Profundidad

In Christiane Pooley's work, waterfalls, ponds, wheat fields, and highways are recurring themes. These seemingly peaceful landscapes, whose exact locations and historical periods are unclear, contain dark undercurrents beneath their serene appearance. The Araucanía region of Chile, where the artist was born and raised, has long been a breeding ground for complex tensions. Conflicts between indigenous people (predominantly Mapuche)and the Chilean government intensified at the end of the 19th century when the Chilean government seized their land and imposed Chilean citizenship on them. Before that, the Mapuche had fought Spanish colonizers for over 300 years. Pooley’s work depicts Arcaunia’s hidden past and tensions over land ownership with a deceptively calm beauty. At what moment doesa landscape represent nature, extraction and production, a repository ofcollective memories, or a homeland never to return to?

These questions are encoded in Pooley's paintings, which always originate from and return to these archetypal images. One such archetype is the dreamlike hut floating alone on the water's surface. This is not an imagery of a dream but rather a nomadic dwelling style from southern Chile. Locals gather to help neighbors move their houses collectively in response to changes in environment and family life. This ritual of communal reciprocity from Andean cultural tradition is known as Minga, or Mink'a, and it contradicts the spirit of modernity on many levels. This kind of dislocation and paradox are at the core of the artist's images. The scenes are drawn from the artist's own photography, family albums, or Chile's national historical archives. They are both specific and ambiguous, full of ineffable psychological undertones. The cascading waterfall cut off by a large color block, with a reclining male figure of uncertain fate at its bottom; a group of horseback riders crossing an abstract glacier-like zone, under an upside-down suspended volcano—all the figurative depictions occur in the crevice between two large intertwined color blocks.

As a descendant of Chilean and European immigrants, belonging has become a complex subject and an unattainable feeling. Pooley doesn't feel she truly "belongs" to her homeland, or to any place at all — as connected as she is with it. She is in constant state of migration and perpetual search, from Araucanía to Santiago, to London and Paris. In her paintings, she ponders how individuals are shaped by structural forces, how identity is molded by ancestral heritage, by one's personal history of migration, and whether one's relationship to the land can be labeled as "ownership." Just as in Río Renaico, where the floating huts rest on the water's surface, while the night sky reveals grid-like maps once used to divide the local land. The nomadic lifestyle rooted in the local climate and survival needs has becomea subject of "planning" after encountering Western modernity. As modern humans, all aspects of our lives are also subject to certain "planning" and discipline, including our own selves.

In Pooley's work, a distinct ambiguity is often evident. The figures’faces become blurred surfaces, pointing towards a kind of anonymityor universality. Who are these individuals? What history have they experienced? Are they also in perpetual search for answers in their own stories? These details remain elusive in the blurred silhouettes. Her self-portrait, To Ground Myself, follows suit. Her head merges surreally with th blue mountains behind, denoting a complex interweaving of her ambiguous identity and the vague landscapes, where existentialist angst intersects witha sense of displacement. Every landscape contains specific references, yet each feels familiar. Large color blocks oscillate between the figurative and the abstract, forcing viewers to seek a balance. If landscapes or sceneries can't be owned, what can be extracted, what can be used for identification?

In Pooley's work, the malleability of painting as a medium is presented in a diverse and rich manner. The works are not mere landscapes, but blurring the definition of landscape. Rich textures and brushstrokes in vast color blocks dominate the canvas, often juxtaposing small human figures or houses with intense "traces" created by physical gestures. Yet, these minutesubjects consistently capture the viewer's visual focus. The brushstrokesoften manifest themselves through geometric color blocks, sometimes translucent, inviting viewers to search for painting traces beneath these layers of color and other hidden pigment textures. These brushstrokes also tantalizingly evoke fragments of abstractionism and patterns commonly seen in indigenous textiles. Her works occasionally feature photographic elements, akin to the effects of multiple exposure. Grids, brushstrokes,color blocks, light spots, images, and diagrams are layered and collaged,mirroring the collision of different actualities. For Pooley, these image-making strategies represent pathways to understanding the world, coalescing with the people journeying through it.

In these paintings, the emotional impact conveyed transcends surface-level melancholy. Much like the layering of images, the exhibition's works evoke a collage-like affect. They are manifested not only through pictorial symbolsbut also through hazy colors, layering images, vigorous brushwork, uniquecompositions, and human forms. These emotional cues oscillate between extreme states, sometimes embodying a sense of disorientation as seen inTraces of Feeling, other times a sense of abandonment in L'épaisseur de ma peau (The thickness of my skin), bewilderment in Confusion, or suffocationand fatigue in Gravedad. These emotional complexities eventually transform into a dialogue between pre-modernity and modernity. Pooley’s work undoubtedly illustrates the political nature of landscape.

在克里斯蒂安娜·普利的作品中,反復出現瀑佈、水面、麥田、公路,它們的具體位置和時態不可知,看似平靜的風景中蘊藏暗湧。在她出生和成長的智利阿勞卡尼亞地區一直以來孕育著復雜爭端的陰霾,當地的原住民(馬普切人為主)和智利政府之間的矛盾在十九世紀末加劇,智利佔領了他們的居住地,原住民被強行劃歸為“公民”,而在那之前,他們曾與西班牙殖民者展開長達 300 多年的鬥爭。因爭奪土地所有權而產生的張力,和普利所描繪的阿勞卡尼亞地區隱藏的過去,讓她的作品呈現出一種頗具欺騙性的平和之美。風景在何時是自然,何時是開採和生產之地,何時是承載記憶之地,何時是難以回歸的故土?

這些問題 編 碼在普利的畫作之中,她的創作反復地從上述原型圖像
出發,而後又回歸於此。其中的一個原型是夢境般獨自漂浮在水面上的小屋,不過這並非來自夢境,而是來自智利南部的一種遊牧式的居住方式,為了回應環境變化或家庭變故,當地人會聚集在一起,幫助
鄰居搬家,將其所居住的房屋一齊搬走。這個來自安第斯文化傳統的社群互惠儀式叫做 Minga,或 Mink’a,在很多層面上與現代性的精神相悖。這 種 錯 位和悖論是藝 術家 所創作的圖像的核心所在。所有畫面中的自然場景均來自藝 術家的攝影、她的家庭相冊或智利的國家歴史檔案,它們如此具體又如此模糊,充斥著難以言明的心理暗示。從畫面頂部傾瀉而下的瀑佈,被巨大的、筆觸豐富的色塊攔腰截住,色塊的底部是一個躺倒的、生死不明的男性;一群騎馬的人們在冰川般的抽象地帶走過,頭頂仿佛懸置著一座倒立的火山,所有的具象描繪都發生在幾乎相互嵌合的兩個巨大色塊間的夾縫中......

正如藝術家本人一直經歴著的身份錯位,作為智利和歐洲移民的後代,普利並不覺得自己真正“屬於”她的故鄉,不論她與故鄉之間的聯結之深切。而她自身又一直處於長久的遷徙和尋覓之中,從阿勞卡尼亞到聖地亞哥,到倫敦、巴黎。普利在繪畫中追問:個人與結構性的力量之間的關係到底是怎樣的,人的身份是如何被祖輩、被自身的遷徙歴史所塑造,人與土地的關係是否可以用“互相擁有”來劃定?正像在《雷奈科河》中,長期處於遷徙狀態的小屋漂浮在水面上,頭頂的夜空中懸浮著網格狀的、曾被用來劃分當地土地的地圖。因當地氣候和生存需求演化而來的遊牧式的生活、居住方式,在遭遇了西方現代性後成為需要被“規劃”的對象。而作為現代人,我們生活中的所有組成部分,甚至我們自己,也都是這樣被“規劃”、規訓著。

在普利的創作中,常見到一種非常明確的模糊。畫中人的臉上往往都是一片失焦的平面,這些面部的模糊,指嚮的是一種匿名性,抑或是一種普遍性。他們是誰,經歴了什麽樣的歴史,他們是否也在尋覓自身的故事?從這些模糊的人影中我們無從得知。普利在自畫像《錨定自我》中對自身的描繪也是如此,頭部與背後的藍色山脈以一種超現實的方式融合,勾勒出藝術家模棱兩可的身份與模糊的風景之間纏繞的建構,在這裏,存在主義迷思和身份上的錯位相互映照。每一片風景都有具體所指,但每一片風景都似曾相識,大面積的色塊讓這些圖像在具象和抽象之中擺動,觀者在這幾種擺動中尋找平衡。如果說風景不能被人所擁有,那麽可以被人帶走的、可以用來指認的是什麽?

繪畫作為媒介的延展性在普利的作品中以非常豐富多變的方式呈現,它們從來不是單純的風景,或者說它們模糊了風景的定義。巨大的色塊中豐富的筆觸和紋理填滿畫佈的主體,用如此直接和漫溢的、身體姿勢帶來的“痕跡”,來“抗衡”體積渺小的人物或者房屋,但這些微小的主體卻永遠佔據著觀者的視覺中心。這些筆觸通常以幾何色 塊的形式呈現在畫面中,它們往往是半透明的,讓人忍不住去凝神尋找這一層顏色之下的繪畫痕跡,以及其他暗藏玄機的顏料肌理。同時,它們不乏誘導意味地讓 人聯 想起 抽象主義的一些碎片,以 及 原住民的織物圖案。普利的作品有時充溢著攝影元素,除了取材均來自攝影之外,多重曝光般的光斑時不時在畫面中隱約閃現,攝影鏡頭中的網格、筆觸、色塊、光斑,圖像和圖錶相互堆疊、拼貼在一起,它們是不同實在的相互撞擊。對於普利來說,這 些圖像制造的策略 都是 通嚮世界的途徑,而它們在她的畫面中與穿越世界的人們合而為一。

在普利的這些畫作中,我們所讀到的不止是一種錶面上的憂鬱。就像圖像 來回堆疊的語法一般,展覽中作品傳達出來的情緒也像是一種拼貼。它們不僅以圖像符號來顯形,還以色彩的迷濛、圖層的堆疊、筆觸的激烈、構圖的特殊和人物的形態。這些情緒信息仿佛在瀑佈或靜水兩種極端形態之間來回搖擺,有時是《情過留痕》中漂浮在一大片邊界不明的水域中的迷失,有時是《肌膚之重》中的忘我,《迷惑》中的恍惚,或是《重力》中的窒息和疲倦。它們在不同場景的調和中,最後被轉譯成了前現代 和現代之間的相互切換。普利的繪畫完美印證了風景的政治性。