Two artists, Sun Xun and Zhou Tao, use video to explore China’s industrialization and environmental degradation.

孙逊和周滔这两位艺术家用录像探索中国的工业化和环境恶化。

Mr Sun’s Mythological Time is a surreal, at times overweening animation set in his northern hometown, Fuxin, which was once home to the largest open-pit coal mine in Asia.

孙逊的《通向大地的又一道闪电》是一件超现实主义作品，某些片段是他的北方故乡阜新的夸张动画场景，那里曾是亚洲最大的露天开采煤矿。

Scenes of tanks, miners, fossils and mountains give way to compelling dream sequences, one of which features fishermen hauling a colossal carp beached like a whale.

货箱、矿工、化石和山脉的场景过渡为扣人心弦的梦境，其中一个展现的是渔夫们拖着一条像鲸鱼那样搁浅在沙滩上巨大鲤鱼。

Disconnected vistas scroll across the long screen, recalling the axonometric compositions of Chinese landscapes, though the gruff, energetic paintings that line the walls of the darkened gallery recall the vigorous work of William Kentridge even more than the literati style of classical Chinese art.

没有关联的场景沿着长长的银幕展开，让人想起了中国风景画的轴侧构图，虽然沿着画廊灰暗墙壁排列的充满活力的粗线条绘画更多地让人想起威廉•肯特里奇(William Kentridge)的犀利，而非中国传统艺术的书卷气。

Mr Zhou’s disquieting two-channel video Land of the Throat, by contrast, is shot in the south of China: specifically, the Pearl River Delta, the first region of the country oriented to hypercapitalist production in the era of Deng Xiaoping.

而周滔令人不安的双屏录像《咽喉之地》则是在中国南方的珠江三角洲拍摄的，那里是邓小平时代第一个转向狂热资本主义生产的地区。

Land of the Throat roams abandoned or sullied sites around Guangzhou and Shenzhen, avoiding character and plot in favor of wordless, melancholy shots that cohere into a lurid dreamscape.

《咽喉之地》漫步在广州和深圳周围被抛弃或破坏的地区，没有人物和情节，只有无声、阴郁的镜头，而后过渡为可怕的梦境。

A barefoot man trudges across acres of mud; a turtle bobs up out of brackish water.

一个赤脚男人在广袤的泥地上艰难跋涉；一只海龟在污水中上下浮动。

A parched brown landscape is bisected with red-and-white caution tape, and hills have been eroded so badly they appear like wrinkled skin.

干裂的褐色土地被红白警戒线一分为二，小山遭到严重侵蚀，看起来像起皱的皮肤。

Mr Zhou’s Pearl River Delta is a sci-fi dystopia with no need of special effects, an update of Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville for a century of ecological crisis.

周滔镜头下的珠江三角洲是不需要任何特效的科幻地狱，经过一个世纪的生态危机，它已经成为让-吕克•戈达尔(Jean-Luc Godard)的《阿尔法城》(Alphaville)的升级版。

If Tales of Our Time and its bank-backed predecessors serve as initial maneuvers to broaden the museum’s collection, then I’m prepared to see these shows’ geographic straitjackets as necessary evils.

如果说故事新编以及之前的三场由银行资助的展览是博物馆拓宽馆藏的初步行动，那么我已打算把它们的地域束缚视为必要的牺牲。

And the Guggenheim is indeed planning to present a more global cross-section of modern and contemporary art — in Abu Dhabi, where its controversial planned satellite museum, 12 times the size of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral museum in Manhattan, will place art from after 1960 in a worldwide framework.

古根海姆博物馆的确正在筹划推出更全球化的、跨领域的现当代艺术展——规划中的那座引发争议的阿布扎比分馆，面积是曼哈顿这座弗兰克•劳埃德•赖特(Frank Lloyd Wright)设计的螺旋形博物馆的12倍，将把1960年之后的艺术置于全球框架内。

As for New York, Tales of Our Time and the museum’s coming China megaexhibition offer a welcome opportunity to reckon with art we still see too infrequently.

至于纽约，故事新编和该博物馆即将开幕的特大型中国展览给我们提供了难得的机会，去思考依然不太常见的艺术。

I hope, though, that we start to see more solo shows by the likes of Mr Zhou, as well as thematic exhibitions that let us appreciate him as more than just a national ambassador.

不过我希望，我们能够看到更多周滔这样的艺术家的个展和主题展，让我们能够不只是把他当作一个国家大使去欣赏。