MORGAN O’HARA ( b.1941, Los Angeles)
Morgan O’Hara was born in Los Angeles and raised in an international community in post-war Japan. She earned a Master’s Degree in Art from California State University at Los Angeles, and had her first solo exhibition in the Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1978. Her practice researches the vital movement of living beings through drawing. In 1989 she began doing performative drawing in international performance art festivals, did her first site specific wall drawings and began the practice of aikido, a Japanese martial art. O’Hara lived in Europe for 25 years, and now lives in New York and works internationally. She has been a member of the Elizabeth Foundation in 2010. Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions, including: Czech National Gallery, Prague; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Macau Art Museum, Macau, China; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the British Museum, London. She is recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Gottlieb Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, David and Rosamond Putnam Travel Fund and the Milton and Sally Avery Foundation. O'Hara held her solo exhibition Morgan O’Hara at Museo Nacional de Bellas Arte, Santiago, Chile in 2016. O’Hara has recently been honored by the Lee Krasner Award in recognition of a lifetime of achievement.
O’Hara’s 30-year practice of LIVE TRANSMISSION series is culturally contextualized in the practice of drawing as a fundamental human endeavor. Tracking the trajectories of live movements, O’Hara condenses and transmits three-dimensional movement onto the two-dimensional plane of of paper. Following a precise procedure as she observes performances, she draws with sharp pencils in both hands and simultaneously translates movement into lines. As O’Hara suggests: “I’m trying to track the vitality of movement in real time, in such a way that my personality doesn’t filter it out and I’m not interpreting or emoting. I’m not expressing myself. It goes through my body, so these look like my lines.” Through her sharp, carefully controlled lines and orderly gestures, traces of various movements - whether it’s Larry Miller and his fan performing at Fluxus Festival, Sarah O’Goran removing of yesterday’s makeup, or Ikebana master Ken Katayama arranging flowers - manifest O’Hara’s primordial nature and immediate concern for life.
Artist’s Website: http://morganohara.com/
摩根·奥哈拉 ( b.1941, 洛杉矶 )
摩根·奥哈拉出生于美国洛杉矶，并在战后日本的一个国际社区长大。她在加州大学洛杉矶分校获得艺术硕士学位，并于1977年在瑞士洛桑州立美术馆举办了个展。她的艺术实践旨在通过绘画的形式探索对人类生命至关重要的运动，她同时还以表演、影像、墙画等多种媒介创作。1989年，她开始在国际表演艺术节上进行表演式绘画，并开始练习日本武术合气道。奥哈拉旅居欧洲二十五年，其中逾二十年居住在意大利。她现居纽约，并参加很多国际项目与展览。从2010年起，奥哈拉一直是纽约伊丽莎白基金会的成员。作为美国70年代开始崭露头角的重要观念艺术家，奥哈拉的作品被捷克国家画廊，美国国家美术馆，澳门美术馆，布鲁克林美术馆，洛杉矶汉莫美术馆，阿姆斯特丹市立博物馆，纽约大都会博物馆及伦敦大英博物馆等机构收藏。她还获得Pollock-Krasner基金会、Gottlieb基金会、Leon Levy基金会、David and Rosamond Putnam旅行基金、the Milton and Sally Avery基金会等机构授予的各种奖项。 2016年，奥哈拉在智利国立美术馆举办了个人回顾展。近日奥哈拉被Pollock-Krasner基金会授予Lee Krasner终身成就奖。
奥哈拉长达30年的“场境转换”系列作品的创作深深植根于绘画——这一人类的基本诉求，并且延续了历史悠久的写生实践。它要求绘画者与被描摹者的深刻连结，直接的观察与转化。对于摩根·奥哈拉来说，纸与铅笔不仅是记录的媒介同时也是观念艺术的呈现方式。通过跟踪记录事物的现场运动轨迹，奥哈拉将三维的运动传递到纸上，以二维的形式展现。她遵循着精确设定的步骤，同时用双手握住多只铅笔作画，将运动的轨迹转移到白纸上。绘画过程甚至可以被比作机械装置的客观绘制。就如奥哈拉所说：“我试着用这种不被我个人性格影响的方式去追踪和记录现实生活中的运动。我并不是在演绎我对于这些运动的理解，也没有在夸张这些运动的轨迹。这些线条穿过我的身体，直接呈现出来。”不论是Larry Miller在Fluxus节上的扇子表演、Sarah O’Goran擦去昨日的妆容还是Ikabana大师Ken Katayama在进行花道演示的动作手势和各种动态都被奥哈拉纤细和精准的线条所描述出来，这些线条展现了奥哈拉的本真状态和对生命本质的关切。
艺术家个人网站：http://morganohara.com/
Morgan O'Hara Draw An Old Man Sweeping Leaves at the courtyard of Albergue SCM, Macau, 2009. Photograph by Frank Lei. Courtesy Albergue SCM
摩根·奥哈拉描绘澳门婆仔屋前院老人清扫树叶的轨迹，2009. 摄影：Frank Lei. 致谢婆仔屋文创空间