所謂「超扁平」(Superflat)，是指沒有三度空間透視法的創作方式，以漫畫式人物底下的沉鬱，諷刺大眾文化。當提到「超扁平」概念，就不得不提運動創始人村上隆旗下的藝術家──青島千穗。她以作品中充滿奇異的都市流行生物和風景聞名，創造的世界及人物具有明顯的女性和精神特質。它們來自大自然，幽默的嬉戲掩蓋著憂鬱和黑暗。這次貝浩登（香港）於9月26日至11月14日期間，為青島千穗舉辦個人展覽，展出一系列數碼動畫、雕塑和手繪作品。
The concept of “Superflat”refers not only to the history of non-three-dimensional styles of Japanese art, but also remarks on the flat, shallowness of consumer culture, which usually comes with a hint of gloominess veiled in its anime-inspired style. When we talk about Superflat, the name Chiho Aoshima often rings a bell, who is best known for her involvement in Takashi Murakami’s art collective. Distinctly feminine and spiritual, the worlds and their inhabitants Aoshima has created are built on the natural world, playful and often humorous, belying melancholy and darkness. During 26 September to 14 November, Perrotin Hong Kong presents a solo exhibition by Chiho Aoshima featuring a selection of digital animation, sculptures, and hand-painted works.
這是青島千穗在香港的首個個展，亦是她首個與貝浩登合作的亞洲個展。不論是她早期創作的數碼作品，還是她最近在實驗的手繪陶瓷，均注入了青島千穗所創造的夢幻景象。在這個幻想世界，建築物都化成童話般的生物，樹木會走路也會說話，精靈在墓地裡徘徊。她甚至在諸如海嘯的世界末日影像中，置入一個令人嚮往的新世界。她的作品激發了我們對另一個世界的想像，一個縱使我們無法看見卻包圍著我們的世界。
This marks the artist’s premiere presentation in Hong Kong and her first solo show with Perrotin in Asia. In the fantastical images Chiho Aoshima has created—whether in her early digitally created work or her most recent experimentation with hand-painted ceramics—buildings turn into fairy-like creatures; trees walk and talk; nymphs wander the graveyard; and even in apocalyptic images, such as of tsunamis, one sees a new world thriving after the end of the world. Her work kindles our imagination for an otherworld that is invisible to us yet is all around us.
©2009 Chiho Aoshima/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Perrotin
神靈、女神、精靈、植物，以至建築物，都在青島的畫作中被賦予真實的生命，然而在其錄像作品中，這些通通都變得更栩栩如生。青島與紐西蘭動畫設計師布魯斯•法格森（Bruce Ferguson）聯手合作，製作出迄今為止她最引人注目的作品。她首部動畫作品《City Glow》（2005）創造了一種循環敘事，以七分鐘作為一天並不斷循環。 另一件作品《Takaamanohara》（2015）是一個具有3D音景的多頻道錄像投影，於2015年在西雅圖首度發表，隨後在東京及其他地方放映。在這個錄像中，整個世界濃縮地在七分鐘內完成了整個生命週期。影片描繪了火山爆發和海嘯後等待重建的世界，擬人化的建築、精靈般的動物和童話般的人物紛紛誕生，拼湊出迷人的景觀。整個影片的全景圖長64英尺，包含許多引人入勝的細節，例如行走的東京鐵塔和嗡嗡的昆蟲。觀者因而無法在單次觀賞後便能捕捉七分鐘內的所有細節，甚至永遠無法捕捉所有細節。
Aoshima’s imagery of spirits, goddesses, nymphs, plants, and even buildings, already bursting with life in her paintings, gained even more vivacity in her video work. Her collaboration with the New Zealand-based animation designer Bruce Ferguson has resulted in some of her most compelling works to date. City Glow (2005), Aoshima’s first animation work, creates a cyclical narrative in which a day elapses in a seven-minute loop. Takaamanohara (2015), a multiple-channel video projection with 3D soundscape, debuted in Seattle in 2015 and subsequently was shown in Tokyo and other places. In this work, the whole world undergoes a life cycle in a seven-minute loop. An enchanting landscape populated by anthropomorphic buildings, spirited animals, and fairy-like figures is born in the wake of a volcano eruption, but has to be rebuilt following a devastating tsunami. The 64-foot panorama is filled with a great deal of intriguing details such as a walking Tokyo tower and buzzing insects. There is no way to take in all of it in a single viewing of the seven-minute loop, or perhaps ever.
青島千穗沒有受過正規的藝術教育，只是持之以恆地練習水彩繪畫，並在過去數年繪畫了數百幅畫作。其創作的人物會在某些作品中，透過泡泡對話框進行活躍的交流。骷髏頭骨會對兔子說：「你不知道嗎？當我們死時，我們所有人都會變成頭骨！」有些時候，青島會把對話放進作品標題中。她創造的化身Moimoi喜歡在大自然嬉戲，並特別喜歡墓地。Moimoi在她進入墳墓前，向她的貓咪朋友喊道：「雖然有點擁擠，但進來吧！」通過Moimoi，我們彷彿進入了青島的幻想世界。我們可以聽到她與其他在墳墓中徘徊的生物在竊竊私語並窺視她的心境 或興奮，或沮喪，或擔懮或釋然。
With no formal training in art, Aoshima has been practicing watercolor drawings, and produced several hundred pieces in the past several years. In some works, characters exchange lively conversations in speech bubbles. A skull says to a bunny: “Didn’t you know? When we die, we all become skulls!” In other works, dialogue is revealed in the title. Moimoi, an avatar of Aoshima, likes playing around in nature and graveyards in particular. As she is about to enter a grave, she beckons to her cat friend, “It’s a bit tight, but come on in!” Through Moimoi, it feels as if we can enter Aoshima’s fantasy world: we can hear her talking to other creatures lingering in the graveyards, and see her getting excited or frustrated, concerned or relieved.
青島首個受到全球矚目的作品，要追溯至她2000年代初期使用Adobe Illustrator繪圖軟件製作的超現實主義場景。數碼媒介為她的圖像輸出提供了多種可能性：它們可以以任何尺寸的噴墨或彩色顯像進行打印，並像尋常錶框作品般，固定在樹脂玻璃框內，或者成為覆蓋整幅牆壁的壁畫。青島在倫敦告羅士打道地鐵站和紐約聯合廣場地鐵站的壁畫裝置，即把其數碼作品轉化成大型的公共藝術，誘使如紐約人奔波勞碌的乘客亦不禁駐足欣賞她創造的擬人化摩天大樓。
Aoshima first attracted global attention for the fascinating otherworldly imagery she created using Adobe Illustrator in the early 2000s. The digital medium offers the versatility for the output of her images: they can be printed as inkjet or chromogenic prints of any size, and can be mounted on Plexiglas as a framed work or cover an entire wall as a mural. Aoshima’s mural installations at London’s Gloucester Road Underground station and at New York’s Union Square Subway station turned her digitally generated art into large-scale public art, prompting even indifferent and harried New Yorkers pause and pay attention to her anthropomorphic skyscrapers.
四年前，一次與陶藝家朋友的閒談令青島自此涉足陶瓷世界。這些陶瓷人物藍本取自Moimoi等角色，以手工模製後，成為大小恰到好處的立體的人物。青島感到這也許是更適合自己的媒介，因此現時致力於陶瓷製作，挑戰自己創作出更大尺寸的作品。
A casual suggestion from a potter friend four years ago prompted Aoshima to venture into ceramics. Hand-moulded and intimately sized, these ceramic characters—Moimoi among others—come to life in three dimensions. Feeling she may have found a better medium, Aoshima is currently devoting her energy in making ceramics, challenging herself to create larger sized works.
在她的作品中可以看出，青島對日本的宗教傳統，特別是神道信仰，懷有濃厚的興趣。她相信一種超越「這個世界悲傷卻無法迴避的現實」的精神世界，相信死亡和重生的循環。日本神道教神靈所居住的高天原（Takaamanohara），就是這樣一個重生世界的天堂。當青島被問到她的創作靈感來源時，她如此回答：「人類文明的發展是偉大的。人類認為自然是珍貴的，但是卻很難和自然共存。我想透過作品中的建築物和山脈， 比喻這兩類無法相互理解的靈魂。」青島亦被問到，為甚麼筆下的人物總是單一為女性人物。她回想起年輕時在日記中的素描，並回應道：「當我畫畫時，我總是覺得自己是個小女孩。就像我小時候一樣，我仍然無法畫男孩或男人。」也許就像Moimoi是幻想世界中的青島化身一樣，她藝術中的幻想世界也是一個隱形世界的化身。
Aoshima’s deep interest in Japan’s religious traditions, Shinto in particular, is evident in her work. She believes in something spiritual that transcends the “sad but unescapable realities of this world,”and in the cycleof death and rebirth. Takaamanohara, where Japanese Shinto deities reside, is one such heavenly place where theworld is reborn. Whenasked about her inspirationfor this, Aoshima answered: “The evolution of human civilization is great; human kind thinks nature precious, but it is difficult for humankind and nature to coexist. I represented these two souls that cannot understand each other through images of buildings and mountains. Female figures have been the sole subject of Aoshima’s work. When asked about this, she responded by recalling sketching in her diary as a young girl. “When I draw, I always feel as though I am a little girl myself. Just as when I was little, I still cannot draw a boy or a man.” Perhaps just as Moimoi is Aoshima’s avatar in the enchanted world, the fantastical world in Aoshima’s art is an avatar of an invisible otherworld.
青島千穗（出生於1974年，東京）於1990年代開始她的藝術創作，並於2001年在洛杉磯當代藝術博物館舉行，備受讚譽的《超扁平》展覽中， 以其精湛的數碼作品在國際上首次亮相而聲名大噪。青島的作品常被運用到大型公共藝術項目中，最著名的是她在倫敦告羅士打道地鐵站和紐約聯合廣場地鐵站的委約裝置，以壁畫打造出一個夢幻景觀。青島曾在多國舉辦個人展覽，包括對她迄今藝術生涯中最為重要的西雅圖美術館個展。此外，亦包括巴塞羅那米羅基金會博物館、侯斯頓美術館、波士頓當代藝術學院博物館、英國蓋茨黑德波羅的海當代藝術中心，以及里昂現代藝術博物館。
Chiho Aoshima (born 1974, Tokyo) started her art practice in the 1990s, rising to prominence with the international debut of her masterful, digitally rendered work in the acclaimed Superflat exhibition held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2001, Aoshima’s work has been the subject of major public art projects, most notably her mural-scale dreamscapes commissioned for London’s Gloucester Road Underground station and New York’s Union Square Subway station. She has held solo presentations at institutions worldwide including the Seattle Art Museum, which curated the artist’s most significant survey exhibition to date; the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK; and Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon.
青島千穗 《淚會飄向外太空》
Chiho Aoshima’s OUR TEARS SHALL FLY OFF INTO OUTER SPACE
Date: 2020.9.26 – 11.14
Time: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 – 19:00
Venue:
Perrotin Hong Kong
香港尖沙咀梳士巴利道18號K11 ATELIER Victoria Dockside807室
807, K11 ATELIER Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
©Chiho Aoshima/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Courtesy of Perrotin.
