“我要看上几百幅形色各异、反差强烈的画，东拿一点，西取几分，”盎格鲁-爱尔兰艺术家弗朗西斯·培根(Francis Bacon)在描述自己的创作过程时曾说过，“这种人为己用就像从别人的盘子里夹东西吃。”安德列亚斯·戈尔德（Andreas Golder，1979年生于俄罗斯艾卡特林内堡，工作生活于柏林）也是这样一位胃口大的艺术家，2010年秋冬之际，他进驻麦勒画廊“艺术家驻地”工作室，在北京大口吞食各种艺术图码，将不同形式的方法挪为己用，为自身的创作添加养料。为了获得最佳的表达，通晓多种语言的人可以轻易地在不同语言间转换自如：同样地，戈尔德的创造能力可以使他自由地适应并结合不同的绘画类型和技法，制造出令人惊奇的成果。戈尔德的创作既在西方绘画史之中，又超越其外，他可以避开任何自我意识的呆板暗示，创作出的绘画和雕塑自然率直，激情而富有见地。

北京麦勒画廊为戈尔德举办个展，呈现他在“驻地”项目期间进行的多产的创作，展览选用了英国摇滚乐队“硬石玫瑰”(The Stone Roses)1991年一首流行的单曲曲名《我要被崇拜》(I WANNA BE ADORED)作为展览标题。戈尔德阴险的混搭策略使得展览给人的印象直接而强烈，但不能把艺术家的实践视为模仿拼贴的习作，那种内行人的玩笑旨在通过随意的引用他人作品而揭露绘画发展的叙事。与之相反，戈尔德用一种讲究方法的热情将绘画不协调的环境中那些互不搭配、时有残缺的部分织就一体，展览中的作品通过强烈的目的明确性和主题统一性缝合在一起。就像弗兰克斯坦制造的怪物，展览中戈尔德画笔下这些扭曲的脸孔和绝望的女神有着共同的、致命的缺陷：急需被爱。

黑色幽默隐秘地贯穿在戈尔德的新作中，他使用的对象尽管、或者恰恰由于其决然的反抗性，试图勾起我们的欲望，某种程度上促发了这种黑色幽默的产生。这些对象狂热地渴望被爱，这使得它们更为可悲。展览中的“小肖像”系列（用艺术家本人的话说）较为典型。画中的人浑身流露着被爱的期冀，坐在戈尔德画布前的他们让人想起互联网上令人作呕的约会网站中张贴的资料照片，为了美化形象而制造的发型神气十足，更显愚蠢，无疑是向伤口上撒了把盐。作品《二十多岁的年轻人寻觅着》（Young Man in His Mid-20s Seeking，2010年作品）讲述了一个糟糕到离谱的网络情缘，七十多岁的老太婆怎么承受得住爱情的变幻莫测。这些离奇怪异的头像展现了一些过往艺术家的风格，比如萨尔瓦多·达利(Salvatore Dali)和弗朗西斯·培根这两位戈尔德的试金石；但许多形象本身更像大卫·林奇(David Lynch)风靡一时的经典之作《橡皮头》(Eraserhead，1976年)中造型恶心的畸形儿，装着可爱，腻歪地祈求人们的目光。

戈尔德的雕塑作品恰如画出来的铜塑半身像，一如从画布上直接跳到画廊的空间里（艺术家本人也确实把它们称作3D绘画），让人联想起恐怖电影里拖步而行的半腐僵尸。雕塑的底座与眼平行，灰色的头像伫立其上，恶棍般地排列在画廊里迎接观众，你若想要往返于展览的各个空间，就不得不在这之中穿梭而行。这些雕塑将展览转化为一种完全身临其境的体验，观众无法与戈尔德的创作保持任何舒适的距离。

展览中的三幅大型油画作品或多或少都是基于西方艺术史的经典作品创作而成，如提香的《维纳斯和阿多尼斯》（Venus and Adonis，约1555-1560年）和鲁本斯的《帕里斯的裁决》（The Judgement of Paris，约1632年），这些作品中的对象都受到了戈尔德典型的类型糅合手段的对待。提香和鲁本斯的画表现的是希腊神话故事中讲述的希求他人的欣赏所带来的危险。《帕里斯的裁决》重申了展览的主题，完美实现了戈尔德的目标，告诉人们欲求得到别人欣赏的自大和攀比会带来什么样的悲剧。虽然戈尔德新作中的很多形象都是怪异悚然的，但它们希望得到我们的钟爱，这其中反映出的问题是永恒的，是作为人的我们必须认识到的。

文：丁大韦(David Spalding)
翻译：苏伟

“I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them,” the Anglo-Irish artist Francis Bacon once said when describing his working process, “rather like people who eat from other people’s plates.” Andreas Golder (b. 1979, Ekaterinenburg, Russia; lives and works in Berlin), the artist-in-residence at Galerie Urs Meile Studio in Beijing during the fall and winter of 2010, is also a man of strong appetites, devouring iconic works of art and appropriating diverse stylistic approaches to fuel his creative output. Like the polyglot who shifts effortlessly between languages in order to select the perfect idiom, Golder’s skill affords him the freedom to adapt and combine various painterly genres and techniques with surprising results. Working within and through the history of Western painting, Golder manages to sidestep any hint of stiff self-awareness, instead creating paintings and sculptures that appear both spontaneous and passionately informed.

Taking its title from a popular 1991 single by the British rock band The Stone Roses, I Wanna Be Adored, Golder’s solo exhibition at the Beijing branch of Galerie Urs Meile presents a selection of new works produced by the artist during the course of his prolific residency. While the exhibition draws its immediate impact from Golder’s sinister mash-ups, his practice cannot be characterized as an exercise in pastiche--an inside joke designed to unravel the narrative of painting’s development through arbitrary citation. Instead, Golder has stitched together the mismatched and sometimes maimed parts of painting’s conflicted upbringing with a methodical zeal, suturing together the works in his exhibition with great clarity of purpose and thematic unity. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the twisted visages and desperate goddesses that people Golder’s exhibition share a common, fatal flaw: they are desperate to be loved.

The dark humor that threads its way through Golder’s new works results, in part, from the fact that his subjects attempt to solicit our desire, despite or perhaps because of their utter repellence. That they want to be wanted with such ardor makes them that much more pathetic. The series of small portraits (to use the artist’s turn of phrase) included in the exhibition is exemplary. All hopeful sinew and gristle, Golder’s sitters evoke on-line profile pictures posted on the web’s creepiest dating site--their jaunty hairdos a misguided attempt at beautification that only salts the wounds. Titles such as Young Man in His Mid-20s Seeking (all works 2010) suggest an internet hook-up gone terribly wrong, while Grandma Kaput belies the vagaries of romance after 70. This grotesquerie of headshots combine stylistic ticks of artists ranging from Salvador Dali to Francis Bacon, two of Golder’s touchstones, but many of the figures themselves are as cuddly and as cloyingly needy as the revolting, mutant baby in David Lynch’s cult classic, Eraserhead (1976).

Golder’s sculptural works, vividly painted bronze busts that seem to have leapt directly off the canvases and into the gallery (indeed, the artist calls them 3-D paintings), are reminiscent of the half-decayed zombies that shuffle through horror movies. Perched atop plinths at eye-level, the grizzled heads form a rogues gallery receiving line that visitors must traverse as they move between the exhibition’s linked spaces. The sculptures transform the show into a fully immersive experience that refuses the viewer any comfortable distance from Golder’s creations.

The three large-scale oil paintings on view are all loosely based on canonical works from western art history, such as Titian’s Venus and Adonis (ca. 1555 - 1560) and Rubens’ The Judgement of Paris (ca. 1632), their subjects reworked with Golder’s typical genre-bending finesse. These paintings refer to Greek myths whose narratives underscore the dangers of longing for the admiration of others. Reiterating the exhibition’s theme, these works demonstrate how a clash of competing vanities, fuelled by the desire for adoration, can set a tragedy in motion. Yet while many of the figures in Golder’s exhibition appear monstrous, their wish for our affection reflects an enduring condition that we must recognize as entirely human.

David Spalding