How to Reach the Pain of an Era
Text/Pei Gang
Born in the ‘80s from the Hunan Province, his painterly language has always been vigorous and expressive! His paintings are based on unfamiliar, remote landscapes, but somehow reflexively recreate a strange image of local landscape.
Painting, to me, has become a language, an action that feels unbearable to not complete.
-Xu Hongxiang
In the past two years, Xu Hongxiang has cooped himself up in his studio and created a series of new works. In his brand new, spacious studio, aluminum plates and a variety of metal cutting tools are scattered all over the floor. A cold, metallic luster radiates from the large-scale aluminum plate collages hanging around.
His recent works have changed drastically. The subject of his works created in the past two years are about body and flesh. Before that, the early works were about landscape, and also history.
In 2018, he immersed himself in the exploration of painterly language, producing a body of works that bears a somber palette. “The paintings are informed by pure black or different tones of black, with a certain degree of blue, of purple blended in…composition, contouring, pictorial hierarchy, and the variations between wetness and dryness, between thickness of the paint, and between colors are the ontological issues of painting I have been pondering on in the recent years,” said Xu Hongxiang. But now, when simulated by different images, it’s impossible for Xu Hongxiang to not paint them. This has become a kind of muscle memory.
Image That Reaches the Pain of an Era
Between 2012 to 2013, he has collected an abundance of landscape photographs, which variates from European to American landscapes, majestic to exotic sceneries. Relocating from Huantie Art District to a new studio in Liqiao, what is different is not merely the location of his studio, but also the way his works looked! After Xu Hongxiang’s rendition, though remains strange, the “distant, strange landscapes” have somehow magically transformed into “local landscapes.” “Red is like the color of mud, and green is more translucent. Through the act of painting, I immediately turn a distant landscape into my own landscape. I will even place some human figures within it, and these figures are absorbed and localized (by the landscape) right away.” This reflects his contemplation over reality, and it’s also an embodiment of his experience. “Much like the word “Fu” (福), it’s very local—born of a native culture. It is very objective, neutral existence.” This example offered by Xu Hongxiang can also illustrate the simultaneously strange yet local pictorial language conversion in his art. It’s worth to mention that now looking back at our tradition with our fractured, fragmented perspective, tradition is increasingly unfamiliar these days… Facing the torn, mixed, and hybridized cultural reality, through Xu Hongxiang’s conversion over image and painterly language, one can discern a strong sense of “tension” in such reality. This kind of “tension” is our reality, an emotional trace captured by the sensitive Xu Hongxiang, and also the pain of an era that only his dynamic works can reach!
Fleeing from HIs Obsession with Images
In 2016, Xu Hongxiang began to turn away from non-narrative image, gearing his paintings towards subjects with narrative. “Since 2016, I began to paint the people around me. Suddenly I felt like I discovered a new lifesaver, having better control over the subject of my paintings.” He described this feeling as being “rooted.” Since 2017, Xu Hongxiang has often incorporated the events he came across from the news in the stories he made up for his kid. In the second half of that year, he pulled together these fragmented stories and turned them into a tale of an individual, titling it as A Single Life. A Fish, a worm, or a life—all these seem insignificant when one casually mutters the, but life was never insignificant. This large-scale aluminum collage expanded and materialized from the artist’s conversation with his kid, and certain images of the latter series were also derived from this monumental work. “In the end, I decided to use collage to present this idea. I spent almost two months working on this group of works, which in the process, offered me a great sense of pleasure—pleasure akin to a form of freedom. The freedom in painting is hard to come by—it doesn’t fixate on a certain type of mediums, or a certain kind of rhetoric or language. It just comes together effortlessly.” During 2018 and 2019, Xu Hongxiang collected from the internet and his life an abundance of images. It was only then it became clear to him how to incorporate different materials, how to create a narrative out of them, what kind of materials to use, and how to handle images.
Mulian Village is group of four paintings consisted of a variety of mediums include paper, woodcuts, and oil. Based on its narrative structure, collage is a fitting technique for this work. The difference between aluminum collage series such as Ultimate Thinking and Hero and the painting is informed by its industrial production process. In comparison to the instinctual aspect of painting, this laces it with a layer of "cruelty.” “When I am working on the face of a person, I usually outline the contour first before working on the details. When you pierce these contours out, it’s almost like you are facing a person. There’s a sense of cruelty, almost as if you are piercing a human body. I often have this feeling when I am working.” This goes in line with the overarching narrative in Xu Hongxiang’s creative process.
He understands life and flesh as inherently cruel. With such understanding in life, he doesn’t merely process and produce flat image. He is invested in his works almost like he is pricking a body, building a connection with it. This belief accompanies his creative career throughout. “I have a thing for bodily relationship.” When dealing with figures in works such A Boy, Overlook, and Brothers, the overlapping, half-naked bodies and the disembodied limbs in them give rise to a kind of tension that is almost akin to wrestling. This is also similar to cruel narrative in A Boy, which references a real event.
Strangeness and Unknown in Contemporary Reality and Painting
One early morning when Xu Hongxiang sent off his son to school, he went by a kindergarten and came across this security guard who’s garbed in an ill-fitting outfit. The security guard was just a fifteen or sixteen-year-old kid. The person who is in charge of the security of the kindergarten is in fact, an underage. “Everyone assumes that every child must live a bright, innocent childhood. Thinking that they all live a carefree life before they grow up. But In reality, many underage children were force to support their families, going through what most adults also have to face. Sometimes the mental and physical pressures they endure are even stronger than those of adults.” This is a struggle between corporeality and reality, which reflects in the conflict between flesh and aluminum plates in Xu Hongxiang’s new works.
After accumulating various experiments in different languages and metallic materials, he returned to painting. But this time around his previous experiences have become a kind of muscle memory that allows him to deal with form and color in a much more direct, succinct manner. “I am quite intuitive.” He is used to convey these bodily perceptions simulated by images without subjectively altering or covering them. But he never truly relies on his emotion. He strives to create a kind of work that is fully improvised, intuitive. Therefore, his works often demonstrate the tension, complication, and cruelty between body and reality… Perhaps it’s at this moment, the depth of history, time, and space between these images emerge naturally in this way.
“In traditional painting, one seeks for technical dexterity and a highly stylization. In contemporary art, or contemporary painting, one pursues the unfamiliar and unknown.” These are two completely opposite approaches. Xu Hongxiang was once tormented by this conundrum—what does he want exactly in his painting?