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模型摄影的一个作品
模型摄影的一个作品
BY SHELLEY RICE
and Sculpture one. Young Chinese artists like Xing and Cao Fei, who re-creates
Thomas the Tank Engine trucks and documents reactions of
Chinese bystanders as they see a Western animated character
come alive on their highways, are underlining the complex inter-
national relationships binding originals and simulacra in contem-
porary life. In 1970, when Peter Bunnell curated the groundbreaking
2s "Photography Into Sculpture" exhibition at the Museum of Modern
f I Opposite and detail: Xing Danwen,
I S Urban Fiction 26, 2004-ongoing. Art in New York, he was trying to make a case for "photography
SI C-print and paper, 33 x 42 in. as a material medium"^ He was interested in "embracing concerns
Sculpture 30 7
and sold, alongside their photographic
interpretations. Witkin, on the other hand,
uses sculptural forms as structures to house
mythological and gruesome subjects
(severed heads and limbs, taxidermied ani-
mals, and deformed people living or dead).
His large black and white photographs-
of crucified Christs, mythic Mexican icons,
and amputee Venuses-are printed with
gauze and radically hand-worked for effect,
giving them a painterly, precious, and
antique look. Celebrated as a pictorial
photographer for a number of years. Wit-
kin only chose to create and exhibit sculp-
tures as primary expressive statements
later in his career, despite the fact that
much of his original artistic training had Above: lames Casebere, Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #8, 2010. Framed digital
been in this medium. chromogenic print mounted to Dibond, 188.3 x 230.5 x 7.6 cm. Below: lames Casebere, Mosque
The Brazilian artist Vik Muniz also began (After Sinan) #2, 2006. Digital chromogenic print mounted to Plexiglas, 183 x 233 cm.
his artistic career with sculptures, making
small and humorous objects like Pre-Colum-
bian Coffee Maker and Clown Skull. After
documenting these works with a camera,
his creative emphasis began to shift. "Once
you photograph something you make," he
told Peter Galassi, "you not only document
it but also idealize it. You take the most
stupid snapshot, and it will still be some-
thing that started in your mind. You make
it look more like that image in your mind
that led you to create that object. That
somehow brings a sense of closure; an
idea going full circle, a way to evidence
how your own imagination survives being
digested by the material world."" Soon, he
began discarding the objects and retaining
only their traces, their two-dimensional
records. "The moment I photographed
a sculpture, 1 didn't care about the sculp-
ture anymore. I realized I liked the picture
better, so I started making things exclu-
sively to be photographed."5 Known for his
temporary representations —portraits of
children, clouds, art reproductions, and
celebrity icons crafted with diamonds, cot-
ton balls, sugar crystals, garbage, dust, or
(currently) huge pieces of furniture, urban
Gardner-with chocolate, thread, or even spaghetti and sauce. He appropriates famous
detritus, and discarded vehicles assembled
images in order to create what he calls "the worst possible illusion," allowing viewers to
in an airplane hangar in Rio de Janeiro —
understand and celebrate the mechanisms of their own pictorial perception.^
Muniz has traded the site-specificity and
Another, very different, postmodern artist, the German Thomas Demand, also bases
heaviness of objects for the lightness,
his works on pre-existing images. Born around the same time as Muniz, Demand grew
malleability, and mobility of images. He
up in a country rebuilding-physically and spiritually-after the devastation of World
often transcribes welt-known icons —Leo-
War 11. Obsessed with media imagery, especially pictures of sites where violent crimes or
nardo's Last Supper, Medusa's head, Ava
momentous historical events once occurred. Demand chooses an iconic picture, re-creates
Sculptura 30 7
to India and China, and most recently,
lush natural scenes inhabited by wild
animals. The Monkey (2011) is a close
encounter with a constructed primate,
who stares out of the picture from what
appears to be the greenery of a tropical
rain forest.
Once photographed, Massard's jungle
diorama becomes a landscape of the mind,
what Xing would call "another of the
fantasies that govern our contemporary
life." With this comparison, we have come
full circle. Xing's pictures are evidence of
the Chinese dream, and nightmare, of
modernization; Massard's pay homage
to the enduring voice of jean-jacques Rous-
Above: Didier Massard, Mangrove, 2003. Chromogenic print, 16 x 20 in. Below: Didier Massard, diorama seau, the desire for a primal or exotic
for The Monkey, 2011. Styrofoam, aluminum foil, synthetic moss, plastic vegetation, dried plants, card- we antérieure that may only exist in the
board, epoxy resin, wool cord, aluminum wire, glass eyes, and acrylic paint, 80 x 58 x 157 in. imagination. Living on the same planet,
at the same time, these two gifted artists
describe their reactions to the terrifying
and exhilarating experience of contem-
poraneity. Their works create a complex
picture of the yearnings and desires of the
21st century: our pull toward the future
and our simultaneous yearning for a
simpler past. Photography has come of
age, and its mandate is a weighty one,
for it anchors us to light and form, to time
and space.
All of these artists, working in the inter-
stices between dimensions, are helping
us to negotiate the ecologies and tempo-
ralities of a new millennium, to create
the mental maps that we need to guide
us through the interconnected byways
of a brave new world.
2 Notes
Q
4 Vik friuniz, in Vii( Mmiz, exhibition catalogue, (Paris. Centre National de ^ This line from Muniz iS also the title of a film about the artist by Anne-
<• ^ Artist statement in Xing Donwen, extiibition catalogue, (Hong Kong Ooi
la Photographie. 1999); quoted in Shelley Rice. ~The Untwarable tikeness of Marie Russell and produced t>y Mixed Greens. New York, 3001
^ Botos Gallery. 2009). P 18.
Being Vik fvluniz." in Vik Mmii: incomplete Works (Brazil: National Library. ^ Didier Massard, quoted in Carol Kino, "A Peepfiote Perspective on Tiny
Í 2 Peter Bunnell. wall labet from "Photography into Sculpture," Museum of
>- 2001). p. 71. Worlds, " Tfte New York Tirrws. Arts and Leisure Section, Sunday, lune 12.
2 Modern Art, New York. April 8-|uly 5,1970.
S 3 Bunnell, press release from "Photography mto Sculpture, " p, 1. ^ Moniz. quoted in Rice, op. cit.. p. 72 2011, p. 20.