S I G N A L
Text by James Elaine
“Our local community has been living in a landscape which is being slowly torn down, removed, broken into bits, hauled off in trucks or left under green tarps that resemble rolling hills created to keep the wind from carrying the final stage of our lives to the ends of the earth in clouds of dust.” — Stephen Gleadow
When all things are broken down to their essence, including art and even life itself, the remaining ‘installation,’ or matter, is “dust.” All things came from dust and to dust all things return. Dust, what it is and what it means, has been a focus in Gleadow’s art making process for the past several years. This process begins a long time before art is ever created. It is a way of life and a way of ‘seeing,’ seeing through the physical world, the pain and chaos into other dimensions, attitudes, and perspectives. The world around us is so full of incredible beauty in the places most people miss. They overlook, avoid, or call bad or ugly what they cant ‘see’ or understand. Colors, textures, materials, juxtapositions, shapes and forms, common objects out of context lost in abandoned worlds…these are trampled on, forgotten, cast out wonders that have no apparent value except to be buried in landfills where future communities will be placed upon devoid of any understanding of what was before and now lies beneath their feet. Every culture has this and China has it in abundance. Gleadow states, “In recent years local communities in Beijing have been in constant flux. Architectures, dwellings, and lives have been deconstructed, pounded into parts, and crushed into dust.” How can we stop the unstoppable or reconcile the irreconcilable?
Gleadow does it with his art, by acts of seeing and making. Gleadow recognizes and brings to light the hidden and true value and worth of that which is dismissed and denied. HIs art is, on one hand, brutally ‘in your face reality,’ but on the other hand it is totally honest and built on a foundation of faith, hope unseen, and love of truth. Through reclaiming that which is viewed as worthless; mending the broken, gathering the lost, giving it a name and a place, Gleadow brings new forms to life and new life from the dead.
“Chance and randomness play a constant role in my work. Much like the aftermath of a flood I enjoy discovering relationships between materials and objects that are assembled through processes that are somewhat out of my control,” states Gleadow.
The first thing one sees entering the main gallery space is a large wall size studio floor calendar titled Dust. It is a confetti-like chronological date book of days and months and years of working in the studio. All of the things normally relegated to the ‘dust bin’ were collected, repurposed, and reused. Shredded drawings, destroyed paintings, common debris, broken bits, sculpture shards, cuttings, droppings, gleanings, and so on, carefully and randomly archived into a giant grid.
The way up is always down. Humility is the way to go higher. Brokenness is the way to empowerment. Ladders serve is as literal, and figurative, passageways to higher places but these passageways always mean suffering and self-denial. “Sebastian,” a Second Century Martyr for his Christian faith and often depicted in European classical paintings tied to a tree and shot with arrows, is the title of the ladder sculpture situated in front of the wall mural illustrating the stoning of Stephen, a Biblical figure who also died for his faith in Jesus Christ. The broken plaster chunks came from a found mold of a classical figure most likely used in the art department of a local art school to teach and instruct students in the fine art of representational drawing. They are pure and white but sharp and heavy and resemble the stones of scorn and judgement being hurled at the man in the mural for his beliefs.
Gleadow’s Signal drawings use found flag, banner, or signage materials whose original purposes are to communicate specific messages and ideas. These materials have been cut up and pressed in sheets of clear cast resin freezing them in a permanent transient state of miscommunication as they twist and turn littering the air with alphabet swarms of sputtering voices and shattered words.
“The words are just fragments, abstractions, parts signaling familiar references of their origins,” says Gleadow. There are signals everywhere filling the air in radio and short waves, TV, advertising. Often the messages get garbed through bad internet connections, antenna reception, or language barriers, but their voices travel on and on and on telling their ever changing stories.
When I was a young boy growing up in the US, children played a game called “Telephone” where one person would whisper a story into the ear of someone else, then that person would in turn tell the same story to another child, and on and on. By the time this flow of words traveled through the lips and ears and minds of several people it had completely changed and was but an abstraction of its origins, but the stories remained interesting for what they were. These Signal drawings, likewise, transcend language, even the language of meaning. They can be just fascinating and beautiful works of art that perhaps might remind us of many things in our lives. How can one describe a ticker tape parade? What is the language of falling paper? What meaning does it have? Its thrilling…breathtaking…beautiful. That’s enough!
Poem from the Sea of Bones, the blazing white plaster and wood sculpture surrounded by a deep blue curtain of blueprints in the small gallery, looks like a giant exoskeleton pulled from the Dead Sea encrusted in treasures of minerals and salts. Suspended in its center a charred black bone winds its way geometrically throughout the structure, giving it strength. The bone resembles some kind of ladder upon which the entire body after centuries or millennia finally made its way out of the cold deep up into the air and bright light for all to see. It’s a strange and mysterious relic that defies specific scientific classification yet offers us hope, a picture of reclamation. It was a lost thing or being, condemned to eternal darkness, and yet was still not out of the reach of redemption and new life. You might say that Poem from the Sea of Bones is a love poem from the deep.
信号
文：林杰明
“我们所在的社区处于这样一片景观当中：它正被缓慢地拆毁、移除、肢解，进而被装入卡车运走或遗留在绿色油布下面。这些看上去如同起伏丘陵的绿色油布，被用来阻止大风将我们生活的最后一程也裹挟进团团沙尘并刮到世界尽头去。” ——史帝文·格莱多
当万事万物——包括艺术，甚至生活本身——被消解至只剩本质，唯一留存下来的“装置”或物质，便只有“尘”。一切起源于尘，一切又归于尘。尘是什么，尘又意味着什么，这是格莱多在过去几年的艺术创作中持续关注的问题。创作艺术的过程早在艺术被创作出来之前很久便开始了。这是一种生活方式，一种“看”的方式：透过物理世界，透过其间的痛苦和混乱，去发现更多的维度、态度与视角。我们周遭的世界充满了无与伦比的美，然而大多数人对此视而不见。对于自己无法“看见”或理解的事物，他们选择忽视、避忌甚至称之为腐坏丑陋。色彩、质地、材料、堆积一处的互不相关的事物、形状与形式、来历不明的寻常物件都迷失在被遗弃的世界……这些令人惊奇的事物被践踏、遗忘和驱除，因为它们看起来一文不值，只能被当成垃圾填埋掉。未来的社区又将伫立其上，而对此地从前的景观和自己正踩在脚下的事物一无所知。这种现象在所有文化中都有发生，而在中国尤甚。格莱多说，“近几年来，北京本地的社区一直处在不断的变动中。建筑、住所和生活被不断地解构、捣碎、碾成尘埃。”我们该如何阻止那些势不可挡的事物，又如何同彼此无法相容的事物和解？格莱多选择用艺术、用观看与创造的行动来应对这一问题。他在那些被忽略被否定的事物中辨别出所隐含的真正的重要性和价值，并将其展现出来。他的艺术一方面是残酷的“直面现实”之作，另一方面又十分坦诚，以信仰、尚未被看到的希望和对真理之爱为基石。通过重新认可所谓无用之物的价值、修复破碎物、集合废弃物，通过为它们命名并赋予它们安身之地，格莱多给生活注入了新的形式，也从已逝之物中挖掘出了新生命。
主展厅
“偶然和随机在我的作品中始终扮演重要角色。我喜欢观察材料和物件是怎样在那些我无法掌控的过程中聚集到一起的，就像洪灾发生后的余波那样，”史帝文说到。
进入主展厅后你所看到的第一件作品是占据一整面墙的巨大的工作室排程表，这件作品名为《尘》。一张满目彩色纸屑的日程簿，记录着在工作室工作的年月日。那些通常被当作废品丢进“尘箱”（垃圾箱）的东西被收集起来，赋予新的价值并重新得以利用。撕碎的画稿、销毁的绘画、日常垃圾、破损物、雕塑碎片、修剪边角料、丢弃物、捡拾所得，不一而足，都被小心又随机地存档进一张巨型网格里。
上行之路总有俯首的姿态。谦卑是为了提升。破碎是为了获取强大的能量。梯子无论从本义还是象征意义上都指向伸往更高处的通道，但这些通道也往往意味着受苦和自我否定。伫立于壁画前的梯子雕塑《塞巴斯蒂安》，其作品名来源于公元二世纪的一位基督教殉道者，欧洲古典油画中对此人物多有描绘——塞巴斯蒂安被捆绑在一棵树上，身中乱箭而死。雕塑背后的壁画则呈现了另一位圣经人物司提反（Stephen）被乱石砸死的场面，他同样是因为信仰耶稣基督而殉难。碎石膏块来自一件偶得的制作某古典人物模型的模具，很可能之前是在本地艺术院校的艺术专业用来指导学生进行纯艺具象绘画的教学道具。这些石膏块纯净、洁白，同时又尖锐、沉重，使人联想到壁画中那些被掷向心怀信仰之人的鄙夷与评判之石。
格莱多的《信号》系列以偶得的旗帜、横幅或公共标识物等原本用于传达特定信息和观点的物件作为素材。这些材料被剪碎然后贴紧在透明树脂片上，永久冻结于一种暂时性沟通失效的状态：它们扭曲翻转，在空气中胡乱丢出一大堆字母，发出语无伦次的声音和破碎的语词。“这些语词只是碎片，抽象概念，一些局部，示意着其出处那些令人熟悉的信息。”格莱多说道。信号无处不在，充斥在空气中，在无线电和短波广播、电视与广告中。很多时候因为网络不好、天线故障或语言障碍，信息被修饰一新，但它们的声音还是持续不断地传递着，讲述变换不定的故事。我小时候在美国，孩子们之间会玩一个叫做“打电话”的游戏（和国内的“传话筒”游戏类同）。一个人对另一个人耳语一段话，这第二个人再将同一段话在另一个小孩耳边复述一遍，如此传递。在流经数个人的口、耳、脑之后，那段语词已然面目全非，变成只是其源头的一种抽象概念了，但那些故事版本仍然有趣。《信号》这一系列画作同样超越了语言，甚至是有含义的语言。它们可以仅只是迷人、优美的艺术作品，或也使我们想起生活中的很多东西。你该怎么去描述一列彩色纸带的队伍？飘落的纸操着什么语言？这语言有何含义？令人兴奋……内心震颤……美妙。这就足够了！
小展厅
《来自骸骨之海的诗》——小展厅所展示的这件夺目雕塑由白色石膏和木条构成，被一大张布满设计图案的深蓝色窗帘所环绕。看起来就像一副从死海捞出的巨大骨骼，表面被珍贵的矿物和盐所覆盖，形成一层硬壳。在这副骨骼中间，悬着一截被烧焦的黑色骸骨，在白色骨骼内沿几何状蜿蜒穿梭，赋予其力量的支撑。黑色骸骨形似梯子，借由它，一整副身体得以在数百甚至数千年后脱离冰冷的深海，并被展现在所有人眼前。这是一件诡异而神秘的遗产，明确的科学分类法无法适用于它，但它却给我们带来希望和一幅重生的图景。一件迷途的事物，或生命，被判给了永恒的黑暗，但它仍有机会得到救赎和新生。或许可以将《来自骸骨之海的诗》看作一首来自深渊的情诗。