The Art of Teleportation 问: 人类怎样实现瞬间转移？

March 5, 2021 2021年3月5日

Black holes are fascinating. No one knows precisely what they are. A theory from science-fiction writers is that they’re a spacetime portal, a shortcut in the universe, teleporting whatever crosses them into another dimension. Beyond what lies past them, there’s also a mystery with whatever is left behind.

31-year-old Thai artist Kantapon Metheekul, also known as Gongkan, finds comfort in the idea of these holes being passages to a superior dimension. It’s a concept he explores in several projects, the most notable being his paintings featuring cartoon-like figures emerging placidly from magical portals. He named this style “Teleport Art.”

黑洞拥有令人着迷的力量，没有人知道它到底是什么，在科幻小说家的笔下，黑洞是穿越时空的门户，是宇宙中的任意门，穿过黑洞，就能到达另一个时空。除了黑洞后面的世界神秘莫测，穿越后所遗留下来的世界也同样令人好奇。

31 岁的泰国艺术家 Kantapon Metheekul（又名 Gongkan）将黑洞视为通往理想世界的通道，从中寻求慰藉。他在多个艺术项目中探索着这一个概念，其中最引人注目的莫过于一系列平静地穿过神奇黑洞的卡通人物作品，他称之为“Teleport”（瞬间转移）艺术。

The term teleportation relates to the idea of a magical passage—a transformative and healing force exuding a message of hope—and it’s almost invariably present in his work. In one of his favorite paintings, he depicts different harmful instruments, such as a gun, a missile, and a hand grenade being transmuted into benign objects, such as a pencil, a pear, and a flower, by way of a portal. The piece also shows changing sentiments, an insulting gesture replaced by a hand sign for love, a standoff into an embrace.

“瞬间转移”这个词令人联想到奇妙的通道，代表着转变和治愈的力量，传递给人们希望的信息，同时也是贯穿 Gongkan 作品的主题元素。在他最喜欢的一幅作品中，各种枪支、导弹和手榴弹等危险的工具在穿过黑洞后，变成了铅笔、梨子和花朵等人畜无害的物体。除此之外，这幅作品还有着情感的变化，粗鲁的手势变成代表爱的手势，对峙变成了拥抱。

Even if they often have a human shape, Gongkan’s characters are otherworldly. They appear detached, not aloof or cold but assured and calm. We can see this in his portrayal of a young man with serene eyes rising from a portal that’s simultaneously the sky and the sea. Gongkan’s paintings are atmospheric, almost like a dream sequence, borrowing elements from Magrittean surrealism.

Gongkan 笔下的角色虽然有着人类的外形，却又有点超凡脱俗。他们看上去超然尘外，但又非高高在上或冷眼旁观，而呈现出一派平和与冷静。譬如在其中一幅作品中，神色不惊的年轻男子正穿过既是天空又是大海的黑洞。他的画作有一种空灵感，如同一帧帧的梦境，借鉴着雷内·马格里特式的超现实主义的元素。

He started painting in this style in New York City, where he spent three years working as a creative in advertising. There, he felt lonely and suffered the emotional toll of trying to achieve the Big Apple dream. “It all started in New York when I was feeling stressed and depressed,” he recalls. “I drew a simple picture for self-encouragement: a man emerging from another dimension. It seemed that things could get better if I only could find a solution in my imaginary world.”

He wanted to share the relief he felt, and he began painting different murals in the city with similar styles. Gongkan also made stickers of his black-hole voyagers, slapping them throughout New York, gaining a reputation in street-art circles.

Gongkan 曾在纽约从事三年的广告创意工作，在此期间，他开创了这种绘画风格。在纽约生活的时候，他时常感到孤单寂寞，在追逐自己的“美国梦”的路上屡受挫折。他回忆说：“之所以有这个创意，是因为当时在纽约的生活充满了压力和沮丧。为了鼓励自己，我给自己画了一幅简单的画：一个人从一个时空穿梭到另一个时空。创意和想象的世界给了我逃脱的出口，让生活感觉不那么糟糕。”

Gongkan 想向其他人分享这种舒缓压力的方式，于是，他开始在纽约的墙壁上创作相似风格的壁画。此外，他还制作了一些黑洞旅行者贴纸，张贴于纽约街头，并因此在当地的街头艺术界赢得了关注。

Gongkan moved back to Bangkok in 2019. His homeland opened up a new set of subjects for his freshly defined style, starting with his memories of his turbulent youth as an outlier. “I was mocked and bullied during my childhood for being gay,” he recalls. “Also, my family didn’t understand why I became a Christian while they are Buddhists. I wondered who defines what is right or wrong to pay respect to, or if I have to be in hell for being gay, even if I did nothing wrong.”

It was a lonely childhood, but he believes that his solitude helped him cultivate an aptitude for visual communication. Like most kids growing up in the 1990s, he gorged on TV cartoons, being particularly fascinated by shows drawn with simple lines and shapes. He would go beyond just watching them but conjured elaborate plots and background stories for the characters outside of the shows, outlining a fantastical world in his mind.

2019 年，Gongkan 回到曼谷，在这里，他的新艺术风格迎来了一系列的新主题，首先是他自己动荡的青春时期里的记忆。他回忆说：“小的时候，我常常因为是同志而被嘲弄和欺负。我的家人也不理解，明明他们都是佛教徒，为什么我偏偏会成为基督徒。那时候我很想知道到底是谁来定义对与错，是不是因为我是同性恋就必须下地狱，即使我没有做错什么。”

他的童年是孤独的，但他认为，正是这种孤独，帮助他培养了用视觉去交流的能力。和 1990 年代成长的大多数孩子一样，他沉迷于电视动画片，尤其是那些线条简单的动画作品。他不仅是单纯的观看，还会为片中的角色构想细致的情节和背景故事，在自己脑海里打造一个异想世界。

Although his favorite medium is painting, Gongkan’s work spans illustration, sculpture, photomontages, videos, and augmented reality. He welcomes the challenge of multi-disciplinarity every time, holding a renewed curiosity of what his overarching theme may look like in different forms. He also often combines his teleport art with the work of other artists and collaborates with different brands. In 2020, Gongkan collaborated with pop singer Troye Sivan in the Thai lyrics video for “Take Yourself Home.”

虽然绘画是他最喜欢的创作媒介，但 Gongkan 的作品涵盖了插画、雕塑、合成照片、视频和增强现实。他喜欢挑战跨界的艺术创作，渴望于探索同一主题在不同艺术形式的表现。此外，他还经常将自己这种“任意门”艺术和其他艺术家的作品结合，和不同的品牌联手合作。2020 年，Gongkan 携手流行歌手 Troye Sivan，制作了《Take Yourself Home》这首歌的泰语歌词 MV。

无法观看？前往腾讯视频

He certainly doesn’t shy away from admitting that most of his works reflect his life experiences. Still, they also reflect the world around him, notably the struggles salient in Thai society, such as inequality, LGBTQ issues, and corruption. But this is hardly presented in an explicit manner. Gongkan’s works have a reflecting capacity. Whether representing an escape from social, family, or career pressures, or from the overwhelming injustices of life, or even merely a much-needed moment of peace from the daily fight; his paintings touch viewers subliminally.

“My work is not about cute cartoons—It’s about freedom and extended hope to anyone who’s suffering,” Gongkan says. “The black hole means a dimensional gate that enables us to escape from this cruel world into a better one.”

Gongkan 坦承大部分的作品都来源于他自身的经历，同时也反映着周围的现实世界，尤其是泰国社会中那些突显的问题，例如不平等、LGBTQ 和腐败的问题，只是并非以一种直白的方式。他的作品拥有映射的能力：无论是逃避社会、家庭或职业压力，摆脱生活不公，或者是在艰难的日常生活里寻找一刻的和平，他的作品能够潜移默化地触动观众。

他说：“我的作品并不在于展示可爱的卡通漫画，而在于表达一种自由，为遭受苦难的人们带来希望。黑洞是一个穿梭时空的任意门，让人们得以逃离残酷的世界，进入一个更美好的世界。”

His teleportation daydreams came to him as an escape when the feeling of ineptitude haunted him. As he invites us to step through the same portal, whatever is beyond it or behind it becomes subjective, unique to us. What matters is that—real or surreal—another world is possible.

每当现实让他感到无能为力时，他的“任意门”艺术就是他的出口。他带领观众穿越着同一个黑洞，但对于黑洞所连接的两个世界，则取决于每个人的主观，每一个都是独一无二的。最重要的是告诉人们，在现实或超现实的世界之外，还会存在有另一个世界。

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Website: www.gongkanstudio.com
Instagram: @gongkan_
Facebook: ~/gongkanstudio

Contributor: Tomas Pinheiro
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

网站: www.gongkanstudio.com
Instagram: @gongkan_
Facebook: ~/gongkanstudio

供稿人: Tomas Pinheiro
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Some Type of Way 让母语在海报上飞一会儿

March 3, 2021 2021年3月3日

Myka Arnado’s designs overflow with tension, being pulled at from different times, places, and identities. The Filipina’s artwork, created under the alias CMYKa, is a retro-futuristic mash-up of disparate Asian references. Obsolete media formats, such as floppy disks and CD cases, are overlaid with distressed textures, glitched-out humanoids, and a collection of typography that ranges from Chinese and Japanese characters to archaic Filipino scripts and English fonts.

菲律宾艺术家 Myka Arnado（又名 CMYKa）的作品拥有十足的张力，能跨越不同时代、地点与身份。她能在形形色色的亚洲文化元素中提炼养分，混搭出一套酷炫的复古未来主义风格——计算机软盘和 CD 盒等时下流行的老旧媒介层出不穷，施乐印刷般的纹理、扭曲的人体轮廓填充其中，同时揉捏了中、日、菲律宾古体等偏怪的字体样式。

“The truth is that it is so easy to fall back on doing typography in English or the Latin alphabet,” Arnado says. But using different languages allows her a way to explore how her art and design can be separated from the cultural consequences of her country’s colonization. She asks, “Do I strive to create work (if it’s even possible) that’s devoid of colonial influence? What do I fill that void with? Or do I take all the colonial influence I see, reclaim it, and make it my own?” She leaves these questions unanswered but notes that she’s striving to use more local languages with updated styles.

Myka 说：“现在很多人很喜欢用英文或拉丁字母来做设计。但我希望能通过不同语言，在艺术创作和设计中摆脱菲律宾殖民文化的刻板观念。”创作中，她常常问自己：“如何不受殖民文化影响？如何用设计来填补亚洲文化在平面设计领域的缺失？还是接纳殖民外来文化，重新定义过去并推陈出新？”对于 Myka 来说，这些问题还在创作中摸索，但可以明确的是——她正努力在创作中尝试多种亚洲文字，打造全新的风格。

Baybayin was an abugida script widely used across the Philippines before the Spanish arrived and colonized the country. Recently, it’s found a resurgence of interest, with official street signs offering Baybayin transliterations and artists’ experimenting with it. Although it hasn’t been widely understood for centuries, its cultural value is cherished, and Arnado has been applying futurist touches to the ancient script. “It’s a fun exercise to speculate what Filipino graphic design would look like had we never been colonized.”

在西班牙人殖民菲律宾之前，贝贝因（Baybayin）曾作为一种元音附标文字（abugida）在当地广泛传播。近年来，菲政府开始对这种古老的文字产生兴趣，原本英文的街道路牌被纷纷添加了贝贝因语；许多艺术家也在尝试使用贝贝因文字进行创作，人们对这种语言的兴趣再度升温。尽管近几个世纪以来，认识这种语言的人已经越来越少，但它的文化价值却不断引起人们的重视。Myka 一直尝试用未来主义设计风格来重新演绎贝贝因文字。她说道：“如果菲律宾从未被殖民过，菲律宾的平面设计会是什么样子的呢？我觉得这是一个很有趣的问题。”

In addition to decolonizing her work, Arnado is also pushing to elevate her local heritage among her kabayan, or fellow Filipinos. Born in Cebu City in central Philippines, her culture is often overshadowed by her Tagalog neighbors to the north. English is her first language, but Cebuano is her mother tongue: “Filipinos across the country have to learn Tagalog for most of their student life, while not getting to formally study their mother tongue,” she says. “This can limit one’s ability to engage in discourse and express themselves in their own language.” She points to the prevalence of Tagalog in Filipino music as evidence of the language’s dominance in the country.

除了“去殖民化”的创作理念，Myka 还努力在菲律宾推广本地传统文化。她出生在位于菲律宾中部的宿务市，该市北方地区的 “他加禄文化” 备受社会关注，而当地本土文化却常被人忽视。在家乡宿务，英语虽然是 Myka 的第一语言，但宿务语才是她正儿八经的母语，她说道：“在菲律宾，大家在学生时代都会学习他加禄语，所以没什么机会去好好学习母语，这间接影响了人们用母语交流和表达的能力。”她举例指出，菲律宾当代流行音乐大多以他加禄语为主，这证实了他加禄语在菲律宾的统治地位。

注 1：他加禄，是菲律宾的一个民族，人数约为3000万，为继米沙鄢人之后菲律宾第二大本地民族，也是菲律宾各民族中经济、文化最发达的民族。

注 2：菲律宾宪法规定的官方语言有两种，英语和他加禄语。除此之外，菲律宾还有上百种语言，其中包括了宿务语、伊罗卡诺语等等。

Arnado’s incorporation of Japanese and Chinese characters is a way to further expand beyond the Latin alphabet: “Although Baybayin is closer to Indian scripts than Japanese, using Japanese helps me in how I approach and design with Baybayin,” she reasons. Arnado has also studied both languages; her Filipino-Chinese high school required students to learn Mandarin and Hokkien (the language of ethnic Chinese-Filipinos), and she took Japanese classes in university before doing postgraduate studies in Tokyo.

至于作品中的日文和中文，Myka 则希望能进一步拓展亚洲文字在平面设计领域的可能性。她解释道：“贝贝因文和日文大有不同；在尝试日文设计的过程中，我发现日文对贝贝因文字设计的探索也有很大帮助。” 而事实上，Myka 对这日文和中文都有所研究。她曾就读于中、菲双语高中，学校要求学生学习汉语和闽南语。而在大学期间，她也曾上过日语课，后来还去东京深造硕士学位。

Although the vast majority of the typeface in her work is original, she rarely expands her lettering into full fonts for public use. After considering the functional needs of a project, she decides, “if the type style will organically evolve from shapes, be a new take on an existing style, have to convey a concept, or be evocative of a feeling.” If it’s not necessary for the text to be easily legible, she enjoys treating letters like abstract shapes in a composition.

尽管作品中的绝大多数字体都由她原创设计，但她很少将自己设计的字体完善成字体库，供大众使用。在顾及项目功能的基础上，她需要考虑字体能否在形状的基础上进行适应，从而对现有的字体风格进行全新演绎，让文字传达出某种概念，或唤起某种特定的文化记忆。如果作品中的文字没有被辨识的必要，她就会把文字当作抽象图形来进行处理。

While she’s worked with globally known brands like Nike and Uniqlo, Arnado also jumps at the chance to work with Filipino brands such as Tropical Futures, Revere Clothing, and triART. “Working with local brands is awesome because the work you turn out contributes to pushing the scene, and it helps enrich the discourse surrounding Filipino graphic design and identity. Similarly, working with international brands is wonderful because you get to represent Filipino design and bring it to a global audience.”

如今，Myka 已与耐克、优衣库等全球知名品牌合作，同时也与菲律宾本地品牌保持紧密联系，其中就包括了 Tropical Futures、Revere Clothing 和 triART 等本土潮流服饰品牌。“我希望能为本地的艺术发展做点什么，帮助提升本土品牌的文化知名度；但同样的，我也很乐意与国际品牌合作，这样就可以把菲律宾本土的设计推给全世界的观众。”

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Instagram: @cmyka.type

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

Instagram: @cmyka.type

供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Floral Roll-ups 纸·植

March 1, 2021 2021年3月1日

Under the touch of Daphne Lee, calming gradients and multilayered petals blossom from sheets of ordinary paper. Born in Singapore and now based in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Lee—who co-founded the papercraft studio JUDiTH+ROLFE with her husband in 2016—creates handmade floral sculptures that examine the relationship between man and nature, particularly on how flowers can have a profound effect on our everyday lives.

渐次晕开的色彩，层叠舒展的花瓣，是 Daphne Lee（Judith）用通过最贴近自然的手工制作，把植物与人的关系、连同生命赋予人的意义，悉数植入到衍纸作品中去，塑造出简单却层次丰富的立体植物形态。

Lee stumbled upon paper art by chance. In 2016, she wanted to find a customized gift for a friend but searched high and low to no avail. That’s when she decided to take matters into her own hands and make her own out of paper. Having worked as an architect for nearly a decade, making three-dimensional paper art wasn’t a far leap. Her first creation was a typographic piece. Joining together strips of paper, she assembled a paper sculpture of her friend’s name. She found it surprisingly soothing to work with paper, discovering a zen-like sense of peace in their repetitive folds. She was hooked.

Lee has long adored flowers and the natural world, so it’s not surprising that it’s become a central theme in her art. Magnolias, daisies, roses, and lilies are among some of her favorites, and their colors and shapes are frequently referenced in her designs. “The beauty of a blossoming flower inspires me endlessly,” she says. “So in my color palettes, I try to recreate their original vibrance. The power of colors cannot be underestimated—they can affect our mood and even change the energy of a room.”

2016年，Daphne Lee 本想寻找一种个性化定制名字的礼物送人，但苦寻未果，反而让她下定决心自己动手了起来。那是 Daphne Lee 首次创作纸艺作品。曾作为一名建筑设计师的她，本就有一双乐于发现美的眼睛，她利用手边既有的材料，制成预先裁剪好的纸条，然后就开始卷纸卷，并将它们排列成字母名字。没想到接下来她却发现自己“爱上了这个重复的、充满禅意的过程”，此后几乎每天都在与纸打交道。

在 Daphne Lee 印象中，能吸引到她的总是那些极具美感和生命力的东西。木兰、雏菊、玫瑰、百合……她擅长收集和“解构”自然界里的种种微妙设计所在。“似锦的繁花是我的灵感来源，我在调色板中通常会尝试反映自然界中的实际颜色。”她说道，花瓣的颜色丰富而有渐变感，她会仔细筛选备用的纸张颜色，因为纵深度的关系，作品会随着观者的视角、光线的变化而不断变化，Daphne Lee 对此很是痴迷：“色彩的力量不容小觑，它可以影响我们的情绪，改变一个房间的能量。”

When working, inspiration often comes to Lee without much effort. The faint glimmer of an idea is more than enough for her to make a preliminary sketch. A variety of techniques goes into her paper assemblages, but quilling—a traditional paper-art method involving standing rolled sheets of paper upright—remains the most used. This technique makes a variety of shapes possible. “In traditional quilling, rolled paper is made into various decorative shapes,” she explains. “With my method, instead of using the shapes associated with traditional quilling, I treat each strip of paper as its own line. The paper still stands on its edge, but its cut and glued down individually to create the artwork. It’s in a way, kind of like sketching with paper.”

Daphne Lee 说，她从不会主动寻找灵感，这个过程是反过来的：一霎灵光会找上她，然后就开始画草图制作。一般来说，她会使用不同的技术来创作立体的纸质作品，但更擅长使用立边纸条，这种技术也可以广泛地被称为“衍纸艺术”。“在我的工作方法中，没有使用典型的装饰形状，而是将每跟纸条都作为自己的线条来使用。纸条保持在它垂直的立面，但被我单独切割和粘合下来以构建作品。”Daphne 这样解释道整个过程，相比其他手工创作，她坦言自己就是喜欢衍纸作品的模样，“有点像用纸画素描。”

Since starting JUDiTH+ROLFE, Lee has invested even more time studying up on plants and nature. Both she and her husband believe that there’s a universality to the love of plants, and a person’s preference for flowers can reveal plenty about them as an individual. To them, flowers also hold a tremendous influence on a person’s well-being. With these viewpoints in mind, the studio’s past work has largely been focused on floral-themed art. More than eye candy, Lee’s paper flowers carry the power and beauty of their real-life counterparts but are imparted with an expressive elegance that leaves a lasting impression.

自从创办 JUDiTH+ROLFE 后，Daphne Lee 投入了更多时间在植物和自然身上。她和丈夫都认为，人们对植物的喜爱是是普遍共识，一个人对花的喜好可以揭示出很多个人特点。在他们的理解中，大自然应是和人类的身心健康息息相关。这也许正是他们简历纸艺工作室的初衷：纸张铺陈的植物也是有力量的，它们不仅仅会带给人视觉上的享受，更重要的是寻得内心深处对美的渴望与表达，并将植物的能量投射到人们的心境中去。