马特‧科里索

马特‧科里索1966年生于英格兰诺丁汉,就读伦敦金匠学院,现在伦敦居住和工作。

科里索以其摄影和录像装置最为人注目。作品乍看美丽、诱人、感性,却潜藏着暴力、令人不安和反感的意象,冲击着各人内心,并探讨及左右我们对影像的接受程度。他使用的影像通常是从别处挪用,然后再加以数码处理,主题着意探讨艺术再现与真实存在之间的关系。

在《染病的花朵》(1996)灯箱系列中,照片影像是看起来娇艳的花卉。初看时,观者定会被其美艳绝伦的色彩及优美形态所吸引,这都是基于花朵本身的自然形态,再以技术提升其吸引力。但细看之下,却发现原来它们并不完美,花瓣有不少地方明显受病毒感染。作品标题亦非植物的名称,而是导致它们外貌破损的病原—大自然中各种可怕的绝症。在这种情况下,观众既被吸引亦被吓怕。作品的灵感是来自十九世纪一位纨絝子弟的故事。此人极为迷恋花朵,甚至拒绝与人来往,终日闭门不出,只与满屋的花卉为伴。他财富越丰,花朵病害亦越厉害,就像他病态心灵的一个反照。

科里索参与了1988年展览「凝」,展出他其中一件最为著名的作品—将某人明显受抢伤的头皮照片放大,然后以十五个灯箱展示。他早期参与的创意联展还包括:「感觉:萨奇英国青年艺术家藏品」展(伦敦皇家美术学院,1997);「闪耀!伦敦新艺术」(沃尔克艺术中心,明尼阿坡里斯,1995);「现代药物」(一号建筑,伦敦,1990)。近期的个展有:「追溯」(英国电影社,伦敦,2010);「科里索,投降」(鹿腿画廊,德国,2009)。

Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw was born in 1966 in Nottingham, England and studied at Goldsmiths College in London. He lives and works in London.

Collishaw is most renowned for his photographs and video installations. His work combines the beautiful, seductive and sensual with an undercurrent of unnerving violent, repulsive imagery and psychological drama, examining and distorting our attraction and repulsion to particular images. Often, images are appropriated and digitally altered, the underlying theme being the relationship between representation and reality.

The Infectious Flowers (1996) light box series contains photographic images of particularly luscious looking flowers. On first encounter we are struck by their exquisite colours and shapes, formed by nature and enhanced by the technology of the medium. But closer inspection reveals their imperfections. The petals are not perfectly formed— areas are ravaged by, and almost pulsating with, disease. The titles identify not the exact species of flora but the cause of their disfigurement— infection by some of nature’s cruellest cancers. In this way, the viewer becomes both seduced and horrified. Collishaw was inspired by the story of a 19th century dandy who became so obsessed with flowers that he decided to lock himself away in a mansion filled with only his plants. His opulence became so much that the flowers became diseased, becoming a parallel to the sickening of his mind.

Collishaw was one of the artists to exhibit in the infamous Freeze exhibition in 1988 with one of his most well known works, that of an apparent bullet wound in the scalp of a human head blown up to an epic scale and presented over fifteen light boxes. Other early seminal group shows include Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1997; Brilliant! New Art from London, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1995 and Modern Medicine at Building One, London, 1990. His most recent solo exhibitions include Retrospectre, BFI, London, 2010 and Mat Collishaw, Submission, Haunch of Venison, Germany, 2009.