MAKING CHINATOWN
REDCAT, Los Angeles, 2012
Tag: MakingChinatown
Making Chinatown (Chinese)
再造唐人街
2012
混合媒介装置，7频彩色视频
由洛杉矶REDCAT委托
黄汉明为其在洛杉矶的首个个展里，创作了一系列的影像作品和以风景为拍摄场景的作品。它们主要是围绕罗曼·波兰斯基的重要作品《唐人街》展开的。 当作品《制造唐人街》在2012年在REDCAT画廊展出时，艺术家把整个展厅空间布展成拍摄片场，并以此探索分析电影原片所用的语言结构组成、表演方式及身份认知，用以重新诠释唐人街。在该作品中，艺术家扮演曾由杰克·尼科尔森，费·唐纳薇，约翰·休斯顿以及贝琳达·帕尔墨担任的角色，在数码渲染的原片剧照背景前表演原片重要的场景，并在视频装置中保持其完整性。作品展出时所使用的展览背景墙，既坚持了剧场式和电影式的布景传统，又保有大幅画和雕塑的特性。
黄汉明以其独特而深刻的行为表演方式和视频作品享誉国际，他的作品大部分是将世界电影史中的大师级作品和主流娱乐电影重新建构。通过诠释法斯宾德，王家卫和英格玛·伯格曼等世界知名电影导演的视觉风格和符号，艺术家常常会在其作品中探讨电影构建主观性和地缘性。《制造唐人街》是黄汉明第一个以美国电影为创作背景的作品，他主要利用了波兰斯基《唐人街》里的标志性手法，来探讨洛杉矶的多功能性和可塑性。黄汉明将文本作为媒介去创作该作品，这个文本可供其栖息，也可将地缘特点拟人化。《制造唐人街》在模仿主流电影技法的同时也将其简化，以强化作为电影技法基础的戏剧特性。
Making Chinatown
MAKING CHINATOWN
mixed-media installation featuring a 7-channel colour video
2012
Commissioned by REDCAT, Los Angeles
“For his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Ming Wong creates a series of videos and scenic backdrops that center around the making of Roman Polanski’s seminal 1974 film Chinatown. Shot on location in the Gallery at REDCAT, Wong’s reinterpretation, Making Chinatown, transforms the exhibition space into a studio backlot and examines the original film’s constructions of language, performance and identity. With the artist cast in the roles originally played by Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston and Belinda Palmer, key scenes are reenacted in front of printed backdrops that are digitally rendered from film stills and kept intact within the video installation. The wall flats adhere to the conventions of theatrical and filmic staging while taking on qualities of large-scale painting and sculpture.
Wong has been recognized internationally for his ambitious performance and video works that engage with the history of world cinema and popular forms of entertainment. Working through the visual styles and tropes of such iconic film directors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wong Kar-wai and Ingmar Bergman, Wong’s practice considers the means through which subjectivity and geographic location are constructed by motion pictures. Making Chinatown is Wong’s first project focused on the American context of filmmaking and draws upon Polanski’s iconic film for its use of Los Angeles as a versatile and malleable character. Wong treats the film as a text through which he is able to inhabit and impersonate the qualities that are particular to the place it represents. Making Chinatown mimics and reduces the techniques of mainstream cinema in order to emphasize the theatrical qualities that underlie cinematic artifice.”
(from the REDCAT press release)