策劃               Curator： 艾未未  Ai Weiwei

展覽時間         Period： 2008.6.21 – 8.10

開幕               Opening： 2008.6.21 @ 3:00 pm

開放時間 Gallery Hours： 2:00 -- 6:00 pm  (周二Tues. — 周日Sun.) 

 

 

 

毛同強將那些被普遍放棄使用的鐮刀與斧頭堆積、陳列在這里，熟悉歷史的人會感慨萬千。

看著那些被時間磨損的工具，人們很容易將它們在歷史中的輝煌與今天的衰朽進行對比。

通過對這些歷史的物品的觀看，每個人都會因為自己特殊的經歷與知識背景對之給予解讀。

不會有人再去產生那些鐮刀斧頭或者錘頭了，毛同強將它們變成了今天的藝術。

 

這些陳舊的東西脫離了它們的歷史和現實語境，被集中在一個當代社會的“藝術空間”，觀眾很容易就將它們看成是一種新的東西。如果我們對杜桑的話給予適當的修改——盡管這樣的修改充滿著意識形態的慣性，可以這樣表述：

 

鐮刀斧頭是不是藝術家親自制造出來的，這并不重要。藝術家選擇了這些東西。他拿了這些普通的生產工具，將它們放在另外的地方，在新的標題和觀點下，它們原來的使用功能已經沒有了，新的標題和觀點賦予了它們新的思想。

 

 

 

Mao Tongqiang puts piles of abandoned sickles and axes in the space, which will inevitably stimulate the imagination of people familiar with China’s modern history. While looking at these time-worn pieces, people naturally compare their glorious past with their decline today. Everyone will have their own interpretation of these historical objects based on their individual educational background and experience.   

 

No factory is ever going to produce such kinds of sickles and axes (or hammers). Mao Tongqiang has transformed them into a piece of artwork. These old objects have been devoid of their historical and present context and are put together in an “artistic space” of the contemporary world, so the viewers tend to consider them to be new things. This, I believe, can be expressed in a more comprehensive way if I may alter Duchamp words slightly into the following paragraph (even though such alteration may reveal traits of my ideology): 

 

Whether Mao Tongqiang with his own hands made the sickles and hammers or not has no importance. He CHOSE them. He took ordinary articles of life, placed them so that their useful signification disappeared under the new title and point of view—creating a new thought for these objects.