唐吉軻德vs.小金剛——評成東勳與劉柏村雙個展

Don Quixote vs. Little Vajras–A Review of the Dong-Hun Sung and Po-Chun Liu Duo Exhibition

朱銘美術館於2011年5月舉辦成東勳與劉柏村雙個展——《金英雄．破神話》，促成了兩位亞洲雕塑家的交手與對話，二位藝術家也不約而同地以鋼鐵雕塑交鋒。鋼鐵在二十世紀初走進雕塑的領域，至今已有一百多年的歷史。二位造形語彙各異的亞洲藝術家，分別回應此一媒介的特性與其複雜的歷史。成東勳選擇忽視鋼鐵在整個現代雕塑史中展開的議題，一開始即將鋼鐵導向一種敘事、象徵或寓意的用途，並採用異質吸納的手法，將現成物、工業廢棄物等異質的素材組合成幽默、怪誕、多義的異文化組合體，並且選擇唐吉軻德作為精神表徵。劉柏村則是深入的思考鋼鐵的媒材特性，及其在整個現代藝術史中引起的提問，來刻意地「與雕塑保持距離」。他延續畢卡索以來雕塑質性的顛覆，深入探討繪畫與雕塑之間的辨證關係，以解決平面與空間的衝突。在看似簡單的手法中，複雜地容納了結構、空間、光線、聲響、動能、場域、複製等現代雕塑的基要問題。在主題的選擇上則以〈金剛〉來象徵資訊時代的亂象。也正是在後工業社會裡，以及所謂的新媒體世代中，成東勳與劉柏村的鋼雕相遇，在現代主義崩潰的邊緣，在二十一世紀中試著打開鋼鐵雕塑的新視野。

In the Dong-Hun Sung and Po-Chun Liu duo exhibition (entitled“Metallic Heroes and Demythification”) held in May 2011 at the Juming Museum, two Asian sculptors engage each other in a clash-cumdialogue. They do so, coincidentally, with steel sculptures. Steel as a sculptural material dates back more a hundred years to the beginning of the 20th century. Having different plastic vocabularies between themselves, the two Asian artists each respond to the qualities and complex history of this particular medium. Dong-Hun Sung chooses to bypass the issues unfurled by steel throughout the history of modern sculpture, and directs steel on the onset towards a narrative, symbolic or allegorical purpose. Exercising heterogeneous assimilation, Sung combines heterogeneous materials (such as found objects and industrial refuse) into humorous, bizarre and polysemic hybrids of different cultural components, and chooses Don Quixote as a spiritual icon. Po-Chun Liu, on the other hand, thinks deeply about the properties of steel as a medium, as well as the questions it has been raising throughout the history of modern art, so as to deliberately distance himself from sculpture, as it were. He carries on the post-Picasso subversion of the nature of sculptures, and delves into the dialectics between painting and sculpture to resolve the conflict between planar and 3D space. With a deceptively simple approach, Liu presents a complex enfoldment of many of modern sculpture’s basic questions, including those about structure, space, light, sound, kinetic energy, site and reproduction. His choice of subject (Vajra) is a symbol for the pandemonium of the Information Age. In post-industrial society and the so-called New Media Generation, Dong-Hun Sung's and Po-Chun Liu's steel sculptures meet on the brink of modernism's collapse. The result is an attempt to open up new horizons in the 21st century for this shared medium.