Illusive Fields

Painter Xu Hongming’s first solo exhibition in the United States: in philosophy, approach, and practice, Xu has been breaking the barriers of conventional Chinese art for more than four decades with his investigative practice in pure abstraction. The exhibition will showcase a group of works created between 2018 and 2021 — a collection representative of the artist’s impressive growth and immense contribution to the diversity of contemporary painting styles in China. During Hongming’s formative years as an artist, the world experienced intense changes in both politics and culture, including the steep rise of global capitalism, stark wealth disparities, and increasingly eclectic music and fashion trends. The influence of the time can be seen in the abstract details in his pieces, which seem to depict an uncertain balance between dispersion and concentration, embodying the dramatic transformation of those decades. As art critic and curator Gao Minglu said, Hongming’s work “does not represent completeness and wholeness but rather development and incompleteness.” These themes also reflect the artist’s interest in Chinese philosophy and Buddhist mandalas, and their associated ideas of continuous change, fluidity, and interconnectedness. Illusive Fields highlights the artist’s unique sense of spatial awareness; his planes of vision seem to extend into three dimensions without adhering to Renaissance rules of one-point perspective. In his airy abstract environments, the work slowly reveals itself, color rising to the surface and then retreating into a haze of smoke, like looking up at a cloudy night sky, waiting for the stars to flicker into view.