Ding Yi's solo exhibition "十 X 30 Years — Ding Yi's Works", curated by Feng Boyi, will be presented at GDMOA (Guangdong Museum of Art) on September 30, 2018. The exhibition director is Wang Shaoqiang, director of GDMOA. This exhibition continues until November 2.

艺术家 | Artist

丁乙 Ding Yi

展览总监 | Exhibition Director

王绍强 Wang Shaoqiang

策展人 | Curator

冯博一 Feng Boyi

开幕 | Opening

15:30, 2018.09.30

展期 | Duration

2018.09.30 - 2018.11.02

地址 | Address

广东美术馆，广州市越秀区二沙岛烟雨路38号

Guangdong Museum of Art, No.38 Yanyu Road, Ersha Island, Guangzhou


丁乙 DING Yi | 十示 2018-5 Appearance of Crosses 2018-5 | 2018 | 椴木板上综合媒介 Mixed media on basswood | 120 x 120 cm


丁乙 DING Yi | 十示 2018-2 Appearance of Crosses 2018-2 | 2018 | 椴木板上综合媒介 Mixed media on basswood | 丁乙工作室现场 In Ding Yi's studio

丁乙的艺术创作针对的是个人处境的无限冲突，而他在这一依存的关系里，通过创造“十示”的符号，成为他个人对现实生存实在属性的感触和他的艺术标示。展览试图以“十示所示”、“互为图像”、“视差张力”、“居间地带”、“能量转化”五个单元，以及精心的展陈设计，梳理出丁乙三十年来不同历史阶段的不断实验探索的结果，以及内在的逻辑关系，抑或还有着他以个人艺术能量所能达到的极致程度。

Ding Yi’s art addresses the endless conflict between the individual and reality. In such interdependent relationship, his crosses, whether + or ×, are an expression of his epiphany of realistic being as well as his artistic signature. Through five thematic sections of “What ‘Appearance of Crosses’ Demonstrates”, “Mirror One Another”, “Tension of Parallax”, “In Between” and “Energy Transformation”, this exhibition attempts to present Ding’s unrelenting exploration in the past three decades; and unveil the intrinsic logic within his practice as well as the eminence of his individual artistic energy.


丁乙 DING Yi | 十示 1991-1 Appearance of Crosses 1991-1 | 1991 | 布面丙烯 Acrylic on canvas | 120 x 140 cm


丁乙 DING Yi | 十示 2003-9 Appearance of Crosses 2003-9 | 2003 | 成品布面丙烯 Acrylic on tartan | 140 x 160 cm

丁乙以“十示”作为主要标识，将个人的现实存在抽离于不着边际的纠结，寻求着一种间离的视觉效果，形成了有序或无序的视觉张力。他摆脱了日常生活经验的过度纠缠，从而使理性成分制约着情感的泛滥表达，使画面构成的有形与无形、虚与实，覆盖与交叉的碎片化结构，并始终处于“无边”的抽离与延伸之中。显示了他的创作超越了“似真性”的追求之后，穿越了真实与虚构的二元对立。而线、段笔触的密集、繁复、衔接的痕迹，又使得时间与空间产生了一种混杂、微妙的关系，凸现了一种不确定性的作用和无法把握的变动。这种“不确定性”的变动，对于丁乙来说不仅是一种形式，还是具体而微的生存经验与内心感受，以及对艺术的执著、偏执态度。其价值与意义不是在对应的现实关系中去寻找，而是在他所规约的“十示”图式中寻找他个人对现实态度与立场的投射，尤其是在绘画中所寻找新的时代精神。这是一种形而上的还原，即返还到艺术创作之初，重新接近人与思想、与绘画语言、与艺术与生存本源性的关系之上。

In a way, Ding’s crosses are a clever invention: they displace individual existence from discursive struggle in search of a remote visual quality, rendering an orderly or disordered visual discipline. By avoiding excessive tangle with everyday experiences, Ding manages to create pieces in which rationality curbs overwhelming sentimentality. His paintings are thus structured by intricating and overlapping fragments between form and formlessness, existence and emptiness, while never cease in the expansion and rejection of the notion of ‘infinity’. Ding Yi transcends both the pursuit of realism and the simple dichotomy of reality and fiction. The repetitive traits of the lines and crosses in his art engender a chaotic and nuanced relationship between space and time, and accentuate the agency of uncertainty and unpredictable changes. Such uncertainty is not merely formal for Ding Yi: it is a concrete expression of his own experience and feelings, and a testament to his dogged perseverance with (or extreme focus on) his art. The value of Ding’s work is not to be found in simple parallels with reality, but rather in the projection of his own views through his patterns of ‘Appearance of Crosses’. Ding Yi flits between the two routes of ‘art for life’ and ‘art for art’s sake’, mirroring the synapse between each cross in his paintings. I believe that Ding is trying to create a return to metaphysics – the origin of art – and get back to exploring the relationships between mankind and thought, painting language, art, and the nature of survival.


丁乙 DING Yi | 十示 1996-B24 Appearance of Crosses 1996-B24 | 1996 | 纸上炭笔、粉笔 Charcoal and chalk on paper | 52 x 69 cm


丁乙 DING Yi | 十示 2001-B20 Appearance of Crosses 2001-B20 | 2001 | 纸上铅笔、彩铅 Pencil and color pen on paper | 50 x 70 cm

丁乙的这些具有极简、形而上的作品，有着抽离了内在情感之后的单纯的统一，其中压缩着他冷静、严谨的处理方式，也是他节制、精致艺术态度的象征，从而有意识地消解了所谓艺术价值、意义等指向性涵义，充分塑造和建立了一个独属于自我封闭又无限延伸的视界。而将“十示”作为画面构成的基本元素，丁乙这些年对其展开了漫长的实验探索。长时间单一而沉溺地去做一件事，或许是他最喜欢的工作方式。在他的创作中，反复的提取、营造、精炼，直至褪去任何附着的象征与隐喻，构建他纯粹而精确的绘画支点和视觉样式的标志。在当代文化境遇以及在这种处境中的个人，对艺术的思考和敏锐，将导致对旧有艺术形式在观念上的改变，而艺术家需要的是用一种规定为“艺术”的方式和视觉语言来体现这种思考与判断、探索与追求。显然，丁乙十示的视觉修辞方式远非局囿于作品本身，它已扩展到中国绘画问题在当下文化语境之下寻求建构当代价值的新的可能性，以及中国当代艺术的现代转型乃至创新和边界等一系列问题。丁乙的艺术个案为中国当代艺术的转化提供了一种视觉样本的参照。

Ding Yi’s minimalist, metaphysical artwork is simple and unified because it is divorced from personal sentiment. His work reflects his calm, meticulous practice, which itself has become his trademark of a contained and refined artistic attitude. Ding’s detached methods are a conscious erosion of the so-called values and meaning of art – he has instead created new, self-sufficient perspective that conjures infinite associations in the mind of the viewer. Ding Yi has also been a continuous innovator: he has always explored new ways to use his crosses, the integral element of his paintings. The way he has immersed himself in the same repetitive behaviour over an extended period of time may well be his preferred modus operandi. He continuously strips his paintings of any external imagery or metaphor in favour of pure, precise anchors and visual symbols. The contemporary cultural context and the respective individual reflection on and sensitivity to art will provoke new perception on conventional art forms; in order to manifest such thinking, judgment, inspection and pursuit, artists need a method that is recognised as ‘art’ and a visual language. What seems clear is that Ding Yi’s own visual rhetoric is not restricted to his artwork itself. In fact, his visual rhetoric has already expanded to exploring new possibilities for how Chinese painting can construct contemporary values in the current cultural context, as well as how Chinese contemporary art can transform, even innovate, today. Ding’s art has provided a visual guide for others seeking to revolutionise contemporary art for the times.


丁乙 DING Yi | 十示 2017-19 Appearance of Crosses 2017-19 | 2017 | 椴木板上综合媒介 Mixed media on basswood 120 x 120 cm

当每次看丁乙的作品时，总让我想起葡萄牙诗人费尔南多·佩索阿的《魔咒》：

里斯本有着不同

颜色的房子，

里斯本有着不同

颜色的房子……

……

只有里斯本有着不同

颜色的房子。


Whenever I view Ding Yi’s art, I am reminded of Fernando Pessoa’s poem The Curse:

Different colour houses,

Different colour houses….

Only Lisbon has

different colour houses.

——冯博一《策展人语》

Curator Statement, Feng Boyi

关于艺术家 About the artist


摄影 Photo by 黎晓亮(Alexvi Li)


丁乙1962 年生于上海，现工作、生活于上海。1983 年毕业于上海工艺美术学校，1990 年毕业于上海大学美术学院。丁乙的创作领域包括绘画、雕塑、空间装置和建筑。“十”字以及变体的“X”是他主要的视觉符号，用以超越和对抗当时中国典型的政治、社会寓言绘画。从 80 年代后期开始，他将这一标志作为结构和理性的代表，以及反映事物本质的图像表现的代名词。

Ding Yi (b. 1962) was born and currently resides in Shanghai. He graduated from Shanghai Arts & Crafts Institute in 1983 and graduated from Shanghai University with B.F.A. in 1990. The practice of Ding Yi encompasses painting, sculpture, spatial installation and architecture. He works primarily with “+” and its variant “x” as formal visual signals, above and against the political and social allegories typical of painting in China. He chose this sign in the second half of the 80s as a synonym of structure, rationality and of a pictorial expressiveness that reflects the essence of things.

与构图单元的简洁相比，丁乙所使用的材料和颜色变化极度丰富，从几乎是单色调的绘画到明亮的荧光色画。对他来说，作品不仅是过度、噪音、混乱和困惑在画布上的表现，也与他生活的城市上海所具有的刺激与特征息息相关。

The simplicity of compositional structure contrasts with the use of a wide variety of materials and of colors that range from almost monochrome tones to the very bright and fluorescent. For the artist these are a record on canvas of the excesses, noise, chaos and confusion but also the stimuli and styles of the city of Shanghai, with which his work is inextricably bound up.

丁乙的作品在全球不同机构和画廊广泛展出，重要群展包括“ 1989 年之后的艺术与中国：世界的舞台” （古根海姆博物馆，纽约／毕尔巴鄂，2017-2018）； “昨晚的算命人：来自中国及国际当代艺术新藏品展 第三部分” （戴姆勒当代艺术，柏林，2017）；“一种历史：从1980 年至今的艺术、建筑、设计”（蓬皮杜艺术中心，巴黎，2015）； “CHINA 8”（杜伊斯堡、杜塞尔多夫等地，2015）；“向东方，中国建筑景观”（MAXXI 博物馆，罗马，2011）；“上海”（旧金山亚洲艺术博物馆，旧金山， 2010）；“’85新潮：中国第一次当代艺术运动”（尤伦斯当代艺术中心，北京，2007）；“麻将：希克的中国当代艺术收藏展”（伯尔尼、汉堡、巴塞罗那等地，2005－2009）；“生活在此时，29位中国当代艺术家作品展”（汉堡火车站当代美术馆，柏林，2001）等。丁乙还曾参加第45届威尼斯双年展（1993）、第1 届亚太三年展（1993）、第11届悉尼双年展（1998）、第1届横滨三年展（2001）、第6届上海双年展（2006）、第7届深圳雕塑双年展（2012）、第7届釜山双年展（2016）。

Ding Yi has exhibited extensively at various institutions and galleries, among many others, “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York/Bilbao, 2017-2018); “Last Night’s Fortune Teller: The Third Part of an Exhibition Series with New Acquisitions of Chinese and International Contemporary Art” (Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, 2017); “Une histoire: art, architecture, design des années 1980 à nos jours” (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2015); ”China 8, Contemporary Art from China at the Rhine and Ruhr”(Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, 2015); “Verso Est, Chinese Architectural Landscape” (Museo Nazionale Delle Arti Del XXI Secolo MAXXI, Rome, 2011); “Shanghai” (Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2010); “’85 New Wave, The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art” (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2007); “Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection” (Bern, Hamburger, Barcelona, etc. 2005-2009); “Living in Time, 29 Contemporary Artists from China” (Hamburger Bahkhof Museum Für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2001). His works has also been included in 45th Venice Biennale (1993), The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (1993), 11th Biennale of Sydney (1998), Yokohama 2001 International Triennale of Contemporary Art (2001), 6th Shanghai Biennale (2006), 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (2012), 6th Busan Biennale (2016).

近期在国内外多家机构举办个展，包括西安美术馆（西安，2017），泰勒画廊（伦敦／纽约，2017），湖北美术馆（武汉，2016），龙美术馆西岸馆（上海，2015），香格纳画廊（新加坡，2015／上海，2006），Karsten Greve 画廊（巴黎，2014 / 圣莫里茨，2012 / 科隆，2008），民生现代美术馆（上海，2011），博洛尼亚当代美术馆（博洛尼亚，2008），Ikon 美术馆（伯明翰，2005）等。

He has recent solo exhibitions at Xi’an Art Museum (Xi’an, 2017), Timothy Taylor Gallery (London/New York, 2017), Hubei Museum of Art (Wuhan, 2016), Long Museum (West Bund) (Shanghai, 2015), ShanghART Gallery (Singapore, 2015/ Shanghai, 2006), Galerie Karsten Greve (Paris, 2014/ St.Moritz, 2012/ Cologne, 2008), Minsheng Art Museum(Shanghai, 2011), Museo d’Arte Modena di Bologna (Bologna, 2008), Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, 2005).

以上图片来源致谢丁乙工作室，版权为艺术家所有
Images courtesy Ding Yi Studio, copyright the artist