World in a Room

Hometown of Friendship (2015)

In Chinese, sanmingzhi means “sandwich,” which sounds vaguely similar to Zhu Lingzhi’s first name—this realization came about when a classmate mistakenly pronounced his name as such. Ever since then, the nickname stuck. Now, working under the moniker austin_sandwich, the Anhui-born and London-based illustrator and graphic designer repurposes the oddities he observes in everyday life into his surreal illustrations.

在中文里，朱凌志的名字发音读起来与“三明治”有点相似。这个绰号来源是他的同学对他名字一次不小心的误读。对他来说，这还算是一个挺美好的童年回忆，于是他就保留了这个绰号。目前居住在伦敦出生于安徽的他是插画家兼平面设计师，并以austin_sandwich的名字来进行创作，将日常生活中观察到的有趣事物通过超现实风格重新演绎成插画作品展现出来。

Scotland (2015)

In his illustrations—such as the recent Hometown of Friendship and Between Two Worlds—the imaginative landscapes he has created are filled with an eccentric cast of characters and an assortment of seemingly unrelated objects, all of which are strewn about the canvas. His two-frame series Scotland is presented in a similar manner. Like the aftermath of an alien experimentation gone awry, disfigured cows, dismembered cow parts, and flesh-colored objects are scattered throughout the frame. While chaotic at first glance, the chaos is deliberate and methodical, evident by his neat arrangement of every character and item.

在他最近的一些插画作品如《Hometown of Friendship》和《Between Two Worlds》，各种看似毫无关联的物体分散在画布的各个角落，它们充满他所营造的天马行空的画面，形成了奇特的组合。他的两幅画组成的系列《Scotland》也采用了相似的表现手法。整幅画看上去就像一个失败了的外星人实验，分体的奶牛、牛身体的某个部位和肉色的物体分散于整个画面。然而，正如他的其他作品一样，这种混乱却是他故意为之，画面中的每一件物体其实都是经过精心排列。

His latest work, World in a Room, takes the form of a zine. In a visual style true to his past work, Lingzhi takes viewers on a seemingly hallucinogen-induced visual journey into weirdness, passing through through a series of bizarre spaces filled with geological formations, mysterious stairwells, disembodied limbs, amongst other peculiarities. This project is described by him as an attempt to capture the unfathomable impossibilities that may exist in the fourth dimensions. “As humans, even though we’re living in a three-dimensional world, we can only see in two dimensions,” he says. “In that sense, four-dimensional beings are able to see our three-dimensional world in its entirety.”

他最新的作品《World in a Room》采用了zine这种独立小型杂志的形式。这次的新作品从视觉风格上与他过去的作品保持了一致，引领观众踏上一场充满迷幻能量的视觉之旅，深入探索一个奇异的世界，从一系列怪奇空间穿境而过，那里充满了各种地质结构、神秘的楼梯间、分离出来的四肢等奇怪的物体。他将这一组作品称为对试图捕捉可能存在的四维空间里的神秘事物的尝试。他说：“作为人类，我们在三维世界中只能看到二维平面的全部。而四维世界的生物才能同一时间看到我们三维空间的全部。”

Beyond the abstract concepts that Lingzhi explores, the surrealist setting of each page is actually an extension of his sociocultural observations. The zine is a commentary on the state of modern life where people often forego real-life connections, preferring to retreat into a digital world that offers a different sense of interconnectivity. The ability to stay connected with the rest of the world while we’re just sitting in a tiny room is an interesting phenomenon, he mused.

除了朱凌志所探索的抽象概念，每一幅画中的超现实主义背景实际上是他对社会文化的一种观察。这一本zine表现了现代生活中人们放弃现实生活联系的状态，他们宁愿藏身于虚拟的数字世界里，在那里找到另一种不同意义的联系。朱凌志若有所思地表示，我们只需要坐在一个小房间里，就能保持与世界的紧密联系，这是一种非常有趣的现象。

Due to the number of different colors used, World in A Room was mostly laser printed. But one page of every zine was screen printed in canary-gold; the screen printed page is both signed and marked with the edition number by Lingzhi himself. “Using a manual printing technique like silkscreen printing produces different results every time,” he explains. “For me, creating a zine means complete freedom. The design, dimensions, and materials are all completely customizable. The narrative can be presented in any way the artist sees fit.”

由于《World in a Room》中使用的颜色较多，所以主要是采用激光彩色打印。但其中会有一页采用金色的丝网印刷；每张丝网印刷的页面上，朱凌志都亲自签上了名字，并标上版号。他解释道：“丝网印刷具有一种独特性和唯一性，因为每一张作品手工印刷出来都不会一模一样。对我来说，zine是一个非常自由的东西。你完全可以按照自己的喜好来设计它的样式，尺寸以及材质。画面的叙事也可以按照艺术家认为合适的方式来表现。”