The following passages are the Chinese-English translated text from a recent article written by the Chinese art historian Gao Minglu. It is also randomly taken from an academic journal in China for the practicing purpose of my translation skills. I translated the first few paragraphs of the original article in which he critiques a Chinese sculpture artist. The article is heavily theoretical.
[column width=”45%” padding=”5%”]Original Text
标题：咏物——焦兴涛转述“物”的方式
作者：高明潞
刊登于《品读》2012年 第54、55页
艺术创作中最复杂的问题就是物的问题。首先，它离不开用什么材料和用什么题材的问题。如果， 我们把材料和题材看作客观之物或者客观事物，那么艺术家如何再现这个客观之物就引发了唯物和唯心之争。现实主义(realism) 和波普（Pop）认为自己是唯物的，而象征主义和浪漫主义则被认为是主观唯心的。最后，由于艺术作品必须承载意义，那么这个艺术的物又被引申为对另一个物的比兴、隐喻、转喻、象征等等。但是，这种讨论特别容易进入解读者的主观想象乃至偏激的臆想之中，虽然这种想象是允许的，但是它有一个走向庸俗社会学的危险。
所以，当我看到焦兴涛的那些包装袋和打上符号的那些“物”的雕塑的时候，我不愿意把它们看做波普现成品的“唯物”，因为，焦兴涛既不直接用现成品做作品，也不用翻制现成品的手法制作那个物的标本，他总是用传统雕塑的塑造手法去为那些被包装的物品造型。正是这种制作意识，使焦兴涛和正在表现的物之间产生了距离。恰恰是这个距离体现了艺术家、物和在场之间的关系。实际上，当艺术家看到、关注、进而思考和表现一个物的时候，那个物已经打上了艺术家的烙印，物已经不是所谓的纯然之物了。
我也不想在这里根据焦兴涛的这些包裹物来抒发我对这些物的社会意义的想象，比如消费文化的隐喻意义，消费社会的物欲横流与人性异化等。这些可能确实是作品所给予我们的启示。但是，这种解读只说出了意义的一般性。这些隐喻不但可以从焦兴涛的作品中找到，也可以从奥登博格、安迪沃霍或者是其他人那里找到类似的联想，并不能指出焦兴涛对物的特殊性看法和感受。
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[/column] [column width=”45%” padding=”5%”]Translated Text
(Title) Chanting Objects – Jiao Xingtao Finds His Way to Retell the “Objects”
Written by Gao Minglu
The most complex topic for an [sculpture] artist is about the question of the object they are dealing with. An object is made of certain materials, so first and foremost, the artist has to decide what material to use and what subject matter the material takes shape of. If we regard the material or the subject matter as an objective entity, and art making is about re-creating this entity, a philosophical question thus arises between metaphysics and materialism. Practitioners of Realism and Pop art claim their territory in materialism; while Symbolism and Romanticism are considered within the domain of metaphysics. Ultimately, because a work of art has to acquire some sort of meaning, the art object has become a simile, a metaphor, a symbol or other rhetorical devices in the place of another object. These subjective meanings are most likely to be consumed by readers and trigger their imagination or even radical fantasies. Although these kinds of imagination and fantasies are legitimate, they could lead to the philistinism in sociology.
For this reason, regarding Jiao Xingtao’s sculpture of package boxes and signs on them, I am reluctant to take them as readymade materials of Pop art. One has to observe his process of art making. Jiao’s works are not modeled from a finished product; neither are they meant to be the replicas of it. Jiao always adopts a conventional sculpting method to shape those package boxes. It is this process that distances him from the object he is sculpting. The distance is important because it precisely reflects the relations among the artist, the object, and the space. As a matter of fact, when an artist sees an object and then takes a step further to ponder how to represent it, the object is no longer an a priori; rather, the object carries the personal imprint of the artist.
I am not going to imagine the sociological meanings of Jiao’s package objects. They could imply consumerism or twisting human nature that feeds on the materialistic consumer society. These possible interpretations could be the intended message for us, but they are too generalized. I say that because same meanings could be said to many works of art, such as those by Oldenberg, Andy Warhol, or many other artists. Therefore sociological meanings can not summarize the uniqueness of Jiao’s viewpoints and his experiences.
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