The five artists in this exhibition live in Los Angeles and represent the art department of Claremont Graduate University, which has just joined with the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts to initiate a program that includes faculty exchanges, collaborative exhibitions, and a gateway for TAFA undergraduates to continue their education in CGU’s Master of Fine Arts program.

来自洛杉矶的五位艺术家代表克莱蒙特研究生院艺术系参加此次展览。该研究生院不久前与天津美术学院合作启动了一个项目，项目内容包括教师交流、合作展览以及天津美术学院本科生继续接受克莱蒙特研究生院美术硕士课程教育。

Co-curated by David Pagel, Professor of Art Theory and History at CGU, and Wang Wei Yi, Director of the Museum and the Research Department at TAFA, the exhibition highlights the relationships among materials, forms, and contexts while emphasizing the freedom each artist finds—and fosters—in their interactions.

展览由克莱蒙特研究生院艺术理论和历史学教授David Pagel和天津美术学院博物馆和研究部主任Wang Weiyi共同策划，展览突出了材料、形式和语境之间的关系，同时强调了每个艺术家在互动中探索和追寻的自由。

Amico, Burns, Lachowicz, Ruiz, and Yi care deeply about the materials their works are made of. All start with stuff that comes with well-established meanings, from oil paint to eye shadow, digital prints to cellphone icons, rice paper to graffiti. They pay equal attention to what they do with these materials: finessing them to do things they may not have been meant to. They are similarly attentive to the social contexts of their works, especially as they have traveled from Los Angeles to Tianjin.

Amico, Burns, Lachowicz, Ruiz, and Yi都非常看重他们的作品所用的材料。所有的一切都是从一些意义明确的东西开始的，从油画到眼影，从数码图片到手机图标，从宣纸到涂鸦。他们同样关注用这些材料来做什么：对它们进行巧妙处理使其具备本身之外的功用。他们同样关注作品的社会背景，尤其是他们刚从洛杉矶抵达天津时，对社会背景格外关注。

David Amico’s works on canvas and paper are part of a series that began when gentrification forced the longtime resident of downtown Los Angeles out of his studio. Moving into a renovated sweatshop, Amico was struck by the traces of labor and life that remained on the walls and windows. My Place records and redeems those anonymous marks, transforming the incidental residue of urban reality into a meditative homage to otherwise invisible citizens, most of them immigrants. The surfaces of Amico’s works capture the atmosphere of displacement and loss. Abstract and evocative, they make room for the intimacy, humility, and vulnerability of drawing, along with the kind of silence that speaks volumes.

David Amico在画布与纸上的作品是一个系列的部分作品，这一系列作品始于他受到旧城改造中产阶级化的影响，离开他在洛杉矶市中心工作多年的工作室。Amico搬进一家翻新过的血汗工厂，被墙上和窗户上留下的劳动和生命的痕迹所震撼。《我的住所》记录并重现了那些无名人士所留下的痕迹，将城市现实生活中的偶然碎片转化为对原本受人忽视公民（其中大多数是移民）的默然致敬。Amico的作品直观地描绘了流离失所和不知所措的气氛。他的作品抽象而令人回味，使人感受到绘画的亲密性、谦卑性和脆弱性，也为意味深长的沉默留出了想象空间。

The noisy symphony of the street is nearly audible in Tommy Burns’ polyglot paintings. Many look as if they might have been made by several artists. In reality, each has been made by an artist who believes that identity is neither stable nor singular, and that art provides a great place for individuals to find themselves. The generative collision of styles, subjects, and stories in Burns’ works allows them to reach out to the works around them, whether they were made by him or by other artists. Such gregarious user-friendliness inspires visitors to behave similarly: engaging those around us in wide-ranging conversations.

在Tommy Burns的多元画中，我们几乎可以听到街道上嘈杂的交响乐。 许多作品看上去好像是由几位艺术家创作的。事实上，每幅作品都是由一位艺术家完成的，这位艺术家认为身份既不是稳定的，也不是单一的，艺术为个人提供了一个寻找自我的地方。Burns作品中的风格、题材和故事的强烈冲突使这些作品能够接触到周围的作品，无论这些作品是由他自己还是其他艺术家创作的。这种社交性、包容性的特点促使参观者做出类似的行为：与周围的人进行天南地北地聊天。

Cosmetics and Minimalism fuse in Rachel Lachowicz’s Floor Shadow series. Each of her pieces could be mistaken for a painting that has slipped off the wall. But first impressions are deceptive. Made of the pigments women often use to enhance their beauty, her works command far more space than their literal dimensions. Turning what is often perceived to be emptiness into a psychologically charged force-field, Lachowicz’s installations also get into your head, where they defy expectations, undermine assumptions, and ask consequential questions about femininity, beauty, and decoration, not to mention art’s largely untapped capacity to make a difference—which they do.

Rachel Lachowicz的地板阴影系列融合了化妆品和迷你主义。她的每一幅作品都可能被误认为是一幅从墙上滑落下来的画，但第一印象是具有欺骗性的。她的作品是由女性经常用来化妆的颜料制成的，完成这些作品要求远远超过其本身尺寸的空间。Lachowicz的画把通常被认为是虚空的东西变成充满心理压力的力场，这些画进入你的大脑，出乎你的意料，破坏你的设想，并提出了有关女性气质、美和装饰这些具有深远意义的问题，更不用说在很大程度上利用艺术未被发掘的能力来创造不同——这些画做到了。

Doraleia Ruiz scavenges images from the Internet, snaps her own pictures, and finds old family photos. She manipulates them digitally, prints them, and paints them, sometimes customizing details and at others undertaking dramatic renovations. Then, she does all that all over again. Or, she goes back into her files and picks up where she left off—days, weeks, even months ago. In both cases, she turns back time, undoes actions, and rewrites history. Transposing the present into the past—and then redoing it—Ruiz makes for a future that is unlike either: richer and denser and thicker with significance than usual, and a lot more exciting than everyday life often is.

Doraleia Ruiz在互联网上搜寻照片，拍下自己的照片，并寻找过去的全家福老照片。 她用数码处理这些照片，打印出来，然后画下照片中的人物，有时根据客户的喜好调整一些细节，有时进行大刀阔斧的创作。 之后，她又重头做一遍。 或者，她回到自己的画作里，再接着上次（几天，几周，甚至几个月前）的地方继续作画。无论何种情况，她都能让时光倒转，撤销行动，重写历史。通过把现在跟过去调换再重新演绎，Ruiz创造了一个不一样的未来：比平常更丰富、更强烈、更厚实、更有意义，并且比日常生活更令人兴奋的未来。

Yi Kai’s series of diptychs, After and Before, rejects the idea that progress goes hand-in-hand with time’s passage. His haunting portraits, landscapes, and abstractions combine painting and drawing, as well as traditional Chinese genres and contemporary Western procedures, to articulate the complex nature of global reality. Yi’s queasy Realism never points fingers but instead invites visitors from all walks of life to ponder our own relationships to our surroundings—both internal and external—and to take responsibility for the roles we play in their transformation. The picture may not always be pretty, but the truth is far better than deception.  

Yi Kai的双连画系列《前后》反对时代随着时间流逝而进步的观点。 他令人印象深刻的肖像画、风景画和抽象画结合了绘画和绘图技巧，借鉴了中国的传统绘画流派和当代西方风格，表达了现实世界的复杂本质。Yi直白的现实主义从不是对现实进行指指点点，而是邀请来自各行各业的参观者思考我们与周围环境的关系（无论是内部关系还是外部关系），并对我们在转变中扮演的角色负责。这种画作可能并不总是美好的，但事实远胜于欺骗。 

Amico, Burns, Lachowicz, Ruiz, and Yi are more interested in starting conversations than in having the last word. Their multipurpose works draw people from different places and generations into open-ended conversations with no boundaries or restrictions. In doing that, they allow us to see that the perspectives we began with may have been limiting, and that there is always more to reality than meets the eye.

Amico, Burns, Lachowicz, Ruiz, and Yi 更喜欢引发人们讨论，而非一锤定音。他们的多元化作品吸引了来自不同地方和不同年龄的人，并激发他们进行不受限的开放式对话。在这一过程中，他们让我们看到，我们一开始的观点可能一直是不够开放的，我们眼睛所看到的总是冰山一角。