对于许恒的艺术创作，似乎很难给予一个很好的词汇来形容。他的观念影像作品触及了当今中国社会中包括性别，性取向和男性与女性间的关系等话题。 但是透过作品的表象，他的作品却隐含了他个人深层的精神宿求。自2003年起，许恒所有的作品中都借用了他自己作为模特，在这些作品中，他装扮为不同的女性角色，摆以不同的女性姿态。而在近期的作品中，他又追加了更多的后期数码影像制作的成份去辅助他表达其艺术观念。

许恒所创作的第一件以“性别角色转换”为主题的作品是2003年他就读中央美术学院二年级期末之时。标题为“Iiiiiiii”，许恒以一位年轻女性的形象七次出现在同一个客厅式的空间内，而同时艺术家又以本人自己的形象坐在图像左后角的位置，直视镜头。这一次的拍摄体验是完全即兴的，对艺术家本人来说也是一次无比兴奋的亲身体验。自“Iiiiiiii”之后，这件作品为许恒打开了一个新的艺术创作天地，由此也成为了他创作的重要转折点。

在接下来的三年时间里，许恒把一次性的即兴实验转变为了一个精心策划的艺术创作计划，他也由单纯的艺术家蜕变而成为集时装设计师，造型师，模特为一身的多重艺术家身份。2006年，他的作品“我的17个正面和背面”正是他付出不懈劳动和创造性的成果。在这件作品中，许恒扮演了几个女性角色：中规中矩的传统女孩、穿制服的女孩、show girl，还有芭蕾舞演员。作品通过艺术家的角色扮演反应了当今女性在男性占主导地位的社会中过为典型的女性形象。

从2007年到2010年，许恒又花费了三年时间创作了“壳”这一系列新作，在创作的同时，艺术家也选择了更为精炼的视觉言语去表达他的美学概念。与之前作品中较为单纯的摆姿势不同，随着许恒作品背后观念不断的深入化与复杂化，他开始更多地使用后期数码影像技术去辅助他实现他的构思。新作中，在他本人女性形象出现的同时，作品中又添加了男性和女性人造模特意象的反复登场。新系列作品暴露出作为人类其个体的不完整性——一个人抑或是男性，或是女性，而这种寻求完整性的欲求则在我们的日常生活中体现为异性的互相吸引。许恒则把这种完整性的宿求带入到了他的艺术创作之中；在他的作品里，他是完整的，无论在生理层面，还是在精神层面。艺术家期望通过其作品为观者呈现出更多样的视角，同时也希望能够通过作品帮助他们跨越表层而看到内在的精神本质。

关于艺术家

许恒，1983年出生于湖北宜昌，2005年于中央美术学院摄影与数码媒体工作室毕业，获得学士学位。自2005年起，许恒广泛在国内外参展。他近期的展览包括：“许恒”许恒个展，F2画廊，北京（2010）；VISUALGALLERY AT PHOTOKINA ，科隆，德国（2008）；“注意！中国当代摄影”，ARTIUM博物馆，维多利亚，西班牙（2007）；国际影像教育协会全球摄影院校师生作品竞赛获奖作品展，美国，加拿大，澳大利亚（2005－07）；“后电子影像展”，玛斯德比当代艺术中心，北京（2005）；“十三不靠”，F2画廊，北京（2006）。许恒现生活工作在北京。

It seems there is no one good term to descript Xu Heng’s overall practice. His conceptual photography work touches on the issues of gender, sexuality and male/ female relationship in the current Chinese society. However, pass the obvious appearance of the work, underneath the surface, his work embodies his deep personal spiritual pursuit. Xu employs his own body in every single work that he has created since 2003, where he dresses himself in a disguise of a woman in different poses, and most recently started to utilize digital image manipulations to express his artistic concepts.  

The first work that Xu ever created on the “transgender” topic was at the end of his sophomore year while studying at the Central Academy of Fine Art in 2003. Titled “Iiiiiiii,” Xu appears as a young lady seven times in different poses in a space resembles to a living room, while the artist as his actual self sits at the left back corner starting into the lenses. It was a spontaneous experiment, as well as a thrilling experience for him. After “Iiiiiiii,” the work had opened up a whole new artistic world for him, hence became a turning point in his practice.

For the next three years, Xu transformed a one-time experiment into a full artistic project; he took on multiple roles as fashion designer, stylist, model and artist all into one. In 2006, the work “17 of My Front and Back” is the result of his continuous labor and creativity; in this work, Xu role-played as traditional Chinese girl, girl wearing uniform, show girl and ballerina. The work plays out the collective male projection of the stereotypical fantasy of female identities.

From 2007 to 2010, Xu spent another three years on his new series “Empty Body” while choosing the most refined visual language to express his aesthetics. Unlike posing as various female figures as he did in his previous works, Xu started to utilize digital technologies to facilitate him to realize his ideas as the conceptions behind his works deepened and become more complex. The imagery of male and female manikins repetitively appears along with his female persona. The new series manifests the idea of the incompleteness of each human being, since we only can be either male or female. The urge to be completed by the other half is commonly found as male-female attraction in our daily life. However, Xu takes this pursuit of wholeness into his artistic practice; in his work, he is complete, in both physical and spiritual sense. The artist hopes to bring diverse viewpoints to the audiences who come across his work, and through his practice to help them to look beyond the surface. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Xu Heng was born in Yichang, Hubei Province in1983. He graduated from Central Academy of Fine Art with a BFA in Photography and Digital Media in 2005. Since 2002, Xu has been participating in exhibitions in China and abroad. His selected recent exhibitions include Xu Heng Solo Exhibition, F2 Gallery, Beijing (2010); VISUALGALLERY AT PHOTOKINA, Germany (2008); ZhuYi! Chinese Contemporary Photography, ARTIUM Basque Museum-Central for Contemporary Art, Spain (2007); PIEA International Traveling Photo Exhibitions, USA, Canada, Australia (2005-07); Post Electronic Image, Must Be contemporary art center, Beijing (2006); Out of Order, F2 Gallery (2006). Xu now lives and works in Beijing.