“九层塔：空间与视觉的魔术” 是一次跨界行动，是中国从未有过的展览方向和形式。它将邀请9位／组艺术家提供作品，作为展览的基础素材，同时邀请9位建筑师，9位设计师，组成九个临时团队。艺术家、建筑师、设计师三方联名合作，没有 “主次” 和 “中心”，只是分工与协作，最终形成9个全新类型的展览。
空间和设计是决定展览的核心元素，也是对展览和作品的再创作和再生产，它决定了观众看到什么，怎么看，看的次序和节奏。空间和设计，在这里不再是为展览服务，而是独立自主的体验，给予展览无数的变量和可能。
一直以来，我们缺乏一种高质量的跨界，它们不是流俗于明星和网红效应，迎合一种快餐式的出圈，就是自说自话，拘泥于专业壁垒。“九层塔” 倡导的跨界方式，创造了一个艺术、建筑和设计的连接点，一个全新的交叉学科，它既是三个专业间的实际需求，有益协作，又保留了各自的专长和优势，分工得当。
作为中国古代建筑，“塔” 有着一种特殊的结构，它的每一层讲述着不同的故事。这些故事和空间、设计，紧密围绕成一个彼此叠加的整体，成为展览的外在形象和精神内核。
“九层塔：空间与视觉的魔术” 由策展人崔灿灿和建筑师刘晓都共同在2020年发起，它是一个混合了思想、方法、工具的实践项目，也是对跨领域工作的兴趣班，拓展彼此方向的攻关小组。
“九层塔” 的出现，饱含着创造一个全新领域和事业的雄心，旨在发明一种新的合作方式和展览观念，重塑这个时代的感知体验。
“天堂电影院” 厉槟源个展
作为 “九层塔” 第四个项目，“天堂电影院” 像是一首情诗，亦或情感写照，象征艺术、建筑、设计中饱含的精神寄托和情感力量。展览以艺术家厉槟源的九部影像作品为基础，邀请建筑师吴林寿进行空间呈现的创作，平面设计师何见平进行海报等视觉系统的创作。
“天堂电影院” 取自一部意大利同名电影，影片讲诉了主角多多与电影的不解之缘，温暖人心的酸甜让电影的无穷魅力得以释放。天堂电影院坐落于导演的故乡西西里岛，它的状态几经变迁，一栋建筑，一座小镇上唯一的公共广场，承载着几代人的故事和电影的兴衰。
“天堂电影院” 亦是厉槟源自传性的展览，它讲述了厉槟源的种种经历，从漂泊不定的工作，歇脚的海鸟，教堂传来的钟声，到用身体耕种的一块乡土，父亲留下的最后一封信。这些往返回复的故乡，长眠的秘密，生命中深埋的欢喜，和人生的起伏形成了一个映衬，洋溢着记忆中的爱。
然而，亦如电影院中的光明与幽暗，9部影像作品对空间有着别样的要求。建筑师吴林寿在展厅中为我们提供了两种悲喜交加的感受，神圣和幽暗的结合互为表里，像是希望和失望的关系。一面是俗世中的生活场景，不同城市的胡同、里弄、城中村的角落，热闹又琐碎的人间烟火；另一面是人们向往的天堂，露天电影院提供给我们的理想世界。两个空间之间，像是儿时的影院记忆，推开重重的两扇门，外面的阳光干燥而刺眼，一霎那，过亮的光仿佛一座天堂。
“天堂电影院” 中主角多多在父爱缺失时，艺术填充了他未来的人生，他和放映员艾佛特成了忘年之交。此时，我们在艺术家、建筑师和设计师身上，分明看到那个放映员的身影，多年以后，他将我们推开，望着我们远行，离开那尘世中的烦扰。对于生活在俗世中的人们，电影院、美术馆也许是一座尘世里的天堂，有着一份无与伦比的柔情，温暖心头。
策展人 崔灿灿
Nine-Tiered Pagoda: Spatial and Visual Magic, as a cross-disciplinary event, represents an unprecedented direction and form of exhibition in China. Nine (groups of) artists will provide their works as the basis material for the exhibition. Besides, nine architects and nine designers will also join to form nine temporary teams, hence the cooperation among artists, architects and designers. There is no ‘priority’ or ‘center’ in the exhibition, only division of labor and collaboration, presenting nine individual exhibitions of a brand-new type.
As the core determinant for the exhibition, space and design are also a kind of re-creation of the exhibition and the work; They determine the content and how the audience see the exhibition, as well as the sequence and pace. Space and design, no longer in the service of the exhibition, provide an independent and autonomous experience for the audience, granting the exhibition a myriad of variables and possibilities.
There has always been a lack of quality cross-disciplinary exhibitions, which are neither a fast food product preached by celebrities and online influencers nor a highbrow art confined to professional barriers. The cross-disciplinary advocated by Nine-Tiered Pagoda creates a nexus joining art, architecture and design together with a new cross-discipline, which reflects the practical needs and collaboration of the three professions, while it also retains the expertise and strengths of each with a proper division of labor.
As an ancient Chinese architecture, ‘Pagoda’ has a special structure, with each tier telling a different story. These stories, spaces, and designs are closely intertwined with each other into a superimposed whole, formulating the external image and spiritual core of the exhibition.
Nine-Tiered Pagoda: Spatial and Visual Magic, launched by curator Cui Cancan and architect Liu Xiaodu in 2020, is a hands-on project that mixes ideas, methodologies and tools. It’s not only a workshop for cross-disciplinary art, but also a platform for artists, architects and designers to cooperate and expand their development realms together.
The advent of Nine-Tiered Pagoda represents the ambition to create an entirely new field, with an aim to invent a new way of collaboration and to create a fresh exhibition concept that can reshape the perceptual experience of our times.
Cinema Paradiso: Solo Exhibition of Li Binyuan
As the fourth of the Nine-Tiered Pagoda series, Cinema Paradiso is a love poem or more precisely a depiction of emotion emblematic of what the creators pursue spiritually and emotionally in the field of art, architecture and design. Based on nine works of the performance artist Li Binyuan, the exhibition invites the architect Wu Linshou for the presentation of space, and the graphic designer Jumping He for the creation of posters and other visual contents.
Cinema Paradiso is named after an Italian film which tells about the inexplicable bond of the protagonist Toto with cinema. Sweetness blended warmly with sadness is portrayed in the film to unleash its limitless appeal. Cinema Paradiso was a cinema in Sicily, the director’s hometown and came through multiple changes. The building, along with a lone plaza in a small town, recounted cross-generational friendship and the vicissitudes of film.
Cinema Paradiso is also one of Li’s biographic exhibitions. It recounts the chain of events in Li’s life — wandering from job to job, resting seabirds, church bells, the piece of native soil he tilled with body and the last letter left by his father before leaving the world. The recurring hometown impression, sleeping secrets and joy embedded deep in life make a complementary contrast with the rises and falls in Li’s life, one suffused with an affection for the past.
As is the case with the beams and dimness in the cinema, the nine visual works requests similarly of the architect Wu on spatial representation. In the exhibition space he strikes the viewers with both joy and sadness by coupling sacredness with darkness as is signified by the hopefulness-hopelessness duo. On the one hand, the works reflect the many facets of worldly life — lanes, alleys and desolate slums in the cities and the fragmentary facets of the bustling human world. On the other hand, the works seem to draw people to their long sought-after heaven, an ideal one that an outdoor cinema is provided with. The two worlds seem to be separated from each other by the two bulky doors of the cinema we used to go to in childhood. When pushed open, they immediately usher us into a brilliant paradise following the several initial beams of dry and harsh light.
In Cinema Paradiso, the protagonist Toto committed his future to art and struck up a cross-generational friendship with the senior projector Alfredo. We can see with clarity the figure of the projector in the performance artist, the architect and the designer. Years later, the projector pushed us away, seeing us bid farewell to worldly worries. For those in the worldly realm, a cinema or an art gallery means a heavenly oasis from which they derive the warmest of all affections.
Cui Cancan, Curator
