Vaughn Spann Pups!

Almine Rech Shanghai is pleased to present Pups!, Vaughn Spann's third solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in China.

“Spots! Inspirational,” purs Cruella de Vil when she first sees a Dalmatian coat. Its vivid pattern is a mesmerizing abstraction for her, something to be cut and draped and hemmed. Not the skin of a dignified animal but a modish fur. Vaughn Spann’s Dalmatian paintings, in contrast, lend an animate agency to geometric abstractions and, in the process, enervate color-field painting with life. In lieu of fashion’s flatness, Spann gives us depth of personality. Instead of following traditional hierarchies, he wags art history’s tail.

These paintings are not of dogs, strictly speaking, any more than Spann is a painter of strictly abstract tendencies. “I’m an abstractionist at heart,” he says, though his past works range from the highly figurative – such as Parisian Girls (2019), depicting a pair of chicly dressed conjoined twins embracing their matching dalmatians – to pop symbolism in the vein of Jasper Johns, as in his Untitled (Flag) (2019) and Marked Man series (2020). That admission suggests a certain dedication to the painterly mark and an engagement with surface on a fine granular level. “The individual mark is important,” Spann tells me, affirming that he thinks about each part as seriously as the whole. To that end, for Dalmatians, he has mixed sand and modeling paste in his paint, which he applies with a palette knife in certain sections to create reliefs. These spots require a lot of patience and dexterity. Their viscous medium recalls the early experiments of Cubism, while Spann cites as inspiration Agnes Martin and Stanley Whitney – artists who, like him, understood the slow power of the grid.

With their Cartesian layout, De Stijl palette and twill texture, Spann’s Dalmatians could also be a collaboration between Piet Mondrian and Coco Chanel. Their pet names are another tease of anthropomorphism. Each 80 x 80 “pup” painting has a smaller piece Spann calls its “companion.” On a surface level, such labels are a pithy joke about how dog owners come to resemble their canine friends, encouraging a comic intimacy to develop over time and space between the paintings. But there’s something off about their size: how many dogs are bigger than their owners? Spann lost his own dog, Chip, last year, and his death surely still looms large. At the same time, these duos scramble the art-historical hierarchies of medium and scale that so often determine the hagiography of creative practices. There is no “primary” artwork here, no subservient or master. Spann’s companion pieces call into question how a painter works from studies and back again, inverting artistic process as well as the historical “progression” from figuration to abstraction.

Spann likes to dig around in modernism’s sandbox. He admires Philip Guston and Joe Bradley for their irreverent approaches to style. Here, Spann has found a way to honor his idols while refusing to play any one game.

Dalmatians were first bred on the coast of Croatia as lithe carriage dogs, trained to follow horse-drawn rigs (a job they later took up on fire engines). After Disney made their coats the stuff of fantasy, Ulrike Ottinger released her cult film Freak Orlando (1981), with its speckled dwarf carrying a matching standard through the ruins of postwar Berlin. Spann’s paintings, lithe and precise, lead us on a similar march past the end of art history. These spots are inspirational indeed.

- Evan Moffitt, writer and critic

阿尔敏·莱希 - 上海荣幸呈现沃恩·斯班（Vaughn Spann）中国首次个展「斑点狗！」（Pups！）。这也是艺术家与画廊的第三次个展合作。

“斑点! 令人心驰神往，”当库伊拉·德·维尔（Cruella de Vil）第一次看到大麦町犬（俗称斑点狗）的大衣时，她嘟囔道。它生动的图案对德·维尔来说是一个令人着迷的抽象概念，是一种可以被剪裁、垂挂和包边的东西。与其说是高贵的动物的皮肤，它更是一种时尚的毛皮。沃恩·斯班的《斑点狗》（Dalmatian）绘画与此相反，给几何抽象画赋予了一种生命力，并且在这个过程中给色域绘画注入了生命力。斯班抛却了时尚的平面性，却给了我们有个性的深度。他没有遵循传统的等级制度，而是轻摆艺术史的尾巴。

严格来说，画里的不是狗，正如斯班也非具有严格抽象倾向的画家。他说：“我内心是一个抽象主义者，”尽管他过去的作品从高度具象的——如《巴黎女孩》（Parisian Girls, 2019），描绘了一对衣着别致的连体婴儿拥抱与他们相配的斑点狗——到贾斯培·琼斯(Jasper Jones)风格的流行象征主义，如他的《无题（旗帜）》（Untitled(Flag), 2019）和《标记人》系列（Marked Man series，2020）。这表明了艺术家对点绘的某种忠诚，以及对画面细微颗粒层面的关注。“每个绘点都很重要，”斯班告诉我，这更表明了他对每个部分的思考和整体一样认真。为此，在《斑点狗》（Dalmatians）中，他在颜料中混合了沙子和造型浆糊，在图中某些部分用调色刀涂抹，以创造浮雕的效果。这些部分需要很大的耐心和巧劲。粘稠的介质让人想起立体主义的早期实验，而斯班将艾格尼丝·马丁（Agnes Martin）和斯坦利·惠特尼（Stanley Whitney）作为灵感来源——这些艺术家和他一样，理解网格所含代的缓慢视觉力量。

凭借其笛卡尔式（Cartesian）的布局、荷兰风格派（De Stiji）的色调和斜纹的质地，斯班的《斑点狗》也可能是皮特·蒙德里安（Piet Mondrian）和可可香奈儿（Coco Chanel）之间的合作。他们的宠物名字是对拟人化的另一种挑逗。每幅80 x 80英寸的“幼犬”画都配有一部更小的作品，斯班称之为它的“伴儿”。从表面上看，这样的标签是一个关于狗主人如何与他们的犬类朋友相似的精辟笑话，在鼓励着一种滑稽的亲密关系随着时间和空间在绘画之间产生。但它们的尺寸有些不对劲：有多少狗比它们的主人还大？斯班去年失去了他的爱犬Chip，它的去世对艺术家的影响一定仍然显著。同时，这些二重关系扰乱了艺术史上对媒介和规模的等级划分，而这种划分往往决定了对创作实践的经典评价。这里没有“主要”的艺术品，没有从属的或高于一切的大师之作。斯班的配套作品在质疑画家是如何从小草样中工作，然后再回来绘制主图的，他颠倒了艺术创作的过程，以及从具象到抽象的艺术史的“进展”。

斯班喜欢在现代主义的沙盒中开掘可能性。他欣赏菲利普·加斯顿（Philip Guston）和乔·布拉德利（Joe Bradley），因为他们对所谓的风格报以大不敬的态度。在这里，斯班找到了一种方式来纪念他的偶像，同时拒绝耍弄任何同样的把戏。 斑点狗最早是在克罗地亚海岸繁殖的。作为体态轻盈的马车犬，它们被训练的能跟随马车行驶奔跑（后来它们在消防车上承担了这项工作）。在迪士尼把它们毛皮的外套变成令人向往的东西之后，乌尔丽克·奥廷格（Ulrike Ottinger）推出了她的邪典电影《怪人奥兰多》（Freak Orlando, 1981），其中有一个身体涂满斑点的矮人牵着一个同样毛色的斑点狗穿过战后柏林的废墟。斯班的画作，轻盈而精确，带领我们在艺术史的尽头进行着类似的行进。这些斑点确实令人心驰神往。

文/埃文·莫菲特，作家、评论家