C reated in 2003, Duan Jianyu’s Artistic Chicken No. 5 hails from the artist's most iconic series of the 2000s. The chickens somet.mes s make satirical and ironic observations about art, and at other t.mes s, they reflect the conflict between the urban and the rural. The works also tend to combine scenes of bucolic beauty with portrayals of local ethnicity, creating an extremely unique artistic style. The same year Duan Jianyu completed Artistic Chicken No. 5, she was invited to take part in the Venice Biennale, where she exhibited a 100 Artistic Chicken sculptural installation. Of those works, 40 are now held in Hong Kong’s M+ museum, having been previously exhibited at the Canton Express exhibition, where they became representative works for artists from the Guangdong region – a clear indication of the series’ significance.
《藝術雞》（2002年作）展出於2003年威尼斯雙年展。當中40隻現為香港M+館藏。
Born in Henan province, Duan Jianyu exists outside of China’s mainstream artistic circles; after graduating from the Guangzhou Academy of Replica Handbags s, rather than relocating to Beijing - the beating heart of China’s art world - she instead decided to move to Guangzhou, an area not usually considered to be awash with strong artistic currents. Although she herself is based in Guangzhou, her works always seem to embody the local essence of her native town in Henan, intentionally or otherwise. In fact, nostalgia for one’s rural hometown unites many Chinese artists born in the 1970s. Even though their works differ to some extent, they all originated in the countryside. Having been born in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, this generation moved away from home to study in the cities and towns, often staying there for some t.mes . Despite this, their hometowns and native places remain where they ultimately choose to settle down and live out their years in peace. Duan’s hometown serves as the background and central theme of many of her works. In fact, she once recounted that “whether it's the simple and honest countryside in the North or the delicate and beautiful scenery in the South, both landscapes are facing significant change; the old China, made up of lots of rural towns, each rich in its own folklore and local custom, is slowly ebbings away”. Duan prefers the sights of her rural hometown to the noise and clamour of the big cities. When depicting this idyll, she excels at integrating various qualities in her works; her painting style is occasionally quite crazed and, at other t.mes s, even vulgar; somet.mes s her works are imbued with a certain poetic quality, and at others they can be immensely peculiar. This process reflects how actual Chinese society is becoming more grotesque and variegated. Duan’s series Sisters and Artistic Chicken are both excellent examples of this.
愛德華·馬奈，《草地上的午餐》，1863年作，巴黎奧賽博物館館藏。
Artistic Chicken No. 5 references Édouard Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass (1863) while incorporating chickens amidst the picnic scene, brimming with comedy and absurdity alike. The shape of the roasted fowl echoes the shape of the female nude, while the living chickens strut and waddle around the smartly, and most importantly, fully dressed gentlemen. The strikingly contrasting circumstances of the male and female protagonists, and the 'incongruity' of the scene, force the viewer to question and reflect on the long-standing discourse of the objectification of the female body within the trajectory of art history. The subtle placement of the cherries before the groin of the man on the right evokes a risqué undertone. Duan Jianyu might have deliberately omitted the depiction of the female's facial features, thereby removing her identity and sparing her from the male gaze.
In 1999, in search of creative materials, Duan travelled to Shaoguan, Guangdong, to immerse herself in the local lifestyle. That was when she first encountered the American artist Julian Schnabel's painting, daubed on the tarpaulin of a chicken coop where she was making life drawings. She was deeply influenced by Schnabel's fascination with the imagery of China and paused her own project to begin cleaning Schnabel's works. During the process, she was surrounded by cackling chickens, which inspired the Artistic Chicken series.
Painting in a deliberately naive style, Duan diffuses her fantastical tableaux with a mood of banality that only deepens their mysteriousness. The correspondence between setting, allusion, the intertextual nature of image making and the multiplicity suggested within spatial structures are all at work within Art Chicken No. 5, creating a dynamic reciprocity between “high art” and “low art”, its own visual language and the experience of the viewer.
段建宇，《藝術雞》，2002年作，玻璃纖維、樹脂、塑膠彩、鋼架，香港，M+博物館。
《藝術鷄5號》是段建宇2003年的創作，來自她二千年代早期最重要的創作系列︰〈藝術雞〉。雞有時是對藝術本身開的玩笑、自嘲或觀察，有時是暗喻了城市與郷村的衝突。藝術家貫徹了取材自鄉村的美學，結合她筆下帶著俗氣的民族美學造型，造就了她於1970年出生的藝術家之間非常獨特的藝術面貎。創作《藝術鷄5號》同年，藝術家受邀參加威尼斯雙年展，展出100隻原大的雞模型裝置《藝術鷄》，該作品現存40隻，並獲香港M+博物館收藏，早前亦於〈廣東快車〉的展覽中展出，作為廣東地區藝術家的代表作品，足見此系列的重要。
段建宇出生於河南，迴異於中國主流的藝術群體，她選擇了廣州美術學院升學，畢業後，放棄了藝術家集中地北京，而是選擇留下在藝術氛圍不算濃烈的廣州創作及生活。她1999年開始頻繁參與展覽，並於2006首次於廣州舉辦個人展覽。雖然身處廣東省會，但段建宇總是在作品中有意無意的強調著自己出生地河南的鄉土氣息。事實上，鄉土把不少1970年代出生的藝術家連結起來，縱使他們的作品有所不同，但黃土地卻是他們的出發點，他們成長於文化大革命之後，從老家出發往城裡上學並在大城市留下來，故鄉是他們安身立命之所。鄉村是段建宇不少作品的背景及主題，她曾自述︰「不論是渾厚的北方農村還是清秀的南方農村，都在現實中發生著巨變，一個充滿傳說和傳統習俗的鄉土中國正在逝去。」她不喜城市的浮噪，回看家鄉，她擅長把不同元素併貼在一起，畫風時而瘋狂，時而庸俗，時而帶著詩意，時而怪異非常，反映著中國現實社會的光怪陸離，其中包括《姐姐》系列及《藝術鷄》系列。
段氏於《藝術雞5號 》把鷄安插於置於愛德華·馬奈1863 年的名作《草地上的午餐》，充滿滑稽與荒誕。烤雞的形狀似乎與女性的裸體形象互相呼應，而衣冠楚楚的男士們與活蹦亂跳的活雞形成強烈對比。整個場面的『不合時宜』激發出既視感，迫使觀者對乍眼致敬馬奈的畫面提出疑問，反思油畫在藝術歷史的演變中，物化女體的悠遠痕跡由此突顯對女性身體的物化。畫中櫻桃的微妙位置，場景中的曖昧不清的情慾暗示不言而喻。段建宇也許故意省略了女角的五官描繪，由此卸下她的身份，免卻她陷入男性的凝視，以及藝術歷史進程延續下來根深蒂固的畫作闡釋習慣。
以雞入畫如此顛覆美學的題材，原始於藝術家於1999年為了取材，去了廣東韶關一帶深入生活。她在一個破舊的養雞場寫生時意外發現美國藝術家朱利安·施內貝爾的畫作，並深受朱利安眼中的中國形象所吸引。她馬上放下了自己原本的工作，開始對施內貝爾的畫作進行修復工作，過程中，段建宇常常被雞圍繞著，由此啓發了藝術家的《藝術鷄》系列。
段建宇在《藝術雞5號 》裡以一種故作天真的風格和波瀾不興的平庸情緒，增添奇幻畫面背後的神秘性。場景、暗喻、圖像的互文性以及空間結構的多樣性相互發揮角色，呈現「高級」世界藝術史的挪用如何普通、現實、庸俗的視覺詞彙嘲諷當代社會的光怪陸離，與此同時，亦為觀者帶來充滿層次的藝術體驗。
Duan Jianyu's Recent Auction Records | 段建宇近期拍品
