现实与自然

Real and Natural

2014，三频影像，13分49秒

作品由艺术家和空白空间提供

2014, Three-channel video, 13’49”

Courtesy of the artist and WHITE SPACE BEIJING

美国疑问

Questions for America

2014，单频影像，12分49秒

作品由艺术家和空白空间提供

2014, Single channel video, 12’49”

Courtesy of the artist and WHITE SPACE BEIJING 

影像《现实与自然》和《美国疑问》同属于艺术家的《虚空画—人类戏剧研究》项目。 基于对经典文学和绘画的研究，该项目审视了文献、口述历史以及当代人类境遇间不稳定又相互依赖的关系，同时展现出源于当代社会与日常生活中的戏剧化情境。《现实与自然》将两部 19 世纪欧洲文学——特奥多尔·冯塔纳的批判现实主义小说《艾菲•布里斯特》和爱弥尔·左拉的自然主义小说《泰蕾丝•拉甘》——置于当代的社会语境中 , 通过结合采访、真人秀和荒诞派戏剧的综合过程，创建了一个情节剧式的迷宫。艺术家根据原著小说的叙事框架设计了问题，并对表演者进行采访。这种人为的安排隐秘地引导着受访者们的反应 , 使他们调动自己真实的生活经历、亲密关系、创伤以及想象分别重现了这两个二百年前的经典故事。视频由男女主人公分别进行的意识流式的独白开始 , 并以一位教授对文学思潮的评析穿插其中。《美国疑问》则将《现实与自然》创作过程中引导受访者们的采访问题作为歌词，由音乐家谱曲并吟唱，提示作品的行为基础。这个项目强化了艺术家实践的一个关注点:我们当下的意识形态如何从历史语境中派生，又如何继续适应不断变化的现实状况?正如每一个人类口述故事在不同时代都有其各自的现实版本，在已有文献的基础之上，艺术家试图制造一个浮动着当代境遇与细节的视觉文献。

The two videos Real and Natural and Questions for America are included in the artist’s larger project Vanitas—A Study for Human Opera. Based on the studies of classic literature and painting, the project examines the unstable yet interdependent relationship between archive, oral history, and contemporary human experience, presenting the dramatic situations originating from present society and everyday life. Real and Natural places two 19th century European works of literature—Theodor Fontane’s critical realist novel Effi Briest and Émile Zola’s naturalist novel Thérèse Raquin—into a current social context. Combining interview, reality show, and theatre of the absurd, the artist constructs a maze of melodrama. He interviews people with predesigned questions based on the narrative structures of the books. This manipulation secretly directs the responses of interviewees into a situation where they use their real- life experiences, intimate relationships, traumas, and imaginations to retell the classic stories of two hundred years ago. The video starts with a man and a woman presenting their monologues in a stream of consciousness, intertwining with a professor’s criticism on literary thought. In Questions for America, the soundtrack featuring the questionnaire designed for Real and Natural is composed and vocalized by a musician, indicating the performative nature of this work. This project highlights the artist’s practice in developing a discourse on how present ideology is derived from its historical context and continues to adapt to constantly changing conditions. As every oral story has its corresponding version in reality, the artist attempts to produce a visual archive based on the pre-existing archive and topped with contemporary conditions and details.

王拓，1984 年出生于吉林长春，2007 年毕业于东北师范大学获生物学学士，2012 年毕业于清华大学美术学院获绘画系硕士，2014 年毕业于波士顿大学艺术学院获 MFA，现 主要生活、工作于北京。王拓曾是纽约皇后美术馆 2015 至 2017 年度驻馆艺术家，并于 2018 年获得第十届三影堂摄影奖。

王拓的创作涉及影像、行为、绘画等多种媒介，通过预设情境下对他人真实生存经验及文献行为化的介入，揭示当代人类境遇与精神遗产之间不稳定的关系。

近期个展：

“从未走出的神话”，空白空间，北京，2017 年 

“失忆事典”，泰康空间，北京，2016 年

近期群展：

“新冶金者”，尤莉娅·施托舍克收藏，杜塞尔多夫，2018 年

 “One Northeast”，Zarya 当代艺术中心，海参崴，2018 年

 “九”，皇后美术馆，纽约，2017 年

WANG Tuo (b. 1984, Changchun, China) now works and lives in Beijing. He has an MFA (2014) from Boston University, an MA in painting (2012) from Tsinghua University, China and a BS in Biology (2007) from Northeast Normal University, China. Wang Tuo was an artist in Residence at the Queens Museum, New York from 2015 to 2017. He is the winner of the Three Shadows Photography Award 2018.

Wang employs various mediums and a process that combined interview, reality show and the theatre of absurd to construct a maze of melodrama. Through his performative manipulation on individuals’ lived experiences and intervention in intellectual legacies such as literature, film, theatre and art history, Wang’s practice attempts to examine the unreliable relationship between the contemporary human status, myth and cultural archive.

Recent Solo Exhibitions:

Myths We Don’t Outgrow, White Space Beijing, 2017

A Little Violence of Organized Forgetting, Taikang Space, Beijing, 2016

Recent Group Exhibitions:

New Metallurgists, Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf, 2018

One Northeast, Zarya Center for Contemporary Art, Vladivostok, 2018 

Nine, Queens Museum, New York, 2017