杨勇个展
作者：侯瀚如
相关展览：“杨勇个展”，深圳市当代艺术与城市规划馆，深圳，中国，2024
杨勇是20世纪90年代后期在深圳涌现的当代艺术活跃份子。那是中国改革开放的前沿——深圳，进入从开创到成熟的转折时期。抬眼望去，建造高楼大厦的打桩机、吊机林立，用重槌轰打地表，日夜不停地合奏令人震动的交响曲。工地挡板上覆盖着各种美男美女的大头广告，广告上面又覆盖着各种诊所和代办居留证件掮客的手机号码。这些缤纷色彩的城市风景又为来往匆匆的蓝衫工人和白领丽人所覆盖，时不时还会加上一层穿着入时的妙龄少女的点缀。杨勇用他日渐熟练的摄影技巧热切地捕捉这一幕幕的浮光掠影，把它们固定在各种物质媒体上，以图阻止这些良辰美景的消逝……
这也是一个夜生活开始占据打工人的生活和想象的时代。灯火阑珊之下，另一种交响奏鸣随着霓虹闪烁而冉冉升起，渗透到刚刚从打桩机的轰鸣中歇息过来的城市角落中去。那就是卡拉OK的乐韵。尽管多数的演唱者都有五音不全的嫌疑，但是没有任何一个不愿意为当麦霸而声嘶力竭。同时，在繁忙劳顿的都市竞争中，失意伤心的人们也在此寻得一处能获得安慰或可以出气的微型乌托邦。这样的超现实场景，也成为了杨勇构建自己独特的艺术表达理想的出发点。从此，杨勇的全部努力就是要捕捉和证明生活在这个超现实世界中的这一代都市人群的真实心理状态。在这种过度粉饰的背景中，追逐时尚的外表显露出掩盖生命空虚的渴望。这种外壳掩盖了他们不确定的人生、他们的焦虑和价值缺失。他们完全反映出这座城市的社会和物质状况，而且进一步反映出都市化和现代化的真实状态。这是个充满矛盾的世界。
杨勇既是这些新都市人生活敏锐而准确的观察者，也是这个特殊群体中的一员。同时，他的作品又绝不是平铺直叙的写实纪录片。作品里的人物都是由艺术家自己设想、构思和导演出来的。反过来说，杨勇确实是位真正的导演。这就是为何杨勇的作品总是散发出一种特殊的电影摄影般的闪耀魅力。
杨勇说过，“用虚拟来完善的真实，让我兴奋”。这些地带成为他展现个人艺术天赋的独特游乐场。非常自然地，摄影成为他最恰当的媒介——摄影是抹去真实与虚拟、现实与假想之间区别的最好方式——这一切都伪装在所谓摄影“真实性”的假设下。然而，由于与特定场景的碰撞和开发，又使得他意识到拓展艺术手段的必要。于是，他开始引入录像、绘画和装置等形式，以应对更加开阔的议题，比如消费主义对人生价值的冲击，全球化中的信息传播对每个人的生活愿景的影响，还有市场化发展衍生的新社会分化，诸如此类。
一眨眼，我们已经到了2024年。深圳的市民广场从一片泥泞的工地变成了最宜居的休闲乐园，还有了作为创意文化国际性地标——由“蓝天组”设计的高大、异型的杰作“两馆”。杨勇的艺术从二十多年前到现在，也经历了千变万化。他的作品朝着更广阔的兴趣空间和艺术实践发展。他越来越多地关注城市场景与人物之间的空间关系，更多地将都市的各种物质形态联系起来。但是万变不离其宗，他还是执着地在日益全球化的深圳深入生活，用远远超出摄影的各种手段绘画这片依然奉“时间就是金钱”为金科玉律的“探险家的乐土”，并且全身心投入到建造各种连接不同街区和阶层，不同文化和国度的“国际通道”，试图让这里的“物质生活”变成真正的“文化生活”。他逐渐成为公共艺术和公共空间创造的策划者，并引领一众后浪以推动艺术事业在深圳的繁荣。
于是，杨勇，还有他所引领的团队上启艺术，就成为了在深圳这个每天都产生奇迹的大都市里的一个颇为引人注目的奇迹，从他所着迷的“青春残酷”中脱胎换骨，演出各种新奇的都市行动，以迎接一个全新的世界。
Yang Yong Solo Exhibition
Author: Hou Hanru
Related Exhibition: "Yang Yong Solo Exhibition", Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning, Shenzhen, China, 2024
Yang Yong is an activist in contemporary art who emerged in Shenzhen during the late 1990s. Back then, as a frontier city of China’s “reform and opening”, Shenzhen found itself in the transition between the juvenal development to maturation. Over the city’s horizon, there was full of construction cranes and pile drivers. They rhythmically hammered the ground, creating a kind of a mind-blowing symphony that incessantly trembling the earth day and night. Construction site barriers bore advertisements with fashionable boys and girls. They were overwritten with layers of cell numbers of residence permit brokers and phony clinics for all sorts of unknown diseases. This flamboyant urban landscape bustled with blue-collar workers and polished professionals, occasionally ornamented by stylish young women passing by. With a growing mastery of photography, Yang Yong eagerly captured these fleeting lights and shadows on diverse tangible media, striving to preserve these charming instants of urban life from fading away…
This was also an era when nightlife began to infiltrate the lives and imaginations of migrant workers. Under neon lights, another kind of symphony weaved through the city corners where one could escape from the noises of the construction sites: the melodies of karaoke. Although most singers were painfully off-key, they belted their hearts out to claim the title of "KTV superstar." In this competitive and bustling city, those frustrated people found solace in this little utopia. Such surreal scenes became a foundational starting point for Yang Yong to formulate his unique artistic vision. His work became a quest to capture and validate the mental states of urban dwellers in this surreal world, with an over-decorated background where fashionable appearances masked the emptiness of real life. These shields concealed uncertainties, anxieties, and a sense of lost values, reflecting not just the socio-economic conditions of the city, but also the realities of urbanization and modernization at large. This is a world full of contradictions.
Yang Yong is not only a keen and accurate observer of these new urbanites’ lives, he is also one of them. However, his works are far from realistic documentaries. The characters in his creations are entirely imagined, conceptualized, and directed by the artist himself. That is to say, Yang Yong is indeed a metteur-en-scène. That's why his works always have a curious hint of cinematic charm.
Yang Yong once said, “I am thrilled by the idea of using the fictional to enhance reality.” These ideas formed his idiosyncratic playground to express his artistic genius. Naturally, photography emerges as his most fitting medium—it blurs the lines between the reality and the fictional, the factual and the imagined—all camouflaged under the assumption of photography’s “authenticity.” Yet, his engagement with specific scenes has unveiled the need to broaden his artistic media. As a result, he has begun to incorporate video, painting, and installations to address wider themes, such as the impact of consumerism on life values, the influence of global information flow on personal visions, and the new social divisions that arise from market-driven development.
Now, in 2024, Shenzhen’s Civic Plaza has transformed from a muddy construction site into the most livable entertainment area, with Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning — a towering masterpiece designed by the “Coop Himmelb(l)au” as an international landmark of creative culture. Yang Yong’s art has also undergone many transformations over the past two decades, developing towards a broader space of interest and artistic practice. He increasingly focuses on the spatial relationship between urban scenes and city dwellers, while interlinking various material forms of the city. He has devoted himself to building “international gateways” connecting different neighborhoods and classes, different cultures and countries, in an attempt to turn the “material life” of the city into a true “cultural life”. But what remains unchanged is his passion for observing the increasingly globalized life in Shenzhen, through various means other than photography, depicting this “explorer's paradise” where “time is money” is still the golden rule. Furthermore, he has taken on the role of curator for public art and space, leading a new generation of curators to foster the flourishing of the arts in Shenzhen.
As a result, Yang Yong and his team Shangqi Art have become a miraculously outstanding sensation in this city of miracles. His early fascination for “cruel youth” has now mutated into various novel urban actions in order to help us embrace a whole new world.
