A Fiery Particle

火焰一粒|A Fiery Particle

2021.10.08-11.15 SNAP Shanghai

退火 / The receding fire（局部）/ 墙面装置 / Wall installation / 210*240cm / 2021

火焰一粒

徐喆形容自己是闲散的人，他的一些项目往往放了又做，做了再放。他手上的一些有意思的手工物件，往往是对日常成品游戏性的篡改。在他的工作室里，这些零零散散如即兴乐句般的拼装货，半陈列、半堆叠着，充满活性，时间久了也逐渐影响徐喆的工作，也逐渐成为了他生活中无需语言整理的那一部分。在这次的个展中，徐喆尝试动手拼凑出与自身联系更深切的事物。展览将透过一系列雕塑和影像物件，勾勒出三组故事的环境。徐喆父辈早年军旅经历中的物件，它们从日常、积尘的平凡事物化身为带路者。《内河记事》从60年代的战争记忆展开，他旅行到越南，并从镜头里看向某种个人生命故事的源头。徐喆的探索旅程也偶然触动他人记忆的共振。在《未命名的影像》中，徐喆偶遇的一位美国老人讲述了他自身的逃亡故事。而这则故事在徐喆回到上海之后，再触发了他父亲向他诉说的往事。在SNAP空间中，他从取景框中向外望去，看向这些故事主角曾经看过的风景，试着去捕捉某种逃逸路线的形态。徐喆在展览中呈现的几组影像作品与其说是三段故事，实际上更像是它们交叉映射的结晶。影片中出现的光滑如镜的航弹模型，如星条斑纹时而消失在阳光中的旗帜，这些影像物件散落在故事情节之中，映射着徐喆一直以来处理影像和实物材料时的拼拼凑凑，让游戏的气质冲淡材料本身隐含的残酷质感。

--陈玺安

盐 The salts of the earth （局部）/影像装置 video installation/240*280cm/ 混合材料Mixed media/2021

A Fiery Particle

Xu Zhe describes himself as an idle person. His projects are often put off to the side and worked on continuously, with the intention of further work after they are done. In his hands, these engaging handmade items more often than not tamper with the playful nature of everyday objects. In his studio, these scattered pieces, half-displayed and half-stacked like improvised melodic phrases, are brimming with activity. Over time, they have gradually affected Xu’s work and become the part of his life that does not need language to be ordered. In this solo exhibition, Xu sets about to piece together objects with which he feels a deeper connection. Through a series of sculptures and video works, the show outlines the environment of three narratives. Objects from Xu's father's early military experience are transformed from quotidian, dusty and ordinary items into guides. The Inner River Chronicle unfolds from the memory of war in the 1960s. He traveled to Vietnam, considering the origin of some sort of personal life story through this lens. By chance, Xu's journey of exploration also resonated with the memories of others. In Untitled Images, an old American the artist met by chance tells the story of his own escape. After Xu returned back to Shanghai, this story triggered reflections of the past that his father had recounted to him. In SNAP, he looks out from the viewfinder, surveying the scenery previously beheld by the protagonist of these stories and trying to capture an escape line of sorts. The video works series presented by Xu Zhe in the exhibition are not so much three individual tales, but rather the crystallization of their cross mapping. The smooth, mirror- like aerial bomb models appearing in the film, like the stars and stripes of a flag fading from time in the sun, are sprinkled in the storyline. They reflect Xu’s patchwork approach to assembling images and physical materials, allowing the nature of the game to dilute the material’s innately cruel texture.

--Zian CHEN

现场/Exhibition View

读图 Picture Reading / 混合材料拼贴 / Mixed media collage / 51*61 cm*12件 / 2021

《读图》12张照片拼贴作品来自我追随的“越狱逃亡者-徐洪慈”的故事。在这个项目中我选择了徐洪慈90年代重返苦役所在地所拍摄的12张照片作为工作的起点。在这组被编排裁剪的图片里展示了三段徐洪慈的亲历线索。每一张图片被裁剪后又重新拼贴，这一视觉化的处理来自直觉上对于图像解读的延伸。而后，照片背后的文字被我切割后与图像并置在同一平面。事件，地点在这同一表面上再次相遇，以确切与具体的方式。

读图 Picture Reading / 混合材料拼贴 / Mixed media collage / 51*61 cm*12件 / 2021

The twelves photo collages in the Picture Readings is based on the story of Xu Hongci, an escaped prisoner whom I followed. I selected twelve of these photographs as the basis for re-editing to show three clues of Xu Hongci's lived experience. In this grouping of cropped images I have shown three clues to Xu Hongci's personal experience. Each image was cropped and then re-collaged, this visual processing comes from an intuitive extension of pictorial interpretation. Then, I cut and juxtaposed the text behind the photographs on the same side as the images. The events and places meet again on the same surface, precisely and concretely.

现场 / Exhibition View

《未命名的影像》来自于一位美国朋友父亲的经历。在上世纪七十年代初，他作为积极的反战运动参与者选择了拒绝服从国家命令入伍从军，于是他用编造“人不在此”的谎言并且通过邮寄的形式和征兵部门展开了拉锯，成为了一名拒服兵役者。在这个故事里我看到了个体以正义与自由之名与权利抗争的希望，正是这一希望推动着这个时代的演变，这无疑是浪漫的，甚至带着些许童话色彩。我倾佩主人公的机智，也对权利机器的松动感到惊讶。当然，我也读到了故事的背面：我记得父亲曾经和我讲起过一个通过自残的方式希望逃离军营的战友。在战争时期每个国家都有不少使用自残的方式方法希望逃离战争的人，但是这个故事却让我感受到了更为丰富的情感体验。我想到福科描述在《声名狼藉的人》中的那些让他所感同身受的人与事。正是由于他们“微不足道”的生命中所经历的那些与权利的冲突带出了人性最基本的样貌，使得读者们能够切身的与他们站在一起。这不仅使得人物得以在档案外复生，也使得我们有理由去相信逃离道德捆绑后的人性流露依然值得被重新审视。

《未命名的影像》里的主人公藏身在纽约，却编造了游走于各地的故事，而我却带着这个故事“漫游”于北美大陆。移动中的北美风光成为我的视觉记忆，在我的目光中写作主人公的记忆成为影片的基本构架。一部分影像实地拍摄于故事讲述者的家中，另一些则来自我的旅行。令我兴奋的是“叙事”在我们两人的经历之间叠合而成，主人公的回忆实则来自于我的视觉记忆，是我们共同编织了这个故事。

Untitled Moving Images comes from the experience of an American friend's father. In the early 1970s, as an active participant in the anti-War movement, he refused to be enlist in the military, so he dodged his draft by making up the lie that he was not here via mail and played a tug-of-war with the draft board. The hope of individuals resisting authority in the name of justice and freedom inspired me, which is also what drives the evolution of the times. Such a mindset is undoubtedly romantic, even of fairy tales. I admire his resourcefulness and was amazed at the loosening mechanism of authorities. Of course, I also read into the back story: My father once told me about a comrade who hoped to escape from the barracks through self-mutilation. People of many countries inflicted self-harm to avoid serving in the military; however, this story provided me with a richer emotional experience. I am reminded of the people and events Foucault described in Notoriety Life, with which he sympathized. The conflict between those who led "insignificant" lives and power brings out the most fundamental aspects of humanity and allows the reader to stand with them in solidarity.This allows the characters to be reborn outside the documents and gives us reason to believe that the human expression after escaping from moral confines still deserves to be re-examined.

The protagonist in Untitled Moving Images hides in New York but fictionalizes stories of wandering elsewhere, while I take the story with me on my "wanderings" around North America. The North American landscape on the move becomes my visual memories, and the memory of the writer protagonist through my gaze becomes the basic structure of the film. Some of the footages were shot on location in the storyteller's home, others from my travels. What excites me is that the 'narrative' is superimposed between our two experiences. The memories of the protagonist are actually overlap with my visual memory, and that we woven the story together.

未命名的影像 / 截图/Untitled moving images / stills

未命名的影像 / Untitled moving images / 高清影像/ Hd video / 7:23min / 2021 Video hosting on Vimeo

现场 / Exhibition View

内河记事 / The Inner River / 高清影像 / Hd video /

内河记事 / The Inner River / 高清影像 / Hd video / 8:26min / 2021 Video hosting on Vimeo

《内河记事》中我使用旁白讲述的方式带出了那个自残逃兵的故事。在河内旅馆阳台上我拍摄了不同角度的市景影像。热带潮湿的夜晚是静谧的，远处洲际连锁酒店的霓虹灯与悬垂于街道两侧的国旗交织出的是熟悉的味道。影片中出现的宣传画来自于我所收集的出版于六十年代的抗美援越系列，画面中的夸张演绎并不陌生。锁紧的面目与健硕的手臂，时刻在提示着我们斗争的紧迫，坚决与正义。可以想象在那个视觉经验匮乏的时代它们决定了我们对于战争的浪漫化想象。以今天的角度来看这些以“革命浪漫主义”为基调的绘画简化了历史与事件，留给我们的似乎只有口号与传说，而人却不能以自己的面貌出现。
在河内我有幸遇到了一位美籍华人学者，他为我推荐了越南作家包宁的半虚构小说《战争哀歌》的中文译稿。小说中以主人公-一位幸存的北越士兵的视角将战争还原为脆弱人性的挣扎。“人性”成为了超越国族，道德与意识形态逻辑下的价值判断的唯一刻度。那么这一抽象的“人性”视角便是我在影片中希望能够展开的讲述。

For the filmInner River,I adopted a narration to bring out the story of a self-mutilating army deserter. From the balcony of my hotel in Hanoi, I took images of the city from different angles.The night in a high humidity tropical city is quiet; the distant neon lights of the Intercontinental Hotel and the national flags draped over the streets seem somewhere familiar . The propaganda posters that appear in the film are from my collection of American resistance and aiding Vietnam series, published in the 1960s in which the pictorial exaggeration is not uncanny. Stern faces and toned arms are a constant reminder of war's urgency, determination, and justice. One can imagine that these imageries defined our romanticized imagination of war when visual experiences were scarce. From today's perspective , these pictures of 'revolutionary romanticism' have simplified historical events for propaganda, leaving us with what seems to be slogans and legends, without the actual impressions of the people.

In Hanoi I was fortunate to meet a Chinese-American scholar who recommended me the writer, Bao Ninh's semi-fictional novel The Sorrow of War. The story told through its protagonist, a surviving soldier from the Northern Vietnamese army, reduces warfare to a fragile human struggle. "Humanity" becomes the only measure of value judgment that transcends the logic of nationalism, morality, and ideology. This abstract perspective of "humanity" is the narrative I hope to develop in this film.

内河记事 / The Inner River/ 高清影像 / Hd video / 8:26min / 2021

这三段故事中的人物、动机各不相同，结局迥异，却由此激活了我的想象。“拒绝”/“逃跑”是对秩序、系统、理性与规训的反转，是选择纵身跃入未知，是选择振臂去拥抱混乱。然而没有人能够承诺脱离轨道后的冒险是否能如你所愿，似乎个体与权利的碰撞在现实世界的逻辑中永远只有那形单影只的一位输家，“行动”便意味着“失败”。而“保持静止”，拒绝自我意识的敲打是否能够获得对于未来的保证却显得更加令人怀疑。想象并不背离事实，想象提供了我们观察与解读事件的多维角度。
如果放下道德的判断与意识形态的立场，那么故事中所显现出的便应该只有人的欲望。我意识到正是这“欲望”所带来的智慧、愚蠢、懦弱与疯狂才使得我被他们的故事所吸引。在这里，“逃亡”与“背叛”做为一种主体自我追寻的技术反而获得了他们在历史语境中的合法性，尽管这一合法性同样也意味着虚弱与健忘。

However, these three stories have diverse characters, motives, and endings, which activated my imagination. "Refusal"/"escape" is a reversal of order, system, rationality and discipline, a choice to leap into the unknown, an alternative to open your arms to embrace chaos. But no one can promise that the adventure of getting off the track will be what you wish for. It seems that according to real-world logic, there will always be one loser when individuality clashes with power, and that 'action' implies 'failure'. It is even more doubtful whether "remaining stagnant", refusing to tap into one's self-consciousness can guarantee a future. Imagination is not a departure from the truth, but it provides us with a multidimensional perspective from which to observe and interpret events.

If one ignores the moral judgements and the ideological positions, then the only thing that appears in these stories would be human desire. I realized that the wisdom, the stupidity, the cowardice and the madness that this 'desire' drove me to their stories. Here, 'escape' and 'betrayal' as a device the subject adopted for self-searching are legitimate in that historical context, even though such legitimacy also implies weakness and forgetfulness.

热雨情歌 / Love songs and warm rain / 混合媒介装置 / Mixed media installation / 尺寸可变 / Variable dimension / 2021

“热雨情歌”是一组诞生于这一研究项目中的物质痕迹的拼贴。其中包含小尺幅的木板油画，石膏雕塑物件以及收集而来的文献资料，同样也有基于文献资料的再创作。

"Love songs and warm rain" is a set of collage of different materials born fom this research project. It includes small-scale oil paintings on wood, plaster sculptures , collected Archives materials, and derivatives created based on the above.

热雨情歌（局部）/ Love songs and warm rain / 混合装置 / Mixed media installation / 2021 热雨情歌（局部）/ Love songs and warm rain / 混合装置 / Mixed media installation / 2021

石弹 / Some Rock bullets / 木板油画 / Oil on board / 15*22cm 榕树 / A Banyan Tree / 木板油画 / Oil on board / 16.5 *20.5cm

在飞机灯下（局部）/ Under the aircraft lights / 飞机信号灯，不锈钢支架，援越抗美纪念飞机模型，石膏，木质工作桌 / Aircraft signal light, stainless steel bracket,VA War souvenir US aircraft model, plaster, wooden work table / 200*160*220cm/2021石头 / The rocks / 木板油画 / Oil on board / 15*22cm

追月亮的人 / The man who chasing the Moon / 33*44cm / 杂志图片，宜家贴纸 / Magazine picture sheet，Ikea sticker / 2021