Dictator’s Training Centre
Dictator Training Centre 《独裁者培训中心》
Passage Gallery, Sydney
20 June - 25 July 2025
“Little dictators,” is how artist Wang Zhiyuan sardonically describes today’s society—individuals absorbed in social media echo chambers, echoing the egotistic puffery of populist politics and news media. Dictator Training Centre, to be presented at Passage Gallery in Haymarket, responds to this trend. A large brick wall will feature a spray-painted phone number that viewers can call to reach a hotline offering satirical advice. This work is a new iteration of Wang’s 2005 piece, Teaching Lie, first exhibited in Beijing. After moving to Australia post-1989 alongside a wave of Chinese artists engaging with Western democratic ideals, Wang returned to a rapidly shifting China. Unchecked economic growth and opportunism played out visually in the streets, where people spray-painted personal ads and business messages. Wang mimicked this aesthetic, offering a satirical school for lies via his own phone number.
His practice, shaped by context and experimentation, contrasts with what he calls the at times “self-entertaining, highly niche closed loop of the art world.” Passage Gallery, a non-commercial 24/7 space in a Chinatown retail shopfront, shares Wang’s interest in accessibility and disruption. With curators Ashleigh Jones-Fernandez and Marco Rinaldi, Wang has developed a site-specific reimagining of the work—with an emphasis that this is not a singular artwork, but a participatory form that could have endless iterations and usages. “It is a platform that you can participate in,” he says. “It is a form of communication that exists because of the reality it is placed in.” In an era of information excess and manipulation, Dictator Training Centre reminds us of contemporary art’s potential as an open-ended platform for reflection, dialogue, and shared authorship.
“小独裁者”——艺术家王志远以这种讽刺性的说法来形容当下的社会：个体沉浸于社交媒体的回音室中，重复着民粹政治与新闻媒体中自我膨胀的言论。《独裁者训练中心》将在海市场（Haymarket）的Passage画廊展出，正是对此现象的回应。一堵大型砖墙上将喷绘一个电话号码，观众可拨打这个号码，接通一个讽刺性的“热线”，收听荒诞的建议。 此作是王志远2005年作品《教你说谎》的全新演绎，该作最初在北京展出。1989年后，王随一批中国艺术家移居澳大利亚，他们大多希望接触和探索西方民主理念。几年后他回到快速转型的中国，发现街头到处可见喷绘的个人广告与商业信息，这些正是无序经济增长与机会主义的视觉表现。王借用这种语言风格，利用自己的电话号码，设立了一个讽刺性的“说谎学校”。
他的创作实践根植于特定语境与不断实验，这种方式与他所批评的艺术界现象形成对照——一个“自娱自乐、高度小众且封闭的循环体”。Passage画廊设于唐人街一处零售店铺的临街门面内，是一个全天候开放的非商业空间，正好契合王对艺术可及性与扰动性的关注。在策展人Ashleigh Jones-Fernandez与Marco Rinaldi的协助下，王为该空间特别创作了这个现场版本，并强调这并非一件孤立的艺术作品，而是一种可被不断重构与使用的参与性形式。“这是一个任何人都可以参与的平台，”他说，“它是一种与其所处现实密切相关的沟通形式。” 在这个信息泛滥与操控盛行的时代，《独裁者训练中心》提醒我们，当代艺术依然具备成为一个开放平台的可能——用于反思、对话与共享创作权。