Hong Kong Dominoes / David Zwirner / Hong Kong / Sep 4 – Oct 13, 2021 /

American artist Sherrie Levine’s recent exhibition Hong Kong Dominoes at David Zwirner in Hong Kong comprised six bodies of work that span three decades of the artist’s career.
Levine rose to prominence as a member of the Pictures Generation, a group of artists based in New York in the late 1970s and 80s. Originally trained as a printmaker, this has continued to influence her work, of which multiple images and mechanical reproduction form the foundation.

The artist chooses, reproduces and re-presents the works of dead white male artists as her own – works in the past have appropriated Walker Evans, Matisse, Brâncuși and Duchamp – undermining and calling into question concepts like authorship, originality and authenticity, and our fetishisation of these values and of certain works of art. Several works in the current exhibition make reference to modernist works.

In the group of 22 watercolour on paper drawings After Henri Matisse (1985), Levine recreates and presents a sequence of simple line portraits taken from Matisse’s later sketches. They look very much like the modern artist’s work. By appropriating the works of male artists and inserting herself as a re-creator of them, Levine also directs a critique at the ingrained patriarchal dominance in art history, subverting its authority.

Across two exhibition rooms hangs Monochromes After Renoir Nudes (2016), a series of paintings that look like Pantone colour swatches, with individual panels painted in a monochrome colour value: dusty pink, muted earth and olive green. This series, based on the female nude, a traditionally male subject, is an extreme abstraction or reduction of Renoir’s nudes to their simplest essence by using a chromatic computer algorithm to calculate each figure’s average colour, resulting in a monochrome panel. These nude paintings, once considered erotic, and still considered iconic, valuable, art fetish objects, in the commodity sense, have been reduced to nothing more than colour swatches.

On the facing wall hangs a series of eleven giclée inkjet prints, After Feininger: 1–11 (2021). This series of photographs by Bauhaus architect-turned-photographer Andreas Feininger were taken in the 1940s for Life magazine to document the post-war industrial landscape of the US. Again, stereotypically ‘male’ industrial or architectural sites are depicted – quarries, mines, factories – in the midst of otherwise beautiful, monumental natural surroundings. Industry scars and despoils the natural landscape.

On view for the first time is also the titular Hong Kong Dominoes: 1–12 (2017), a series of 12 identical paintings on mahogany replicating dominoes Levine purchased on a trip to Hong Kong in 2012. The dominoes are reduced to an abstract, highly graphic series of white and red dots on black painted mahogany panels. Hung in a row across two walls, like a row of dominoes, the panels are evocative of minimalist and abstract paintings from the 60s, the repeated image of a mass-produced consumer product reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s prints.

While the meaning of her reproduced works is founded in relation to the works or objects which are appropriated or replicated, Levine’s deconstruction and critical attacks on originality and ownership of ideas echo French postmodern theorist Roland Barthes’ concept of the death of the author, in which the reader or viewer plays a role in developing meaning. There is no singular narrative or interpretation.

It’s fitting that the central work and title of Levine’s show should be a game. Much like the Dadaists before her, it is difficult not to see Levine’s oeuvre as a game, playing with and subverting art tropes, and challenging our views of what art is.

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美國藝術家謝麗．利文近日在香港卓納畫廊舉辦個展「香港多米諾」，呈現其30年藝術實踐中的6組作品。

利文最初作為「圖像一代」（Pictures Generation）的代表人物嶄露頭角，這是一群活躍於1970年代末至1980年代紐約的藝術家。利文起初學的是版畫，這也一直影響著她後來的創作，可以見得她的作品往往以多重圖像及機械複製為基礎。
她通過選擇、複製和再現已故白人男性藝術家們的作品，來創作自己的作品。被其挪用過作品的藝術家包括沃克．埃文斯，馬蒂斯，布朗庫西及杜尚。利文的舉動不僅打破並挑戰了創作者身份、原創性和真實性等概念，同時也質疑著我們對這些價值觀和某些藝術作品所持有的癡迷。是次展覽中的不少作品都指涉了現代主義傑作。

一組22件水彩畫《仿馬蒂斯》（1985年）源自馬蒂斯後期的素描作品，經利文二次創作後成為一系列簡潔的線條肖像畫，看上去非常像該位現代藝術家的作品。利文佔用男性藝術家的作品並作為二次創作者介入其中，以此批判藝術歷史進程中根深蒂固的男權統治地位，旨在顛覆其權威。
系列畫作《仿雷諾瓦裸像的單色畫》（2016年）懸掛在兩個展廳中，它們看起來就像是一排色卡。每幅畫僅用單一顏色繪製而成，如灰粉紅色、大地色和橄欖綠。這些畫的以女性裸體這一典型的男性主題為創作基礎，通過一種電腦色彩演算法來計算每個形象的平均色，再將雷諾瓦作品中的女性形象經過極致的圖元化處理留下最簡單的本質，一幅單⾊畫。這些曾被視為色情現仍具代表性，而作為商品屬珍貴而為人迷戀的藝術品，如今在一番剝離後剩下的唯有一塊色板。

在展覽廳另一面掛著11副系列藝術噴墨照片，名為《仿費寧格1-11》（2021年）。這是包豪斯建築師轉攝影師安德莉亞斯．費寧格在1940年代為《生活》雜誌所拍攝的系列照片，用以記錄戰後美國的工業風貌。照片凸顯的是在美麗宏偉的自然環境下的採石場、礦山和工廠，同樣，它們所表現的依舊是陳規的「男性」工業建築風格，也無不反映出工業對自然的傷害和掠奪。

首展作品《香港多米諾：1-12》（2017年）是一套12幅完全相同的紅木繪畫作品。畫面複刻了利⽂在 2012 年於香港旅行時購買的多米諾骨牌，它們變成了一系列抽象且高度清晰的紅白色圓點呈現在塗黑的紅木板上。這些作品橫向並排懸掛在兩面牆上，宛如一排多米諾骨牌，讓人想起1960年代的極簡抽象主義繪畫，而那些重複的關於批量生產的消費品的圖像則讓人聯想到安迪華荷的版畫。

儘管這些再造作品所表現的意義還是建立在原物的基礎之上。但利文在創作的解構舉動，以及對原創和觀念的所有權發出的攻擊則呼應了法國後現代理論家羅蘭．巴特提出的作者已死的觀念。後者認為讀者在文化創發上扮演著重要角色，不是只是簡單的敘述或詮釋。

可以說，利文是次展覽的核心作品和名字就像是場遊戲。相近於之前的達達主義，她一直以來的作品也不難看出遊戲的意味，玩味並且顛覆著藝術辭藻，同時挑戰著我們對藝術的定義。