香港白立方荣幸呈现多媒体艺术家王功新先生的个展：《轮回》这是艺术家第一次对于他早期创作的装置作品的研究呈现，也是艺术家在香港的首次个展。
王功新，1960年出生于北京，是中国影像艺术的先行者和重要的代表之一，也是中国最早从事媒体创作的艺术家。20多年前，从学习绘画开始艺术道路的王功新，在中国最早开始使用影像数字编辑技术进行创作。 80年代末到90年代初在美国接受的艺术教育，和在美国生活的经历，使他具有了开阔的视野和语言上永不满足的态度，在创作上的保持着持续不断的精力和活力。
王功新于1995年创作的作品《布鲁克林的天空》奠定了他作为中国实验艺术家重要代表的地位，这件作品也奠定了他的创作基调：幽默、朴素，以异想天开和富有张力的语言诉诸记忆、现实、时间、空间等严肃命题。而他对文化身份之建构过程的细致观察与阐述，却显著地背离了九十年代的理论和策展取向。因此，他在这段时间的创作，及其对当时的当代中国艺术史的重要性，都被忽视了。在二十年后重新观看这些作品，不难发现，王功新对容易辨认的中国符号的自觉回避，以及他在创作材料和观念层面所引入的文化因素，体现了他疏离艺术主流的愿望。
在1995年完成《布鲁克林的天空》前后阶段，正是王功新放弃架上绘画，开始尝试使用多种混合材料的实践的开始，仅仅绘画已经无法满足对未知媒材的好奇，他开始了对可移“动”的、发“光”的和“液”体的等材质的实验。早在1994年时，他的作品已经开始围绕现场装置展开，使用悬挂或嵌入的灯泡，金属容器，还有墨水或其它液体，创作出包含了光影，动态，以及环境关系的动态装置。他经常把液体放在很浅的托盘状的容器里，再让它们被机械控制的灯泡照亮或者直接接触。液体的流动，和装置的几何稳定感，引发了动态的张力，为作品赋予了力量。
1994年，王功新完成了一件名为《不可坐的》的动态装置，在布鲁克林的雷德胡克区一家由艺术家主持的空间展出。一只红色灯泡绕着一组方形排列的椅子旋转，椅子被黑色墨水和白色牛奶占据。这件作品很能代表他在那一阶段的创作，表露了艺术家在一个新环境中的不适和不安定感。
1995年，王功新完成了又一件作品《对话》的创作。《对话》的重点在于光影的动态对表面纹路和肌理的改变。作品里有两只悬置的灯泡，在一定的时间间隔中轮流下降，浸入黑色墨水中。灯泡在静态的墨池里制造出涟漪，同时改变着观众投在画廊墙上的影子。黑色影子与黑色墨水的运动创造出交织而抽象的状态，正如交流，对话，和重叠的身影让看似稳固的场域变得不再稳固。作品的机械装置以电力为基础，利用光线制造出动态的画面，这也是他后来以电动装置为基础的动态影像的开始。
这一段时期做的一些小型装置作品（包括一些未实施的草图）带有强烈的媒介性和实验性，对他自身来讲，这段时间的艺术实践、对艺术语言的挑战和思维方式的转变是十分重要的，也是他整个艺术实践发生“质”的蜕变的一个阶段。在这组作品中，艺术家选择这些材料并非是基于材料本身的象征和寓意，即使不可避免地存在着经验的带入，也是试图通过不同材料、不同空间的组构，以悬置或祛除既有的象征性，开启一个新的话语生产机制和空间。应该说，他更感兴趣和关心的还是如何将作为媒介的材料还原到它最基本的物理属性，和最基本的机械结构和物理／化学－美学关系中，尝试一种媒介考古的实验。此时，媒介不仅只是一种材料，它包括物质性、空间以及时间等各种“制衡”关系，作为政治的“临界性”和“警戒性”即是在其微妙的运作结构中产生的。
White Cube Hong Kong is pleased to present ‘Rotation’, a solo exhibition by multimedia artist Wang Gongxin. This is the first presentation of the artist’s early installation works, as well as being Wang’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong.
Born in 1960 in Beijing, Wang is a pioneering media artist, being one of the first in China to use digital editing. He was also, in 2001, the founder of Loft, the earliest media art centre in China. Wang began his career as a painter, but his experiences and in particular the art education he received in the US between the late 1980s and early 1990s encouraged him to broaden his artistic language, evidence of the energy and vitality within his practice.
The Sky of Brooklyn, created in 1995, established Wang as a leading experimental artist. The installation sets the tone for his subsequent practice, one that is humorous and modest, rooted in ideas of memory, reality, time and space, using a language that is full of tension. The subtlety with which Wang addresses constructs of cultural identity was a radical departure from the discursive trends and curatorial tastes of the 1990s. This initially served to obscure the importance of this period in Wang’s practice within contemporary Chinese art. Revisiting these works now, twenty years later, Wang’s self-conscious avoidance of easily recognisable Chinese signifiers, and his engagement with cultural references through materials and concepts, is evidence of his desire to depart from the then dominant artistic styles.
Around this time, Wang was moving away from easel painting and starting to experiment with mixed media. Video alone was not enough to satisfy his curiosity, and he began using materials that were ‘mobile’, ‘radiant’ and ‘liquid’. As early as 1994, he was making site-specific kinetic installations that employ suspended or embedded lightbulbs, metal containers, ink and other fluids to play with light, movement and the environment. Moving lightbulbs animate liquids in shallow tray-like containers through illumination or direct contact, creating a tension between the liquid and the still solidity of the installation’s geometry.
The kinetic installation Unseatable was exhibited in an artist-run space in Red Hook in Brooklyn in 1994. A red lightbulb circles over a square formation of chairs whose seats are alternately filled with black ink and white milk. The work exemplifies this transitional period in Wang’s practice, revealing his discomfort and unease at finding himself in a new environment.
Dialogue (1995) again uses the transformative movement of light and shadow. The installation consists of two suspended lightbulbs that descend at alternating intervals into a pool of black ink. The bulbs’ contact with the surface produces ripples across the stilled pool, while their descent creates a shadow play of the audience’s figures on the gallery walls. The movement of shadow and ink merges figures and abstract forms and suggests the ways in which exchange destabilises otherwise seemingly fixed entities. The installation’s activation of an image through the manipulation of light and its electric source was the precursor to Wang’s interest in the moving image.
A number of small-scale installation works, including some unrealised projects from these years have a compelling materiality. For Wang, this period of experimentation was key in transforming his modes of thought. It was a phase of ‘qualitative’ metamorphosis in his practice. The artist’s selection of materials in these artworks is not based on the symbolic or allegorical properties of the materials themselves, though their history is unavoidable. It was, instead, an attempt to use the arrangements of different materials and spaces, and the suspension or clearing out of existing symbolism, to propose a new mechanism for discourse. Wang is primarily concerned with restoring the materials to their most fundamental physical properties, true to the relationships between structure and aesthetics. He strikes a ‘balance’ between materiality, space and time. The politics of ‘criticality’ and ‘wariness’ are the products of these minute adjustments.
Three new works created for this exhibition, In and Out (2017), Horizontal (2017) and Equal (2017), are the realisation of ideas that Wang conceived in the 1990s but lacked the resources to put into practice. They demonstrate a sensitivity to textures − the play between marble and wood in In and Out, or wood and ink in Horizontal and Equal – and, like his other works from this period, investigate how vernacular forms invoke cultural and geographical localities. They provide an opportunity to engage with obscured histories and moments of artistic innovation, and to address the ways in which cultural norms impact individual and collective identities.