高媛是一位出色的艺术摄影家，用摄影来探索和寻求物相的表面。在她丰富的艺术作品内部，有一条主线贯穿始终，那就是她关注物相表面表达视觉意义的方式，这种意义是潜身于视觉物相和审美安排背后的心理和社会意义。在她这批入选的近作中，有两组影像作品特别突出，一组是日本黑帮成员纹身的躯干，另一组则表现胡同的墙面。两者显然是毫无关联的空间和场所，但是它们之间又有一种直接的联系，那就是这两种题材都围绕着“身份”这个常见的艺术主题以及身份与场域标示之间的关系。
我们所处的第一个也是最基本的场域，就是我们自己的身体。我们装饰身体的方式象征着个人身份和社会身份。我们在自己的身体表面描绘图案的行为，同时兼具遮蔽和宣示的双重功能——既掩饰脆弱的身份，又标示个体的状态。刺纹身的行为也内含着一种矛盾，因为它一方面强调差异，另一方面又强调将自己的个体身份纳入一个亚团体(sub-group)的意愿。通过向一个团体宣示效忠，纹身同时也引入了一种认同集体权威的意义，这是一种部落的权威。纹身是一个象征符号，象征着对一种运作于社会规范和规约之外的亚文化的忠诚和承诺。纹身，究其本义就是穿刺皮肤，留下不可磨灭的印痕，是一种效忠的激进姿态。
身体表面的肌肤和墙体表面上的涂鸦，表明的是社会和文化的身份。这样的表面揭示了在其圈定的空间中情感和社会的动态变化。随着标示的增加和积累，表面恰恰变成了身份的象征。
纹身和涂鸦都履行复杂的功能，首先是标注和宣示对一个空间的占有，这是身份的宣言，引起观者的注意，提醒他们在圈定的空间中所包含的身份意义。纹身和涂鸦的行为同时又是一种僭越的形式—— 一种激烈的入侵，前者是在身体的私人空间，后者则是在集体的公共空间。
涂鸦可以是一种僭越公共空间匿名性的反社会姿态，但是在一面墙上画图撰文还有着其他更具交际性和诗意的功能。它可以满足提供信息的简单需要，可以是把一个空间变成一块留言板，也可以是通过用意良好的宣传来教育大众。涂鸦还可以是绝望之余向更广大的社区公众传情达意的最后一博，表达失落、痛苦和渴望，做爱情的宣言，或是一位不愿透露姓名或遭人抛弃的爱人倾诉失恋。在这个意义上，墙的表面变成了公共诗歌的场所。
高媛的摄影作品是文化现象的肖像，是她的摄影人物主要生活和活动场景的写照。在拍摄这些表达宣言和僭越的空间时，高媛让我们认识到，我们作为人关注着身份以及身份与可见物相之间的关系。法国哲学家拉康(Lacan)有理论说：人们自我意识的发展，其实就是在镜中看见自己映像这一能力的发展。照片就像一面镜子，把我们的社会身份映照给我们看。
对于纹身躯干的影像，高媛有意将其中明显的个性线索挖除，或者将观众在这上面的注意转移。她的构图把观众的凝视牵引到身体的文化语境及其在物理和文化空间中的表现上来。她聚焦于提供下意识线索的细节，引出身份的意义来。
从拍摄于上个世纪90年代表现恋物癖情调的纹身躯体的简洁、挑衅性的黑白影像，到现在压倒性的对彩色摄影的热衷，你可以目睹并体会她关注点的转移。她最近的摄影表达或者参照的是在心理和社会上处于脆弱状态的身体。
马蒂斯“形式关乎精神，而色彩诉诸感官”的格言，同样适用于黑白和彩色摄影的使用上。这次展览所挑选的高媛的作品将早期的黑白影像作品和后来的彩色作品并置，营造出这两种不同表现形式之间的一种对话，挖掘出各自在摄影上的潜质。高清晰的黑白摄影简洁的形式，放大了物体和质地上的雕塑感，同时又强调了物相正负片形态安排的抽象构成。事实上，这些影像同时可以看成是三维空间物体或者两维构图，两者之间存在着一种张力。
将高媛的作品挑选并展出，起到两个作用，一方面是恰如其分地展示她的技巧和对摄影的忠诚，另一方面也是一个反映影像、身份、场域相互关系的机会。
迈克尔 赖特 2009
迈克尔 赖特 是英国籍，目前认教于英国哈佛力大学艺术理论资深讲师。并且他是多令肯地斯出版社艺术顾问。同时他也出版过艺术与摄影的书籍，主要是研究绘画与摄影之间的相互概念。
他曾经举办过多次展览与讲座，在英国、波兰、葡萄牙、芬兰、德国、中国、美国等国家。麦克?瑞是英国籍，目前认教于英国哈佛力大学艺术理论资深讲师。并且他是多令肯地斯出版社艺术顾问。同时他也出版过艺术与摄影的书籍，主要是研究绘画与摄影之间的相互概念。
Images of Identity and Territory: The Photography of Gao Yuan
Gao Yuan is a fine art photographer who uses photography to probe and search the surface of appearances. There is, within her extensive oeuvre, a consistent thread of preoccupation with the way a surface holds visual meaning, that is the psychological and social meanings below visual appearance and aesthetic arrangement. In this recent selection of work two sets of images predominate, those of the tattooed bodies of Japanese gangsters and the surfaces of walls from the HuTongs. These are apparently unrelated spaces and locations but there is a direct connection, the subjects are bound by the common thematic agenda of identity and its relationship to the marking of territory.
The first and most fundamental territory that we inhabit is the territory of our own body. The way we adorn the body is emblematic of personal and social identity. The activity of patterning the surface of our body has a dual function of both obscuring and proclaiming, masking vulnerable identity and marking individual status. There is also a contradiction in the act of tattooing as it asserts difference but also the willingness to subsume individual identity within a sub-group. By proclaiming allegiance to a group this also brings a sense of identification with a collective power, the power of the tribe. The tattoo is a token of loyalty and commitment to a sub-culture which operates outside of the norms and conventions, the tattoo literally pierces the skin to leave an indelible mark, it is a radical gesture of allegiance.
The surface of the body and the surface graffiti of walls bespeak social and cultural identities. The surfaces reveal the emotional and social dynamics within the space they bound. With the accretion and accumulation of marking the surface becomes the very embodiment of identity.
Both tattooing and graffiti fulfil complex functions, It is a way of 'tagging' and claiming ownership of a space, it is a proclamation of identity, calling attention to and reminding the viewer of the identities contained within the bounded space. Both activities of tattooing and graffiti are a form of transgression… a radical invasion, on the one hand of the private space of the body and on the other hand of the collective public space.
Graffiti can be an anti social gesture of transgressing the anonymity of public space but there are other more sociable and poetic functions for placing images and text on a wall. It can be the simple need to give information, to transform a space into a notice board, to socially educate through well meaning propaganda. It can also be the last act of desperation to communicate to the wider community, an expression of loss, of grief or longing, the proclamation of love, or the unrequited desires of an anonymous or jilted lover. In this sense the surfaces of a wall becomes a site of public poetry.
Gao Yuan's photographs are portraits of cultural phenomenon, portraits of the prevailing milieu that her human subjects live and move in. In photographing these spaces of proclamation and transgression Jenny Kao reminds us of our human preoccupation with identity and the relationship between identity and visible appearance. The French philosopher Lacan theorised the development of a sense of self as developing out of the ability to see a mirror image in a reflection. The photograph is like a mirror reflecting back to us our social identity.
In relation to the images of tattooed bodies Gao Yuan deliberately crops out or draws the viewer's attention away from obvious clues to personality. Rather her compositions direct the viewer's gaze to the cultural context of the body and its representation in physical and cultural space. She focuses on details that give subliminal clues to identities.
These images are evidence that Gao Yuan is first and foremost an accomplished studio photographer, trained in the art of orchestrating visual meaning through the arrangement of subject and context. These images are improvised compositional arrangement in controlled conditions. Gao Yuan's training is in fine art but her subsequent practice is imbedded in the iconography and practice of commercial and fashion photography. This is the strength and currency of this imagery in that it reflects the ongoing symbiotic and contemporary relationship between mass media language of advertising and the more rarified cultural language of fine art photography. Her photography bridges the cultural spaces of commercial and Fine art photographic practice.
A survey of Gao Yuan's images taken over the span of her career, are a kind of litmus of the times. Her images register her stylistic influences and preoccupations over the time of her photographic practice. Her oeuvre is also a comparative narrative of different cultural environments of Taiwan, Japan, China and most of all her place of work, New York. Living and working in New York her imagery inevitably registers the evolution of aesthetic influences in studio photography and the subtle aesthetic shifts that have occurred in photographic convention over the past 15 years. What is compelling in her work is to see the way in which these stylistic preoccupations highlight the process of cultural and aesthetic overlay onto subject. It is in the overlay of a New York photographic sensibility onto a non New York environment of a Chinese city or Japanese tattooed body which generates the creative tension in the readings of the images. In this sense the photograph always transcends documentation.
You can see and sense the shifts of concerns from her stark, provocative, black and white images of the tattooed and fetishised body, taken in the 90s, through to the prevailing contemporary concern with colour photography. The more recent photography holds or references the body in a state of psychological and social vulnerability.
Matisse's aphorism that: 'form is of the spirit and colour is of the senses', is equally applicable to the use of black and white and colour photography. The current selection and juxtaposition of Jenny Kao's earlier black and white imagery with her colour photography brings into play a dialogue between these different modes of representation and their potential in photography. The stark form of high definition black and white photography amplifies the sculptural readings of mass and texture while equally asserting the abstract formation of positive and negative shape arrangement. There is in effect a tension in the simultaneous reading of the image as an illusionistic three dimensional space and as a two-dimensional composition.
The selection and installation of Gao Yuan work serves two purposes, one a justifiable celebration of her skills and fidelity to the craft of photography and secondly an opportunity to reflect of the relationship between image, identity and territory.
Michael Wright
Review from Michael Wright, he is MA Co-Programme Leader of Fine Art and a senior lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. He is a consultant on publications for Dorling Kindersley in association with the Royal Academy of Arts and has authored a number of arts publications on photography.
