Wilted Flowers, the Bad Bird, and Q
by Bao Dong
The art of today is essentially installation as what constitutes it is the fundamental elements of ready-made.Materially speaking, paints, canvases, frames, conceptualized images, symbols, subjects, and themes are all artifacts with historical value. What is even worse or more interesting is that—to make sense of art—art as a concept and the values of a single art piece must be set in a certain context along with other materials or conceptualized ready-made. Although painting in the traditional sense remains and is periodically being created, it has detached from the representational and expressive functions of its own. That being said, in atypological sense, most paintings of today have long since become installations.
Tong Kunniao’s most recent paintings can be readily described as installations since the images in his paintings are sourced from his previous installations, such as the figure of a cyborg human. Flowers and birds in Tong’s paintings can be attributed to the influence of traditional Chinese painting such as that of the Song dynasty. Stylistically, the brush-and-ink style is a combination of the careful realist gongbi technique and the interpretive, expressive xieyi style, one that adds a sensibility of illustration of today to it in terms of the placement and arrangement of objects. The frames and their ornate detailing outside the paintings together with the easels have enhanced the attributes of an installation in an archetypical sense. To put it another way, Tong begins by making a painting of an installation to create a new series of visual installations out of the images that have been designed for the installation and other images in the existing painting and eventually places the ready-made work on an easel. Interestingly, the installation characteristics of a painting are fully exposed if the concept of “easel painting” is brought to light intuitively. In essence, the original themes, artistic language, style, and artistic genres are profoundly disturbed yet simultaneously unified in the coherent, natural style of Tong Kunniao.
So, what defines the style of Tong Kunniao? Makeshift things, low technology, artistic bric-a-brac, folklore design, obsession with machines, hoarding, rap, dialect, “soil-flavored” bodies (figuratively meaning either tacky cool or outdated, cringe-worthy), put-up-or-shut-up attitude, and a lot more. In fact, all of this seemingly chaotic yet vibrant kaleidoscope of things is collectively turned into the aesthetics of a childishly, unreasonable being. Ever since Tong created the “Screaming Bird”, he has synthesized the “bad bird” style —which combines covert and overt badness—by paralleling two pleasures: one is the naughty pleasure of aneight/nine-year-old child, which attaches to urinating, defecation, and flatulence, the other is the provocative pleasure as depicted by Marcel Duchamp in “The Large Glass” (also known as “The Bride Stripped Bare byHer Bachelors, Even”).
In the world of contemporary art, such a sense of “badness” can be understood as astuteness since it is at odds with the conventional norms and not based on principles, however, it reflects a kind of personal experience that has yet been described, revealing a sense of Romanticism that emphasizes the primacy of the return to child innocence without being controlled against the backdrop of excessive policies in place in art and society. Once appeared—or more specifically, elaborated—in the paintings that can be described as playful or cynical, the anti-grand-narratives attitude—after shrugging off the binary understanding of political correctness with Chinese characteristics, has re-emerged in a sincere, progressive manner other than in the form of a new “gaudy aesthetics” that is rather speculative. This time, however, such an attitude points to the dual realm of the material world and the wellbeing of individuals, which is constantly involuted.
At one point, romanticism in European art turned towards multi-layered heterogeneity of location, ethnicity, and religion to open up other opportunities for the ever-increasingly closed system. Similarly, the revival of ancient traditions and the quest for the lost rituals in the wilderness undergone by ancient China opened the pathway to transformation and change. The radicalism of today has carried all kinds of de-centering, deontological beliefs and thoughts to extremes in both subject matter and form. Here we come to see thatTong Kunniao’s artistic practice, in terms of subject matter, has conceptualized the broad equality of human, nature, and machine; in terms of form, the artist has developed a deontological, even de-mechanical typeof artistic practice. Such a disruptive strategy appears to remind us of Futurism and Dadaism which were popular one hundred years ago or so, making us wonder if a new nihilistic avant-garde movement can ever happen again.
September, 2023
Translated from Chinese by Ma Zhengtang.
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Tong Kunniao, Chinese, b.1990, Changsha, Hunan Province, received his BFA from No.3 Studio, Department of Sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. In 2016, he went to graduate school and dropped out in the same year.He currently lives and works in Beijing.
Bao Dong, born in Anhui in 1979, graduated from the Art History Department of the Sichuan Fine ArtsInstitute in 2006.He isan activeartcriticand curator of the new generation in China, co-founder andartisticdirectorofBeijingContemporary Art Fair.
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童昆鸟：蔫花坏鸟画中姬策展人：鲍栋
今天的艺术在本质上都是装置，因为它们的基本元素都是现成品，物质意义上成品的颜料、画布、外框，以及观念层面上的图像、符号、题材与主题，都是历史化的人工产物。更糟糕或者更有趣的是，甚至“艺术”的概念与具体艺术作品的价值，也需要放在语境中，与其他物质或观念的“现存品”一起，才能得出结论。虽然传统意义上的绘画依然存留，也不乏周期性的活跃，但脱离了再现与表现功能的绘画，即如今的大部分绘画早已在类型学意义上属于装置了。
童昆鸟的这些绘画新作更是装置了，这些作品中的图像来源之一就是他以往的装置作品，尤其是那个赛博格人类形象；画中花鸟的部分则是来自宋画等中国古画，笔墨风格既有工笔也有小写意，而位置经营又充满了眼下的插画感；画外的框饰与支架又强化了这些作品原型意义上的装置属性。拗口地说，童昆鸟画自己的装置，让装置图像在绘画中与其他图像再构成一个个图像装置，最终再把绘画放在了一个个的画架装置上。有趣的是，当“架上”这个概念被如此直观地揭露出来，“绘画”的装置属性也暴露无遗。总之，原有的题材、语言、风格及艺术类型在这里被完全打乱，但又被统一在这种“理所当然”的童昆鸟风格中。
什么是童昆鸟的风格？临时搭建、低科技、小商品美学、民间设计、机械癖、囤积癖、饶舌、方言、土味身体、能动手就不哔哔……实际上，这些乱七八糟而又生机勃勃的东西都统一在一种孩子气的但蛮不讲理的美学中。从“尖叫鸡”开始，他就把八九岁孩子的屎尿屁淘气快感与那种杜尚在“大玻璃”（新娘甚至被光棍们剥光了衣服）中的挑逗性快感，把明着坏与蔫着坏合成了一种“坏鸟”风格。
在当代艺术世界里，这种可以不讲套路不讲理的“搞坏”既是一种鸡贼，但它又确实对应了我们身上那种尚未被表述过的经验，一种在艺术及社会系统层层加码中放肆回到孩子气的浪漫主义。曾经在“玩世”“泼皮”绘画那里出现过的——更确切地说是被阐释出的——那种反宏大叙事的态度，在告别中国特色的“政治正确”二元论之后，在童昆鸟这里又以一种进阶的身份，一种真诚而不是投机的“新艳俗”美学出现在了我们面前。只是在今天，它面对的已是物质与精神双重内卷的整个世界。
曾经，欧洲艺术中的浪漫主义转向了异域、异族、异教等异质性，是为了给日益封闭的系统注入新的可能，中国古代的复古与求诸亦是一种类似的革新路径。现在，最新的激进主义把各种去中心、去本体的思想推向了至极，从题材到形式，在这里，童昆鸟的艺术既是在题材上去构想了一种人类-自然-机器的平等，也是在形式上去实践一种无本体，甚至无机的艺术类型。这种打乱一切的搞法总让人想起一百年前的未来主义与达达，一种虚无主义的前卫将在这个时代再度发生？（鲍栋《蔫花坏鸟画中姬》2023）
策展人：鲍栋
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童昆鸟，1990年生于湖南长沙，2015年毕业于中央美术学院雕塑系第三工作室，2016年考入中央美术学院雕塑系研究生并于同年退学。现工作和生活于北京。
鲍栋，1979年生于安徽，2006年毕业于四川美术学院艺术史系，是中国新一代活跃的艺术评论家与策展人，“北京当代”艺术博览会联合创办人及艺术总监，现工作和生活于北京。
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