'TAN TIAN'
by Karen Smith
Tan Tian was born in Beijing in 1988. He graduated from art school in 2012 and, in the short space of the several years since, has held several impressive solo exhibitions in Beijing. These have been held at the gallery (White Space, Caochangdi) where he first interned and gained insight into the working of the commercial art world; insight which he subsequently drew upon to feed the content of his work. He has also participated in a number of high-profile group exhibitions, including most recently, OVERPOP at Yuz Museum, Shanghai, in the autumn of 2016. Thus far, Tan Tian’s career has acquired significant momentum. This might not be surprising for an artist born to successful artist parents in China, but to his credit, Tan Tian stands firmly on his own merit, thus far.
My first encounter with Tan Tian’s work was in 2014[1] and with a group of awkward yet arresting objects that were part of his seminal “archival regurgitation” phase – my own term, and the nature of this approach to digesting archives and regurgitating selected content will be explained in due course. A few months later, in January 2015, he participated in the “Second CAFAM Futures” exhibition, a survey of young emerging artists conceived and presented by the museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (CAFAM). Here, he was represented by an installation work comprised of potted palms flanking an expansive photographic portrait of himself and his new wife in a larger-than-life portrayal of “the artist-as-an-innocent-idealist-young-man”. The startling realism of the image, its function as a self-portrait, came as a striking contrast to the prior assemblage objects. Beyond the deceptively innocent, just-married bliss that radiates from his expression, the piece was the work of a clearly ambitious and confident artist, as embodied in the work’s title How to Self-Promote – Co-operate with Museum -- CAFAM – Recognise Me (2014).
How to Self-Promote – Co-operate with Museum -- CAFAM – Recognise Me marked a direct entrée into the field of enquiry that preoccupied Tan Tian’s thinking towards art: from the obvious “what it is to be a contemporary artist today”, to the practical “exactly how to become one”. The self-portrait piece was the fanfare for a project initiated in 2013, which he titled How I Become a Contemporary Artist, which was made the subject of his first solo exhibition, “Jump to Second Solo Show”, held in March/April of 2015.
Two years in the making, the works that comprised How I Become a Contemporary Artist were, as a themed exhibition, experienced as a mini retrospective of the ideas and works that had resulted from those ideas, as well as nods and references to the artists who inspired Tan Tian. A wide, bold, colourful and strange range of individual components that together gave rise to a hugely tongue-in-cheek composite presentation. The focal portion of the exhibition was a large diagram that represented a visual mapping of the elements which “make” an artist; from a database of knowledge to draw upon, to learning how to talk, how to self-promote and how to sell, with multiple highly detailed sub-categories attached to each segment. How I Became a Contemporary Artist also included a brilliantly-coloured neon floor piece, Database Index 2014, which in childlike building-block fashion represented the websites he had visited in pursuit of information. The correlation of the neon forms with building blocks encouraged a reading of them as a metaphor for the stepping stones required to gain knowledge where websites are surfed or, here more accurately, hopped to from one to another as the need arises. Obviously, too, it stood for the relational web wherein artists must be interlinked, enmeshed, if they are to have any chance of (commercial) success today.
The origins of this project can be traced back to earlier in 2013 when, as Tan Tian embarked on his career, evincing a spate of nerves, perhaps, his solution for getting to grips with the task in hand was found in a series of work titled Feel Better After Throw Up. Large, utterly incongruous forms, decorated with bright sickly hues daubed over surfaces that suggest the textures of materials they are not, these pieces were a seemingly effective means of clearing his system; an artistic detox of detritus accumulated by overindulging in a smorgasbord of artistic faire, which, as with a buffet, tends to be consumed outside all conventional gastronomic logic. And, which here, we may surmise, resulted in a case of artistic indigestion. But with palette cleared, later that year, he began using an off-the-cuff, seemingly sardonic approach that characterises a distinct seam of contemporary art, as a means of demonstrating that to be a successful contemporary artist today, all that is required is a simple construct. To this portion of his output Tan Tian would give the heading How to Make a Contemporary Artwork for the process he deployed to achieve them demonstrated just that. This was done by referencing the database he had amassed in the process of attempting to become a contemporary artist, and which had resulted in a massive index of approximately 8,500 artworks compiled courtesy of the internet. It is this process, encouraged by the personal confession that seems to underscore Feel Better After Throw Up, that feels aptly described by the term “archival regurgitation”. Interestingly, if you are not apprised of the titles of either series, you would be hard pushed to distinguish between Feel Better After Throw Up or the works that constitute How to Make a Contemporary Artwork. So what exactly does this notion of “archival regurgitation” imply?
Tan Tian’s how-to process was simple: he delved into the database using a keyword as the search parameter. This could be a shape like “circle” or a material like “concrete”. This would bring up a list of artists who had used these. Tan Tian could then select specific works to use as models, and apply the extracted element to a new component which was determined by the outcome of a second keyword search. Like a chemist attempting to extract a new essence from various existing compounds, he exercised his skill to distil a formula for making an artwork. In short, this is derived from the more immediate or obvious recurring characteristics in the works of a leading contemporary conceptual artist. Any criteria could be invoked to extract characteristics that are redeployed as the formal strands of an artwork that is titled to reveal the names of the artists appropriated: Thea Djordjadze+Mona Hatoum+Franz West or Jessica Jackson Hutchins+Nika Neelova+David Batchelor or Jack Strange+Gillian Wearing+John Stezaker or Bing Wright+Shilpa Gupta+Meera Devidayal. The list of possible permutations is endless as Tan Tian’s large and diverse output demonstrates.
The wholly random qualities of all these pieces is up-ended by the strikingly open biographical quality of their inception and intent. All artists’ works and exhibitions thereof narrate some biographical aspect of the artist who made them, revealing the influences that had a hand in shaping the works on display. Yet, conventionally, few bare their souls or reveal the seeds of their inception quite so directly as those Tan Tian combined in this solo exhibition by directly naming his sources. It is, in the artist’s own words, a performance in which he assumes the title role, acting “the role of the contemporary artist,” as a means of finding “his own position and realising his capabilities.”[2] It is idealist: just as the grinning, almost giggly, expression he offers in How to Self-Promote – Co-operate with Museum -- CAFAM – Recognise Me, which exudes a beguiling innocence. Yet, practical it is, too, in its plot to realise the artist’s ambitions. In his hands, these very human failings in ways that are as humorous as they are provocative, which renders them readily palatable to variegated individual tastes. “I don’t know,” he says, “whether simply through planning, subjectivity, and continuously reorienting myself I can let myself become a contemporary artist, or whether I am merely imitating being a contemporary artist very well.”[3]
The composite constructions are certainly clever and amusing. On the one hand, they rely heavily upon the viewer’s knowledge of the art world; our recognition and appreciation of the elements that are displaced and reconfigured. That is what lends the work its humour. On the other, the viewer unacquainted with the most current trends in contemporary art, applying the formalist criteria of composition, command of materials, elements and spatial awareness may simply find the work unreadable and clunky. But then; “Contemporary art is a source of consternation,” writes author Dolan Cummings. “The very novelty that appeals to so many people is to others a betrayal of art itself.”[4]
The all-Important subtext in thee assemblages is a knowledge and appreciation of the practice of appropriation. “Good artists borrow; great artists steal” is the phrase that is invoked to justify such acts, or where influence is overt, attributed to Picasso, who is deemed one of the greatest thieves of all. Tan Tian’s objects are undeniably attractive; the danger is where having the problem illustrated in this way comes close to becoming an endgame in itself. But not yet.
Tan Tian’s experience of art was innate, beginning long before he was of a mind to recognize his own desire to become an artist. As mentioned, he is the son of artists. His father, Tan Ping, one of China’s most revered and individual painters; his mother, the respected designer Teng Fei. Both are senior lecturers at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Under such parentage there is a certain inevitability to Tan Tian’s choice of career. And to the views he holds of practice, centered on dedication, professionalism, individuality, success, and credibility as well as an understanding of the work and challenges involved in sustaining a career. Tan Tian’s father owes his respected reputation to his contribution to the discourse of the abstract and emotive in painting; a language he has made distinctly his own. So whilst Tan Tian was early on encouraged to seek out his own language of expression, it was from the first a challenge he also viewed with some trepidation; not least, one complicated by a son’s inevitable oedipal urge to usurp the attainments of the father.
Upon his return from the U.K., where Tan Tian gained his first degree (unusually for many art students / artists in China who study abroad in that a bachelor degree is usually obtained in China before the individual travels abroad to gain a master’s degree), he took a job in Beijing’s White Space gallery where he gained his first memorable exposure to “the art world”. The encounters, incidents and attitudes he observed there would be stored away as a resource of insights into distinctive interpersonal mechanisms to be examined in his work. This has become increasingly apparent as demands, responsibilities and relationships that each affect an artist’s creativity, output and progress in various ways and degrees expand in tandem with his career.
Idealist, as every young artist ought to be, in the U.K. Tan Tian was free to view art through the prism of being an art student, and from participation in two exhibitions. Delightfully fitting for the humour that Tan Tian injects into his art, the first was in a pub, the Wagon and Horses in south-west London’s Surbiton, and titled “BYOP” (Bring Your Own Pie, a variation on the more familiar British acronym BYO for supplying your own alcohol at parties and certain unlicensed restaurants). The second, in the Toilet Gallery, named for deducible reasons of the building’s original purpose, for an exhibition of student works from his college, Kingston, titled “History was no longer real”. It may be a clichéd view of the British cultural climate, but it may well be this immersion in a culture that feeds so deeply on irony which encouraged Tan Tian to inject so much of the stuff into his work.
But, whilst clearly being something of a young idealist, Tan Tian has not submerged his critical faculties in the ideals he holds. Quite the opposite. He chooses to leverage those ideals to propel his critical faculties to the fore. This became increasingly clear with works produced from late 2015 through to 2016, which are more directly vocal of the situations and issues that prompted them. I’ll Meet you in the Half Way … Of Course You Can Sit on It … You See Something Which Others Cannot See … each of these work titles speaks of words spoken during encounters in the artist’s studio and deftly use nuance to conjure the conversational context for us I which they were uttered. The great 20th century critic Robert Hughes, author of the influential treatise The Shock of the New, wrote in that tome “What has our culture lost in 1980 (this was the year the book was published) that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore and, above, the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.”
Whilst that was the condition of art thirty years ago, as postmodernism waned, the commercial market stirred, and what we presently term contemporary art had yet to find a public profile, it also describes a situation that was very Western-centric. In that moment, the West was hardly a “radically changing culture”, which may account for the loss Hughes discerned. Yet, it was nothing less than a radically changing cultural world into which Tan Tian was born. The more one studies Tan Tian’s work, the more evidence emerges that he is working with some highly apt metaphors for explaining the nature of this rapid change to its inhabitants – its art-world inhabitants at least – as he upholds ideals within a cultural framework that does not yet (want to) recognize them.
As an example of how artists who critique the system are so often ahead of their times, or how they deal with living within frameworks that are not yet able to recognize their contribution, it is worth recalling the Shanghai-based artist Zhou Tiehai or the Beijing-based artist Yan Lei, who were following similar paths of enquiry in the 1990s. Both curtailed their critiques to greater and lesser degrees in the early 2000s. Their role models were Hangzhou-based Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi who began their critical commentary earlier still, spitting out with barbs against the blinkered egotism of the art world from the late 1980s, critiques which evolved to become more broadly social, cultural in time. Without going into great detail here, these examples demonstrate that this type of critique of the art world is the province of youth, and becomes harder to challenge as the artist’s career unfolds. Those were perhaps different times. In both the 1980s and 1990s, the contemporary – then termed “new” or avant-garde – artist was represented and experienced as being the outside-society figure that underscored the West’s image of the modern artist from the late 1800s onwards. Beginning in the latter part of the 20th century, it would become increasingly impossible for artists to exist, to function, outside of the art world’s institutional and commercial system. But this is also Tan Tian’s predicament – how to become a functioning part of that system without finding one’s identity subsumed to prevailing conventions and the correct handling of the requisite relationships?
It was never easy to become an artist, but today with the full range of experimentation that unfolded in the 20th century, what can an artist achieve when so much has already been done in the name of art and breaking new ground? Simply, as the 2015 work Jonathan Horowitz + Mel Bochner + Lawrence Weiner[5], so eloquently states, how to turn something into a thing, that being one that is worth looking at, and worth preserving? This conundrum underscores the challenges that Tan Tian tackled in transforming other artist’s works into a personal language in How to Make a Contemporary Artwork and the multitude of boxes that the artist needs to tick, as laid out in How I Became a Contemporary Artist.
Tan Tian stands out in his generation for drawing attention to what it means for art to be exhibited in the particular environments of institution, art fair, etc., as well as the relationship between artist and curator – once that of scholar and research object, now often one of curatorial conceit with illustrational visuals supplied by artists, and which requests the tailoring of works to fit curatorial accent, topic, exhibition space and the positioning of things within that environment as a specific and temporal spatial setup: the correct response being Tell Me What You Want.[6]
This led Tan Tian to the thorny issues of maintaining artistic independence vis-à-vis attaining commercial recognition. Becoming an artist involves coming into contact with an increasing number of people from the art world – as least it does if the artist is lucky. It means coming to terms with the conditions of exhibition-making, or of participating in group shows with specific agendas and parameters. The experience of being asked to accommodate these types of conditions is always something of an affront to new recruits to the system. First encounters leave lingering impressions. Tan Tian channels these impressions and experiences through art. One example, the installation work Group Show Curator, was prompted by a conversation between a curator and the artist who is asked to make the work “fit” a gallery show for reasons of scale and colour. There are thus myriad backstories to Tan Tian’s works. The slogans which Tan Tian now adds as an aid to understanding function well as punchlines, but the works do not exclude viewers if they are unaware of the context that inspired them. If you don’t know it, well it’s a shame but you will still sense there is a joke underscoring the juxtaposition of text and form in these works; the stories simply make the text-punchline so much punchier. Feeling let-in on the in-joke makes the viewer feel embraced in the warm aura of an artist’s sharing of a personal dilemma; after all, what would you do in this situation, they seem to ask.
Tan Tian previously used language directly in several video works. Both How to do an Interview (2015) and Four Colours (2016) mock the linguistic lexicon that artists per force adopt to describe what they do as art, the requirement today for artists to speak of their own work as eloquently as theorists, historians, or critics might. How easy it is to learn this form of artspeak, he suggests, and how vapid it can seem when enacted and not from the heart.
In terms of incorporating text into artworks, Tan Tian follows a line of respected artists which includes Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, Jack Pierson, Richard Prince, Jenny Holzer and David Shrigley to name a few. Through image, composition, gesture, material, form or concept they point to issues, possibilities for alternative points of views, perspectives; Jammed… Choke…: It Will Never Happen to You. These slogan-like statements are bold and visceral, full of confidence and clarity on the part of the artist. The forms with which the phrases are combined are incongruous, absurd; combinations further suffused with humour; You Got the Swag works on so many levels. Tan Tian has evolved a form of art that wears its attitude fully on its Technicolored sleeve.
In a short few years, Tan Tian has been productive. The How to Make a Contemporary artwork series alone resulted in an astonishing volume of works. Surprising, too, the rich imagination brought to creating them. The approach is strong, the various iterations (artworks) succinctly connected. The issues he is focussed on are prescient and, in terms of the works, resolved in diverse and satisfying ways. Yet; if it is true – and why would we say “All good things come to an end” if it were not the case? – that we do tire of the same tone and content if perpetuated through an extended period of time, that an artist cannot continue to do the same thing forever without evolving the idea/concept/work, what may the future hold for Tan Tian? It is so often irritating when writers attempt to predict the future, but autumn 2017, here we are on the brink of a new phase for Tan Tian as he embarks on a master’s degree programme, this time in New York. In terms of foreseeing the future, for Tan Tian this will inevitably predicate a shift. New York has long been a vibrant centre for contemporary art. That alone will impact Tan Tian’s worldview. New experiences, new ideas and a very different art world from either that of the U.K. or China, but there is a whole big world outside of China and outside of the art world too. The force of that awareness is sure to converge in New York, and to open Tan Tian’s eyes to myriad subjects, topics and experiences that have – perhaps – broader appeal and meaning than self-referencing in-jokes at the expense of the art world. This does not diminish the work done to date, or the long-term value embedded in these works as reflective images of prevailing issues within that art world. But there is more at stake too than it is possible to discern now for an artist so devoted to the quality of irony. What makes his work to date function so well is the deadpan façade on the ridiculous attributes Tan Tian combines as Art. We need to be unsure of what to make of these works at first encounter; we need to be wrong-footed by the gap between appearance and intent. That is what makes the moment of realisation, when we get the meaning that is dangled in front of us, all the richer in the savouring. But there is a lot of other aesthetic elements at work here that are less easily defined, but that clearly play a role in the success of the works. As artist Aiden Campbell claims “When artists are preoccupied with making sense, they are distracted from readily generating genuinely innovative art.”[7] Sensibly, so far, Tan Tian has not been overly focused on “making sense”.
One might also consider the flip side of the coin, that being the over indulgence in irony and the dead-end that this may represent: Mathematician-philosopher Alfred Whitehead described irony as signifying “the state of mind of people or of an age which has lost faith. They conceal their loss, or even flaunt it by laughter. You seldom get irony except from people who have been somehow more or less cleaned out.”[8] This is a paradox in Tan Tian’s style. While some may describe contemporary art as the product of people or culture that is somehow cleaned out, and where Tan Tian’s own appropriating approach to creativity may evidence a loss of faith in the possibilities for innovation, yet he has managed to find a wealth of new things to reveal, or new ways in which to reveal things with which we may already be familiar, revitalizing art’s function in showing problems for what they are.
It brings us back to the words of Robert Hughes “Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there [is] plenty of territory to explore and, above, the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, [can] find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.” This is the best description of what, through the activity he pursues as art, Tan Tian has achieved so far.
[1] An exhibition titled “Memo II” at White Space Gallery, Caochangdi, Beijing
[2] “Tan Tian: Demonstrations Under Art World's Conventions” / author Huang Bihe
[3] Tan Tian quoted in Hi-Art
[4] Dolan Cummings, introduction to What is Art Good For?, from the series “Debating Matters”, pub. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, 2002
[5] Jonathan Horowitz + Mel Bochner + Lawrence Weiner, 2015, 数码微喷 g-print, 64 x 94 cm
[6] All following phrases in italics are actually titles of Tan Tian’s works.
[7] Aiden Campbell, “Artist or Agent”, What is Art Good For”?, pub. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, 2002
[8] Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, pub. M. Reinhardt, London, 1954
'谭天'
凯伦史密斯
谭天1988年生于北京。自2012年于英国金斯顿毕业后，短短几年间，谭天在北京举办了多个令人印象深刻的展览，其中就包括他在空白空间的个展。空白空间也是谭天归国后工作过的机构，这段工作经历带给他洞察艺术界是如何进行商业运作的机会，而他的观察又转化为他作品的内容。谭天还参加了许多重要的群展，其中就包括2016年秋在上海余德耀美术馆举行的“波普之上”。对于一个父母均是知名艺术家的艺二代来说，谭天职业艺术生涯强劲的发展势头本不会令人感到惊讶。但就目前来看，他的成功完全立足于自身的努力。
我第一次接触到谭天的作品是在2014年[1]，当时我看到的是一组略显笨拙但饶有趣味的物体。在我看来，他们正处于一个关键的“档案回流”阶段。我将在接下来的文字中解释“档案回流”——谭天是如何消化这些档案并且重新编排它们的。2015年1月，谭天参加了“第二届CAFAM未来展”。这个展览由中央美术学院美术馆策划，旨在调查年轻艺术家的生态。谭天的参展作品由一张超大尺寸的他与新婚妻子的结婚照以及两侧的盆栽构成。饱含英雄色彩的照片把艺术家渲染成一位“天真的理性主义的年轻人”。图像所具有的令人吃惊的现实主义及其自画像功能和谭天之前创作的装配物形成了鲜明的对比。在《当代艺术家该如何自我推广－与美术馆合作－CAFAM－认出我》(2014) 这件作品流露出的欺骗性的天真和新婚的欣喜若狂之外，我们看到的是一个野心勃勃、自信满满的艺术家。
《当代艺术家该如何自我推广－与美术馆合作－CAFAM－认出我》表明了谭天一直以来对于如何获得艺术入场券的思考：从最显而易见的问题“在今天，什么是一个当代艺术家” 到实践层面的考量 “如何成为一个当代艺术家”。这张结婚证件照是谭天自2013年开始实行的项目《我是如何成为一个当代艺术家的》中较为张扬的一件作品, 而这个项目的名称同时也是他归国以后举办的首次个展 “第二个个展”的主题。
《我是如何成为一个当代艺术家的》，不仅是这次展览的主题，还可以视为一次小规模的思考与回顾，其中收录了谭天最近两年创作过程中产生的观念、根据观念完成的作品，以及谭天参照的、赋予他灵感的艺术家。一系列广泛的、大胆的、色彩鲜艳的、且奇怪的元素构成了一个宏大的、自嘲的、复合的表述。展览的一个重要组成部分是一张描绘出“成为”一个艺术家所需条件的系统图—从一个可利用的知识数据库，到对当代艺术家该如何说话、如何自我推广、如何销售作品这三个条件的学习—以及每个条件细分出的众多子条件。《我是如何成为一个当代艺术家的》还包含了一件着色鲜艳、置于地面的霓虹灯作品《资料库索引》，它以儿童搭积木的方式呈现出谭天搜索信息时用到的网址。霓虹灯网址与积木在形式上的相关性是：前者如同知识获取的敲门砖，为了获得知识，我们浏览网站，或者更准确的说，从一个网站“搭”到另一个网站。当然，作品也象征性地指出，如果艺术家在今天想要获得任何（商业）成功，就必须在一张关系网中被连接，缠绕。
这个项目的起源可以追溯到2013年谭天在他艺术生涯的初期，所体验到的一连串的紧张感，在他的系列作品《吐出来就好了》中我们看出他是如何在作品中转化这样的感受的。巨大的、不协调的形态，表面涂抹着鲜艳而病态的色彩，对材料所不具备特质的暗示，这些作品似乎在有效地厘清他的系统；或者说是一针清除沉溺在艺术大杂烩中的残余物的解毒剂，以自助餐的形式在所有传统美食的逻辑之外被享用。我们或可猜想，这是一种艺术上的消化不良。而到了2013年末，谭天打扫干净他的调色板，转而以即兴的、讽刺的手法在不同层面创作当代艺术。他似乎想要提示的是，在今日，成为一个成功的当代艺术家已是一条标明所需条件的清晰路径。而他在《我是如何成为一个当代艺术家的》主题下输出的作品恰好反映了他的创作方式。具体来说，谭天在尝试成为一名当代艺术家的过程中，参照了一个他自己构建的数据库，其中可以索引约8500件从网络中搜索到的艺术作品。正是这个私人化的、坦白的创作过程，凸显了《吐出来就好了》的语境，并恰当地解释了“档案回流”这一概念。然而有趣的是，如果你并不知道这两个系列作品中任何一个系列的标题，你可能会分不清一件作品是出自《吐出来就好了》系列还是《我是如何成为一个当代艺术家的》项目。那么，“档案回流”究竟意味着什么呢？
谭天创作“如何”的过程很简单：选择一个关键词作为进入数据库搜索所需要的参数。这个关键词可以是一个形状，如“圆”，或一种材料，如“混凝土”。作为搜索结果出现的是一串使用过相关形状、材料的艺术家名单。随后，谭天可以在名单中挑选某一件作品作为原型，并把从中提取出的元素与一个新的、由下一个关键词得出的结果相结合，共同组成自己的作品。像一个化学家试图从各种现有的化合物中萃取新物质一样，谭天提炼的是一个制作艺术作品的公式。简单来讲，公式源自当代观念艺术家的作品中反复出现的直接、明显的特征。谭天可以用任意标准提取这些被他自己重新调用的形式线索，而他每一件作品的标题都呈现出被挪用的艺术家的名字：《Thea Djordjadze+Mona Hatoum+Franz West》，《Jessica Jackson Hutchins+Nika Neelova+David Batchelor》，《Jack Strange+Gillian Wearing+John Stezaker》，《Bing Wright+Shilpa Gupta+Meera Devidayal》。可能的排列组合方式像谭天已经实现的作品一样，变化多端，不可穷尽。
项目本身的创建及其意图让项目中的作品保持了开放的传记性，这种特性超越了作品具有的随机性。所有涉及到的艺术家作品和展览都以传记的方式解说了制作它们艺术家，并揭示了展出作品是如何受这些艺术家的影响的。然而，在通常情况下，几乎没有艺术家会像谭天在个展中这样直接指出创作时所参考的资料。用谭天的原话来说，他在一个行为项目中所要做的“就是充当‘当代艺术家’这个角色，找准其位置，履行其职能。”[2]这是理想主义的：正如《当代艺术家该如何自我推广－与美术馆合作－CAFAM－认出我》中的咧嘴笑，几乎是由傻笑流露出的带有欺骗性的天真；同时也是实际的，在策略上实现了艺术家的野心。在谭天的手中，幽默又挑衅的人为故障让他的作品符合了不同人的趣味。“我不知道，”他说道，“只通过计划、臆想和不断的自我重新定位，是否真的能让自己成为一名当代艺术家，又或者是一个极其类似当代艺术家的模仿者。”[3]
谭天作品中的合成性构造自然是聪明而有趣的。从一方面看，它们强烈地依赖观者对艺术世界的熟悉程度；以及对重新配置的艺术元素的辨识及欣赏。这赋予了作品幽默感。从另一方面来说，那些对当代艺术流行趋势不熟悉的观众，如果用构成的形式主义标准，以及艺术家对材料、元素、空间感的控制法则评判谭天的创作，也许会感到他的作品难以解读甚至是的粗糙的。然而，多兰·卡明斯写道：“当代艺术是惊愕的源泉。能感染许多人的新意对于其他人来说只是对艺术本身的背叛。”[4]
这些装配物隐含的至关重要的潜台词是关于挪用的知识和欣赏。“好的艺术家借用，伟大的艺术家窃取” 这句话让挪用行为变得顺理成章。或者说，挪用明显受到了被认为是最伟大的小偷毕加索的影响。谭天的作品无疑是吸引人的，但问题是，当艺术家毫无保留地把窃取的方式呈现在作品中，他的创作也许已经接近尾声。不过，谭天的实践才刚刚开始。
谭天的艺术家经验是与生俱来的，在他意识到自己有成为一个艺术家的欲望之前就已经存在。正如上文提及的，谭天来自一个艺术家庭。他的父亲谭平是中国最受推崇的画家之一；他的母亲滕菲是一位倍受尊重的设计师。他们都是中央美术学院的教授。这样的家庭环境让谭天不可避免地选择成为一个艺术家，将他实践的重心放在对艺术的献身精神、职业化、个人风格、成功、公信度上，并将实践中遇到的挑战理解为职业发展道路上必经的历练。谭天的父亲在抽象绘画领域创造出属于自己的独特艺术语言。因此，谭天在寻找属于自己的表达方式时，多少会因为想要超越自己的父亲而感到焦虑。相应地，谭平也要面对儿子在艺术成就上必然的、俄狄浦斯式的弑父情结。
谭天从英国获得第一个学位回国后（通常，许多中国的艺术学生或艺术家会先在国内完成本科课程，然后出国攻读研究生学位），在北京的空白空间画廊工作，并初次接触到了一个令他难忘的 “艺术世界”。他把在这里观察到的人事物之间的相遇、冲突、态度存储起来，作为他创作作品时研究人际关系的第一手资料。我们可以愈发明显地看到需求、责任、关系正以不同的方式和程度影响着艺术家的创造性、作品的输出和职业进展。
作为一个理想主义者（每个年轻艺术家都应该是理想主义的），谭天在英国透过自己艺术学生的身份自由地观看艺术，并参加了两个和自己注入在艺术中的幽默感相呼应的群展。第一个展览在位于伦敦西南部瑟比顿区一间叫Wagon and Horses的酒吧中，展览名为“BYOP” (“带上你自己的派”，这是一个更常见的英文首字母缩略词BYO的变体，意为在参加派对或去某些无售酒执照的餐馆时要自备酒精饮料)。第二个展览在厕所画廊，画廊的名字取自这座建筑的原始用途。展览“历史不再真实”展出了谭天在金斯顿学院就读时的学生作品。也许反讽性是我对英国文化氛围所持有的刻板印象，但是，或许正是这种根植于英国文化中的嘲讽精神鼓励谭天以相似的状态创作。
然而，谭天作为一个年轻的理想主义者，他的批判能力并没有被他的理想情怀淹没。正相反，他选择借助自己的理想将他的批判性思维推向最前方。从2015年底到2016年，谭天越来越多地针对其作品所处的情境和涉及的问题进行创作。《我去迎迎你》、《你当然可以坐了》、《您的眼力还真是不简单》，每件作品的名称皆来自于曾经发生在艺术家工作室中的对话，而艺术家娴熟地以与原本的谈话有细微差别的方式让当时的对话情境通过作品在观者的脑海重现。20世纪伟大的批评家罗伯特·休斯在其影响深远的巨著《新艺术的震撼》中写道：“1980年(此书于同年出版)，我们的文化丢失的，而先锋派拥有的是什么？是热情，理想主义，信心，探索更多领域的信仰，以及最重要的，一种感觉，认为艺术能够以公正而崇高的方式，象征性地向民众展示文化的激进变迁。”
然而，罗伯特·休斯所谈论的是三十年前的艺术状况：后现代主义衰落，市场的活力被激发，我们现在称之为当代艺术的东西尚未形成其公共形象；此外，罗伯特·休斯是以西方为中心描述艺术的现状。当时，西方几乎没有“激进地变化的文化”，这也许解释了罗伯特·休斯察觉到的文化的衰落。然而，谭天生长的文化环境的变化是激进的。我们越多地研究谭天的作品，越能从中发现可以向民众，至少是向艺术世界中的民众，说明这些极速变化产生的原因、机智的隐喻—谭天在现有的文化框架中维护着这个文化还不能（或还不想）承认的理想。
先于时代之前批判系统，或在系统框架内实践而没得到认可的这类艺术家中，比较有代表性的是活跃在上海的周铁海，或生活工作在北京的颜磊。两位艺术家在1990年代有着相似的质询路径，而到了2000年代初，他们在不同程度上减少了自己的批判。他们的榜样是在杭州的张培力和耿建翌。这两位艺术家从1980年代末便开始尖锐地批判艺术世界的狭隘、以自我为中心，并逐渐将他们的批判所指延伸至当时的社会、文化领域。这些例子说明，艺术家对艺术界本身的批判更多的发生在他们早期的创作中，而当他们事业步入成熟期，挑战艺术系统则变得相对困难。这也许是两个不同的时代。在1980年代和1990年代，当代艺术家(当时被称作前卫艺术家)被看成是游离在社会之外的人，如同西方1800年代晚期之后的现代艺术家。从20世纪下半叶起，艺术家越来越不可能独立于艺术机构与商业系统生存和工作。但这也是谭天所处的尴尬境地—如何在成为系统中起作用的一部分的同时，既不被系统归入普遍存在的惯例，也不用以公认的、正确的方式去处理必要的关系。
当艺术家从来不是一件容易的事，特别是在20世纪涌现了无限种对艺术的实验之后，当今的艺术家还能以艺术之名做出什么新的尝试呢？谭天2015年的作品《Jonathan Horowitz + Mel Bochner + Lawrence Weiner》[5]简单而传神地质疑了艺术家如何把某些东西转化为一件值得观看和收藏的物品，谭天对这一难题的思考体现在他试图将其他艺术家的作品转换为自己的语言的《如何完成一件当代艺术作品》中，以及项目《我是如何成为一个当代艺术家的》所列出的不同子项目里。
谭天比他同龄的艺术家更显眼的地方在于他知道如何让自己的作品在机构、艺术博览会等特定环境中展出时吸引眼球，并且处理好自己作为一个艺术家和策展人之间的关系。艺术家的作品逐渐由艺术学者的研究对象转变为供策展人挑选、安插的视觉材料，并需要像一件定制品般切合策展的倾向、主题、展览空间，以及作品在一个特殊的时空组合中的定位：谭天对此做出的政治正确的回应是《告诉我你想要的》。[6]
这是一个谭天需要解决的棘手问题：如何在保持艺术独立性的同时获得市场的认可。成为一名艺术家，如果这个艺术家还算幸运的话，意味着他要和艺术圈里越来越多的人打交道，在不同的条件下举办展览，或是参加具有特定议题、边界的群展。对于艺术系统的新成员来说，迎合这些条件会让他们感到自己被轻视。这样的印象和经历出现在了谭天自己的作品中。比如，装置作品《群展策展人》源自一场对话，其中，一个策展人要求艺术家提供一件在尺寸、颜色上适合画廊展览的作品。谭天的其他作品也诉说着无数个类似的幕后故事。谭天加在作品中的标语如同妙语般辅助人们更好地理解作品，但不了解作品语境的观众并不会感到被排除在外。如果你不了解具体的语境，这有点可惜，但你仍旧可以意识到作品文字和形式的并置所产生的幽默感；作品背后的故事只是让再现这些故事的妙语显得更加简洁有力。当艺术家把艺术圈内的笑话透露给观众时，他在以分享自己的困境的方式让观众近距离体验艺术圈的生存状态。作品似乎在让观众和艺术家换位思考，如果他们自己遇到艺术家面对的情境时会怎么办？
谭天之前的几件影像作品中已经涉及到对语言的直接使用。在《当代艺术家该如何接受采访》和《四种颜色》中模拟了艺术家描述自己的艺术创作时必须要用到的语汇，以及当下艺术家阐释自己作品时被要求像理论家、史学家、或批评家那样能言善辩的情景。两件录像作品展示出这种模拟性的艺术说话形式很容易被学习，而且，艺术家不走心的扮演看上去也特别乏味。
谭天在把文字融入艺术作品方面，和约瑟夫·科苏斯，劳伦斯·韦纳，杰克·皮尔森, 理查德·普林斯, 珍妮·霍尔泽和大卫·史瑞格里这些值得尊重艺术家一脉相承。通过图像、构成、姿态、材料、形式，或指向某些问题的观念，提出替代性观点、视角的可能性；《想得美》：艺术家用这些口号般大胆而发自内心的声明，自信且清晰地表达自己。作品的形式与组合的词语格格不入，怪诞，且充满了幽默感，比如，《够屌》就结合了许多层次的意味。谭天发展出了一套态度附着于绚烂夺目的计策中的艺术形式。
短短几年中，谭天是高产的。单是《如何完成一件当代艺术作品》一个系列的作品就产量惊人。而同样令人感到惊讶的是谭天创造这些作品时丰富的想像力。强有力的创作方法将其衍生出的变化多样的作品清晰地连接在一起。谭天的作品以不同的、令人满意的方式回应着他所关注的具有预见性的问题。然而，好的事物是否都将终结？我们迟早会对在一段时间内恒久出现的同一个格调和内容感到厌倦，因为一个艺术家不可能在不推进自身想法／概念／作品的情况下，永远保持其新鲜度。类似地，谭天创作时持续使用的艺术体系将何去何从呢？作者本不应该对一个艺术家的未来妄加判断，但谭天会在2017年的秋天迎来一个新的时期：他要在纽约开始研究生阶段的学习。我们可以预见，这一新的开始将为谭天的艺术生涯带来转变。纽约一直以来都是当代艺术活跃的中心，这个城市本身也将对谭天的世界观产生影响。这里有新的经验、想法、以及与英国和中国不同的艺术世界，当然，还有一个更广阔的世界超越了中国和艺术圈本身。纽约无数的对象、主题、经历自然会让谭天的眼界更为开放，这些或许比艺术家在创作中以避开更广阔的艺术世界为代价、指向自身的圈内笑话具有更大的吸引力和意义。这并不是在贬低谭天去美国前已经完成的作品，或是否认他的作品所包含的长远价值，即反映艺术圈中普遍存在的问题。然而，对于一个在研究反讽的艺术家来说，总存在比他能察觉到的更多的问题。谭天的作品有趣的点在于其由荒唐的元素组合成的艺术的一本正经的表面。我们第一次看到他的作品时并不确定艺术家想表达什么；作品的表象和意图之间的差距也让观者感到措手不及。这便成就了一个认知的时刻：意义越是在我们面前悬置，我们越能细细品味作品。当然，谭天的作品中还有许多其他不容易被定义但起着关键作用的美学元素。正如艺术家艾登·坎普贝尔所言“当艺术家专注于让作品变得有意义，他们就不能发掘出真正具有革新性的艺术了。”[7]明显地，谭天目前还没有过度地追寻创作的“意义”。
我们也可以从相反的视角出发，即对反讽的滥用与其导向的绝境：数学家、哲学家阿尔弗雷德·怀特黑德把反讽比作能够揭示 “丢失了信仰的一代人的精神状态。他们假装没有失去信仰，甚至用放荡不羁的笑来掩藏这一缺失。你只有在精神上被掏空的人身上才能看到反讽。”[8]这种悖论也存在于谭天的作品中。也许有人会认为，当代艺术就是人或文化被内部清扫之后的产物，而谭天的挪用式创作恰恰证明了艺术家已经对创新的可能性失去信心。然而，他仍旧找到了许多可以展现的新的事物，或者说新的展现这些我们原已熟悉的事物的方式，由此重振艺术揭示问题的职能。
回到罗伯特·休斯对艺术的观点“热情，理想主义，信心，探索更多领域的信仰，以及最重要的，一种感觉，认为艺术能够以公正而崇高的方式，象征性地向民众展示文化的激进变迁。” 这也许能贴切地解释谭天目前通过艺术达成了什么。