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THE
OUTER TERRITORIES
An
essay on the art of Frank Gerlitzki
The outer territories is an
australian expression to define the remote parts of this huge
country,
mostly deserted and untouched where only few groups of native
aboriginal live.When I first met Frank, during an open studio
event in
Beijing and I had to confront his art, I tried without success to
grasp
the references behind the objects, maps, paintings, drawings,
photos
and installations which filled the studio. In my mind either it
was too
obvious, either there was something missing.
After several years and a few
projects we had the chance to develop together, the subtle and
innovative quality of his work started to unveil itself. That day,
the
point was not about what was in the studio,....it was the fact
that we
were in that studio, in that unexplored physical space he was
living
since a few weeks for the first time.
Not long after, Frank moved to
Guangzhou, right at the time when Beijing was the hottest art city
of
the world, and it was clear that this had a quite marginal impact
on
Frank's path. Why avoiding the hype, the "place to be", the center
of
the energy? I'm not sure how Frank would answer this question, yet
there is a clear answer in his work: language, form, mediums and
contents are neither synthesized, nor developed in themselves,
they
are, instead, transformed into tools to explore unknown
physical
and cultural spaces: his art develops itself in an antropological
quest
of new territories.
One of Frank's most important
work is in fact the creation of a temporary, artistic and
autonomous
territory, with proper identity, but with no fixed geographical
location. The project was not completed, yet its potential
existence
was already a poetic and subversive image to confront. In his
installations, we hear the echo of Mike Kelley, yet Frank does not
push
the abjection, and does not emphasize the nostalgic-punk attitude
; he
simply uses the "otherness" of those kind of materials and objets
trouvées. The "traveller spirit" of his bottles and baskets
filled with sentences reminds us of Martin Kippenberger, but,
again
Frank avoids the romantic ironic self-celebration of the german
artist
and puts forward the nomadic, undefined, unstructured nature
of
these kind of interventions. Both Kelley's american "stinky"
rebellion and Kippenberger's sophisticated european anarchy are
simplified and reduced to their basic nature of unorthodox methods
of
research and inquiry.
Getting rid of any sort of
indulgence, Frank transforms abject art, non-art and "degree-zero
art"
into refined instruments to question not only artistic
production
but the nature of communication itself. What makes the
specific
high quality of this approach is his capacity to be so severe with
this
potentially chaotic aesthetic; the fact that he seems not
interested
into developing further an intervention keeps him from "closing"
his
artworks and focusing the attention on themselves only. If he does
not
finish them, if he does not push them further, it is again because
for
him they are interesting only as functional tools to enter and
explore
the next new space. The nature of this exploration will be
sympathetic
but not intrusive, refusing to colonize the new area and aiming at
recording the experience of the encounter and using it as a bridge
for
the next one to happen.
It is difficult to tell
Frank's presence in his work, because he dissimulates it under the
unpretentious non-chalance of his personality and the
anti-subjective
quality of his interventions, yet in his mirror-white-painting
series
(probably the most intimistic of his works) he cannot but confront
the
need of self-inquiry. Once again he tries to erase as much
artistic and
subjective gesture as possible from these raw, simple, modest-size
collage paintings, but this time, he ( deliberately?) forgets
that the act of painting, if not done by a machine,
leaves
personal marks. The white acrylic primer succeeds into leaving
colour's
sentimentality out, but the rough, organic texture bears a
personal
statement. The mirrors stuck in the white matter fail to be
fragments
and on their surface imprisoned in the matter we are obliged to
confront our image.
By the time I saw the
white-mirror-paintings, I was still under the influence of a
completely
different work of his, exhibited together with a sculpture of mine
in a
museum show in Songzhuan; it was a series of cartoon-like
drawings, in
which stylized sheeps conveyed a mockery of all politically
correct
social behaviors . The sheep drawings were behind bars made by the
shadow of a supermarket trolley's structure, projected on the wall
by a
simple lightbulb. People could draw and write on the
sheep-drawings.
The reality of our consumerist society lied there bare, stripped
of its
colorful deceptions and seductive patina. It was like a sweet and
sour
cold shower for the viewers and the fact to have the possibility
to
write and draw on the sheep-drawings increased the sense of loss
and
the impossibility to escape from the postmodern flatness. You
could
mock it, criticize it or being indifferent, yet you are inevitably
part
of it. Then the white-mirror paintings came and thinking of
the
sequence I remembered few lines in the last chapter of
"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury which could well express Frank's
message:
"Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror factory first and
put
out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in
them"
Alessandro Rolandi
如果一个大国的偏远地区是一个很少与外界联系并只有少数原住民居住的区域,那么在澳大利亚人概念里就被定义为外部领土。我第一次见到弗兰克的
时候是在北京开放工作室活动期间,也是我首次接触到他的作品。我试图通过艺术品,地图,涂漆,绘画,照片及摆满整个工作室的装置艺术来理解他
作品背后的意义,但我失败了。以我的理解,一切或许是显而易见的又或许遗漏了某些要素。随后的几年里,我们在一些项目里有了一起合作的机会。
此时,他作品里的一些微妙而又新颖的特性开始显露。就在那天,重点不是工作室里有什么......而是我们在这个地方,一个他第一次生活了几
周的却未被探究的陌生空间。
不久,正当北京成为全世界最热门的艺术城市时,弗兰克移居到了广州。很显然,这对于弗兰克的艺术之路产生了一定的影响。为什么要远离便于宣传
自己的绝佳之地,远离能量的汇聚地?我不确定弗兰克怎么回答这个问题,不过,在他的作品里面已经很明显有了答案:语言、形式、媒介和内容既没
有被综合在一起,也没有各自发展着,而是转换成了一种探索未知物质和文化空间的工具:他的艺术在人类学的探索领域里有了新的发展。
事实上,弗兰克最重要的工作之一就是创作一种临时性、艺术化、完全自主且身份明确但没有固定地点的空间领地。这个项目没有完成,但它潜在的存在感已经展示出诗意般、颠覆性
的形象。在弗兰克的装置艺术中,
虽然他没有主动摈弃,也没有强调这种朋克式怀旧的态度,但我们还是仿佛听到了迈克·凯利的余音。谈到作品来源,他只是简单的用了“差异性”来形容找到的那些材料和物质。他
那具有
“旅行者精神”的瓶子和篮子里面蕴含着的意味让我们想起马丁·基彭伯格,巧妙的是弗兰克避免了具有浪漫讽刺意味的德国艺术家式的孤芳自赏,而是提出并渗入一些具有飘忽性、
不确定性、非结构化的特质。凯利美国式的“臭名远扬”般的叛逆和基彭贝尔格复杂的欧洲无政府状态因非正统研究和探索方式已经被简化和削弱。
摆脱对任何形式的偏爱,弗兰克将廉价品艺术、非艺术、“零度艺术”转换成精美的艺术装置,这种做法不仅是对艺术品本身,更是对这种交流的意义提出质疑。正是他对潜在混沌美
学的苛求才造就这种特殊而又高品质的创作形式。事实上,他似乎没有兴趣走的太远,为的是避免过多外界因素干扰自己并“禁锢”自己的作品,他将
注意力都集中在作品本身上。如果作品没有完工,也没有进一步完善的打算,那么对他而言这些创作形式只是进入和开拓未来新领域的一种方法。这种
探索的特性是和谐的不受侵入的,它拒绝新领域被殖民化。他旨在记录遇到的经验,并作为创作下一个作品的桥梁。
在弗兰克的作品中很难分辨出他的痕迹,因为都掩饰在他谦逊的个性和非主观性介入之中。在他的镜子-白色的绘画系列(可能是他最私密的作品)中他不得不面对自我探究的需求。
一次又一次他尝试尽可能从原始、简单、中等尺寸的拼贴画中抹去艺术和主观的姿态,而这一次他(故意?)全然忘记了绘画的艺术性。如果不是留下
了个人的签名,这些作品会被认为是由机器完成的。白色的丙烯酸底漆成功地将感性的色彩游离于外,但粗糙的有机的质地依然蕴含着个人的思想。滞
留在白色物体中的镜面并没有破碎,人们可以清晰的从未破碎的镜子中看到由此折射出来的影像。
当我看“白色镜子绘画”作品的时候,他的另外一部作品却影响我很深。这个作品和我的一个雕塑作品同时在宋庄的一个博物馆里展出。这是一组卡通
画式的风格作品,画里面特定风格化的羊想要表达的是在被政治气氛渲染下对所有正确行为的一种嘲讽。羊在牢中的形象是被设计为关在超市手推车样
式的阴影中,而这一阴影是利用一个简单的灯泡投射到墙上去的。人们可以在羊的绘图上绘画或书写。剥去丰富多彩的欺骗和诱人的铜锈,消费主义社
会的现实性就会一览无余的呈现出来,这就像给观众提供了一次酸甜的冷水淋浴。在我们给羊的绘图上画画和书写时,无疑加深了迷失感和无法逃离后
现代氛围的无奈感。你可以嘲笑它、批评它、或变得与众不同,但你终究还是属于其中的一部分。这部白镜画作品的出现让我想起雷布莱伯利写在“华
氏451”最后一章的几行话。我想,这几行话可以很好地解读弗兰克吧:
“现在,我们先去建造一个镜子工厂。除了镜子什么也不生产,以备下一年我们好好地照照镜子。”
A
door can shut a space...
.....Frank
Gerlitzki opts for opening, for the
creation of contact and communication. His conceptual works
and
projects are full of discreet ironic winks to the contemporary
artscene, but a
mood of calm brings to his creations serenity along
with powerful intensity.
Painter,
photographer, multi-media artist, writer he also produces
catalogues, invitation cards and videos.
Since
the
opening of his "Espace ApArt" in 2003, he doesn't not only
show his own work but organises also
shows of work by other
artists and arranges lectures, performances and film-shows.
For
him
being an artist doesn't stop at painting pictures or producing
artworks. His understanding of art is much more complex. Art
is daily
reality.
Not limiting himself to a specific technique,
choosing the medium that seems most appropriated for the
representation
of his ideas and visions, integrating a deep reflexion and
questionning
about the architecture and socio-cultural reality of the
exhibition
space, Frank Gerlitzki doesn't hide however his origins as a painter.
His
works
are contemporary Polaroids, celebrating the moment but
always on the run. Open windows to China's chaotic city life
as well as
to the spiritual and metaphysical loneliness of a hidden
temple.
They
sing
the rhytmic and hard sound of cityscapes as well as the
melancholic one of never ending landscapes; the stress of
metropolis
and the nervous rigidity of big emotions- Idyllic and cynical:
HEART
and HARD become one.
His
artistic language is like a whisper just before complete
silent, waiting to be transformed in an explosion of shouting.
This
work can be seen regularly in Switzerland, Luxembourg,
Belgium,
France, Germany, Greece and China and was awarded with the
créateur d'aujourd'hui award in 1997 and the "Prix Gauguin "in
1998.
一
扇门可以关闭一个空间...
福
兰克·
格雷兹勒选择一种开放的方式来进行他的艺术创作,其主题主要围绕着接触和沟通这两个概念。他的概念作品和艺术项目总是充
满了对当代艺术场景谨慎的嘲讽与调侃,但同时能感受到作品所包含的一种宁静的思绪和强大的张力。
福兰克既是画家,摄影师,多媒体艺术家和作家,同时也制作画册,邀请函和影像作品。
2003年,
他成立了自己的"Espace
ApArt"艺
术代理机构,
不
仅展示他自己的作品,
同
时也策划其他艺术家的展览,
组
织讲座,行为艺术表演以及电影短片观摩。
对他而言,
艺
术家不应只停留在作画或其他艺术品的创作。他对艺术的理解更为广泛综合,艺术就在身边,
是
日常的现实本身。
福兰克总是选择最适合表现他的艺术观念与图景的媒介,并不局限于特定的技巧,并结合他对展览空间的建筑与社会文化特点的
反思与质疑来进行艺术创作,他并不隐瞒自己的画家出身。
他的作品是当代的拍立得,既捕捉当下的瞬间,又总是在行进当中。在他的视窗中,既有中国忙乱的城市生活场景,又有孤
寂而深藏的寺庙。
这些作品中回响着城市风光有节奏而沉重的声音,还有漫无边际的自然风景忧伤的吟唱;既充斥着大都会的压力,
又
弥漫着一种紧张的情绪
– 对
田园诗般生活的幻想和对尘世生活的愤世嫉俗,温情与冷漠融合成一体。
他
的艺术语言就象沉寂前的低语,静候着呐喊的爆发。
福兰克·格雷兹勒的
作品定期在多国展出,如瑞士、卢森堡、比利时、法国、希腊和中国。他于1997年
获得“当代艺术家”奖,于1998年
获得”高
更奖”等
众多奖项。
Une porte peut fermer un espace…
Frank
Gerlitzki opte pour l’ouverture, pour la création de contact
et de communication.
La
tension du passage à travers toutes sortes de membranes est à la
base de son oeuvre artistique. De par son intérêt pour le corps,
la peau est au centre de ses recherches. En effet, elle est
structure de séparation en même temps qu’organe de communication
avec le monde extérieur pour un être vivant.
Le
passage vers une structure plus profonde dans ses peintures
d’espaces colorés à géométrie volontairement imparfaite; la
confrontation de la façade “dure” de l’être humain avec sa
fragilité intérieure souvent cachée dans “Fragmentos de piel”;
la libération de la vie, retenue derrière les barrières visibles
ou non du corps, sont les thèmes que l’on retrouve dans son
travail.
Peintre,
photographe,
artiste multi-média, écrivain, producteur de
cartons d'invitations, de catalogues, de vidéos.
Depuis
l'ouverture
de l'"Espace ApArt" en 2003, Frank n'a pas seulement
montré son propre travail à lui, mais également
organisé des expositions de travaux d'autres artistes, de
performances et de lectures.
Pour
lui être artiste ne consiste pas seulement à peindre, mais sa
notion d'art est beaucoup plus complexe.
Le
travail conceptuel recherche une discrète ironie, des clins
d’oeil envers la scène artistique actuelle, que Frank Gerlitzki
connaît également en tant que coordinateur d’événements
culturels.
Ne
se limitant pas à une technique spécifique, choisissant le moyen
qui lui semble le plus approprié en fonction de la
représentation de son idée et de ses visions. Y intégrant une
réflexion et un questionnement sur l’architecture de l’espace
d’exposition, Frank Gerlitzki ne nie toutefois pas ses origines
de peintre.
Ses
travaux
sont des Polaroids contemporains, célébrant le
moment...mais toujours en mouvement. Des fenêtres ouvertes sur
le
monde chaotique de villes chinoises comme sur la solitude
spirituelle
et métaphysique de temples cachés.
Ils
chantent
le rhytme du monde urbain en même temps que celui d'un
paysage sans fin: l'agitation d'une métropole et
l'immobilité nerveuse de grands sentiments-idylle et cynisme
s'unissent.
Son
language artistique est comme un murmure juste avant le grand
silence, attendant de se transformer en cri.
Après ses études à Liège, il a absolvé divers cours artistiques
auprès de différents professeurs (e.a. Jochen Stenschke/Berlin).
Il était brièvement membre au “Letzebuerger Artisten Center
(LAC)” et a reçu entre autres les récompenses de “Créateur
d’aujourd’hui” (Paris 1997) et le “Prix Gauguin 1998”
Frank
Gerlitzki expose régulièrement au Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, en
France, en Belgique, en Allemagne et en Suisse.
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