“But where the danger is, also grows the saving power.”
–Friedrich Holderlin
“The time of abjection is double: a time of oblivion and thunder, of veiled infinity and the moment when revelation burst forth.”
–Julia Kristeva
「在危險之處，救贖的力量也悄然孕育。」
——弗里德里希·荷爾德林
「厭惡的時間是雙重的：既是遺忘與雷鳴交織之時，也是無限被遮蔽與啟示爆發的瞬間。」
——朱莉亞·克里斯蒂娃
MARLENE DUMAS, The Enemy, 2018-2024 © the artist
Dark, sombre, and stark, this is an exhibition that touches upon a grim tonal aesthetics of abjection, yet a timely one. An ancient mythic space in which a musical dual between the god Apollo and the satyr Marsyas is being played out, a reminder perhaps that the sacrificial and the aesthetic circulate on the edge of the dissolution of art. Is it that this drama coming to us in a new presentation as a warning of abandonment that is to come and with this a terrible price which can be paid? We are invited to look on at the drama of a forlorn and suspended body, but then next, to enter close-up facial encounters, as if exteriorities and intimacies of visual arrest are in mutual circulation. There is a lot of staining, or liquid intensity, within this darkness of grim alert. Offered fragments, or discharges of sense, we might feel invited to move slowly, step by step into the heart of the vision that refuses to disclose its completed impulse. Instead, there is a seriality of arrests and departures, a raw nerve revealed in one passage, a spasm of intensity in the next. Are we being prepared for these footsteps of, or towards, oblivion? There is a question of beginning and ending that is being posed within this space of assembled images, but there are also suspended passages that strike a pleasurable accord in which the eye is left to linger, not so much as compensation, but rather as the possibility of a redemptive leap. An animation perhaps to suspend our overburdened search for signification, for otherwise there is no art (and ethics) with which to modulate our stretched-out attention. The play of textual and the visual, aesthetic and ethical, abject and redemptive, are they all implicated within these junctions of difference that stage the questions related to judgment and decision?
這場展覽充滿黑暗、沈重和冷峻的氛圍，表達了一種關於「厭惡」的嚴肅美學，正好反映了當下的時代背景。展覽場景取自古代神話，講述了太陽神阿波羅與半人半羊的薩堤爾馬爾西阿斯之間的音樂對決，暗示著藝術、犧牲與美學常常在崩潰的邊緣遊走。這個故事以全新的方式呈現給我們，彷彿是一種警告，提醒我們即將面臨遺棄，並且這種遺棄將會付出可怕的代價。我們被邀請去觀看一個孤獨、懸浮的身體所展開的戲劇，接著，則是與面部進行近距離的接觸，彷彿外在的形象和內在的親密情感在視覺中互相交織。在這種黑暗而警覺的氛圍中，畫面充滿了污漬和液體般的強烈質感。我們所接收到的，是一些片段式的感官刺激，這似乎引導我們一步步慢慢進入畫面的核心，但這核心卻始終拒絕完全展現它的真實意圖。相反，我們經歷的是一連串的停頓與推進——一處暴露出如同碰觸到敏感神經般的疼痛感，下一刻又出現強烈的情感爆發。我們是否正在被引導，踏上遺忘的步伐或走向遺忘？在這些組合圖像的空間裡，探討著開始與結束的問題，但同時也有一些讓人愉快停留的片段，吸引著我們的視線。這並非對過去的補償，而是暗示著一種救贖的可能性，讓我們或許可以從中獲得解脫。這種動態似乎讓我們暫時停下對意義的過度追尋，因為若沒有這樣的暫停，我們便無法藉由藝術和倫理來調整我們延展的注意力。文本與視覺、美學與倫理、厭惡與救贖之間的交錯，是否正處於這些差異的交匯點上，提出了關於判斷與選擇的問題？
Installation view of the exhibition © Frith Gallery
MARLENE DUMAS, Mourning Marsyas, 2024 So, what is it that is contained within the poetics of Ovid that is capable of sustaining fascination for over two thousand years? Is it the grand drama of everything in a state of flux and discharge, or the imagination of the gods that are capable of rendering everything within a theatre of excess? Partly the immediate drama presented within this aesthetic offering, is the feeling that the reiteration of it assumes a fading of memory and energetics attached to it, a form of dissolution connected to a quality of fading, like an empty room in a basement waiting for someone or something to switch off the unwelcomed light. There is a question which lingers with the question of light, and this pertains to the what if-ness of outcome. Would Apollo have bled in the same way of Marsyas to become emptied of life, or would his blood flow upwards into the sky becoming instead a sublime vapour that refracts the purity of sunlight? Is this contest one which poses the unequal strife between the heavenly sky and the lowlier earthly terrain or the difference of gods and the hybrid mortals? What value might be retained by such contests for late modern beings? Such questions linger on the very edges of the visual spectacle but cannot find their resolve or answer at this juncture. To embark on such a project (projection) is already to submit to the inevitable summoning of failure of resolution that is the co-extensive reality of aesthetic discharge. The artist thus not only paints a wounding of the subject but becomes the bearer of the wound itself. This then is at the root of the relationship between art and sacrifice. The impulse of poetry, both brings forth reward but is also the bearer of symbolic cost, thus a strange economy that evades everyday calculation. This then implies modulation of opposing forces. Both art and sacrifice endure states that are contrary to one another and yet reside in accord within the nature of this.
那麼，奧維德的詩學到底包含了什麼，使它能夠吸引人們長達兩千多年？是因為他描寫的萬物變遷和釋放的宏大戲劇，還是因為他對眾神的豐富想像，將一切呈現在過度誇張的劇場中？部分原因是這些戲劇內容不斷重複，讓人感覺記憶和能量逐漸消退，這種消散的過程就像一個地下室，等待著有人來關掉那不受歡迎的燈光。這個問題圍繞著光的意象，並探討結果的假設。如果阿波羅像馬爾西阿斯一樣流血，他的生命是否也會被耗盡？還是說他的血會向天升起，化為折射純淨陽光的崇高蒸氣？這場比賽是否象徵了天界與凡塵的衝突，還是神祇與混血凡人之間的不平等鬥爭？對於現代人而言，這樣的較量還能留下什麼價值？這些問題在視覺呈現的邊緣徘徊，但此刻無法找到明確的答案。進行這樣的創作或探索，意味著接受無法徹底解決的命運，這是藝術釋放過程中的特徵。藝術家不僅表現出傷痛，還承載了這種傷痛，這正是藝術與犧牲之間的根本聯繫。詩歌的創作既帶來回報，也伴隨著象徵性的代價，這是一種無法用日常標準衡量的奇異經濟。這也意味著對立力量之間的調和，藝術與犧牲雖然看似對立，但在本質上卻相互協調地共存。
Nearby at Christie’s, a Contemporary art display in anticipation, auction lies in wait. The principal space is painted black, and each painting is illuminated in ways that highlight each as a separate entity projecting in virtual or ethereal light. It is a form of hyperspace without blemish or distraction, with just objects of desire exceeding their own genesis. They are or become the bearers of a promise of forgetfulness. Such a way of exhibiting brings with it a process of estrangement in which reified objects might depart from any attendant pain or even texture that might be attached to their production. Pristine fine art, or simply fine luxurious product, this is what is on offer on the level of signification, not the confidence of art to resist the market, but the market confident in its ability to embrace art in its own terrain, as an emblem of pure delight contained within the power of conquest in its wake.
在附近的佳士得，一場當代藝術展即將揭幕，拍賣蓄勢待發。主展廳的牆壁被漆成黑色，每幅畫作都被精心照亮，彷彿投射出虛幻或飄渺的光芒，強調它們作為獨立個體的存在。這是個無瑕且純淨的超空間，沒有任何干擾，藝術品超越了它們自身的創作背景，成為令人渴望的對象。這些藝術品成為了一種遺忘的承載者。這種展示方式帶來了疏離感，使得那些物化的作品脫離了與其創作過程相關的痛苦，甚至剝離了原有的質感。無論是完美無瑕的藝術品，還是奢華的產品，這些在符號層面上展示的都是高端的象徵。這並非藝術抵抗市場的力量，而是市場自信地將藝術納入自身領域，視其為征服力量下的純粹愉悅象徵。
What then will endure as the aesthetic image of our time? Such a question is in the circulation in the spaces we occupy and give shape to. We take place within this rising and falling of powers assembled, with either gestures that are culled from either possession or dispossession. The price that is paid is all in view, but how this is calculated, and with what measure, remains obscure. It is poetic that moves between the space of what can be calculated and what is subjected to measurability to discover a sense of immeasurable reserve in the beyond of such relation. Seeking out such difference close to perceiving a mere flicker of light, rather than lights all over technological resolution of visibility, what is proper to mourning then, is the subdued illumination of candlelight, fragile and vulnerable in its half life that it casts between vision and void.
那麼，什麼將成為我們這個時代持久的美學形象？這個問題在我們所身處並塑造的空間中不斷被探討。我們在這股權力的升降變化中前行，無論是從佔有還是失去中汲取的姿態，都在塑造我們的行動與創作。付出的代價一目了然，但它是如何計算的，以及用什麼標準衡量，仍然不明確。詩意在可計算與可測量的範疇之間穿梭，試圖探索這種關係之外無法衡量的深層潛力。追尋的是那一閃即逝的微光，而不是技術手段帶來的全面可見性。真正適合哀悼的光是燭光，它柔弱、脆弱，像是一種短暫的中途生命，投射著介於視覺與虛無之間的光芒。
‘Mourning Marsyas’ is a calling, an allegorical like space that echoes with the terrors assembled, taking us through the subdued light of pain inflicted. As a calling there is something to be answered on the edge of this oblivion presented. When Titian painted his version of the “Flaying of Marsyas’ (1570-76) it was both a continuation of his late Ovid inspired paintings but also a response to the flaying of a Venetian commander on the walls of the Ottoman capital. In Dumas’s paintings, there is also a doubling over temporal address to both ancient and contemporary frameworks to awaken us to the complexity embedded in the fold of time. These image shards, are then, a call that draws together poetic and political reflexes into a resistance to the present. Wars are when too many lines are drawn, lines painfully etched deep into faces, then cuts endured by bodies, followed by lines obscured in the daily dulling of language, the repressions and blockages inflicted to the passages of memory, all of which are part of the rubble accrued. With this, maps are redrawn. War torn, with lines both written, drawn, all subject to erasure followed by processes of re-inscription that makes possible the surfacing of gestures culled from the deep.
《哀悼馬爾西阿斯》是一種召喚，宛如一個寓言般的空間，回響著聚集的恐懼，帶領我們穿越那因痛苦而顯得柔和的光芒。這個召喚讓我們在遺忘的邊緣上必須做出某種回應。提香在1570-1576年間創作的《剝皮的馬爾西阿斯》既延續了他晚期受奧維德啟發的畫作風格，也回應了威尼斯指揮官在奧斯曼帝國首都城牆上被剝皮的事件。而在杜馬斯的畫作中，時間的雙重性同樣體現出來，既與古代相關，也與當代呼應，喚醒我們對時間摺疊中複雜性的認識。這些畫面碎片彷彿是一種召喚，將詩意與政治反應結合，成為對當下現實的抗爭。戰爭是當太多的界線被畫下時，這些界線痛苦地刻在臉上，割傷著身體，隨後在日常語言的麻木中被掩蓋，記憶的通道被壓制和封鎖，這些都是戰爭後累積的殘骸之一。隨著這一過程，地圖被重新繪製。戰爭使得書寫和繪製的界線被抹去，隨後又經歷重新刻畫的過程，這使得那些從深處汲取的姿態得以浮現。
MARLENE DUMAS, Mourning Marsyas, 2024 © the artist
A looking at, a looking into, half-remembered glances of the eye, an assemblage as witness, memory circulating in between these shadow spaces, all awakened by the myriad of conjunctions open our being-with to the gaze of the outside. Nothing more than this but nothing less.
一次凝視，一次深入的觀察，半記得的眼神片段匯聚在一起，成為見證者。記憶在這些陰影空間中流轉，無數的聯結將我們的存在喚醒，向外界的凝視敞開。既不僅僅是如此，也不會少於這種意義。
Marlene Dumas
Mourning Marsyas
Frith Street Gallery
20 September – 16 November 2024
Text by Jonathan Miles
Edited by Michelle Yu
