自从社会迈入“现代”这个阶段以来，“新闻”一直都在构建着我们的生活，是我们认识生活并且形成我们世界观的一个重要通道。有时，她就是生活本身。人们习惯于接受新闻，根据新闻做出判断，不可逃脱地生活于新闻构筑的“现实”之中。新闻事件构成了人们认识世界的框架，观察新闻成为人们认知世界的一种方法。在全世界，当代文化中的人们不自觉地接受了“新闻”的方式，无可选择地被“新闻”所教育、培养、甚至控制。在中国，由于生活的多样性还未得到充分发展，而与此同时，高速的经济发展速度频繁地制造着各种新闻事件，“新闻”已经成为了人们日常生活的一个重要内容。从某种意义上说，“新闻”就是一种生活。
随着摄影、摄像技术的发明和广泛应用，图像越来越成为新闻传达中的重要手段。原本复制现实的图像，被“新闻”的方式利用而呈现为另一种“现实”，支撑着接受者对世界的判断。这是一种处理过的现实，是一种第二级的现实。而正是这个第二级的现实正在形成一种认识世界和彼此关系的方式，同时这种方式也在重新塑造着我们。
在当代中国，她特有的社会主义经历使政治维度成为当代中国文化中不可或缺的成分。体现在新闻当中，是“历史责任”、“国家意识”、“集体主义”这些观念。这些观念支撑着“新闻”的功能/目的。意识形态性成为新闻图像的重要因素。新闻图像成为政治的视觉表达手段。而由此形成的一套的美学观，我们可以称之为“政治视觉美学”。
这次展览中八位艺术家的作品都与新闻和新闻图像发生了某种关系。尹秀珍的作品《刹车在哪儿？》有意制造了一个新闻事件——车祸的现场，以新闻的手段反映了当下急速发展的社会状态。赵半狄一直以来都在通过各种自我制造的新闻事件把自己演变成一个社会的视觉符号。在这次展览中，他模仿新闻的视觉方式，同时通过个人的一种社会行为使自己成为一个新闻事件。在这个新闻事件当中，他制造了一个个人的奥运会。他把政府行为演化为一个具体个人的表演。在平时生活中，政府欲望和个人欲望的方式和能量是有着巨大差别的，即使在这两种欲望内容相同的情况下也是如此。而艺术家赵半狄通过他个人的行为试图去平行政府的行为，在这样一种平行中，个人的能量被成倍放大出来，形成一个新的个人/社会混杂的空间。
社会主义政治的视觉形象重新出现在李尤松、张大力和杨少斌的作品里。李尤松在当下重新描绘社会主义建设时期的美好图景，当时间的距离已经把图像中政治的内容抽离出来时，作品建造和唤起的是集体主义的乌托邦理想。杨少斌从过去的电影和新闻图像中截取了某个瞬间，记录了自己对那个时代的记忆，形成了个人的新闻记忆风格。张大力通过并置同一图像在不同新闻图片中被修改的情况，揭示了政治视觉文化中的一种普遍的美学态度：艺术源于生活，又高于生活。
宋冬、王庆松和吴小军则利用新闻、新闻式的图像或者与新闻有关的视觉符号解构着新闻和对它的利用者——国家政治。宋冬1997年的作品是在新闻媒体对香港回归作现场转播之时，用水在大陆和香港的两块土上记录着这一特定的时间，但除了时间别无其他。王庆松把喧闹的新闻世界里的各种口号（政治号召和商业广告词）归堆为一个垃圾场，他用最终的结果方式来解构一种功能。同样的方式也体现在吴小军用霓虹灯制作的作品上，他用同样造型的两个国家新闻媒体的符号（CNN和CCTV），合成了WC的符号。
新闻在今天是一种超表面的现实，是一种第二现实。而围绕着这个第二现实的各种展现，我们称之为第二现实主义。这个现实是通过图像和对图像的解释被塑造出来。而由于这种解释性，这个第二现实成为了政治的角斗场。在对未来争夺重塑理念的今天，我们正在展开一种新的政治视觉美学。
In this “modern” day and age, “news” plays an important social role in constructing our lives. News informs our knowledge and worldview. People are accustomed to receiving and basing judgments on news. It is impossible to escape the “reality” constructed by news.
Events on the news have become the lens through which we view the world. In the current global cultural milieu, people unconsciously accept the mode of “news” and have become invariably educated, conditioned and even controlled by “news.”
While China’s dynamic economic developments make constant headlines, its social developments lag comparative behind. Yet, economic “news” dominates our daily lives. To some extent, “news” has taken on a life of its own.
In the wake of the invention and widespread use of photography and movie technology, photographs have become an increasingly important means to disseminate news. Through the news format, original images are manipulated to represent a different reality, a second reality. This new reality informs our sense of judgment and worldview and remolds us in the process.
Given China’s socialist background, a political aspect is an indispensable component of contemporary culture. “News” has come to embody such concepts as “historical responsibility,” “national consciousness” and “collectivism.” These concepts sustain the function as well as the purpose of “news.” Ideology has become an important factor for news images. Consequently, news images have become the visual expression of politics. Therefore, we can call this aesthetic “political visual aesthetics.”
The works of all eight artists featured in this exhibition are related with “news” and news images. Yin Xiuzhen’s “Where is the brake?” dramatizes a traffic accident and uses the means of “news” to reflect the social status quo of high-speed development.
Zhao Bandi uses dramatized news events to transform himself into a social visual symbol. For this exhibition, he creates a fictitious one-man Olympic Games and turns a governmental undertaking into an individual performance. In reality, the will and desire of the government versus the individual are different, even if the content is identical. In attempting to parallel his individual performance to governmental actions, Zhao Bandi magnifies the individual and forms a new liminal space between individual and society.
The images of socialist era politics reappear in the works of Li Yousong, Zhang Dali and Yang Shaobin. Li Yousong uses the glorified socialist campaign imagery of the development era to show how images can be imbued with new meaning over time. Void of their original political content, the images now display a Utopian ideal of collectivism.
Yang Shaobin selects clips from old films and news images to record his own memories of that period, forming an individual memory style.
Zhang Dali juxtaposes doctored versions of the same news image and reveals a general aesthetic attitude in political visual culture: though derived from life, art is ultimately great than life.
Song Dong, Wang Qingsong and Wu Xiaojun use news and news related imagery and symbols to deconstruct “news” and its main proponent: national politics.
Song Dong’s piece involves using water to write the time on two boxes of soil, one from Mainland China and the other from Hong Kong during the 1997 Hand Over ceremony. Time was all the existed during the live broadcast.
Wang Qingsong compiles various political and advertising slogans from the news into a dump. He takes the final product (slogans) to create a new product that deconstructs and subverts the function of the original. Wu Xiaojun’s work embodies this method as well. With the use of neon lights and the borrowed font of two national news media (CNN and CCTV), Wu Xiaojun composes a “WC” sign.
Today’s news represents a superficial “reality” or “Second Realism.” This reality is based on images and interpretations of images. The interpretive nature of this “Second Realism” makes it a political arena. In our midst of vying to remold concepts of the future, we have unfolded a new political visual aesthetics.
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