策展人廖薇邀请了四组当代艺术家，请他们使用与展览机制(dispositif)明确相关的视觉策略重新审视美术馆的定义：颜磊的绘画装置里，早期当代艺术沙龙的陈旧模式;刘建华用陶瓷模拟的物品类型学;孙原和彭禹用录像在动物标本的自然主义展示和极少主义模具展示之间制造的冲突;黄永砅悬挂在空间中的两只大鱼装置，则是对叙述文体和历史关系的运用。

　　显然，这些对展览历史机制的指涉并非怀旧地描绘博物馆过去所是或应是的样子。应该说四组艺术家从这些对展览模式的引用出发，用故事套故事的方式，十分有效地讲述了展览的现代主义乌托邦，它是为理性、等级、教育灌输和身份再现所引导的。实际上，在艺术家构想的每个机制内部，都铺展着其他的视觉层次，它们冲击、颠覆和替代着原初模式。因此我们看到，刘建华创作的一组八个青色瓷器严格地拒绝一种形式类型学，这些瓷器塑造的似乎是家居物品或者人的身体，但是这些形态故意没被做完或者足够模糊，让人无法对应和辨认。它们一直徘徊在家用物品和脸的形态之间，与此同时，它们又完全能代表其他东西，艺术家要指出的正是这个另外空间。于是，观众的眼睛迷失在徒劳的辨别里，妄图在用心的凝视中进一步接近差异性，接近一个开放的、未确定的空间。

　　颜磊的一系列画作的创作程序是彻底反转的。参观者看到的展览布置似乎被一种混乱所统辖，混乱来自大量的绘画，从地上到天花板，铺满了为此次展览漆成深红色的美术馆墙面。不过，如果再仔细点看，这个杂乱的装置别具颠覆性，因为在表面的无序之中，艺术家设计了一套极度严格而精细的作品生产、展览机制。这些画不是艺术家本人画的，而是向不同的业余及专业画家定制的，由颜磊向这些被委任的艺术家规定题目。在这样一种图像生产策略中，作者身份立即被破坏了，他要求第三方对一个文本进行视觉再现，于是文本成为绘画。诠释另一个艺术家的作品题目的艺术家因而陷入一个关于创造性的虚幻而荒诞的怪圈，他要么试图模仿“原创”艺术家，要么试图开启起一系列的历史参照或主观美学风格。最终参观者发现，展览的表面混乱在这一系列绘画的组织中消解了，这些绘画的节奏来自于用粉笔直接写在墙上的文字。这些文字其实是画作的标题，可是此处的联盟并未立即将这些绘画故事化。观众读着“一块砖”的文字，开始让自己的眼睛迷失在对绘画的徒劳解读中。

　　展览《时光旅行者》用这些作品对作为“封闭结构”的博物馆定义进行解构，至少是试图找出局限性和扩展的可能：封闭、分类、排除、等级以及物化。

　　《时光旅行者》并未一下子宣布博物馆结构的终结，但是它毕竟揭示了博物馆并非是一个自然结构，并非一直存在，也并非处在历史之外。封闭结构是一种历史建构，它在囊括和排除中强制使用自己的规则、途径和方式。将当代艺术场域放在艺术博物馆结构框架中思考，我们能简要地回想起那些坐标。1648年，皇家绘画雕塑院在法国成立，这个机构随后成立了美术学院，它是精神课程，而不再是简单的手艺实践。事实上，美术学院渐渐与这样一个系统分离，即艺术家自我组织行会、作品直接对应教会或皇家机器的订单的系统。艺术家因美术学院获得了自治，拥有了只为形式和美学品质而创作的可能。当代艺术作品从此完全为了自身独有的形式品质而展示，而不再只为了应付订单，它们进入了公共场所或者在政治或宗教节庆的集体地点得到承认。于是，事实证明，有必要开创各种独立结构，好让新的体系和新的艺术市场被创造出来。我们于是看到了为艺术而艺术的概念的出现，作品的价值在于自身独特的形式和美学品质，但是，作品同时应该努力迎合一种公共的趣味，抢占或者制造这种趣味。艺术、现代艺术家身份以及艺术作品原创性自治事业的悖论就在于这样一个事实，即自治为文化民主化、让广大公众接触到艺术的宏大社会政治任务提供了有效的操作方式。为了使这个民主系统切实有效，美术学院和美术馆这些结构被创造出来，为选拔、趣味培养、推广当代艺术家以及遗产保护之用。一系列为了组织美术学院和创造艺术市场的机构和事件随之发生。我们接着看到沙龙在1667年出现了，它成为我们今天所知道的当代艺术展览的最初形式。为了应对这些官方结构，显然出现了持不同意见的展览和美学运动，以及反抗权力的其他结构。由此诞生了落选者沙龙和替代场馆，其中最为有名的是建于1855年和1867年的居斯塔夫·库尔贝馆，它的建造出于对世博会模式的反对，这种模式像储物室般悬挂物品，作品不仅混乱，而且跟大量工业产品混在一起。库尔贝开创了在世艺术家专题展的形式，这一思想行动在某种程度上成为著名的当代艺术展览白盒子空间的先驱。事实上，在整个十七和十八世纪建立起的结构，在推广艺术家的同时，又将他们卷入一个特殊的、通常是复杂的社会与美学复兴的循环。

　　显然，二十世纪六、七十年代的机构批判艺术是对美术馆机构的历史提出质疑的关键一步，由此发展出新的展览实践、作者表达和艺术作品身份的前所未有的模式。马塞尔·布达埃尔的虚构美术馆，例如创立于1968年的他著名的“现代美术馆/鹰之馆”，米歇尔·亚瑟所进行的观念和建筑学转移，以及汉斯·哈克引入的美术馆机构的意识形态基础，都强烈地揭示和质疑丹尼尔·布仁的观察：“美术馆为每一样展示在其中的东西……制造‘标志’，强加‘框架’，深刻而无法磨灭(……)美术馆展示的每一样东西都只因它被放置其中而被看待和创造。”(1)

　　因而，《时光旅行者》这个展览所处的语境正是对这些变动的认识，但它也在另外一片历史和当代的场域展开，对此需要明确一下。

　　首先，它的发生地是外滩美术馆这座建筑物，它是由英国皇家亚洲文会在1932年建成的，作为在中国成立的首批现代主义美术馆之一。这一特性对于建筑观念和适应外滩美术馆这座大楼自身的展览实践有着决定性影响。这一历史亮点实际上有助于策展人构想计划，考虑到西方人如何能够建立一座美术馆，用以发展他们对于来自中国文化的各类物品所进行的再现，而这些再现又不强调是中国人用自己的文化进行的再现。于是，展览联合起四组国际性中国艺术家，他们的作品在机构批判的交汇处展开，但不会在此结束。

　　其次，《时光旅行者》发生在2012年，所处的新语境正是中国当代艺术私立美术馆的过度成立。这一点并未被明确指出，但是展览呼应着一种批判性思考，即产生自中国的当代艺术美术馆既不能自我构想，也不能仅仅通过西方美术馆的历史来定义自身。尽管西方模式可能统领着所有新美术馆的构想方式，但是根据中国的特殊语境、根据与历史、经济、文化相关的意想不到的发展，进行诠释、转换和改造也是不可避免的。在这个意义上，《时光旅行者》是一个引人入胜的展览，它呈现了中国艺术家如何用他们对于展览和收藏实践的批判解读来介入充满变动的当代中国。

　　最后，《时光旅行者》展示了四组国际级中国艺术家的作品，他们虽然熟知西方艺术史，却超越了单一的机构批判而重新思考这些资料。这些作品回顾了展览的各种模式，在多样的解读中更好地重新展开批评的维度，不管是黄永砅诗意的虚构，还是孙原和彭禹的录像中对当代美术馆的戏剧性颠覆，不管是颜磊在绘画实践中进行的批判性概念化，还是刘建华的瓷器中开放的思索和绝妙的角度。

　　历史是无止境的书写，而外滩美术馆这样的当代艺术博物馆显然想要参与到历史的当代发展当中，投入到这个不懈地制造、拆解、重塑历史的自发行动中来。

　　Time Traveler displays a layered，multi-faceted and open exhibition from a closed structure that it is supposed to question：the Museum.

　　The curator of the exhibition，Ella Liao，has opted to invite four contemporary artists who revisit the definition of the museum through the use of visual strategies explicitly tied to the machinery of expositions [dispositifs d’exposition]：the bric-à-brac models of the first salons of contemporary art in Yan Lei’s installation of paintings，the simulation of the typologies of objects with Liu Jianhua’s ceramics，the conflagration between the naturalistic exposition of stuffed animals and the exhibition of minimalist modules in Sun Yuan & Peng Yu’s video，and the use of narration and of the connection to history in Huang Yongping’s installation of two fish suspended in space.

　　Obviously，these references to the historical machinery [dispositifs] of exhibitions have nothing to do with nostalgic illustrations of what the Museum has been or what it could be. For the four artists，these references to exhibition models constitute，instead，the point of departure to a very efficient mise-en-abyme of the modernist utopia of the exhibition as guided by reason，classification，pedagogical obsession，and the representation of identity. In effect，in the interior of each mechanism [dispositif] conceived by the artists，other visual stratas? are displayed which come to contradict，subvert，and displace the initial model. Thus，the series of eight celadon ceramics，created by Liu Jianhua，rigorously rejects a typology of forms that are supposed to depict domestic objects or bodily parts; yet these are purposely left unfinished or sufficiently ambiguous to prevent referencing and identification. They oscillate permanently between the domestic object and facial features，while at the same time can represent something else entirely，and it is exactly this other space that the artist aims at. The eye of the spectator consequently goes astray in a vain attempt at identification，in order to better avail oneself of the sensitive contemplation of alterity，of an open and indeterminate space.

　　The process is exactly the inverse in the series of paintings produced by Yan Lei. The visitor discovers an exhibition mechanism where a certain confusion seems to reign from the profusion of paintings; from the ground to the ceiling，these cover the walls of the Museum，walls which are painted a dense red for the occasion. But looking more closely，the jumbled installation is subversive in a different way，for at the heart of this apparent disorder the artist has conceived an extremely rigorous and constructed mechanism for the production and exhibition of works. These paintings are not realized by the artist but commissioned from different amateur and professional painters based on a title provided by Yan Lei for these delegate artists. The status of the author is maligned straight away in such a strategy for the production of the image，delegating to a third party the visual representation of a text which would become painting. The artist who interprets the title of the work from another artist is therefore placed in a fictive and absurd loop of creativity，seeking to imitate the “original” artist or to set in motion a series of historical references or subjective aesthetic styles. In the end，the visitor perceives that the apparent confusion of the exhibition is canceled out by the organization of the pictoral series，given rhythm by the texts，written in chalk，directly on the walls. These texts are in fact the titles of the realized works，but here the name plaques do not end up captioning the paintings. The spectator reads the text “as a block” and endeavors to lose their eyes in the futile reading of the paintings.

　　With such works，the exhibition Time Traveler undertakes the deconstruction of a definition of the Museum as “closed structure，” or at the very least，attempts to point at its limits and possible extensions：division，categorization，exclusion，hierarchization，and reification.

　　Time Traveler does not right away proclaim the end of the museum structure，but it does show above all that the Museum does not in the least possess a natural structure which has existed for all time and which is situated outside of history. The closed structure is a historical construction that has imposed its codes，circuits，and modalities of inclusion or of exclusion. Considering the field of contemporary art within the framwork of the museum structure，one can very briefly retrace some landmarks. In 1648，France saw the creation of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture [the Royal Academy of Painting and of Sculpture]，which would go on to found the Fine Arts as a discipline of the spirit rather than as a simple artisanal practice. As a matter of fact，the Fine Arts had little by little become disconnected from a system where artists organized themselves as guilds [corporations] and where works responded directly to orders made by the machinery of religious or royal power. With the Fine Arts，the artist became autonomous and had the possibility to create works for their sheer formal and aesthetic quality. Henceforth，works of contemporary art would be shown entirely for their sheer formal qualities，and not merely responding to an order，nor inscribed in a public square，nor affirmed in a common site [lieu collectif] of political or religious celebration. It proved necessary to create autonomous structures that would allow for the creation of a new system and of a new art market. One therefore saw the appearance of the notion of “art for art’s sake” [l’art pour l’art] where the work is valued for its sheer formal and aesthetic qualities but also where，at the same time，the work must attempt to correspond to a common taste，either to precede it or to form it. The paradox of this undertaking towards the autonomization of art，of the status of the modern artist，and of the originality of the work of art thus resides in the fact that it constituted the effective operative means of a vast social and political mission in the democratization of culture and in the accessibility of works to the general public. For this democratic system to become effective，the Academy des Beaux-Arts [the Academy of Fine Art] and the Museum were thus created as structures for the selection and formation of taste，for the promotion of contemporary artists，and for the protection of cultural heritage. A whole series of institutions and events would follow to structure the Fine Arts as well as the creation of an art market. One would also see the appearance，in 1667，of the Salon that would make up the first form of contemporary art exhibition as we know it today. Faced with these official structures emerged，obviously，contesting exhibitions and aesthetic movements，as well as structures of counter-power [contre-pouvoir]. From that also emerged the salons des refusés [Salon of Rejected Artists] and the alternative pavilions — especially Gustave Courbet’s famous pavilions，constructed in 1855 and in 1867，in opposition to the format of the universal exposition with its ragbag，chaotic hanging of works and the integration of paintings amidst industrial objects of mass production. Courbet thus inaugurated the form of the monographic exhibition of a living artist where the act of contemplation was in some ways the precursor to the famed white cube of contemporary art exhibitions. In fact，across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries，structures which promoted artists were erected，all the while implicating them in a particular and often complex circuit of social and aesthetic reconnaissance [reconnaissance].

　　Clearly，the art of Institutional Critique in the 1960s and 70s formed an essential step in the questioning of the history of museum institutions by envisaging new practices of exhibition，of original modalities in the enunciation of the author，and of the status of the work of art. The fictional museums of Marcel Broodthaers，like his famous “Museum of Modern Art / Department of Eagles”(created in 1968)，the conceptual and architectonic displacements carried out by Michael Asher，or still the ideological foundations of museum institutions indexed by Hans Haacke would radically reveal and question Daniel Buren’s observation：“The Museum makes its ‘mark，’ imposes its ‘frame’…on everything that is exhibited in it，in a deep and indelebile way…. Everything that the Museum shows is only considered and produced in view of being set in it.”(1)

　　The exhibition Time Traveler is therefore situated in a context that has taken note of these transformations. Yet it equally takes place in an entirely different historical and contemporary field [champ] which it may be helpful to make clear.

　　First of all，the exhibition takes place in the building of the Rockbund Art Museum，which was constructed by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1932 to be one of the first modern museums established in China. This particularity has exercised a decisive influence on the architectural conception and on the exhibition practices inherent in the building of the Rockbund Art Museum. This historical hook has in fact worked to the advantage of the curator in conceiving the project; she considered not only the manner in which Westerners were able to build a museum in order to develop their own representations of objects originating in Chinese culture，but also representations which are not necessarily that which the Chinese make of their own culture. She has thus taken the step of solliciting four international Chinese artists who display their works at the intersection of institutional critique without ever being hedged in by it.

　　Furthermore，Time Traveler takes place in 2012，in a new context of the frenetic creation of private museums for contemporary Chinese art. This period is not explicitly evoked but it echoes the critical reflection that a contemporary art museum，as it is being invented in China，cannot be thought or defined uniquely on the basis of the Western history of museums. Although the Western model is predominant in the way of conceiving the museum anew，this is inevitably interpreted，transposed，and transformed according to very specific contexts and unexpected developments in terms of the historical，economic，and cultural stakes in China. In this sense，Time Traveler is an impassioned exhibition aimed at how Chinese artists engage in a critical reading of exhibition practices and of collection，all within a contemporary China undergoing rapid transformation.

　　Finally，Time Traveler displays the works of four international Chinese artists who，despite their flawless understanding of the history of Western art，are rethinking these facts beyond just institutional critique. The works revert to exhibition models in order to better again display their critical dimension in diversified readings which embrace the poetic fiction of Huang Yongping as much as the subversive theatricality of the contemporary museum in Sun Yuan & Peng Yu’s video，the critical conceptualization of the practice of painting in Yan Lei，and the meditative opening and the approach of the sublime in the ceramics of Liu Jianhua.

　　History is a writing without end，and a contemporary art museum like the Rockbund Art Museum appears willing to participate in its contemporary development on the condition of being engaged in this voluntary project of tirelessly making，unmaking，and remaking history.