2024

Gene Gallery

Xing Hao’s practice employs a technique akin to the“pretext” in literary creation, presenting an alternative reality through his paintings. 

Such an alternative reality emerges from the interweaving of memory and the present, serving as a means for Xing to retrospect on his family history and the vicissitudes of modern society. Through the " pretext,” Xing’s works transcend a mere reproduction of history and instead convey a sense of detachment from contemporary surroundings and reality.

The sense of floating, in which Xing obscures the definitive positioning of his creations in historical time and space, is partly inspired by the narratives and spirit of Chinese classical allegories and“Zhiguai” (records of anomalies) fiction. For instance, Xing’s work often alludes to the supernatural elements of “Liaozhai Zhiyi” (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), where ghost stories serve as metaphors for individual helplessness and the randomness of fate. This connects to the core of Xing’s creative endeavour: through seemingly unrelated scenes and symbols, he attempts to express an underlying sense of absurdity and powerlessness deeply embedded in the times. These peculiar plots in “Zhiguai” give Xing the ability to transcend temporal dimensions and narrate in a dramatic way, allowing his paintings to bypass historical causality and shed the impression of any specific era. For instance, the recurring images of interior spaces and Su-school architecture (a classical Chinese garden style) possess an awkward presence in his works. They serve as both a retrospective of Xing's childhood and an impression of the era, yet they appear starkly out of place within the contemporary context. As Xing describes, when gazing at the industrial relics preserved under the northern dilapidated buildings, he is struck by their anachronistic persistence. These flashbacks and reproduction of specific scenes can be seen as a response to Victor Turner's concept of the "Invisible Ritual" (1967–1969), where certain cultural symbols, patriarchal clans and historical architecture create a ritualistic field to reflect the complex relationship between individuals, history, and society. However, when Xing deliberately erases all descriptive prefixes, the attitude toward history and the present becomes bizarre and playful, while simultaneously creating a vague and uncertain atmosphere with subtlety, which further intensifies the distortion of time and space, as well as the misalignment between history and the present.

Whether it be the outdated architecture, morphologically mysterious insects and livestock, or geometric dots and blocks that appear out of nowhere and cease abruptly, bringing a detached mood to the painting, these layered elements exude a sense of subtle violence with obscured historical context. This aesthetic treatment aligns with Xing's attitude toward history and memory, keeping his work in a state of tension and restraint during critique and reflection. While revealing the absurdity of reality, Xing’s paintings also avoid inducing a one-dimensional emotional response from the viewer. Instead, the body of work glances at the experiences and histories intertwined and haunted daily life and sensation, forming a means of revisit and reconstruction rooted in historical coordinates. Moreover, this becomes Xing's way of engaging in a dialogue with himself, as he contemplates his own identity amid the complexities of changing period.

Written by / Chen Junyao