在艺术创造范围之外发生的创作过程，深植于自杜尚为艺术界做出巨大贡献以来的现代和当代艺术领域，也在于二分法的诞生,这种看法显然常常被强调，将艺术表达的构想与其付诸实践割裂开来。当代艺术家双手与头脑之间的割裂最终导致他逐渐但必然地摒弃其“制造者”(homo faber)的特质,而制造者这个界定更适合工匠而非艺术家。多年来，,这种态度已使得观念获得了远远高于手工操作的地位，艺术家已经用 “感受”来代替他的天生创造能力。因此,所有这些手法都源于手工特性，并且通过将其限定在工匠的“次要圈”(sub-circle)内而传达出来。
劳拉•玛得(Laura Matei,1965年出生于罗马尼亚布泽乌)的作品，就是由思想的双手和动手实践的头脑而带来的一种姿态转换。在玛得的作品中，观念的成分与一种手工的手法绝妙地结合起来，艺术家本人一直坚持追求这种态度并付诸实践。凭借现实提供的一切事物的当下可利用性，劳拉•玛德以一种与克劳德•列维•斯特劳斯(Claude Lévi Strauss)所描述的“博艺不精者”(bricoleur)概念相类似的手法，选择各种材料来融入其作品，以细致但简单的姿态亲自将它们组合起来，充溢着一种近乎古香古色的味道。她采纳这些手法，依凭的是那些在“通过做事来感受”时觉得自由自在的人们所特有的沉静之心与自信态度。将劳拉•玛德比作列维•斯特劳斯在《野性的思维》(The Savage Mind)所描述的人物，看来很恰当。斯特劳斯描述的是“用自己的双手，运用与工匠完全不同的方法从事一项工作”，适应“他手边可以支配的器械，也就是一整套工具和有限的非标准材料”的人 。但是，与斯特劳斯“博艺不精者”不同，艺术家有意识地选择了将某些材料融入到自己的诗意中，不仅仅是因为“他/她没有别的什么可以依赖”。在创作的过程中，艺术家将刺绣作为她的首要工具。这种具有上千年历史，并且具有高度女性色彩的传统流行技艺从她艺术生涯开始之初就扮演着“连字符”(trait d'union)的角色，实际上这是她组合自己作品中各种不同成分时所凭借的唯一技巧。艺术家以这种方式着眼于日常生活的林林总总，满怀好奇，所以她能将排斥转化成为某种惊叹，将不引人注目转化成为一种迷人的魅力，化平凡为卓绝。彩色包装纸、保鲜膜以及羊绒线这类极其简陋的材料在玛得的视觉语汇中发挥着至关重要的作用。这些材料以形式上的一丝不苟和极其精确组合在一起，充满某种脆弱和轻盈的感觉，充当了所表现的主体人物选择的一种平衡：那些已经塑造并且已成为全球集体记忆一部分的标志性人物。
这就是罗马尼亚血统个性的情形，但是在全球范围内闻名遐迩，比如著名体操运动员纳迪娅•科马内奇(Nadia Comaneci)和约翰尼•韦斯默勒(Johnny Weissmuller)，即不断恩泽银幕的最流行的泰山。在从纳迪娅•科马内奇获得灵感的装置和摄影作品系列中，根据她多才多艺的、无可挑剔的魅力手法，刻画这位运动员的同时，她又以始终使她有别于他人的风度和自信主宰着整个竞技场。但是让观众想到，他们面对的不仅是著名运动员、罗马尼亚国宝——她完美的表现甚至打破了奥运会的计分极限——还是一位少年，尽管战胜了对手，骄傲地面对各种挑战，并表现出全部的人性弱点，这一切都是由于用来塑造运动员身体的材料——透明保鲜膜。一簇骨骼和肌肉，身体用一种材料精美地制作而成，成为她作为运动神话这一强有力的集体身份与她作为年轻女性固有的脆弱性之间，不稳定的平衡隐喻。
约翰尼•韦斯默勒出生于罗马尼亚，年幼时移居美国，, 他扮演的泰山是男子汉和出色的男性气概的偶像。身为演员，但首先在整个竞技生涯中是一位极为杰出的游泳运动员，韦斯默勒前后创造了67次世界纪录。在明星的生活中是一个结过五次婚的花花公子，但是在玛德的作品中，约翰尼•韦斯默勒并没有以任何英雄与明星的形象出现：没有体现出任何明星与神话的光环，而是一个无国籍的移民，因为官僚体制的原因，被迫用自己兄弟的出生年月和地点来获得一本美国护照，以此来确保自己作为美国奥运代表队成员的比赛资格，最终成为进入电影史的泰山/约翰尼•韦斯默勒。这种因素形成了诸如“泰山兄弟”、“小猴子与近似泰山的人”以及“双泰山”之类作品的基础，在最后一个作品中，画面中间的动物成为韦斯默勒兄弟身份互换的见证，他们既是同谋，也确实配得上泰山的称号。
主导上述两个系列的视觉张力，源于所刻画人物的公众形象的醒目之处，他们不懈追求自由解放的自我鞭策以及问题多多的私人生活，以那些同他们移民身份有关的敏感问题为特色，塑造了他们个人的身份。但也许恰恰因为这些问题，他们在私生活中的形象至少比他们的公众形象更为鲜明。在这些系列中，力量和脆弱性充当了两个元素，乍看之下是对立的，但事实上彼此有关。纳迪娅•科马内奇和泰山/约翰尼•韦斯默勒的软弱性无可否认，被视为他们人性的一种自然延伸。恰恰因为这种元素,打破了他们“公众名誉”所强加的局限，也正因为这个理由,接受了自己的不确定性和脆弱性。他们的英雄主义不是由他们在舞台上获得成功而决定的,而是归功于他们身为人类——也许更多。
所刻画人物的脆弱性是人性所固有的，是他人性构架的组成部分，因此使得一个人成为人。“橡胶圈”系列刻画了普通的人物——学生、孕妇、胖子和快步走的人——除了他们的社会地位差异之外，因为他们共有的软弱和免遭敌意以及凶险的外部环境的需要而统一起来。人物实际上被艺术家所营救。他们被描绘在斑马线的盘旋线暗示的中央，封闭在有机玻璃外壳之中。斑马线最初在玛得的作品中用以象征一种凶险的境遇，而在眼下，则成为缠绕在主体周围的保护，而画面的主体以这种方式远离了危险。包裹着他们的透明有机玻璃外壳成为他们有形的以及隐喻的身体的外延，一个防御工事，一个用以面对艺术家展现出来、但是在现实中能够被我们每个人所想象的日常生活的法宝。
视觉的逆喻也主导着“花开时节”系列。透明的头骨用不同花卉图案的礼品包装纸包裹。由于视力和直接的魅力，这些骷髅通常象征了死亡，在这种特别情形下却让人想到了思想的盛开绽放、创造力的萌芽、智能的延伸。这些成分，以喷薄而出的能量以及一件日常小小奇迹带来的神奇感为特征，让一堆枯骨成为人之根本的隐喻。与骷髅的透明相配的亮色花纸共同造就了玛德的作品，其中情感与理性的元素绝妙地共存。另外，透明膜远远不只是一种表现的手段：它象征了创造瞬间的短暂，因其稍纵即逝而令人兴奋不已，因轻盈而弥足的珍贵。
Laura Matei: The Poetics of Fragility
By Manuela Lietti
The belief that the process of making falls for the most part outside the sphere of artistic creation is rooted in the field of modern and contemporary art ever since Duchamp’s contribution to the art world, and lies at the origin of the dichotomy, often overtly emphasized, separating the conception of the artistic gesture from its placement into practice. The subsequent separation between the contemporary artist’s hand and brain has led him towards the gradual but inevitable rejection of his nature of homo faber, a definition more suitable for a craftsman rather than for an artist. For years this attitude has contributed to the primacy of the conceptual approach over the manual one, emphasizing the artist’s ability to "feel" at the expenses of his natural inclination to create. Therefore all those approaches rooted in materiality and conveyed by it have been restrained to the "sub-circle" of craftsmanship.
The body of work of Laura Matei (1965, Buzau, Romania) is the visual transposition of a gesture resulting from a thinking hand and an operating mind. In Matei’s work, the conceptual elements are expertly combined with a manual approach which is strongly pursued, sought after and put into practice by the artist herself. Relying on the immediate availability of what reality offers, similar to the approach of the bricoleur as described by Claude Lévi Strauss, Laura Matei selects the materials to incorporate into her works and personally assembles them with meticulous yet simple gestures, filled with an almost archaic quality. She embraces this practice relying on a composed mind and a self-confident approach typical of those people who feel at ease in “perceiving by doing something”. It doesn’t seem inappropriate to compare Laura Matei to the figure described by Lévi Strauss in “The Savage Mind” as "the one who performs a job with his own hands, using methods that are different from those used by craftsmen" thus fitting to the "equipment at his disposal, namely a ‘limited’ set of tools and heterodox materials." However, unlike Lévi Strauss’ bricoleur, the artist consciously chooses to incorporate certain materials in her poetic and not just "because (s)he has nothing else to rely on." In the process of making, the artist relies on embroidery as her primary tool. This highly traditional and popular technique with an exquisitely feminine millenary history has acted as the trait d'union of all Matei’s works since the very beginning of her career and literally it is the only technique she relies on to combine the various components of her works. In this way, the artist approaches the vast repertoire of the everyday with such a curiosity that she is able to transform the dismissed into a sort of wonder, the unnoticed into a form of enchantment and the ordinary into an extraordinary event. Extremely humble materials like coloured wrapping paper, transparent film, and wool strands play a primary role in the visual vocabulary of Matei. These materials, assembled with formal rigor and painstaking accuracy, are filled with a sense of fragility and lightness that act as a counterweight to the selection of the subjects represented: Iconic personalities who have shaped and have become part of the global collective memory.
This is the case of personalities of Romanian origins but renowned at a global scale like Nadia Comaneci, the prominent gymnast, and Johnny Weissmuller, the most popular Tarzan ever to grace the silver screen. In the series of installations and photographs inspired by Nadia Comaneci, the gymnast is portrayed while, relying on her histrionic and impeccable appeal, she masters the agonistic arena with the grace and the self-confidence that have always distinguished her. However it is the material used to shape the body of the gymnast –transparent wrapping film- that reminds the viewers that they are facing not only the celebrated athlete, the Romanian national treasure that transcended the Olympic scoreboards, unable to represent her level of perfection, but also a teenager who, despite having won adversaries and proudly faced challenges of any kind, appears in all her humanity/vulnerability. A collection of bones and sinews, whose body is a medium to shape with delicacy and to handle gently, stands as a metaphor for the precarious balance between her strong collective identity as an athlete/myth and her personal fragility typical of a young woman.
"Tarzan," the icon of machismo and masculinity for excellence, is represented by Johnny Weissmuller who was born in Romania but moved at a very young age to the United States. Weissmuller, an actor, but also previously, an undefeated swimmer throughout his agonistic career, is presented in Matei’s works in a different way from the usual cliché of the victorious man, the playboy who married five times as he is often remembered. He doesn’t embody any myth but his identity develops from a stateless man, forced to use the date and place of birth of his brother to be issued an American passport and be ensured his eligibility to compete as part of the United States Olympic team, to finally become the Johnny Weissmuller/Tarzan who entered the history of cinema. This element lies at the basis of works like "The Tarzan Brothers," "Cheetah and the almost Tarzan," and the ironic series "Bi-tarzan" in which the animal at the centre of the composition is the witness to the derailment of the identity of the Weissmuller brothers, accomplices and both worthy of the title of Tarzan.
The visual tension dominating the two series cited above is rooted in the fracture between the boldness of the public image of the characters portrayed -highly self-motivated in their strenuous quest for emancipation- and their problematical private life, characterized by sensitive issues related to their condition of emigrants, and the shaping of their personal identity. But perhaps appropriately for these issues, their private image is not less daring. In these series, strength and fragility act as two components at first considered antithetical, but in afterthought correlated. The fragility of Nadia Comaneci and Tarzan/Johnny Weissmuller is not denied, it is simply regarded as a natural extension of their humanity. Thanks to this element, leaving behind the limitations imposed by their “characters”, the two become unlimited “human beings”, and for this reason they embrace their uncertainty and fragility. Their heroism is not defined by their being victorious on the stage, but inasmuch as to their being human, perhaps unlimitably so, in their daily lives.
The fragility of the subjects portrayed is inherent in the nature of a human being: It is part of his anthropological structure and therefore it is what allows a human being to be what he is. The series “Rubber Ring” features ordinary people -a student as well as a pregnant woman, a chubby man and a stringy one- that despite their social differences, are united by their universal weakness and need of protection from the hostile and threatening external environment. The subjects are literally rescued by the artist: They are portrayed at the centre of a spiral, reminiscent of zebra crossings, and enclosed in a Plexiglas dome. The zebra crossings, used previously in the work of Matei to symbolize a situation of risk, are in this case, a protection wrapped around the subjects to insulate them from danger. The transparent Plexiglas dome that contains them becomes an extension of their physical and metaphorical body, a defence or a talisman to rely on to face everyday life, made visible by the artist but that in reality can only be imagined by each of us.
The visual oxymoron also dominates the "Bloom" series: Transparent skulls covered with gift-wrapping paper of different floral patterns. Appealing to the eye and of immediate allure, these skulls normally symbols of the memento mori par excellence, in this particular case bring to mind the flowering of ideas, the sprouting of creativity, the unfolding of intellectual abilities. These components, characterized by the energy of an eruption and the sense of wonder brought about by a small miracle, raise what could be a mere bunch of bones to a metaphor for the essence of man himself. The bright floral papers complement the transparency of the skulls contributing to create works in which the emotional and rational elements superbly co-exist. Again, the transparent film is far more than a means of expression: It is the symbol of the transience of the creative moment, its subtlety, making it elating because transitory, precious because fleeting.
【编辑：小红】
