Solo Exhibition Loft 8 Gallery
Xu Hongxiang: One Night Hunting for Fearies
Artist：Xu Hongxiang
Curator：Alexandra Grimmer
Duration: 05 June - 13 July, 2019
Venue：Loft 8 Gallery, Vienna
Address: Radetzkystraße 4, 1030 Wien
The solo show of Xu Hongxiang entitled One Night Hunting for Fearies has opened on June 5, 2019 at Loft 8 Gallery in Vienna. This exhibition is the first solo show by Xu Hongxiang in Europe. “One Night While Hunting For Faeries“ forms a group of nine recent paintings from 2018 and 2019, which represents the main focus of his creation: parts of landscapes and figures without much information about their origin and personality.
When we facing the works by Xu Hongxiang, three aspects in Xu Hongxiang’s work should be analysed: first, the development of the perspective that Xu Hongxiang takes; second, the plasticity that the artist is searching for in his images and third, the special light that he applies, mainly in his works of the recent years, which permits associations with imagined situations and which lead to the title of this exhibition.
A Specific PerspectiveSince 2012, the subject of landscapes has regularly been reappearing in Xu Hongxiang’s paintings. There are often scenes with branches of trees, light-flooded forest glades or waterfalls, which have been transferred in a special atmosphere. However, there is never a whole landscape visible in one painting: each time, Xu selects particular moments, similar to a view that has been limited through a small window. Although it is only possible to see a limited part of a landscape, the painter masterfully succeeds in conveying a certain feeling with it, combined with his distinctive handwriting, which makes his paintings recognisable at first sight.
Did a whole image exist before, from which the artist cut out his favourite part? Or is the image nothing more than just this specific view? When asking the question of where Xu Hongxiang’s landscape parts originate, the second question arises.
PlasticityThe plasticity most likely results from the strong contrasts that Xu creates and accelerates in his paintings. When it comes to the origin of his images, the artist negates that it is a matter of real, existing landscapes. The sceneries themselves do not primarily interest him. What does interest him are the formal aspects that can be found in certain branches of trees, or the grass and how their shapes and physiognomies accumulating the background.
Furthermore, it is precisely by isolating such moments, which Xu Hongxiang found in nature or in photographs, that he achieves this high level of plasticity. He has a talent for choosing exactly the right detail and transferring it onto his image by cutting it out from the total image.
Xu usuallydoes not provide any information about the place or his relation to the context of the image. The Green Grass, One Part or The White Birds simply show the painter’s approach to his definition of an interesting landscape.
The Use of LightWhat is probably most remarkable about Xu Hongxiang’s paintings is the specific atmosphere he sets as a companion to every image. Similar to a camera obscura, the painter casts light only from one direction onto a few parts of the image, leaving the rest in shadow. What western people would clearly interpret as a melancholic keynote in his paintings might be defined as an ambiguous significance in the Chinese tradition. The feeling that Xu Hongxiang conveys can be interpreted from different perspectives.
The painter succeeds in transferringa specialambiancearound his forrest sceneries and his very particular protagonists that immediately succeedof putting the viewer under their spell. Xu manages to create a feeling of enigmatic mystery. There is usually no direct light in Xu’s scenarios which increases their tension with a mixture of dramatic moments and beauty.
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