The Shop / David Zwirner / Hong Kong / Mar 20 – May 6 /
Stepping out of the elevator at David Zwirner Hong Kong, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in the wrong location. What lies before you is an old-fashioned umbrella shop – the kind more commonly seen at street level in Hong Kong. The shop is stuffed to the gills with brollies, Chinese lanterns, manuals, books, a replica of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. It’s a delight to peruse. All items are for sale.
Is the installation a commentary on the idea of art? An attempt to elevate the umbrella from a banal, everyday object to art by situating it in a different setting? Its creator, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, has said that Duchamp’s Fountain is his favourite art piece.
Tiravanija is a master at using everyday experiences such as eating and playing to shed light on how the personal is also the political, and how art is a part of the everyday. He is perhaps best known for exhibitions involving food, such as Untitled (Pad Thai), where he served the popular Thai dish to gallery-goers to highlight its autocratic origins – it was invented by then prime minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram in the 1930s as part of a nationalist campaign. At The Shop, Tiravanija turns his gaze to a politically charged object.
The umbrella is a device to protect oneself from the rain or the sun. But in modern-day Hong Kong, an umbrella isn’t just an umbrella. In fact, it stopped being that during the 2014 protests, when it was used as a makeshift shield against tear gas and pepper spray.
Here, a machine airs a Cantonese recording of a chapter from Death’s End, the third book in Chinese science-fiction author Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy. The narrator tells the story of how a spinning umbrella protects a princess from being disappeared by her power-hungry brother.
The theme of disappearance continues in the next space, revealed via a nifty automatic sliding door at the back of the brolly shop, which is austere, stripped of the visual richness and spontaneity that came before. A few robotic vacuum cleaners sweep across the carpeted floor, tracing the Chinese characters for “dark forest”, the title of the second book in the trilogy. The book’s plot revolves around a group of extra-terrestrials trying to eliminate the human race and claim Earth as their own. In Tiravanija’s work, the Chinese characters disappear as viewers walk across the space, then reappear again, in an endless loop.
Downstairs, 3D printers create what look like poorly formed architectural models but are in fact broken umbrellas, their blazing red hue making them looking all the more forlorn. There is also an AR component: as you pan your phone around the gallery, black mutilated umbrellas are suspended in mid-air, one of them so close that it feels like it’s grazing your body. The spinning umbrella that provides protection has transformed into a battered, useless object.
The only way out of the gallery is through the way in. As one re-enters the robo vacuum-filled space and the brolly shop, it almost feels like going back in time. What has disappeared? What has been lost? Has the brolly shop already been relegated to the past?
走出卓納畫廊的電梯，不怪你有種來錯地方的想法。在你眼前的是一家老式傘鋪——大多在香港街頭可見。鋪子裡擺滿了雨傘、中國燈籠、手冊、書籍、梵谷《星夜》的複製品。那是個令人愉快的景象，所有物品均可出售。
這個裝置是在解說藝術理念嗎？或是一種嘗試，通過將傘至於不同環境中，把它從平庸的日常物提升為藝術品？它的創作者泰國藝術家裡克利·提拉瓦尼曾說，杜尚的《噴泉》是他最喜歡的藝術作品。
裡克利·提拉瓦尼非常擅於用吃和玩等日常體驗來闡明「個人」也是「政治」的觀點，以及藝術也是日常生活的一部分。他最為知名的或許是在個展中加入食物。比如作品《無題（泰式炒金邊粉）》，他為來到畫廊的觀眾奉上這道廣受歡迎的泰國菜，目的是強調其獨裁的起源——這道菜是由時任泰國總理鑾披汶·頌堪在20世紀30年代發明的，作為當時民族主義運動的一部分。在展覽《店舖》中，提拉瓦尼將目光轉向一個帶有政治色彩的物品。
傘是一種保護自己免受日曬雨淋的工具。但在現代香港，傘不僅僅是傘。實際上，在 2014 年的抗議運動期間，它就不再只是傘了，那時它被當作抵禦催淚彈和辣椒噴霧的臨時盾牌。
傘鋪裡，一台機器用粵語播放著出自中國科幻小說家劉慈欣《三體》三部曲的最終篇《死神永生》裡的章節錄音，講述了一把旋轉的傘如何保護公主以免被其渴望權力的哥哥弄至消失的故事。
下一空間繼續著「消失」的主題，借由傘鋪後方一扇精巧的自動滑門質樸地展現，脫去了先前豐富的視覺效果和隨意性。幾台掃地機器人掃過鋪有地毯的地板，沿著漢字「黑暗森林」的軌跡移動，這是《三體》第二部的書名。這一部的情節圍繞一群外星人試圖消滅人類並佔領地球的故事展開。當觀眾穿越過展廳時，漢字消失，然後又重新出現，就這樣無限迴圈。
樓下，數台3D 印表機裡打出的看似形狀不佳的建築模型，實際上是一把把破損的傘，熾熱的紅色使它們看起來更為淒涼。這裡還有一個 AR 元件：當你繞行於畫廊用手機拍攝時，殘缺的黑傘懸掛在半空中，其中一把離你如此之近，感覺就要擦破你的身體。此時那曾給予保護的旋轉傘變成了破舊無用的物品。