「桃花山」覃钰玲Chinyurin 玻璃装置展

艺术家覃钰玲一直在通过玻璃这个介质来表现自己观察到的细小事物以及内心表达。

在日本学习期间，我们通过「玻璃」认识到了覃钰玲，她在学生时期的作品“someone with glass helmet”、“人间洗衣房”等就展露出了有趣又锋利的创作内核。

2020年明写館雏形时期我们在店铺内陈列了她的吹制作品，是一个玻璃“大脑”和一些不太日常的玻璃器，常常有客人问我们这是什么、用于何处，我们解释完后也觉得并没有说到位，最后都用“我们尽快办她的展览，到时候见”来一句话总结了，然而不知不觉就到了4年后。

4年间我们对覃钰玲有了更多的了解，第一回到她位于景德镇的工作室「东海龙宫人间办事处」时，见到了与名字并不相符的办事处的“核心”，是一个温度达到千度以上的玻璃吹制大炉。在炎热的江西，这个办事处显得格外需要降温。而在我们真正体验过一次玻璃吹制后，才瞬间领会到了这迷人又危险的创作行为正是她的日常，仅仅用“热爱”来表达她对玻璃的感情又显得肤浅了。

确定展览方向是在23年年初的时候，覃钰玲说想做一个以故乡“桃花山”为题的展览。“家”与“故乡”好像是艺术家们无法绕开的主题，它似乎决定了我们是谁，甚至有时候成为我们创作的理由，组成了创作路途中的脉络。我们都会时不时的想起儿时的“趣事”，因此很好奇在桃花山上的故事。在这次展览作品中，时间和空间在玻璃中凝固，锋利的介质似乎在此刻变得柔软。

——Meisyakan

桃花山是我小时候住的地方，一条⻢路划开山上和山下，山下是棉纺厂，山上没有桃花。它像是在铁皮罐头里浸泡了二十年，被遗忘。山上的人逐渐离开，房子⻓出裂痕和⻘苔，山下宿舍区拆成一片废墟，剩⻔卫室孤零零趴着。

此次展览中的作品，我将幼时记忆和现在的生活片段拼到了一起。回忆是内在化的，有一些记忆⻓久地留在脑海里，因当下发生的事物触发或埋得更深。生命像一张网，人在过去和当下之间不停地编织往返，包裹出各自的形状。
——覃钰玲

Artist Qin Yuling has long worked with glass as a medium through which to express both the minute details she observes in the world and her inner thoughts.

We first came to know Qin Yuling through glass while she was studying in Japan. Her student works, such as Someone with Glass Helmet and Human Laundromat, already revealed the playful yet incisive core of her artistic practice.

In 2020, when Meisyakan was still taking shape, we displayed some of her blown-glass works in our shop: a glass “brain” and several unconventional vessels. Customers would often ask us what these objects were and what they were used for. Even after explaining, we felt that our words had never quite captured what we wanted to convey. In the end, we would sum it up with a simple promise: “We’ll hold an exhibition of her work as soon as we can. See you then.” Before we knew it, four years had passed.

Over those four years, we came to know Qin Yuling better. On our first visit to her studio in Jingdezhen, the Donghai Longgong Renjian Banshichu (East Sea Dragon Palace Human Affairs Office), we encountered the true heart of this office, whose name suggested something quite different: a massive glassblowing furnace reaching temperatures of over 1,000°C. In the sweltering heat of Jiangxi, this office seemed particularly in need of cooling.

It was only after trying glassblowing ourselves that we suddenly understood that this captivating yet dangerous act of creation was simply part of her everyday life. To describe her relationship with glass merely as “passion” would feel far too superficial.

We began to settle on the direction of this exhibition in early 2023, when Qin Yuling expressed her desire to create a show around Taohuashan, the place where she grew up.

“Home” and “hometown” seem to be themes that artists cannot easily avoid. They appear to shape who we are and, at times, even become the reasons we create, forming threads that run throughout our artistic journeys. We all find ourselves revisiting the “little adventures” of childhood from time to time, and so we were especially curious about the stories that unfolded on Taohuashan.

In the works presented in this exhibition, time and space are suspended within glass. At this moment, a medium so often associated with sharpness seems to soften.

— Meisyakan

Taohuashan is where I lived as a child. A road for motor vehicles cuts across the mountain, dividing the upper and lower parts. A cotton mill stood at the foot of the mountain, while there were no peach blossoms on the mountain itself. It was as though the place had been left to soak inside a tin can for twenty years, forgotten. The people who lived on the mountain gradually moved away. Cracks and moss began to spread across the houses, while the dormitory buildings below were demolished, leaving behind a field of ruins, with only the lonely guardhouse still crouching there.

For the works in this exhibition, I have brought together fragments of childhood memories and moments from my life today. Memory is something internal. Some recollections remain in the mind for a long time, either brought to the surface by things happening in the present or buried even deeper.

Life is like a net, woven continuously as we move back and forth between the past and the present, shaping and enclosing each of us in our own distinct form.

— Qin Yuling