理察‧韦特

理察‧韦特1960年生于伦敦,幼年移居苏格兰,就读爱丁堡艺术学院;1993至95年于格拉斯哥艺术学院进修;2009年获伦敦泰特美术馆的「特纳奖」。现于格拉斯哥生活及工作。

韦特近十年的重要作品都是直接涂绘于墙上的,作品每每展现细致反复描画的设计图案,令人想起极简主义的序列风格,或是「安迪‧华荷式」的机械作画过程。然而这些作品都是他用上好几个星期,亲手细心绘画而成的。韦特对绘画的问题研考殷切,曾说:「绘画是设定及处理物料的过程,探讨了时间的本质」。在他的作品中,物料与过程的重要性,不下于作品本身。此外,他在选定作画地点时亦会考虑该建筑物本身的特定性,成为组成作品的重要部份。他弃用传统画布,认为它是创作意念和执行之间的障碍,希望将之消除。作品《无题(31.3.04)》(2004)绘画了一些原色几何形块,就像一些被折迭的纸带散落在地上,突显了它们的空间感,而底层则画上仿木地板的纹理。韦特的绘画虽然预演了展现空间形式的窘境,但他所绘画的木地板,却让他远离了二十世纪初围绕物料真实性概念的争论。

韦特制作了不同版本的海报张贴到墙上,能活化空间,迫使观众以另类方式来体验画廊。以往立体主义或普普艺术的现代派大师会把街上的商业海报转化为艺术品,而韦特的做法刚好相反,他将自己的海报,派送给专责张贴海报的人,着他们随意在城中张贴,使之成为城市生活的一部份。不论张贴在画廊内或外,这些海报都直接提出了艺术价值的问题。这些问题不关乎二十世纪上半期对于高雅及通俗艺术的讨论,而是1970年代观念主义向艺术商品化所作出的挑战。

韦特的首次个展于1994年在格拉斯哥传达画廊举行,其后在世界各地举行多个展览,其中较瞩目的有:伯尔尼美术馆及泰特利物浦美术馆(2001);莱茵兰和威斯特伐兰艺术协会(杜塞尔多夫,2002);邓迪当代艺术中心(2004);圣地亚哥当代艺术博物馆(2007)。他亦曾参与不少重要联展,当中包括:「皮特华.布塔尼卡」(当代艺术博物馆,悉尼,1997);曼尼费斯特欧洲当代艺术双年展II (卢森堡,1998);英国艺术展V (2000);卡内基国际艺术展(匹兹堡,2008)。

Richard Wright

Richard Wright was born in 1960 in London. He moved to Scotland at an early age and studied at Edinburgh College of Art, and Glasgow College of Art, 1993-5. In 2009 he was awarded the Turner Prize at Tate Britain and now continues to live and work in Glasgow.

Richard Wright’s most significant works in the last ten years have been painted directly onto walls. Very often, the paintings consist of meticulously repeated designs which can appear to allude to the seriality of minimalism, or a ‘Warholian’ mechanical process. The works are painstakingly painted, by hand, over many weeks. Wright's engagement is very clearly with the question of painting and he has said: “Painting is an enactment or a physical occupation of material, in a way it speaks about time”. In his work, the importance of the material itself and the physical process occupy a space of equal importance to the context of the work. Wright's site specific paintings are always executed in response to architecture, and this specificity is very much a part of the content of the finished work. Abandoning conventional canvas as his support was a way of ridding himself of what he perceived as an obstacle between the idea and the execution. The painting Not Titled (31.3.04) (2004) presents an arrangement of primary coloured geometric shapes, disposed across the ground like a folded strip of paper so as to emphasise their spatial quality. The ground is painted to resemble wooden panel, or boards. Wright's painting rehearses the dilemma of representation of spatial forms, but by using a painted simulacra of wooden panel, he radically distances himself from early twentieth century debates revolving around the concept of truth to materials.

Wright produces editions of posters, designed to be pasted to the wall in such a way as to activate a space so that the viewer is forced to experience the gallery in a different way. In a reversal of the practice of key modernist figures from the Cubists to Pop artists, who brought commercial posters off the street and into fine art practice, Wright has also given his posters to professional fly-posters, to be pasted up at random throughout a city, and become part of the urban fabric. Whether pasted up inside or outside the gallery, the posters engage directly with questions concerning the value of art; not so much in terms of an interpenetration of high and low, as was debated in the first half of the twentieth century, but more in relation to it’s commodity status as it was originally challenged by Conceptualism in the 1970s.

The first solo exhibition of Wright’s work took place in 1994 at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, and since that time he has continued to exhibit worldwide. Notable shows include Kunsthalle Bern and Tate Liverpool in 2001; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 2002; Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2004; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2007. He has been included in many important group exhibitions including: Pitura Brittanica, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1997; Manifesta 2, Luxembourg, 1998; the British Art Show 5, 2000 and Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, 2008.