现实主义的本质在于它对理想的否定——古斯塔夫 ·库尔贝

“现实主义展亭”是一个综合展，参展艺术家分别来自于世界各地不同地区，这些参展艺术家生活和工作在北京、柏林、广州、杭州、香港、伦敦、纽约、旧金山以及上海地区。现实主义展亭展览的题名借用了1855年现实主义画家库尔贝(Gustave Courbet)的同名展。此外，与现实主义展亭相关的主题不仅具有历史性，同样还具有现实性。本展览在吸收了世博会的概念的基础上，其不仅与历史上库尔贝的“展亭”有历史渊源，同样，亦和上海主办的2010年世博会发生现实性关联。

如同十八世纪晚期和十九世纪法国的官方沙龙一样，当时作品的参选与否取决于作品是否达到学院水平或者是否与政治因素有关联，同样，此次上海世博会的参展国家被授权来选取公开展示的作品。诚然，这些国家不仅想通过展览来展示他们的文化，科学以及技术，同样还想通过展示经过认可的艺术家的展览品来展示自己国家的民族性。与这些官方政府的政策所不同的是，这里艺术家们并不打算探讨那些影响当今世界的棘手问题。相反，本次展览将沿着库尔贝开辟的蹊径，用艺术的方式呈现与“现实主义”有关的社会、政治问题，为2010年上海世博会锦上添花。展览中的“现实主义”作品所展示的不仅仅体现在艺术形式上的创新，同样也以艺术的形式来参与探讨政治热点问题。库尔贝的现实主义是对他那个时代的社会和政治而做出的前卫批评。此外，他的亭子是通过展览艺术的可能性来透视潜在的某种新见解。库尔贝的具有争议的亭子产生的影响一直到今天我们还能通过各种各样的方式感觉到，这其中就包涵了在博览会之外做另类展览的这种观念形态。这其中就包括伦敦艺术博览会(2009)以及萨尔 ·伦道夫(Sal Randolph)“欧洲宣言展”(2002)，当时就为艺术家在 eBay提供自由展。

本次展览之所以之所以与欧洲有关联，是因为与历史有相对应关系的一个展览，这是源自于展览起源的现代性 ，但是当代的本次展览的语境发生了变化，其语境是不断发展中的全球化。比如在中国有与之相似的已经过时间检验的1990年代早期北京东村艺术现象，虽然其先锋性和前卫性仅维持了短暂的时间。但是这种根植于艺术家的前卫精神和展览实践是与现实主义的亭子的坚定地前卫精神是一致的。但是，与本次展览不同点在于，历史上那个由库尔贝领先发起的展览是对当时现状的反对，即对于包括学院，沙龙，画廊，市场以及展览这些艺术机构的反对。

当年库尔贝的画作在1855年被巴黎世博会官方拒绝之后，他在世博会的外面建立了他的现实主义的亭子。这个历史不但是艺术实践，同样也是艺术批评史上的一个分水岭。因为，在此之前，他是被制度机构以及沙龙所拒绝的，库尔贝的作品被世博会所拒绝，他的“展馆”就是对此事件的直接回应。当时对库尔贝的批评不仅是从美学上的，同样也从政治方面加以批评。因为，在当时的那个时代，现实主义是一个全然新事物，现实主义具有激进的美学风格，当时库尔贝是受到他的朋友，社会主义者以及作家的皮埃尔·约瑟夫·蒲鲁东(Pierre-Joseph Proudhon)的影响。当时普鲁东被认为是第一位无政府主义者的人，在他的左派做品《什么是知识产权》(What is Property)(1840)中树立了这种风格。普鲁东或许可以称之为法国最有代表性的激进政治的发言人，在政治哲学家从伦敦流亡到巴黎期间他结识了卡尔·马克思(Karl Marx)。事实上，马克思从书本上已经熟悉了普鲁东，因为在《哲学的贫困》(The Philosophy of Poverty)一书中，他就与普鲁东的《苦难的哲学》(The Philosophy of Poverty)进行了探讨。就是在这种激昂交锋的背景下，库尔贝的现实主义在美学上和政治上做为艺术的实践而随之产生。

虽然库尔贝的代表作是作品《画家工作室——一个概括了我七 年艺术和道德生活的真实的寓喻》(The Artist’s Studio: A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in My Artistic and Moral Life )(1855) 中，但是他在其现实主义作品中体现出的政治理解以及对底层人民的同情引来了褒贬不一的反应。现实主义所追求的是用尊重的手法描绘被社会边缘化的人群，对边缘化群体充满同情的描绘在此之前的历史是从未出现过的。连同库尔贝的作品《采石工人》(Stonebreakers)(1849)，其他以现实主义手法的作品包括奥诺雷·杜米埃(Honoré Daumier )以及让弗朗索·瓦米勒( Jean-François Millet)的作品，这种新的具体现实的风格即用一种人文同情来描绘社会边缘人群的作品，这在当时是被认为是具有先锋前卫精神的。但是库尔贝选择叙述的主题不仅是关于创造某种与之前的浪漫主义和新古典主义风格不同的东西，而是他的艺术形式上创新这种艺术实践是诉诸于他的政治理解的。也就是说，他的现实主义美学分格不仅仅是一个新的美学词汇，同样也是一种批评思潮以及政治理想。但是有趣的情况是，却是他的作品《画家工作室》(The Artist’s Studio)导致了他被1855年的世博会所拒绝。

世博会是西方现代性的许多标志中的其中一个萌芽标识。到1851年第一次世博会在伦敦落地为止，现代主义在文化、科技以及理性等领域中孕育。虽然我们不能对当时的殖民主义忽略不计，但是欧洲已处于被爱德华(Edward)所称的“东方主义”的困境中。虽然资产阶级的国际主义或许是一种全球主义，全球主义一直以来被理解为早期的对新大陆的发现。对早期墨西哥殖民进行研究的学者塞尔日· 格鲁津斯基(Serge Gruzinski )将之称之为“第一次的全球化”，此次的全球化反映了十六世纪新西班牙的跨大西洋文化交流。无论如何，世博会的确是通过世博会的国际视野标识着一个新的大都会意识的产生。

世博会的最早的前身是法国国家贸易博览会。第一次这种意义上博览会是在1844年举办的，但是，现在意义上的世博会最早是1851年的伦敦世博会。当时是由阿尔伯特(Albert)亲王发起的，伦敦世博会是在约瑟夫·帕克斯顿(Joseph Paxton)庞大水晶宫中举行的。在延续传统的贸易博览会的的基础上，世博会变为工业革命中期的国家之间的贸易协定，这种特点的博览会一直延续到1939年。此后，世博会从仅强调工业而发生转向，转向不仅通过技术乌托邦也转向重视文化方面。一直到二十世纪八十年代末期，一种新的元素进入到世博会的理念，就是在工业和文化的联合之下树立“国家品牌”。“国家品牌”就是通过世博会做为平台来提升国家在国外的国家形象。这个理念加之其他的主题已经成为当前世博会的核心理念。贸易、科学、历史、文化、社会中个体性等，如何让这些因素更好融合起来以及如何在民族性和全球化之间找到平衡，这是本次现实主义展亭中艺术家作品所要探讨的问题。

艺术家黄晓鹏用一种比例不协调方式来缠绕地球模型。在他作品《全球化对你来说意味着什么》(2009)中，他运用一种广告牌大小条幅来告示动画电话游戏的结果。他通过不停转换的中文到英文的网络翻译程序来隐喻全球化，运用不断出现的词语：“ 感谢经济帝国的扩展，使得文化交流成为最大限度的可能，并使得孤立的文明得以链接。”告示采取了交错的方式，采用亚当·斯密(Adam Smith)以及斯坦利·库布里克(Stanley Kubrick)的《2001年：空间奥德赛》( 2001: A Space Odyssey )(1968) HAL形式，利用这种交错方式表达过去和现代时空下，在市场驱动下的乌托邦以及包含历史的文明链接。克里斯托弗·何光(Christopher K. Ho)在一个作品中用缠绕的电路放置于公共领域的广告下面，这种形式曾在先前的在墨西哥MACO的当代艺术博览会中也曾出现过。他用乙烯基塑料做成的文本置放于用于世博会集装箱的内外，用汉字在集装箱的外面写“墨西哥制造”，在里面写“墨西哥创造”。语义的差异形成了在经济倍速增长的消费社会随之而来在中国和墨西哥之间的文化张力，虽然目前前者与美国相比是后者更大的贸易伙伴。在此次现实主义展亭的展览中，艺术家反其之而行之，用西班牙人在中国彩旗上写着“中国制造，中国创造”。不过，因为艺术家的中国种族血统以及策展人的墨西哥种族血统，这个作品在当下的语境变呈现了另一种层面的复杂性。此外，还有其他一些艺术家也在他们的作品中表达了在全球市场贸易以及文化交锋当中的差异性，在某种程度上，此次2010年的世博会的展亭在商业的背后体现了其背后的民族性特征。

张宏图作品《可口可乐》(六包装)(2002)以及《麦当劳》(2002)中，体现了商业文化和文化商业融汇合并。《可口可乐》是一件陶瓷材料作品，这件作品运用的青花装饰手法是可以追溯到中国古代明代的一种陶瓷装饰手法，这件作品是以六个独立的形式表现出来，但是实际上是可口可乐瓶子的形式。这件出色的作品包涵了全球化关系以及低俗文化向高雅文化的侵入的潜在危机，但是这件作品的手法对观者来说并不陌生，在其他的一些艺术家也用过类似的图像，包括像切尔多·梅雷莱斯(Cildo Meirlels)的名为《嵌入思想电路：可口可乐工程》(1970)，同样，在安迪· 沃霍尔(Andy Warhol )波普图像也采用此类手法。《麦当劳》也采用了此手法，张宏图在这里将巨大的麦当劳和法国薯条包以及塑料餐具一起置入布满中国纹饰以及麦当劳标识的器皿中。迈克尔 · 宇堂(Michael Yeu Tong)在他的青绿水墨作品中同样也采用了将西方和中国元素融汇的手法，画面上田园牧歌般的景观中点缀着带着手提电脑的雅皮士，或者出现在各种交通工具中的人士，亦或一个战船却在抒情诗般地漂浮着。在他其他的作品中，宇堂运用巨大的圆形装饰中用了诸如本杰明·富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin )和亚西尔·阿拉法特(Yaser Arafat)的文化图像。洪天建的影像作品以及相关的数字图画，题名为《我们相信上帝》(2009)，隐含了美元事件，但是以温和的方式指代的是对贝拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)的崇拜。洪天建的作品运用了DJ以及多元化的元素集锦，表现了这个美国第四十四任总统的摇身一变而成的各种身份，即耶稣基督、佛、圣母瓜达卢佩、克利须那、穆罕默德和亚伯拉罕。动画是耳目一新的，万花筒般的幻象暗示出了全球存在的各种各样的问题，包括经济、战争、社会问题以及环境问题等等。洪天建用旋风般变幻的图像通过对奥巴马的崇拜表现出一种全球焦虑。高登祥(Gordon Cheung)则是通过他的十幅《2008十大亿万富翁》(2009)也表现出同样的主题。

这些坦率的图像，有些是侧面的，有些是正面的，但是均体现了艺术家的个性特征，炫目的色彩以及重叠的图像形式。流溢的画面在边缘凝固，前景与背景的巧妙地运用就像是多彩的叠印画像，艺术家用复杂的富有诗意的画面作出了坦率的表达：这些世界级的大富翁可否具有经济以及政治力量?随同与之的政府是否影响了人类生存的方方面面? 金阳平则从另一个方面运用普通工人的影像来建构其形象。作品通过卡通人物来表现人物经历内心的煎熬与变化。在此次的现实主义展亭中，并不是所有的艺术家都将经济作为主题，反之，他们将目光转向了2010年世博会的有关主题，比如本土以及域外，东方以及西方，男性以及女性的不平衡关系问题，这些问题在某些时候，确实是难以确定哪一方是更倾斜一些?关于这一点，在艺术家段英梅的表演中尤其突出，1990年代早期来自于北京东村艺术区，在此次展览中一件具有震撼力的作品是一件表演作品名为《朋友》(2003)。这件作品以英梅的天真的拿着放大玻璃而行走而开始的画面，她慢慢地行走，因为她被放大的周围的景观所吸引。当她快步走过一个房间时，她用她的光学镜片在一个欧洲遗产中发现一个裸体男性。最终，她的少女般的好奇导引着她去审视那个裸体男性的生殖器。这里的潜台词是显而易见的：欧洲人历来将非欧洲人作为凝视的对象，男性裸体在这里是物化的象征。无所不在的根植与内的欲望在莎拉谢的作品中得到了表达。莎拉谢做了一个包含100个物体图像的粉红色的装置作品。粉红娃娃、粉红填充饱满的动物、粉红衣服、粉红色的糖果等等，在这里变成了性别的象征，当这些物品集合在一起时就暗示并内化着理论家并同为哲学家朱迪斯·巴特勒(Judith Butler)所认为的“性别表演”。 也就是说，文化当中的性别没有严格的界限划分，事实上是流溢并具有展性的。其他的艺术家也关注现实的复杂性，比如Sherry Wong的作品21st flânuers, Goths, and dandies。她对亚文化的渲染，无论他们是否是朋克、夜生活者、或者宗教原教旨主义均成为人类学家的研究领域。关尚智对流行文化进行了反思：他的影像取名为Doing it with Chi… making an Exit Bag(2009)。他调侃了由亚洲厨师主持的美国烹调节目。差别仅在于由Chi所教授的不是plat du jour，而只是一堂教授怎样去做一个自取灭亡的出口袋子。如同其他电视人物一样，Chi设法带着保持着面容来做处理这些事情。这里艺术家略施技巧来表现一种二十一世纪的焦虑，这种焦虑将致使人们去自杀。从高磊以及江崇武的作品中也可看出对这种问题的关注。

高磊的作品，在他的影像实践中，他通过搭建舞台造型的方法来表现他需要表达的历史、自然和社会情境。他的影像在刚进入眼帘时也许感觉到有些异样，但是事实上他是一种表现技巧。事件以一种虚拟的方式出现，换句话说，他运用影像来表现事实背后的仿像。同样也通过大型的带有动物标本的雕塑来表达在现实和其对立面的模糊地界限。一只鹿被困在以艺术形式出现的集装箱里，在这里，艺术敬爱增添了自然和文化的二分对立的新的纠结气氛。陆磊同样也做了一个雕塑，他挑选了一些时而可以作为技术零件的物件，或许就可以在世博会的某个地方发现的物件来作为他的媒介。在这里，艺术家将造物变成为诗意的表现，陆磊的作品在各种各样的链接中摇摆着。他的雕塑视野是宽泛的但是又没有游离出他的主位主题。这是一件似乎要在某种程度上将中国和外部世界链接的三维流程图。同样，从倪海峰的影像以及装置作品中我们可以感觉到同样的主题。倪海峰的主题有关乎飞散和游牧意味的。他不仅用艺术的方式也用研究者的方式来探讨涉及全球商贸的问题。倪海峰选用了我们熟视无睹的常常忽略的媒介，这些媒介在他那里却成为具有灵性的物体的象征：一只运输的箱子成为雕塑的基座，因此，在这里艺术和商业的关系开始发生关系。换个方式来理解，倪海峰的艺术方式是全新的，他的艺术智慧向我们展开了绕有趣味的一个王国。

其它参展的艺术家包括高磊、刘敏、林美雅、王轶庶，前两个艺术家的大型摄影作品高度饱和。高磊建构了由人创造的静态场面，然后拍照，其中包括社会荒地，官僚的情况，以及植物和动物群，似乎慢慢地抹杀人类生存的一切。刘敏同样建构了事件的现场，但这项工作道出了本杰明布赫洛评论家所说的“美学的行政模仿。”林美雅林还侧重于社会秩序是被社会团体规划与内化。在《时代在召唤( 2007)》，艺术家将今天上午儿童早晨进行的晨练变成了介于芭蕾和军事奇观中的一种东西。王轶庶也揭示了每天都似乎发生的异常，兽类包括斑马在城市中漫步，像一个走失的宠物正在寻找他们的主人。现实主义类似是一种对于农村和城市，发展中国家和发达国家，前现代性和现代性，中心和边缘的具有政治色彩的批评。

现实主义展亭是一个与时代相随的展览，之所以这样说，不仅是因为艺术家通过艺术形式与社会坦率对话，而且亦表达了与社会息息相关的独立主题，这种独辟蹊径的有别于参加2010年世博会政府的主题表达方式，是具有先锋性的。然而正是这样富有先锋性的艺术形式在当下的艺术世界是必要的，特别是在当今经济力量占主导地位的所谓全球化时代，在这个全球经济萧条时期，先锋艺术的表达而显得尤其珍贵。库尔贝曾被问之为什么不画天使，而库尔贝的做答是他从未见过天使。

劳拉•扎穆迪奥(纽约)

The Return of the Real: The Pavilion of Realism

　　Raul Zamudio(New York )

　　The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal—Gustave Courbet

The Pavilion of Realism is a multimedia exhibition of artists who live and work in diverse cities including Amsterdam，Beijing, Berlin, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, London, New York, San Francisco, and Shanghai. Its title alludes to a similarly named exhibition mounted in Paris in 1855 by the Realist painter Gustave Courbet， and its curatorial narrative culls elements that are concomitantly historical and of the moment including the Universal Expo, its origins and relationship to Courbet’s pavilion, as well as the 2010 World Expo hosted in Shanghai.

Like the official French salons of the late 18th and 19th centuries where submitted works were rejected because they did not adhere to academic standards or censored because of their political content, the countries participating in the 2010 World Expo have their own criteria as to what should or should not be presented to the viewing public. To be sure, these countries will celebrate and promote themselves through cultural, scientific, and technological displays with attendant subtext of nationhood, and a few will even exhibit work commissioned by artists. In contrast to this official government mandate, The Pavilion of Realism will offer an oppositional project of challenging work that addresses social and political questions with a “realism” ostensibly absent from the foreign pavilions featured in the 2010 World Expo. The “realism” that the exhibition will address not only concerns politics, however, but the aesthetic as well; for the work displayed in Courbet’s pavilion was as much about artistic innovation as it was a political flashpoint regarding art’s function. Courbet’s Realism was avant-garde in that it critically engaged the social and political issues of his day, but it was also at the forefront of advanced artistic practice. More to the point, however, is that it proposed something altogether new: the possibility of exhibiting art outside the machinations of established institutional protocols. The ramifications of Courbet’s contested pavilion are still felt today in myriad ways including the concept of the alternative exhibition that operates outside the circuits of the market. Some of these include the Free Art Fair in London (2009) where art was given away at the end of the fair’s run， and Sal Randolph’s Free Manifesta that was part of Manifesta 4 (2002). Here, the artist bid on eBay for the right to exhibit in Manifesta 4。After submitting the winning bid，the artist offered anyone the opportunity to show at the prestigious exhibition for free.

The counter exhibition‘s inception, however, is historically associated with European modernism, but it has also manifested in other contexts。China, for example, has had its own Courbet-like phenomena as attested by Beijing’s East Village art scene of the early 1990s when performances and exhibitions were mounted for a single day because the work may have been perceived as subversive or formally challenging to accepted conventions。It is with this spirit rooted in the history of affirmative artistic and exhibition practices articulated via an unflinching avant-gardism that The Pavilion of Realism is in concert. But, of course, the history of the exhibition as counter discourse was spearheaded by Courbet’s oppositional response to the status quo and its proxies including the Academy, the Salon, and the Universal Expo.

After one of Courbet’s paintings was rejected from an official exhibition coinciding with the Paris Universal Exposition of 1855, which is what the World Expo of today is rooted in, he mounted his Pavilion of Realism outside of the exposition’s grounds. This was a watershed moment in critical artistic practice and art history as well; for before institutional critique and the Salon des Refusés, the first oppositional exhibition was launched vis-à-vis Courbet’ exhibition. The criticality of Courbet’s project was aesthetic as it was political. For not only was Realism a wholly new, radical artistic style, but Courbet was also inspired by the politics of his friend, socialist and writer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. At the time of the Universal Exposition, Proudhon was known as the first to proclaim himself an anarchist， exemplified in his leftist writings including What is Property? (1840). Proudhon, who may have been France’s most well known political radical, had befriended Karl Marx when the political philosopher was exiled from London to Paris. In fact, Marx had read Proudhon well, since he wrote a rebuttal to Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Poverty which Marx published as The Poverty of Philosophy. It is within this social and politically tumultuous backdrop that Courbet’s Realism developed as an artistic practice that converged aesthetics and politics.

Although the art presented in Courbet’s pavilion was his magnum opus The Artist’s Studio: A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in My Artistic and Moral Life (1855), it was his Realist works that earned both praise and scorn because of their political undertones and sympathies with the underclass. Realism sought to portray the socially marginalized with an air of dignity and empathy that had never been seen before. Along with Courbet’s Stonebreakers (1849) and works painted by other Realists including Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet, the new style portrayed society’s outcasts with a humanist pathos considered at the time to be avant-garde. But Courbet’s narratives and choice of subject matter was not only about creating something wholly distinct from the antecedent Romanticism and Neoclassicism。 Rather, his art was equally indebted to his politics as it was about formal innovation. In other words, Courbet’s Realism was inspired as much by the desire to create a new artistic lexicon as it was an iconography motivated by a critical ethos and political ideals. But the irony, of course, was that it was The Artist’s Studio that sparked rejection from the 1855 Universal Expo.

The Universal Expo was one of many signifiers of burgeoning Western modernity. By the time the first Universal Expo was launched in London in 1851, modernism was gestating in numerous cultural, technological, and intellectual registers. Although one cannot elide the rise of colonialism with the Industrial Revolution, the Universal Expo as a cultural practice signified a new internationalism, albeit that Europe was in the throes of what the literary critic and theorist Edward Said has called “orientalism.” To be sure, this bourgeois internationalism was exclusionary, yet the Universal Expo signaled a developing metropolitan consciousness via its international purview.

The World Expo and its precursor were, however, rooted in the French national exhibitions of commerce. The first national exhibition was held in 1844, but it was the Universal Expo in London in 1851 that inaugurated what today would be known as the World Expo. Launched by Prince Albert, the London Universal Expo was housed in Joseph Paxton’s mammoth Crystal Palace. Continuing the tradition of the expo as site for commerce, the Universal Expo became a kind of trade convention for European nations in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. This particular aspect would maintain itself until 1939, when there was a shift in the World Expo away from an emphasis on industry and more on culture as well as utopian view of technology fomented by modernism’s promise of social progress. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that a new factor entered into World Expo ideology beyond that of industry and culture, which has come to be known as “nation branding.” “Nation branding” is the use of the World Expo as platform to promote a country’s image abroad. This veneer, among other themes, has been the point of contention in the current exhibition. Commerce, science, history, culture, and politics oscillating between locality and globalization， is what the artists in The Pavilion of Realism investigate.

Huang Xioapeng, for example, has convoluted the global matrix to absurd proportions. In Huang’s What Does “Globalization” Mean To You? (2009), a billboard size banner announces the results of a kind of ventriloquist telephone game。 For the artist compresses references to globalization through internet translation programs from Chinese to English and back again only to continue the recycling process culminating with the phrase: “thanks to the expansion of the empire economic and culture exchanges become possible to the maximum extent and previously isolated civilizations become linked.” The pronouncement, with its market driven global utopia that subsumes history and binds together all civilizations both past and present, is a cross between the capitalist avatar Adam Smith gone amok, and mega-computer HAL from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Christopher K. Ho also mines the circuits of public advertising in a project that has its roots in a previous public artwork installed in Mexico City’ s MACO contemporary art fair. There, he placed a text made from vinyl on both the outside and inside of a shipping container that was used for exhibition. The text, written in Chinese, stated on the outside MADE IN MEXICO and on the inside CREATED IN MEXICO. The geo-cultural semantic difference creates a tension between burgeoning economic consumer societies accelerating exponentially in both China and Mexico。For The Pavilion of Realism, Ho will create a variant of this with a text in Spanish stating HECHO EN CHINA，and inside the exhibition space will be a phrase in Chinese proclaiming CREATED IN Mexico. Not only does this interface global economics with semiotics，but because the artist’s ethnicity is Chinese and my birthplace being Mexico, the work is now layered with another level of complexity. There are other artists who also comment on the disparity between countries at the ground zero of global markets and trade and the clash of cultures that, to a degree, alludes to the commercial and nationalist undercurrent of the pavilions featured in the 2010 World Expo

Zhang Hongtu has conflated the culture of commerce and the commerce of culture in his Kekou-Kele (Six Pack) (2002) and Mai Ding Lao (2002). Kekou-Kele is a porcelain work replete with cobalt blue decorations that hark back to the Ming Dynasty; yet what they consist of are six individual pieces in the shape and actual size of Coca-Cola bottles. Not only does this work mine global relations and creeping malaise of low brow culture into the register of high Chinese art, but the work also resides within the trajectory of other artists who have used similar iconography such as Andy Warhol’s 210 Coca Cola Bottles (1962). Mai Ding Lao also addresses this; but in this case Zhang has transformed McDonald’s Big Mac and French Fries receptacles and plastic cutlery into cast bronzes decorated with dynastic Chinese ornamentation and McDonald’s logo. Michael Yeu Tong also mixes Western and Chinese sources in his blue ink and paintings where Arcadian vistas are punctuated with a yuppie on a laptop, guys in all terrain vehicles, and a battle ship that floats idyllically by。Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s video animation and related digital paintings titled In G.O.D. We Trust (2009), on the other hand， tropes the moniker on the US Dollar bill but ciphers it through what has been coyly referred to as the cult of Barack Obama. Hung’s pieces are kind of DJ mixing and mash-up of myriad global sources and references where the 44th President of the USA is now guised as Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Whereas Hung’s whirlwind iconography meshes global anxiety through the deification of Barack Obama, Gordon Cheung engages in another form of reification via his 10 panel polyptic titled Top Ten Billionaires,2008 (2009).

These candid portraits, in which some are in profile while others are frontal, are rendered in Cheung’s trademark, dazzling explosion of color with the superimposition of image onto stock listings. As the images bleed and coagulate on the surface in dialectic of foreground and background like polychrome palimpsests, Cheung proposes a straight forward yet complex and visually poetic possibility: are these mega rich with their global contacts and webs of financial and political power, the shadow government affecting all sectors of human existence? Jin Yangping, on the other hand, conflates Pop imagery with images of factory workers. The grueling long hours and persistent toil are offset by images of cartoon characters. Not all artists in The Pavilion of Realism target economics, however; for some comment on the 2010 World Expo as an asymmetrical relationship between native/foreigner, East/West, male/female, and sometimes it is hard to tell in which way the scale of power tips? This is evident in the work of Ying Mei Duan. Coming out of the East Village art scene in Beijing in the early 1990s, a powerful work in the exhibition is a performance piece titled Friend (2003). The piece begins with Ying Mei innocently walking with magnifying glass up to her eye as she slowly makes her way while being captivated by her enlarged, macroscopic surroundings. As she ostensibly sashays her way across a room, she discovers through her optical apparatus a nude male of European heritage. Ultimately, her girlish curiosity leads her to inspect the genitalia of the nude;the subtext is quite clear here。Whereas the European has historically gazed at the Other as non-European and as available, the role is reversed as the male is objectified. This notion of desire from within towards what lies without is also what operates in the work of Sarah Tse. Tse’s piece is a site-specific installation consisting of 100 images of objects colored in pink. Pink dolls, pink stuffed animals, pink clothes, pink candy etc become gendered signifiers yet when grouped together allude to an attempt to internalize or naturalize what the theorist and philosopher Judith Butler called gender performance. That is to say, that gender within culture is a not rigid category or absolute but, in fact, is fluid and malleable. Other artists also target the intricacies of the popular as is the case with Sherry Wong, and her depictions of 21st century flânuers, Goths, and dandies. Her renderings of subcultures, whether they are punks, nightlife denizens, or religious fundamentalists, are piercing studies that border on the anthropological. Kwan Sheung Chi also mines popular culture with a vengeance: his performance video titled Doing it with Chi… making an Exit Bag(2009) is wry take on American cooking shows hosted by Asian cooks. The difference being is that what is being taught by Chi is not the plat du jour, but a technique in how to make an exit bag for suicide. Like television personalities, Chi manages to do this with an infectious smile. Artifice is employed here as a way to explore a kind of 21st century anxiety that would push people to take their lives。 Exploring what lies beneath the surface is also discernable in the art of Gao Lei and Jiang Chongwu.

Gao, for example, has employed his photographic practice to construct tableaux that feigns history, nature, and social relations. His pictures at first appear to be oddly rendered but, in fact, are a kind of tromp l’oeil in their artifice. Events take on an air of fiction; in other words, he uses photography to ontologically reveal the falsity of the factual. Jiang Chongu also articulates a blurred line between reality and its opposite in large scale sculpture that incorporate taxidermy. One work appears to consist of a deer trapped in an art shipping container, adding an altogether new twist on the nature/culture dichotomy. Lui Lei also creates sculpture that culls from many sources that occasionally appear to be a kind of technological device that one may find at a World Expo. Part inventor and faux technophile yet always poetic, Lui’s work oscillates between numerous registers. His sculpture encompasses a broad purview of formal qualities and is steadfast in its thematic focus. One work is ostensibly like a three-dimensional flowchart that connects the US with the rest of the world. Likewise, one can detect a similar protean sensibility in the videos of Ni Haifeng. Ni’s eclecticism derives from what appears to be the circulation of imagery where his subject matter takes on the air of the nomadic and peripatetic. He explores facets of global commerce and trade yet acts as both researcher and artist in his vocation. Ni uses materials that we often overlook and gives the stamp of value to something bordering on fetish: a shipping palette becomes a plinth for sculpture, therefore confusing ever still the relationship between art and commerce. Other artists in the exhibition include Gao Lei, Lui Min, Meiya Lin, and Wang Yishu. The first two artists work in highly saturated, large scale photography. Gao constructs tableaux which is then photographed, Some of these include scenarios of social wastelands, bureaucrats, and overgrown flora and fauna that seem to slowly obliterate human existence. Min also constructs mise-en-scene, but this work parodies what the critic Benjamin Buchloh has called “the aesthetics administration。”Lin also focuses on conditions by which social order is naturalized and internalized by the social body。In The Times are Summoning(2007)，the artist has transformed morning exercises by children done in mass into something between ballet and military spectacle. Wang also reveals the quotidian as rife with the uncanny：beasts including zebras meander and frolic through urban settings like lost pets in search of their masters。Realism is used as mimetic foil to comment on the politically charged couplings of rural and urban，developing and developed nations，pre-modernity and modernity， and center and periphery.

As attested by the works presented，The Pavilion of Realism is a timely exhibition in addressing themes that may not be the official province of foreign pavilions participating in the 2010 World Expo. However, such an oppositional attitude is what is needed today in an art world where market forces dominate, even after the so-called global, economic wane。This negation has subsumed critical artistic practice into commodity culture。In the same way that art, in this context, serves to elide reality, what is thus needed today is an art that returns to the real. Or, in paraphrasing the author of the Realist Pavilion when asked why he does not paint angels, Courbet’s response was…that he had never seen any.

【编辑：霍春常】

编辑：霍春常