蜂巢（北京）当代艺术中心荣幸地宣布，2018新年首展将于3月15日于A、B展厅推出艺术家郭工的大型个展“切问”，本次展览由青年批评家许晟担纲策划，将呈现郭工近年来不同时间跨度、物质媒介相异的装置作品，旨在重新发掘并梳理作品之间的内在逻辑，并在流动的空间中渗透他对于生命与艺术的体悟。

郭工于1966年出生于山西。自2008年始专注于装置艺术创作。本次个展命名为“切问”，其中“切” 首先包含了后工业时代中的“切割”动作，即用精准，犀利，并含有暴力的手段剖析事物。其次，“切”是一种包含了主观干预的调查。例如“切脉”，如果要调查脉象，就必须用“切”的手段。这时候，“切”看似是客观的，其实又包含了调查者的主观感知；但是，“切”又意味着进入调查对象的内部，让主观与客观融为一体。在郭工的作品中，这个调查对象可以是物质，时代，人心，自然，或者当代世界本身。

郭工的作品首先展示了他对装置艺术的深刻认知：装置最重要的不是面向未来的创新，而是首先向前追溯，打破杜尚所创造的起点，回到艺术的源头，由此为装置艺术的发展寻找更加可靠的依据。因此，他首先把“挪用”变成了“创造”，制造出纯粹的，相互映照的材料关系。其次，他跨越了“观念”的束缚，将单纯的观念，社会学，或人类学层面的批判性，变成了一种综合了诗性的，基于视觉核心而非审美趣味的，对人的整体感知系统的强调。另一方面，郭工的作品已经与“物派”彻底拉开了距离：“物派”只强调对“物性”的确认，并以风格化的方式，创造了“以作品确认物性”的过程和方法。而郭工的作品则以“物性”为基本的出发点，以“心”对“物性”的感知为基础，不断创造着“心”与“物”的互动方式。这一方法已经在“物派”之后，为当代艺术打开了一扇新的大门，并创造了一种可供任何个体“栖居”的支点。从这个支点出发，郭工开始了他与世界的自由对话。他的新作品彻底消除了逻辑性的解读，并向我们展示着逻辑的根源：无逻辑的直觉。作品作为一个独立存在的个体，它自身的材料组成，已经彻底转变为一种综合而整体的物性，并由此获得一种“主动性”。“物”的主动性，以及它对人的灵性的唤醒作用，在这里变得明显了。简单的说，郭工创造了一个综合而独立的“物”，一个自在的，不需要解释的存在。或者说，他创造了一种生命，这种生命本身就属于万物，如今在他的作品中显现了。这样的生命看似陌生，实则无处不在，比如一首被历史的无意识流传下来的，古代无名氏所创作的诗。

Hive Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing) is honored to declare the launch of Guo Gong’s large-scale solo exhibition entitled “Qie-Wen” as the first event for the year 2018 in exhibition hall A and B on March 15. Curated by the young critic Xu Sheng, the exhibition will showcase Guo Gong’s installations spanning different periods of recent years and featuring various materials and mediums, in an effort to rediscover and examine the inner logics among his works and to make his understandings towards life and art penetrate the fluid spaces.

Guo Gong, born in 1966 in Shanxi Province, has been dedicated to the creation of installation art since 2008. “Qie-Wen”, the title of the exhibition, involves, above all, the action of “cutting” in the post-industrial era, that is, the surgical, sharp and somewhat violent anatomy of things. On a lesser level, “to Qie” or “to incise” also involves subjective investigation. “Qie Mai” (pulse taking or feeling), for example, necessitates “Qie” as the means of exploring into the pulse conditions. In this case, the  apparently objective “Qie” in fact involves the subjective perception of the inquirer. Meanwhile, “Qie” also entails penetration into the inside of the investigated, thus integrating subjectivity with objectivity. In Guo Gong’s works, the subject matter under investigation could include substances, the times, the heart, the nature or the contemporary world itself.

Guo Gong's works demonstrate his insight into installation art: above all, key to this art form is not future-oriented innovation but backward tracing in an effort to transcend the starting point created by Marcel Duchamp until the very origin of art is reached, thereby locating the more reliable basis for development of installation art. That is how he turns “appropriation” into “creation”, bringing materials of their own essence into the relationship of inter-enhancement; secondly, he transcends the bondage of “concept” by turning pure concepts and sociological or anthropological criticalness into emphasis on human holistic perceptive system that incorporates poetry on the basis of visual core instead of on aesthetic tastes.That is where Guo Gong’s works distance themselves from Mono-ha—the art school that emphasizes only the affirmation of the nature of things and creates with the stylized approaches the process and methodology that affirm thing’s nature. Guo Gong’s works, however, take a path less travelled. Having proceeded from the nature of things, the artist constantly creates and innovates the ways of interacting between the heart and things. Such an approach has opened a new gateway for advances of contemporary art and has created a fulcrum for the dwelling of any individual. It is the fulcrum that marks a real start of Guo Gong’s free conversation with the world. Through complete elimination of logical interpretation and revelation of logic-free instinct as the very root of logics itself, his most recent installation, as an independent individual and as integration of its material, has transformed into a comprehensive and integrated nature of material, thereby acquiring some sort of “initiative”. Here the thing’s initiative and its capability to awaken man’s spirituality have become evident. Simply put, Guo Gong created, as essentially part of the varied world at large, a sort of life which has found its expression in his works. Such a life, while apparently strange, is in fact ubiquitous, like a poem composed by some unknown poet and passed down unconsciously from generation to generation.