Yin Zhaoyang B. 1970

尹朝陽 Plaza 4

Footnotes

Provenance
Beijing Commune, Beijing
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibited
Max Protetch Gallery, Public Space: Yin Zhaoyang's Solo Exhibition, New York, September 2005, p. 15

廣場4號
油彩畫布
2005年作

簽名：朝陽2005年7月

來源
北京公社畫廊
現藏家直接購自上述畫廊

展覽
「公共空間：尹朝陽個展」，紐約Max Protetch畫廊，2005年9月，第15頁

As a gallery owner for over fifty years, Max Protetch was driven by a broad-minded interest in the conceptual and material ways in which our environment can be shaped by creative human intervention, and how we in turn are shaped by our environment. Such open-minded curiosity led Protetch to exhibit a wide range of contemporary practices over the years, from Pop to Minimal and Conceptual Art, from architectural drawings to Chinese contemporary art. Protetch opened his first gallery in 1969. Initially based in Washington, D.C., this gallery showed works by Andy Warhol, Conceptual and Minimalist artists including Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, On Kawara, Sol Lewitt and others. When he moved the gallery to New York in 1978, Protetch's focus shifted to architectural drawings. Over the years, he worked with many masters in the field, including Tadao Andao, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and numerous others. During this time, Protetch also took an interest in contemporary art from China, and, dating back as early as 1998, he was a leading figure in bringing Chinese art to Western audiences, giving artists like Zhang Xiaogang, Zhang Huan, Yue Minjun, and Fang Lijun their first New York exhibitions. Protetch additionally collected these artists' works himself, and, recognizing the disparity between Chinese artists presence in the West and their relative lack of exhibition platforms within China, he was also an early supporter of the Beijing Commune, one of the first galleries to set up shop in the then nascent arts district known as 798.

The gallery has closed its doors, leaving behind one of the most distinct profiles in the New York art world of the last half-century. The present lot, Plaza IV from the painter Yin Zhaoyang, comes from Protetch's personal collection and perfectly reflects his thoughtful, meditative taste. Yin presents a long, narrow horizontal canvas. From a starless black sky and a deeply red, earthy ground emerges "the plaza", gently aglow as if by a mysterious internal light. The building pictured is the Great Hall of the People, built in Beijing in 1959. The building looms over the Western side of Tian'anmen Square. The hall is home to China's annual legislative and ceremonial meetings, where the Chinese parliament, National People's Congress, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and National Congress of the Communist Party all hold their sessions. Its symbolic and material significance cannot be understated.

Born in 1970, Yin is from a younger generation of Chinese painters whose personal experience of communism was limited. His works reference neither the personal tragedy nor the angry satire found in Political Pop, Gaudy Art, or in the Cynical Realists. Instead his approach harkens back to the Western artists of the 1960s and 1970s who also took a coolly distanced view of their cultural environs (fig. 1, 2). Yin's works rest in a similar ambiguity. The hall itself is neutral, almost ethereal. The suggestion of gathering figures reminds us that the square itself is a popular promenade, heavily visited in all weather and at all times of day. There is a suggestion of figures milling about in the darkness, moving tentatively into the light. They seem magnetically drawn to the great hall, suggesting a mystery, not quite ominous but curious, as to the motivation of this gathering night-time crowd. The format recalls that of a tourist postcard. Yin has removed the Monument to the People's Heroes which sits at the center of the square, heightening the isolation of the building, emerging from darkness, and the dream-like quality of the scene. Although plainly recognizable, Yin's subtle distortion of the image as well as his handling of the composition create an ambiguous, reflective quality, demystifying the iconic hall and allowing for its subjective repurposing for a new generation.

麥克斯・普羅泰奇（Max Protetch）是經營畫廊超過50年的負責人，對於探究藝術如何以創新概念和手法改變我們的環境，以及環境又如何形塑了我們的議題是普羅泰奇追隨藝術的動力。多年來，普羅泰奇以開放的態度和胸襟再加上旺盛的好奇心為各種類型的當代藝術籌辦展覽，從波普到極簡主義和觀念藝術，從建築繪圖到中國當代藝術無所不關注。普羅泰奇在1969年於華盛頓首府開設了第一家畫廊，展出安迪・沃荷（Andy Warhol），以及卡爾・安德烈（Carl Andre）、唐納德・賈徳（Donald Judd）、丹・弗拉文（Dan Flavin）、河原溫（On Kawara）、索爾・勒維特（Sol Lewitt）等觀念和極簡主義藝術家的作品。當他在1978年將畫廊遷至紐約的時候，也轉而將關注的焦點投向建築繪圖，在往後的幾年之間與建築界大師合作，包括安藤忠雄（Tadao Andao）、法蘭克・蓋瑞（Frank Gehry）、札哈・哈蒂（Zaha Hadid）、雷・庫哈斯（Rem Koolhaas）等不勝枚舉。同時在這期間開始注意到中國當代藝術，早在1998年便為西方觀眾引介中國藝術，為張曉剛、張洹、岳敏君和方力鈞等藝術家舉辦了生平在紐約的首展，成為這一方面的先驅者。普羅泰奇個人也收藏這些藝術家的作品，並且察覺到中國藝術家在西方的能見度提高，在中國卻缺少展出的平台，因而成為率先進駐798藝術區的畫廊之一的北京公社的早期支持者。

麥克斯普羅泰奇畫廊現已歇業，在紐約上世紀後半期畫廊史留下獨領風騷的重要一頁。出自尹朝陽之手的《廣場四》（Plaza IV）為普羅泰奇的私人收藏，也反映出普羅泰奇樂於思考與細膩的品味。在作品狹長式的畫面中是一片沒有星星的漆黑夜空，地面呈深紅色和土色，上面浮現一座似乎發出柔和而神秘之光的「廣場」。聳立在天安門廣場西側的是一九五九年建於北京的人民大會堂，這可是中國每年招開政治活動和大會的地方，國會、全國人民代表大會、中國人民政治協商會議全國委員會和共產黨全國人民代表大會均在此舉行，它的象徵意義和實質重要性可想而知。

生於1970年的尹朝陽是中國年輕一代的畫家，對於共產主義，其個人經驗相對而言比較少。他的作品既非關個人悲劇，更與政治波普、豔俗藝術、玩世現實主義沒有聯結。論及他的藝術態度，反而得追溯到1960年代和1970年代那些冷靜觀察自身文化環境的西方藝術家（圖一、二）。尹朝陽的作品採取同樣不明的立場。人民大會堂本身是中立的，甚至幾乎有些飄渺。看似聚集在廣場中的群眾提示了這是一個著名景點，無論任何氣候或時間總有大批人潮造訪。畫面中似乎有群眾在黑暗中朝著光的方向移動，像是被人民大會吸引而去，雖然感覺上不像是有惡兆，但這些夜訪人民大會堂的群眾有何意圖又令人不解。作品的構圖使人聯想到觀光明信片。尹朝陽移除了廣場中央的人民英雄紀念碑，建築物聳立在黑暗之中更顯孤立，加強了畫面如夢似幻的氛圍。尹朝陽顯然巧妙地扭曲了實景，同時刻意以特殊構圖來增添作品未明與反省的特性，好揭開這象徵性建築物的神祕面紗，容許新一代以新的視角面對它。