冥王星曾被认为是太阳系的第九大行星，但在2006年，国际天文学联合会（IAU）重新定义了“行星”的标准，导致冥王星被降级为“矮行星”。耿旖旎将她的一副新作命名为《被出局的矮行星》（2024），而这里的“矮行星”则是代指了她成长和生活的地方东北沈阳。相较于讨论东北在时代背景下的宏大社会议题，它所传递的是一种更为朴素的存在事实：在看似是被动“出局”下的主体复杂性，在加速与滞后记忆后的自我指认。
耿旖旎的绘画实践始终根植于东北的社会现实，历史与记忆、集体与个体共同交织为其绘画母题的现实底色。与此同时，她绘画中的图像大多来自于其拍摄或收集的照片、网络图片和植物绘本。这也使得耿旖旎的绘画呈现出基于一种现实的虚构特质，她始终在处理如何将个人记忆与感知的碎片转化在绘画的画面中，进而渗透出在时代洪流下历史与现实的断裂和个体脆弱性。
此次个展呈现了耿旖旎在2021至2024年间所创作的新作。其过往作品中常出现的血脉膨胀的“大力士”退场，手持刀叉的西餐厨师上台；凶狠撕扯的动物和狩猎游戏，变成了呆滞尴尬的鸭和鹅、善恶难分的乌鸦、儿时记忆里的燕子，还有那些疲于奔命的工蜂。荒诞不再以直接性对抗来显现，而是转化为了无可奈何的退守于泥泞，以及自我修复和治愈的坚韧。由此，耿旖旎的新作在其题材的地域性中逐渐发展出了新的面貌，看似私人但恰恰是一种更为普世的个体困境。
耿旖旎的新作试图向更为普遍的现实发问，个体在面对外部重压之下如何与之协商：非直接对抗，也未全面放弃；颓萎，但不堕抒情；在挤压中如何恢复弹性，在失落里如何寻求依托之处。在这些作品的画面里，背景和主体互为参照，画面中同时出现的多个主体也使所谓稳定的权力机制溃散；她以薄透却并不扁平化的笔触来去处理画面，使其中的结构关系更为均质；那些被描绘的身体、动物、植物形态，其机理和光影被处理得极为克制，这使得观者得以在看似戏虐而失序的节奏中寻得静谧。
在耿旖旎的绘画实践中，她始终强调图像处理的痕迹。例如那些模糊或人工的边缘，拼贴感的形象组合，她有意地在画面中保留了对图像素材进行编辑的印迹。这既是一种对于绘画性的探索，同时也是她在绘画过程中如何将记忆和感知诉诸于画面。乌鸦、燕子、眼睛、地砖……它们既是遗留的历史记忆，也是现有的社会现实。还有那些无意识的线条和笔触，总会闯入画面的某处。当然我们可以把它归咎于艺术家个体情绪的自由袒露，它显得突如其来，却又是再恰当不过。如果说我们都在经历时代洪流下的普遍失落，那么这些痕迹就是个体在星际迷航中的锚点。
文/陈立
此次个展的灵感碎片 by 耿旖旎
Fragments for this solo exhibition by Geng Yini
Pluto was once considered the ninth planet in our solar system, but in 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefined the criteria for a “planet,” resulting in Pluto being downgraded to a “dwarf planet.”Geng Yini has titled one of her new works “The Dwarf Planet That Has Been Demoted” (2024), and the “dwarf planet” here is a reference to Shenyang in Northeast China, where she grew up and lives. Rather than discussing the grand social issues of Northeast China in the context of the times, it conveys a more simple fact of existence: the complexity of the subject under the seemingly passive “out”, and the self-identification after the accelerated and lagging memory.
Geng Yini's painting practice has always been rooted in the social reality of Northeast China, with history and memory, collectivity and individuality intertwined to form the realistic undertones of her paintings. At the same time, most of the images in her paintings come from photographs, internet pictures and botanical illustrated books that she has taken or collected. This also makes Geng Yini's paintings present a fictional quality based on reality, and she is always dealing with how to transform the fragments of her personal memories and perceptions into her paintings, thus penetrating the rupture between history and reality and the vulnerability of the individual under the tide of the times.
This solo exhibition presents new works created by Geng Yini between 2021 and 2024. The blood-swollen “Hercules” that often appeared in her previous works are off-stage, and the western food chef with knife and fork comes on stage; the ferocious animals and hunting games become the stagnant and awkward ducks and geese, the crows that can't distinguish between good and evil, the swallows in her childhood memories, and the worker bees that are tired of running for their lives. Absurdity is no longer revealed as direct confrontation, but is transformed into an inexorable retreat into the mud, and the resilience of self-repair and healing. As a result, Geng Yini's new works have gradually developed a new outlook on the regional nature of their subject matter, which appears to be a private but precisely a more universal individual predicament.
Geng Yini's new works attempt to address a more universal reality, how the individual negotiates with external pressures: not in direct confrontation, but not in total abandonment; decadent, but not lyrical; how to regain elasticity in the midst of compression, and how to seek a place of support in the midst of loss. In the images of these works, the background and the subject are references to each other, and the simultaneous appearance of multiple subjects in the images also breaks down the so-called stable mechanism of power; the artist handles the images with thin but not flattened strokes to make the structural relationships more homogeneous; the bodies, animals, and plants depicted are handled with extreme restraint in terms of mechanism, light, and shadow, which enables the viewer to find a silence in what seems to be a playfully and disorderly rhythm.
In Geng Yini's painting practice, she always emphasizes the traces of image processing. For example, the blurred or artificial edges, the collage-like combination of images, she intentionally retains the imprint of editing the image material in the picture. This is both an exploration of pictoriality, and at the same time how she appeals to memory and perception in the painting process. The crows, the swallows, the eyes, the floor tiles ... they are both leftover historical memories and existing social realities. There are also those unconscious lines and strokes that always intrude somewhere in the picture. Of course, we can attribute it to the free exposure of the artist's individual emotion, which appears to be sudden but appropriate. If we are all experiencing a general loss under the tide of the times, then these traces are the anchors of individuals in the starry voyage.
Text/ Leo Li Chen
耿旖旎 Geng Yini
彩虹玩具 Rainbow Toys
布面油画 Oil on canvas
150 x 120cm
2023
耿旖旎 Geng Yini
高山草莓 Alpine Strawberry
布面油画、丙烯 Oil and acrylic on canvas
180 x 120 cm
2024
耿旖旎 Geng Yini
蜂蜜蝗树（刺槐） Honey Locust Tree (Acacia)
布面油画 Oil on canvas
250 x 200 cm
2022
耿旖旎
Geng Yini
耿旖旎有着雌雄同体般的艺术敏感度和超脱于性别界限和国籍的非同寻常的视角，单从她的作品看，基本察觉不出任何端倪。耿旖旎的油画色泽黏稠，表面内容丰富多彩，画面故事则完全呈现精神分裂症的特点。她的作品中经常会出现虚线、目标和象征性的图标，就像说明书中插图，让人捉摸不透。把各类混杂的元素汇聚到一起要表达什么并不重要，以轻松的心态恣意演绎多重性才是耿旖旎的作品胜人一筹的地方。
耿旖旎毕业于沈阳鲁迅美术学院，现居住生活于辽宁省沈阳市。自2013年起，她已在BANK举办四次个展，2017年于上海K11美术馆，2018于武汉K11艺术村举办个展。其作品曾参展于多家艺术机构及大型展览，如第55届威尼斯双年展平行展、上海视界艺术中心、北京今日美术馆、成都蓝顶美术馆及沈阳K11美术馆等。耿旖旎的作品被白兔美术馆、乌里·希克、香港K11美术馆和北京时代美术馆等重要机构与个人收藏。
Geng’s gooey paintings with their manifold surfaces and schizophrenic narratives are a testimony to our interactive computer lives where we simultaneously dance between multiple windows, looking and covering, pointing at past and future. What the total sum of ingredients in her uncanny works may mean is not the point; it is the lighthearted celebration of unbridled plurality that gives Geng’s work its edge.
Geng Yini (b.1982, Shenyang) is graduate of Lu Xun Academy and now lives and works in Shenyang, Liaoning Province. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at BANK for four times since 2013, and K11 Art Village, Wuhan in 2018, and chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai in 2017. She has also shown in numerous venues including 55 Venice Biannual Collateral Event, Venice; chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai; MoCA Shanghai, Today Museum, Beijing; and Blue Top Museum in Chengdu, etc. Her work is in the collection of White Rabbit Collection, Uli Sigg, chi K11 Art Museum and Beijing Times Museum, among many others.
陈立
Leo Li Chen
独立策展人和写作者，现生活并工作在中国北京。他曾于魔金石空间担任研究主管，并从事独立策展。他的研究主要关注于地缘政治、表演性及流动影像，探索身份与主体的复杂性，及其如何超越地理的界限。陈立曾策划“相去几何”（阿那亚艺术中心，北戴河，2023），“琢面”（画廊周北京公共单元，北京，2023）、“比赛继续、舞台留下”（广东时代美术馆，广州，2019）、“今天应该很高兴”（泰康空间，北京，2019）、“世变”（Para Site，香港，2016）、“他/她从海上来”（OCAT，深圳，2016）等展览。陈立参与了多个国际驻留项目：2016年亚洲艺术文献库研究者驻留；2019年韩国国立现代美术馆国际研究者项目驻留；2019年获得亚洲文化协会纽约策展驻留奖助金。
Leo Li Chen is an independent curator and writer based in Beijing, China. He was the Director of Research in Magician Space, Beijing, and an independent curator. His main research focuses on geopolitics, performativity and moving images, to explore the complexity of identity and subjectivity that transcends geographical barriers. He has curated the exhibitions, How Far, How Close (Aranya Art Center, Beidaihe, 2023); Facets (Gallery Weekend Beijing Public Sector, 2023) ; The Racing Will Continue, The Dancing Will Stay (Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2019); Today Could Have Been a Happy Day (Taikang Space, Beijing, 2018); That Has Been and Maybe Again (Para Site, Hong Kong, 2016); Adrift (OCAT, Shenzhen, 2016), and so on. He was a resident researcher at Asia Art Archive in 2016, and at MMCA Korea in 2019. He gained the New York curator residency fellowship by Asian Cultural Council in 2019.
