S1: E3   The Painting Is The Message 

The Paintings Are the Messages

Duration

Time

2021. 12. 29 - 2022. 01. 15  

Venue

No. 0 Hall， Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts

Artist /

Liu Chuan ; Luo Fan      Shi Yiran

Commissioned essay /Xu Liwei 

Produced by Yamin Wang/

Yamin Wang 

Team 队/

Tai Ziyue      

Di Zhengjie   

In The Paintings is the Messages series, the first time we see the title of this edition, “The Paintings are the Messages,” it seems true. When we place the medium of painting into a real exhibition hall, it offers a preliminary exploration of the messages conveyed by painting in various scattered and shifting (conjectured) (sub-)media spaces.

From Shi Yiran’s recent “MIRAGE” and “Peacock Town” exhibitions, Luo Fan’s Zoo, and Liu Chuan’s latest series of paintings at INS, this edition begins with exhibitions in physical spaces. This dislocated presentation of a series of diverse (sub-)media spaces of paintings is both a traditional group show and a way to smuggle in some messages about the medium itself. The medium becomes the message.

In addition to “The Painting is the Message” serving as a medium, this program is situated within the context of academic art education. This exhibition attempts to avoid pure presentations of the painted image as a final product. Instead, the project tries, as much as possible, to substantively present the living, specific act of painting in the form of an archive and carry additional messages for the present moment, the artist, and the viewer.

About The Painting Is the Message

The original intention behind “The Painting is the Message” is to concretize some of the theories and practices of medium/media studies in painting. Why?

Reasons include but are not limited to: Means and methods such as chatting with a group or reading and writing alone have long histories but have become problematic almost because they are incompatible with an accelerating era. In fact, painting has started to become a “problematic” medium in the art industry…

The advantage of concretizing medium theory in large-scale traditional productivity lies in the possibility of informing and transforming mass productivity, getting twice the result with half the energy. In today’s painting-supported market, painting has always been the mode of artistic production most beloved in China and all over the world, especially if you are not entirely willing to acknowledge that Kuaishou and TikTok are forms of artistic production.

“The Painting is the Message” attracts attention for its direct appropriation of Marshall McLuhan’s classic “the medium is the message.” Here, the concrete painting replaces the abstract medium, so “The Painting is the Message” becomes a specific version of this famous phrase. Despite this, the project is open, with no fixed meaning.