibition of contemporary art?”) is typical of the rhetoric that positions both art practices and art spaces as platforms for exchange and dialogue. Here “platform” suggests the participation of various publics in discussions or other forms of engagement that are implicitly understood as democratic and interstitial (outside the chokehold of capital), a recreation of the Greek polis, where each voice is heard and group decisions are reached about the shape of the society we share. But before donning your toga, think back on the number of boring panels you’ve attended, where grandstanding and speechmaking stood in for dialogue, or you were unable to follow the presentations. Seen in this light, L/B’s Diving Platform suggests the increasing ambition to create viable platforms for meaningful exchanges may often be realized in name alone. Of course, it’s a symbol with multiple meanings; they will shift depending on the viewer’s perspective.

Diving Platform also casts a shadow over the rhetoric of “relational aesthetics” the interpretive rubric that can circumscribe many of L/B’s site-sensitive installation works, thanks to Nicholas Bourriaud’s groundbreaking book of the same name, which presents certain interactive, “sociable” art practices as idealized platforms for exchange. In the book, Bourriaud outlines a new paradigm for the discussion of “relational” works of art made during the 1990s, asking at the outset how (not “if”) “an art focused on the production of such forms of conviviality [is] capable of re-launching the modern emancipation plan, by complimenting it? How does it permit the development of new political and cultural designs?”3 His argument extends to those artists who create environments that are made to promote or produce social interaction, Michael Lin, Jorge Pardo, and L/B among them.

Describing the goals of such artists, Bourriaud writes: What they produce are relational space-time elements, inter-human experiences trying to rid themselves of the straightjacket of the ideology of mass communications, in a way, of the places where alternative forms of sociability, critical models and moments of constructed conviviality are worked out.4 But, as art historian and theorist Claire Bishop has asked, “If relational art produces human relations, then the next logical question to ask is what types of relations are being produced, for whom, and why?” 5

The “relational” or interactive component of L/B’s artistic practice is ambivalent and non-directive. Their brightly colored installations often cover the surfaces of public or semi-public spaces—walls, floors and sometimes furniture—in vivid, sprawling patterns that point to retro interior design, such as the “Supergraphics” of the 1970s. Though they foster encounters between visitors, these works (like those of Lin and other artists, including those cited by Bourriaud) do not constitute new forms of emancipatory social engineering. However, the works are not aimed at creating a particular set of outcomes beyond the visitor’s increased optical and tactile pleasure. They’re surprising aesthetic experiments that charge otherwise dull spaces with a pulsing magnetism that sets the mind in motion.

Beautiful Carpet #4 (2006), presented at Tokyo’s Art Spiral /Wacoal Art Center, is typical of many of L/B’s works made in this style. A giant carpet, covered in an electric palette of interlocking geometric figures resembling lightning bolts, spread across the gallery’s wall and floor and into the center’s restaurant. Unifying otherwise disparate spaces, the work greatly lessened the division between the relaxed social atmosphere of the café and the sterile, white gallery adjacent to it. Couldn’t conjoining the two experiences—the appreciation of art and the act of sharing a lunch with friends—help us to imagine a more relaxed, open way to encounter contemporary art, as opposed to the state of mind reflected by the hushed tones of the typical gallery, a guarded white box?

We must not overstate the liberatory potential of Beautiful Carpet #4 and others works like it, which are often commissioned by institutions in order to decorate restaurants and cafes, making them more appealing and profitable. As the artists astutely remark, “The dilemma as we see it is that social interaction often is only another way of ‘consuming,’ there is no real participation. For us, one important point with works inviting the viewer is to offer him both: a beautiful image to look at AND invitation to participate.”6 None of this, however, makes Beautiful Carpet #4 any less visually appealing, and herein rests its ability to improve a visitor’s mood or day. Cries of “spectacle”—which would liken L/B’s candycolored, patterned walls to a stupefying drug, an optical opiate—miss the point entirely, as the artists’ works do nothing if not awaken the senses, the lenses through which we begin to form interpretations.

For “I’m Real”, their solo exhibition at Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing, the result of L/B’s three-month residency at the gallery, the artists have combined two elements to create a site-sensitive response to the city of Beijing and the gallery space. Galerie Urs Meile’s Beijing location, designed by Ai Weiwei, is a gated complex of several conjoined, twolevel buildings set in a triangulated formation, with all facades, outdoor walkways and surrounding walls made of grey brick. Entering the gallery, one’s eyes are immediately

directed downward, toward Beautiful Carpet #1 (2009), which covers the gallery in zigzagging bands of color that include lemon yellow, Barbie pink and midnight blue, amplifying the existing architecture’s angularity. The carpet’s pattern suggests a fractured, crisscrossing network of galvanic pathways that visitors can use to navigate the space, trying one and then another as they move about the installation. Walking on the artwork, one is suddenly surrounded by it; rather than studying wall-hung artworks from a measured distance, we have no choice but to move into and through an immersive visual experience that ignites the senses.

Finally, we pass through a dim corridor to reach Flash #2 (2009), an installation comprised of 59 custom-made barber poles arranged in a circular configuration of swirling green and silver bands that curls opens on one end to admit visitors into its vertiginous center. Spinning in unison and lit from within, the poles, which are 230 cm high, form a curving wall that nearly encloses viewers; once in its epicenter, the familiar symbol of the barber’s pole becomes dizzying and hypnotic, an optical experience that begins to impact the body’s equilibrium. Wrapped in its pulsing light, we are transported again to Calvino’s city of Tamara, contained by something at once spectacular and loaded with symbolic value.

On the one hand, we’ve passed over the carpet and into an installation that recalls the work of Op artists like Bridget Riley, but is perhaps more closely related to Duchamp’s works from the 1920s, termed “Precision Optics,” which put patterned sculptures into motion in order to create optical illusions. Most famous of these were Duchamp’s rotoreliefs, in which asymmetrical arrangements of concentric circles were set spinning in order to create the effect of three-dimensionality. The rotoreliefs and other “retinal” art, including Flash #2, foster not only a sense of illusion; with dual perception comes an awareness of the fragility of the mechanics of vision itself. Since we know we cannot be seeing what the eye is registering (in case of the rotoreliefs, seeing a flat surface suddenly enter the third dimension, rushing toward or receding from the eye), one’s confidence in a singular interpretation of vision is called into question.7 Rather than eroding our confidence, Flash #2, with its disorienting embrace, reminds us of how various experiences and meanings can exist simultaneously, without canceling each other out. Thus the emphasis the work places on retinal experience does not dull the visitor into a state of passive spectatorship, but instead encourages one to consider the work’s multiplicity of meanings.

Another of these meanings is linked to the macabre history of the barber pole. It is hard to imagine now, but until the end of the 18th Century, barbers also performed surgical procedures, including bloodletting, a popular practice throughout the Dark Ages and beyond. Barbers would ask patients to grasp a pole to help them locate veins in their arms,

which the barber would then open in order to drain blood and balance the humors. “After the procedure,” the BBC reports, “the washed bandages were hung outside on a pole to dry, and to advertise the ghastly therapeutic specialities offered in the barbershop. Flapping in the wind, the long strips of bandages would twist around the pole in the spiral pattern we now associate with barbers.”8 While L/B’s work, with its industrial precision, may evoke Greg Brady’s bedroom more than a scene involving leeches and revolving bandages, any work that takes a readymade form as its basis inherits the history of the object it modifies, assists or re-locates in an art context.

When L/B traveled to Beijing to conceive of the new works on view in “I’m Real”, it seems that they were drawn to the familiar—the patterns of the barber’s poles in China rhyme nicely with L/B’s artistic vocabulary of bright, flat colors often put into swirling, curving and geometric patterns whose play of scale and pattern make them seem as if the are in motion. In Beijing, the effect of barber poles is greatly intensified: they are often grouped two or three at a single storefront, lighting up dark alleys and adding extra color to busy intersections, especially near residential areas, where salons are grouped three or four in a row. But in Beijing, the poles do not just announce a place for a haircut; at night, girls in short skirts and heavy makeup call outside to passersby, “Massage? Massage, sir?” In fact, the barber poles connote that prostitutes’ services are available. Seen in this light, the pole suggests an erection dressed in vivid prophylactics. The contradiction between this overtly visible sign and its covert meaning was not lost on L/B, who observe:

It is our normal situation. We learn and teach, we act and know as spectators who link what they see with what they have seen and told, done and dreamt…We have not to turn spectators into actors. We have to acknowledge that any spectator already is an actor of his own story and that the actor also is the spectator of the same kind of story.10 Like many of their previous works, L/B’s latest exhibition at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing simultaneously dazzles the retina and opens a liminal space for the contemplation of vision itself. At the same time, its symbolic value allows us to test the interpretive filters that form the screens of visuality as we engage with different associations offered up by the work, sex and death among them. As a result, our sense of spectatorship is amplified for a time that extends beyond the gallery. As Calvino writes, when we leave the city of Tamara: The land stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds.

In the shape that chance and wind give the clouds, you are already intent on recognizing figures: a sailing ship, a hand, an elephant…

March 15, 2009 Beijing

The Beijing-style seemed easy, fun and somehow “Italian”: very colorful, eccentric and blinking seem to be very popular. The barber poles we noticed everywhere. Of course, soon we found out about the double meaning of them and this even seemed more absurd: to have a secret code for something illegal and it’s this blinking large sign you could not ignore. Why wouldn’t they make it a bit more discrete (we as typical Swiss asked ourselves)? 9 1

The polyvalence of the symbols employed by L/B attest to an interest in the “local,” in as much as certain pieces of the landscape of Beijing resonate with their pre-existing sensibilities.

While their work is visually spectacular, the multiple meanings radiating from the elements in “I’m Real” invite us to make interpretative choices, as opposed to participating in a zombifying “consumption of spectacle,” as has been so often asserted about work of such visual impact. “Spectatorship is not the passivity [that] has to be turned into activity,” philosopher Jacques Rancière has argued. He continues:

Italo Calvino quotes excerpted from Invisible Cities, William Weaver, trans.

(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p.13-14.

2 http://www.documenta12.de/archiv/d11/data/english/platform1/index.html, last accessed March 14, 2009.

3 Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods, trans.

(Paris: le press du reel, 1998 [Eng. Edition, 2002]), p.16.

4 Bourriaud, p.44.

5 Claire Bishop, “Relational Antagonisms,” October Magazine, No. 110, Fall 2004, pp. 51–79.

6 Email from the artists to the author dated February 24, 2009.

7 I am borrowing here from Michael Betancourt, “Precision Optics / Optical Illusions: Inconsistancy, Anemic Cinema, and the Rotoreliefs,” in The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, http://www.toutfait.com/online_journal_details.php?postid=1570 posted November 30, 2004, last accessed March 15, 2009.

8 See “Blood, Bandages and Barber Poles,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A885062 posted November 29, 2002, last accessed on March 14, 2009.

9 Email from the artists to the author dated February 24, 2009.

10 Jacques Rancière, “The Emancipated Spectator,” a lecture given on August 20, 2004, complete transcript posted on http://ranciere.blogspot.com/2007/09/ranciere-emancipated-spectator.html, last accessed on March 14, 2009.

Part of this quote appears in Claire Bishop, “Introduction,” Claire Bishop, ed., Participation (London and Cambridge, Mass: Whitechapel and MIT Press), 2006, p.16.

这是真的 知识和梦想的壮观

文：丁达韦

伊塔洛·卡尔维诺（Italo Calvino）在《隐形的城市》 （Invisible Cities）1 一书中，当马可· 波罗对忽必 烈讲述他深入体验当时已经岌岌可危的可汗帝国里各个城市的奇异旅程时，写道： “眼睛看到的 不是事物，而是代表不同意义的事物的形象。”在 Tamara（塔玛拉）镇， “夹锭钳指出拔牙店；大 酒杯标出了客栈；而战戟则标志着军营的驻扎地。”马可· 波罗提到，Tamara这个迷宫般的城市发 展显出了日益复杂的结构，有时候让人难以明白。 “雕塑和盾牌上描绘有狮子、海豚、高塔和星星： 这表明某些事物（谁知道是什么事物？）的标志是狮子、海豚、高塔或星星。”禁忌，可能性，甚至 我们对Tamara的所有了解都是通过解读一系列标志得来，这可能会让我们对这个城市有更加深 入的了解，也可能会误导。不过，这些标志奇怪而古旧的魅力让我们浮想联翩。 “羊角、沙漏、水 母…织花头带…鎏金的轿子…”这些视觉体验的碎片，指向他处。我们首先被标志本身吸引，然后 才会考虑它们承载的诸多意义。

过去的二十年中，Sabina Lang 和 Daniel Baumann（下文简称 L/B）共同合作将“象征”和“壮观” 的元素融合在创作中，而不受其他创作门类的限制。他们共同创作了装置、环境、公众项目、绘画 和游戏，甚至还创作了一间移动式酒店房间。他们常用的视觉语言让人想到欧普和波普风格的设 计。在他们过去的作品中，颜色鲜亮的图案穿越艺术中心、社区中心和画廊的墙壁、地板和窗户上， 甚至还盖过一节乡间铁轨。在另一场地，巨大膨胀的塑料管贴附在一座建筑的外墙上，形成了缠 绕在一起（但又十分规整）无法企及的网状通道。闪亮的装饰性“模块”和成型塑料制成的灯饰被 做成不同的式样，将一系列的视觉变量和谐地整合在一起。在L/B的世界里，艺术家强调在现有 的空间和场景之间创造新的联系，希望活用那些从美学上被忽略的纽带区域（如大厅和楼梯）。他 们的作品在视觉上具有冲击力，强调“看”这个行为，从而让观众忘却自己的解读路径。

《跳台》(“Diving Platform”，2005 年）先后在伯尔尼和“Art en plein air”户外展（Môtiers，2007 年）上展出。这件作品出奇的高，有13米，是个下面没有水池的跳台。跳台支柱上的梯子根本上不 去，最低的地方离地面也有七米，这使那些想爬上去的人大失所望。这件作品虽变换了标准尺寸 和地点，但却是复制了一个能在公共泳池看见的实用而不会引人遐想的普通跳台而已。

不过，跳台是一个过渡性的临时空间，让跳水者产生诸多强烈的情感：往上爬时愈发强烈的脆弱

的民主性和边缘性（避开了“首都”的制约），就像是希腊的城邦，每个人的意见都能得到倾听，

感（只穿着泳衣站在铺着地砖或水泥的泳池边上，光脚爬上湿滑的梯子）；在跳水前的激动和紧

大家集体决定社会发展。可是在你穿上议员袍之前，请想想你参加过多少无聊的讨论会，会上充

张感；明确的目的性，以及在聚精会神一小会之后，跳水者突然走向跳板边缘时的那一刻。跳水必

斥着哗众取宠和滔滔不绝的演讲，却鲜有对话，你也根本听不下去那些演讲。考虑到这一点，L/B

须是独自体验，但是在有其他作为观众的游泳者的场所。从组成这方面看，在 L/B 设计的跳台上跳

的《跳台》表明，越来越多的人希望打造交流平台，但最后只是有名无实。当然，这件作品的多种象

水就好比在大商场里做体操，犹如跳水的过程是可预测的“规定动作”的一部分，因此通常没有

征意义，会根据观者不同的视角而发生变化。

多少人注意。 《跳台》也给“关系美学” （relational aesthetics），即那些限制了L/B为具体地点专门创作的装置作 《跳台》矗立在我们的头顶，下方没有水池。L/B的这个作品为展览场地添加了简单而富有诗意的

品的诠释性规则蒙上了一层阴影。尼古拉·布什欧（Nicholas Bourriaud）曾就这个主题写出了开创性

一笔，也暗示了它在功用方面的其它可能性：它可以是一个供人欣赏瑞士田园景色的观景台；也可

的著作《关系美学》，谈到一些具有互动性和“社会性”的艺术实践是交流的理想平台。在书中，

能是一个戏剧性的自杀地点，让人跳下去，结束生命。不管如何，这件作品让人产生的联想比它的

布什欧提出了讨论九十年代创作的“关系”艺术作品时采用的全新模式。在一开始他就问到， “着

用途更加重要。处于高处无法攀爬的平台可以有许多解释，但它的主要意义在于象征无法实现的

重于创造这些形式的‘欢乐’ （conviviality）的艺术作品如何（而不是‘是否’）能重启现代解放运

愿望：包括永远无法实现的目标，希望却无法将某种情况看清楚的窘境，或是解决自身困境的基

动，难道是通过赞美它来实现这个目的？它如何能够促进新的政治和文化设计的发展？3”他继续

本需要。

谈到了那些设计以推动社会互动为目的的环境的艺术家，包括林明弘（Michael Lin）、Jorge Pardo 和L/B。布什欧这样描写这些艺术家的目的：

与此同时， “平台”成为了当代艺术中长盛不衰的一种比喻（虽然现在可能日益遭到质疑）。卡塞尔 文献展的艺术总监 Okwui Enwezor 将第十一届文献展（2002年）设计成由五个“平台” （包括在卡

“他们创作的是时间— 空间的关系元素和人与人之间的体验，让他们摆脱大众传媒

塞尔举行的展览）组成的一个系列展。其中四个平台在本质上都是在政治道德方面十分重要的专

的意识形态的桎梏，从某种程度上做出其它形式的社交性临界模型，构建出‘欢乐’

题讨论。这些平台分设在不同的四个大洲（我个人并未参加），探讨各种话题，如“未实现的民主”

（conviviality）。”4

和“真相与和解”等等。这是为鼓励专家和大众一起就当前紧迫的社会/政治事件进行对话所做的 一种努力。文献展公关部提供的材料中有如下表述：

但是，正如艺术史学家和理论家Claire Bishop曾经质疑的： “如果关系艺术创造出人际关系，那么我 们很自然要问的问题就是：这种艺术创造出了什么类型的关系，为谁创造了这些关系，原因何在？”5

“我们可以把 各 个平台理 解成 对一系列知 识创造 过程的批判 性 评估的‘荟 萃’ （constellation）。同样，这些平台有着第二层功用：它们让第十一届文献展清晰地表达

L/B艺术创作的“关系”或互动成分是矛盾的和非直接的。他们色彩鲜亮的作品通常会覆盖在公共

出自己的学术兴趣和策展研究情况。因此，展览的整个观念导向都是跨学科的，将各个

或半公共的空间中——包括墙面、地板，有时候还会是家具，它们鲜艳的图案四处蔓延，让人想起

领域的学者、哲学家、艺术家、电影人、机构、城市和观众联系在一起。

了复古风格的室内设计，例如七十年代的“超级平面艺术” （Supergraphics）。虽然它们促进参观 者之间的交流，这些作品（和林明弘及布什欧提到的其他艺术家的作品一样）并不是新形式的“社

第十一届文献展倡导辩论和论争，在学术上严谨，在方法上则比任何当代艺术展览都

会解放工程”。这些作品除了能提升观众的视觉和触觉享受外，并没有具体目标。它们是令人惊讶

具创新和探索精神。”2

的美学实验，使本来很枯燥的空间变成了悸动的磁场，让思维活跃起来。

这种夸张（“比任何当代艺术展览都…？”）很典型，表现了艺术活动和艺术空间作为交流和对话

在东京 Art Spiral / Wacoal Art Center 展出的《美丽的地毯 4号》 （ “Beautiful Carpet #4” ，2006年），

的平台时常用的语汇。在这里， “平台”这个词说明公众参与到了讨论或其它活动中，暗示了平台

是L/B此类风格的代表作品之一。他们用一块硕大的，带有交叠在一起的几何图案的电子装置去模

仿闪电的“地毯”，链接了画廊的墙面、地板和餐厅，将原本分开的空间连接起来，去淡化有着轻

密。在杜尚这一系列作品中，数个处于运动中的雕塑，制造出视觉的幻觉效果；其中，最著名的作

松环境的咖啡厅和它旁边枯燥的白色画廊之间的差别。欣赏艺术和与朋友共享午餐这两种体验

品是“旋转的浮雕” （rotorelief） ，他将同心圆以不对称的方式旋转，产生一种三维的效果。这件旋

的结合，能让我们找到一种更加开放和轻松的方式去接触当代艺术，而不需要在有专人看守的白

转的浮雕和其它的“视网膜”艺术，包括《闪 2 号》，不仅仅带来了一种幻觉，伴随着双重感觉的产

色方盒子的画廊里噤若寒蝉。

生，还使我们意识到了视觉本身的脆弱性。我们知道眼睛能注视到的可能是虚幻而不一定是真实 的（比如在旋转的浮雕这个作品中，我们会看到一个平面里突然出现了一个三维的东西，向前或

我们不应该过分强调《美丽的地毯 4号》或其它类似作品的潜在释放性。这些作品通常由机构定

是向后延展），以至于我们对于视觉单一解读的信心开始动摇。7 不过， 《闪 2号》并未试图动摇我

制，用于装饰餐厅和咖啡馆，来增加这些场所的吸引力，从而赚取更多的利润。艺术家曾机敏地谈

们的信心。它让人失去方向感的效果提醒我们：许多不同的体验和意义可以同时存在，而非相互抵

到： “我们发现存在这样一种两难境地，社会互动通常仅仅是另外一种‘消费’模式，而真正的参与

消。因此，这件作品对视觉效果的强调并不会让观众只是被动的观看，而是去思考它的多重意义。

是缺失的。对我们来说，创作同观众互动的作品时有一点很重要，那就是，作品既要构成美丽的形 象，也要鼓励观众的参与。”6 当然， 《美丽的地毯 4 号》在视觉上极具冲击力，可以让观众的心情为

作品的另一个意义与理发店转灯的骇人历史有关。现在觉得难以想象，但直到十八世纪末，理发

之一振。但是光会喊“壮观”而完全不理解作品的重点，会让L/B糖果色的充满图案的墙面看起来

师还兼做手术，及为病人放血。放血是中世纪以来十分流行的做法。理发师会让病人抓住一个柱

像是使视觉麻木的迷幻药。艺术家的作品要唤醒我们的感官，让我们有不同的解读视角。

子，以便看清病人手臂上的血管，然后从血管放血，平衡体液。BBC曾报道过： “在放过血后，理发 师会把洗过的绷带挂在柱子上晾干，同时也用这种方法来做广告，告诉客人店里提供这种现在看

L/B 会在北京麦勒画廊举办个展“我是真的”，展示他们住在画廊三个月的创作成果。两位艺术家

来十分可怕的治疗。这些长长的绷带在风中摇摆，或是绕在立柱上，形成螺旋状。这就是我们现在

使用两种结合在一起的元素，专门为北京、为画廊创作了这件作品。北京麦勒画廊是艾未未设计

理发店前的转灯样式的来历。”8 虽然L/B的作品看起来更像是 Greg Brady 的卧室而不是有着放血

的，由数栋双层楼体组成了一个三角造型建筑。它的外墙、室外通道和围墙都用灰砖砌成。进入展

和旋转的绷带的场景，但任何用“现成品”作为基础的作品都继承了它修改或重置的物体的历史。

厅，你的视线立刻就会被脚下的作品《美丽的地毯 1 号》 （“Beautiful Carpet #1”，2009年）吸引， 它由一条条弯弯曲曲带有柠檬黄、芭比粉和深蓝等颜色的色带构成，增强了展厅内建筑的棱角感。

在北京，当L/B构思“我是真的”展览上的新作品时，可能是被中国理发店转灯上熟悉的图案所吸

地毯的图案使人想到一个支离破碎的交叉网络，任观众在游览这个空间时随意选择它上面的路

引，因为这些和他们的艺术语汇十分合拍。他们经常将明亮平滑的颜色用在旋转、弯曲和几何图形

径。踏上这件作品，不同于在一段距离之外研究挂在墙上的作品，你感觉被它包围着，这使我们不

上，利用比例和图形的效果，使作品看起来像是在运动中。在北京，理发店转灯的效果被极大地

得不顺着上面的线条朝前走，沉浸在一种视觉体验中，唤醒我们的感受。

加强了：一家店前面通常会摆放两到三个灯柱，照亮没有路灯的小巷，使拥挤的路口看起来更加繁 乱。这类发廊在住宅小区附近特别多，有些地方，甚至三四家并排开在一起。但是，这些转灯不仅

穿过一个昏暗的走廊，观者就会看到《闪 2 号》（“Flash #2”，2009年），这件装置作品由59个专

仅说明你可以进店里理发，夜晚时分，身着超短裙、浓妆艳抹的女子会问过路人： “先生，要按摩

门定制的理发店转灯组成，这些转灯按照旋转的绿和银色带缠绕的形状组成了一个有入口的圆形

吗？”实际上，转灯代表了店里提供的色情服务。考虑到这一点，转灯就好比是身着鲜艳避孕药的

阵，观众可以进入其让人晕眩的中心。这些2.3米高的立柱中都安有灯管，朝同一方向旋转，并组成

勃起的阴茎。L/B 也注意到了这一明显的标志和它隐喻的含义之间的矛盾，他们说道：

了一堵波浪状的，似乎能将观众困在其中的墙。站在装置中，这些本来熟悉的转灯却会让人感到 眩晕，产生一种催眠效果而影响了身体平衡。我们置身于跳动的灯光之中，仿佛回到了卡尔维诺描

“北京的风格很随性，有趣，有些‘意大利’的味道：它十分多姿多彩，怪异和闪亮的

写的Tamara城，惊讶于壮观而充满象征涵义的事物之中。

风格十分流行。这里，理发店转灯到处可见。当然，我们很快发现了这些转灯的双重意 义，这就看起来更加荒谬：虽然它是非法买卖的代号，但你很容易就能注意到这些巨大

走过地毯，看到这件能让人联想到 Bridget Riley 等欧普艺术家的装置是我们的一种感受；或许，这

闪亮的标志。为什么他们不把它做的更低调一些？ （作为典型的瑞士人，我们很自然的

件装置作品同杜尚（Duchamp）二十年代的“精密光学” （Precision Optics）艺术实验的联系更加紧

想到了这个问题）”9

L/B 采用的这些象征标志承载的多价性（polyvalence）说明了他们对“当地”的兴趣，北京的一些 地方让他们从感情上产生了共鸣。 诚然，他们的作品全都充满壮观的视觉效果，但更重要的是， “我是真的”展出作品的诸多元素中 蕴含的各种意义促使我们在解读方面做出思维判断，而不是被动的去享受壮观（这是此类视觉冲 击力较强的作品通常产生的效果）。哲学家 Jacques Rancière 说道： “观众并不是那些必须要转变 成主动的被动元素”。他认为： “这是正常的情况，我们学习，我们教授，我们行动。作为观众，我们将看到的东西和曾看到、听 过、做过和梦过的事情相关联…我们还没有将观众变为演员。我们必须得承认，任何观众本身就 是他自己故事的演员，而演员也是同样故事的观众。”10 同L/B过去的大多作品相似，他们在北京麦勒画廊的最新展览不仅有着眩目的视觉效果，也开启了一 个让人思考“视觉”的中性空间。与此同时，作品的象征意义鼓励我们去考察自己解读作品时的思 想模式，在我们考虑作品涉及的不同涵义（其中包括性和死亡）的同时构成了视觉的屏障。由此，我 们作为观众的感官得到了增强，超越了画廊的限制。这就像卡尔维诺对于离开 Tamara 时的描写： “大地不断蔓延，空空荡荡，延伸向地平线；天空开阔，白云在头顶上飞驰而过。云彩 在风的作用下变成了各种出人意料的形状，你开始辨认这些形状：航行的船、一只手、 一头大象…”

2009 年 3月15日于北京 翻译：黄一

1 摘自伊塔诺·卡尔维诺（Italo Calvino）的《隐形的城市》（Invisible Cities），William Weaver翻译， （纽约：Harcourt Brace Jovanovich，1978年），第13-14页。 2 http://www.documenta12.de/archiv/d11/data/english/platform1/index.html，2009年3月14日最后一次登陆。 《关系美学》（Relational Aesthetics），Simon Pleasance和Fronza Woods翻译， 3 尼古拉·布什欧（Nicholas Bourriaud）， （巴黎：le press du reel，1998年[英文版2002年]），第16页。 4 布什欧（Bourriaud），第44页。 《Relational Antagonisms》， 《October Magazine》，第110期，2004年秋季刊，第51–79页。 5 Claire Bishop， 6 2009年2月24日艺术家发给作者的邮件节选。 《Precision Optics/Optical Illusions: Inconsistancy, Anemic Cinema, 7 在这里我借用了Michael Betancourt 的作品， and the Rotoreliefs》，发表于《The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal》， http://www.toutfait.com/online_journal_details.php?postid=1570，2004年11月30日上传，2009年3月15日最后一次登陆。 ，http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A885062，2002年11月29日上传， 8 参见“Blood, Bandages and Barber Poles” 2009年3月14日最后一次登陆。 9 2009年2月24日艺术家发给作者的邮件节选。 “The Emancipated Spectator” ，2004年8月20日所作演讲，讲稿参见 http://ranciere.blogspot.com/2007/09/ 10 Jacques Rancière， 《Participation》, ranciere-emancipated-spectator.html，2009年3月14日最后一次登陆。部分内容曾出现在《前言—Claire Bishop》， Claire Bishop编,（伦敦和剑桥，马塞诸塞：Whitechapel and MIT Press），2006年，第16页。

L/B Selected works 2002 - 2009

Perfect #4 plastic modules, lacquer / variable 2006 “lumps and bumps” SPIRAL/Wacoal Art Center, Tokyo JP

Kicker aluminium, wood, brass / 115 x 370 x 250 cm 2002 Art Forum Berlin / Galerie Urs Meile, Luzern CH

Spielfeld #3 epoxy paint, metal, lacquer / 5.8 x 13 m 2008 “Balls and Brains” Helmhaus, Zürich CH

Comfort #6 polyester fabric, ventilator / ca. 14 x 36 x 5 m 2008 “La noche en blanco” Fundacion Telefónica, Madrid ES

Beautiful Corner #4 carpet / 15 x 15 m 2006 “lumps and bumps” SPIRAL/Wacoal Art Center, Tokyo JP

Hotel Everland mobile one room hotel, mixed media / 12 x 4.5 x 4.5 m 2002 Expo.02, Yverdon CH

Hotel Everland mobile one room hotel, mixed media / 12 x 4.5 x 4.5 m 2007 - 2009 Palais de Tokyo, Paris F

Diving Platform steel, fiberglass, lacquer, diving board / 4 x 1.8 x 13 m 2007 “Môtiers 2007” Art en plein Air, Môtiers CH

Spielfeld #2 steel pontoon, paint, aluminium goals / 6.2 x 19.6 m 2004 “Zoll/Douane� Zollkanal Speicherstadt, Hamburg D

Comfort #4 PVC-foil, ventilator / 1 tube of 60 m 2008 “Nationale Kunstausstellung” Autofriedhof, Kaufdorf CH

Perfect #2 plastic modules, lamps / variable 2006 “5 Milliards d’années” Palais de Tokyo, Paris F

Comfort #3 polyurethane-foil, tubes, ventilator / 2.2 x 5 m 2006 “La Galerie Exterieure” Canal de l’Ourcq, Paris F

Beautiful Walls #14 wall painting / 60 x 4.2 m 2005 “Malereiräume” Helmhaus, Zürich CH

Pocket Stadium chrome steel, lacquer, aluminium, lamps / 2.7 x 2.9 x 2.7 m 2006 “Trial Baloons” Musac, León ES

Belt Buckle belt buckle with LED display / 14 x 5 cm 2006 Edition 5, Erstfeld CH

L/B Artists-in-Residence Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing, China March - May 2008

Caochangdi, Beijing, March 2008

Beijing, April 2008

Beijing, March 2008

Crab Island, Beijing, May 2008

Beijing, March 2008

Caochangdi, Beijing, April 2008

Biography L/B Sabina Lang *1972 in Bern CH Daniel Baumann *1967 in San Francisco USA live in Burgdorf CH, collaboration since 1990

Selected solo shows 2009 2008 2007

2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

2000 1999

1998 1996 1995

Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers F, Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing PRC, “I’m Real” Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris F, “more is more” Locust Projects, Miami USA, “Pocket Stadium” Palais de Tokyo, Paris F, “Hotel Everland” Villa du Parc, Annemasse F, “Comfort #4” SPIRAL/Wacoal Art Center, Tokyo JP, “lumps and bumps” Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig D, “Hotel Everland” Marks Blond Project, Bern CH, “Diving Platform” Stage, Bern CH, “Perfect #2” Kunsthalle, St.Gallen CH, “Lobby” Bell-Roberts Gallery, Cape Town ZA, “L/B” Galerie Urs Meile, Luzern CH, “duell” Expo.02, Yverdon CH, “Hotel Everland” Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zürich CH, “Window 002” Kunstverein, Freiburg D, “Transit, eine Navigation” Swiss Institute, New York USA, “Beautiful Entrance #3” Hot Coco Lab, Los Angeles USA, “L/B, Josh Blackwell” Galerie Urs Meile, Luzern CH, “Au dernier cri” Kunsthalle, Bern CH, “Inforaum” migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zürich CH, “SAT 2” U.F.F. Gallery, Budapest H, “L/B” CAN Centre d’Art, Neuchâtel CH, “Spalinger, Fleury, Lang/Baumann” Kiosk, Bern CH, “Inter will Roy” Galerie Martin Krebs, Bern CH, “L/B” De Fabriek, Eindhoven NL, “Breathing Pillows” Centro d’Arte Contemporanea, Bellinzona CH, “Pithy Phrases”

Selected group shows 2009 2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

11th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition, Biel-Bienne CH, “Utopics” Progr, Bern CH, “Berner Museumsnacht” Fundacion Telefónica, Madrid ES, “La noche en blanco” Autofriedhof, Kaufdorf CH, “Nationale Kunstausstellung” Helmhaus, Zürich CH, “Balls and Brains” Art en plein Air, Môtiers CH, “Môtiers 2007” Former Schindler’s Factory, Krakow PL, “The Memory of this Moment ...”

Stage, Bern CH, “Unknown Pleasures” Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers F, “L’égosystème” Palais de Tokyo, Paris F, “5 Milliards d’années” Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern CH, “Experiments in Pop” Canal de l’Ourcq, quai de Loire et quai de Seine, Paris F, “La Galerie Exterieure” Musac, León ES, “Trial Baloons” Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern D, “Fussball + Kunst” Kunstmuseum, Thun CH, “Les Complices - Musée CoCo” Swiss Institute, New York USA, “Space Boomerang” CentrePasquArt, Biel-Bienne CH, “Nouvelles Collections II” Galerie Martin Krebs, Bern CH, “Read me” Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin D, “Rundlederwelten” KBB, Barcelona ES, “Focus Switzerland” Helmhaus, Zürich CH, “Malereiräume” Kunsthaus, Langenthal CH, “Design? Kunst?”

Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers F, “Kamikaze 2089” Zollkanal Speicherstadt, Hamburg D, “Zoll/Douane” CAN Centre d’Art, Neuchâtel CH, “Lasko” L’art sur place, Biennale de Lyon, Lyon F, “Floating Land” Kunst im öffentlichen Raum, Chur CH, “Transit.Chur” Attitudes, Genève CH, “Floating Bowl” Villa Arson, Nice F, “Lee 3 Tau Ceti Central Armory Show” Art en plein Air, Môtiers CH, “Môtiers 2003” Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris F, “Mursollaici” Bunker, Oberschan CH, “Unloaded - Coming Up For Air” Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel CH, “Sweet Nothing” Kunstmuseum, Solothurn CH, “Tapetenwechsel” Helmhaus, Zürich CH, “Balsam - Exhibition der Fussballseele” SA National Gallery, Cape Town ZA, “Cape Town Festival” Kunsthalle St.Gallen, St.Gallen CH, “Surface”

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

Stadion Dynamo Kiev, Kiev UKR, “Dreamgames” Museum Bellerive, Zürich CH, “70s versus 80s” Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow PL, “Larger than Life” migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zürich CH, “Collection” Frac, Marseille F, “Je pense donc je suisse” Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich CH, “hors sol. Künstlerische Plakate” CentrePasquArt, Biel CH, “Collection Cahiers d’artistes Editions 1997-1999” migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zürich CH, “Let’s be Friends” Galeries d’Antiquaires, Nice F, “Door to Door” Vitra Design Museum, Berlin D, “Blow Up” migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zürich CH, “Personal Brandscape” Grimaldi Forum, Monaco MC, “Air-Air” Werkleitz-Biennale, Werkleitz D, “Real Work” Art in urban space, Biel-Bienne CH, “Transfert” Shed im Eisenwerk, Frauenfeld CH, “Doppelgänger” Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius LIT, “Painterly” Haus für Kunst Uri, Altdorf CH, “Positionen” CentrePasquArt, Biel-Bienne CH, “Au centre l’artiste” Palazzo Doria Spinola, Genova I, “La Coscienza tra Arte e Cultura Contemp.”

Ludwig Museum, Budapest H, “Aktuelle Kunst aus der Schweiz” Wankdorf Stadion, Bern CH, “Kunst am Ball” Podewil, Berlin D, “Come in and find out vol.2” Ex-Troesch Building, Bellinzona CH, “999” Parking of the l’Archet 2 hospital, Nice F, “Drive in” Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Wien A, “Produktion/Öffentlichkeit” 95, Rue du Cherche-midi, Paris F, “Déplacements” Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich CH, “Medium - eine Welt dazwischen” Swiss Institute, New York USA, “Independing Loop” La Station, Nice F, “L/B, Maxime Matray, Thomas Zoritchak” Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt D, “Freie Sicht aufs Mittelmeer” Akademie der Künste, Berlin D, “Nonchalance” Shedhalle, Zürich CH, “Schnittstelle/Produktion” Kunsthaus, Zürich CH, “Freie Sicht aufs Mittelmeer” Skuc Gallerija, Ljubliana SLO, “Levade” Fri-Art, Fribourg CH, “Technoculture - Computer world” CentrePasquArt, Biel-Bienne CH, “Nonchalance” Opera Paese, Roma I, “You know my name”

Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, April 2009

出版：麦勒画廊 北京-卢森 编辑：Sabina Lang 和 Daniel Baumann, 麦勒画廊 北京-卢森 设计：L/B 摄影：Katsuhiro Ichikawa (39 - 41, 49页), Francois Charrière (59页), Oliver Heissner (61页), Christian Helmle (63页), FBM Studio (71页), 其余均为 L/B拍摄 文章：丁达韦 文章翻译：黄一 校对： Lee Ambrozy (英文), 申彤 (中文) © 2009 麦勒画廊 北京-卢森, L/B, www.langbaumann.com 印刷：中国，北京 Publisher: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne Editors: Sabina Lang & Daniel Baumann in collaboration with Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne Designer: L/B Photographers: Katsuhiro Ichikawa p. 39 - 41, 49, Francois Charrière p. 59, Oliver Heissner p. 61, Christian Helmle p. 63, FBM Studio p. 71, all others by L/B Text: David Spalding Text Translator: Huang Yi Copy Editors: Lee Ambrozy (English), Anya Shen (Chinese) © 2009 Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, L/B, www.langbaumann.com All rights reserved. No part of this book 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.

ISBN: 978-3-9523342-3-2 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, 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 本画册为L/B个展“我是真的”而出版 2009年5月9日至7月12日展出于中国北京麦勒画廊 北京-卢森 This catalogue was published on the occasion of L/B’s solo exhibition “I’m Real” at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing, China, from May 9 to July 12, 2009 特别致谢: 李红卫, 李建辉, 宋志超, 王志婷, 徐静, 张海军 Special thanks to: Li Hongwei, Li Jianhui, Song Zhichao, Wang Zhiting, Xu Jing, Zhang Haijun