展览预告 | dudu:幽灵鸟的语言

幽灵鸟的语言，更接近于一种声音。

最主要的是，这种语言并不想要传播思想。

Project Lai荣幸与J7 ART共同发起杜文婷（dudu）个展：幽灵鸟的语言，并邀请ORIFICO®STUDIO合作展陈家具，将阅读场景引入展览现场，以给予声音崭新的栖息地。展期将从5月24日起，持续至6月30日。

Big Book——从2020年8月11日第一个逗号开始持续了200天左右的“日记”系列——是本次展览的出发点。一共八本，它们的尺寸和材质不同于寻常笔记本，dudu说它翻起来哗啦啦的。她面对一叠事先装订成册的纸张，向它们倾诉，而它们也接住了dudu任何一种想法的实验、实践与记录。这是她从小就熟悉的游戏，自有一套简单的规则，可以在里面尽情玩耍。随着时间的行进，书页变厚，喋喋不休被储存起来——不论是热情洋溢、真实的低落，又或是意料之外、错误、恶趣味等所有形式的表达，都可以被Big Book收容和接纳，并且在过多的修辞即将出现时，恰到好处地休止。

←左滑翻阅Big Book

Swipe left to browse the Big Book

每做一本书，dudu都会记录下很多词语和句子的排列组合，这些字句之间没有因果关系，只有与感受相连的词语质地。她对词语的感觉，同样作用于她的绘画：不解释，不推论，不建立层级。画面里的东西各自存在，彼此靠近，仅此而已。叙事在有颜色和线条的地方就会发生，而big book的组织方式，更是一种日复一日的即兴演绎，这种方式后来发展成一种更轻盈的日常速写习惯。

我们会展现与Big Book并行的创作，它是一个由纸张、木板、拼贴、绘画和阅读家具构成的现场，更接近dudu如藤蔓交错，矛盾、感性的日常：一面近乎偏执地收集、观察、记录——形状、色彩、句子、声音，甚至某种抽象的思维；另一面，从材料与情感出发，对现实进行吸收、篡改与反馈。在密林里，她丢失了马匹，又获得一块石头，投入某个支线任务获取快乐；在房屋空地，她创造一处没有秘密的绿色通道；在发光、抖动的湖边，她用望远镜观察一个不为人知的远方，那里有三个女人细长的影子和巨大的苍蝇。

那么，如何为dudu的Big Book系列建造一个合适的阅读现场？

它们需要被打开，需要手，需要一个可以停下来的理由。

port_4_lio系列，从前往后依次为：#2 有框型底撑的桌子；#1 有两条斜撑的桌子；#3斜腿有分离侧板的桌子

The port_4_lio series, from right to left: #2  the table with framed bottom supports; #1 the table with two diagonal supports; #3 the table with sloping legs and separate side panels.

ORIFICO®STUDIO为此次展览设计了展览家具“port_4_lio”。这不是一套现成的陈列系统，而是专为这批Big Book、这个展览空间、观看方式而设计的新物件。ORIFICO®STUDIO从艺术家书的物理尺寸与翻阅动作出发，研发出三种高度相同、结构各有差异的桌台装置，对应着不同的身体姿态与停留方式：或在桌边短暂驻足，或手动交替桌面和夹层的上下两册，或结合周围视觉材料沉浸阅览。port_4_lio将散落在展厅各处，与空间中的移动式结构共同构成一个临时的阅览室，一个 “可以停留的地方” —— 一处幽灵鸟得以伪装的栖息地。

Project_lai希望通过这次合作，为观众提供一种新的观看与阅读体验。不需要先理解什么，只需要翻一页，以这个动作为起始，走进这片丛林。

The voice of ghostbirds is closer to

 a sound than a language.

Above all, it has no desire to spread ideas.

Project Lai is honored to present The Voice of Ghostbirds, a solo exhibition by Du Wenting (dudu), in collaboration with J7 ART. We invited ORIFICO®STUDIO to design the exhibition furniture, bringing a reading scene into the gallery space and giving voices a brand-new habitat to settle in. The exhibition will run from May 24 through June 30.

Big Book, a series of “diaries” that began with a comma on August 11, 2020 and continued for approximately 200 days, is the starting point of this exhibition. Eight books in total, their size and material differ from ordinary notebooks; when one flips through them, the pages make a rustling sound, says dudu. Facing a stack of pre-bound pages, she pours herself into them, and the pages receive every form of her artistic practice, experiment, and documentation. It is a game she has known since childhood – one with simple rules that allow her to play freely. As time passes, the pages thicken and store her ceaseless monologue: the exuberant or the honestly low, the unexpected, mistaken, bad tastes. Every form of her expressions is admitted and accommodated by Big Book, pausing at just the right moment before too much rhetoric arrives.

With each book completed, dudu records many arrangements of sentences and combinations of words. Without any causal relationship between them, these words represent her feelings for their textures. This same sensibility carries into her paintings: no explanation, no inference, no hierarchy established. The things within a picture simply exist, drawn close to one another, nothing more. Narrative happens wherever there is color and line, and the way Big Book is organized resembles an improvisation that repeats itself day after day, which later developed into a lighter, everyday habit of sketching.

←左滑翻阅Big Book

Swipe left to browse the Big Book

We will present dudu’s works parallel to her Big Book series, building up an exhibition space composed of paper, wooden panels, collage, painting, and reading furniture – closer to dudu’s daily practice full of contradiction and tangled feelings. On one side, a near-obsessive collecting, observing, and recording of shapes, colors, sentences, sounds, and even a certain quality of abstract thought; on the other, an absorption of reality through material and emotion, and then its alteration and return. In the forest, dudu loses her horse, discovers a stone and devotes herself to a side quest for pleasure; at the backyard of her house, she creates a green passage that holds no secrets; at the glowing, trembling lakeside, she peers through a telescope at an unknown distance – there, she sees the long, slender shadows of three women and an enormous fly.

So then, how to build an appropriate site of reading for dudu's Big Book series? They need to be opened. They need hands and a reason to stop by.

port_4_lio #2 _有框型底撑的桌子

材料：樱桃木、白橡木、再生皮革、铝等

port_4_lio #2 - Table with framed bottom support

Materials: Cherry wood, white oak, recycled leather, aluminum, etc. 

ORIFICO®STUDIO has designed port_4_lio for this exhibition. It is not an off-the-shelf display system, but a new object designed specifically for Big Book, this space, and this particular way of reading and viewing. Drawing from the physical dimensions of the artist books and the gestures of turning pages, ORIFICO®STUDIO developed three distinct table forms, each with the same height yet distinctive structures to accommodate different body postures and rhythms of staying: pausing briefly at the edge, alternating between upper and lower volumes by hand, or browsing each page slowly with the aid of other visual references on the side. Distributed throughout the gallery alongside mobile structures, port_4_lio composes a temporary reading room, where it is permitted to remain – a habitat where ghostbirds can disguise themselves and release their voices.

十字凹槽的桌面，一分为四地自由搭配，摆放不同开本的画册/笔记

A tabletop with cross-shaped grooves, divided into four sections for flexible arrangement, suitable for placing different-sized books.

Through this collaboration, Project Lai hopes to offer visitors a new experience of reading and viewing. No prior understanding is required. Simply turn a page, let this gesture be the beginning, and then enter the forest of ghostbirds.