Xu Hongming: Color and Ten Thousand Things : 色彩与万物
Chinese contemporary artist Xu Hongming's third solo exhibition with the gallery, Color and Ten Thousand Things presents new and recent abstract works that examine the spiritual, philosophical, and material elements that ground the traditional art form. Through atmospheric and brightly pigmented color field paintings on silk, Xu Hongming explores space as a field through which the viewer approaches the immaterial: qi (life force), emotion, memory, and the infinite.
The title for this exhibition references a concept in Chinese philosophy called 万物 or “wanwu” which translates to “ten thousand things,” an idea meant to express the multiplicity of existence. Drawing inspiration from diverse sources including Northern Song landscape painting, Dunhuang murals, Modernism, and the artist’s time spent in the Qin Mountains, Xu Hongming’s work rejects binary Eastern/Western categorization, bridging Chinese aesthetic and philosophical traditions and contemporary abstraction in a distinct visual language.
