On March 22, 2024, inner flow Gallery will launch the solo exhibition Abandoned Land by artist Su Hang. This solo showcase in Beijing will feature 12 pivotal works created by the artist over the past two years, providing the viewer with a glimpse into his unique and captivating vision.
As the chill of winter fades, these forgotten landscapes awaken from their slumber. With the arrival of spring, suburban greenery erupts in a wild frenzy reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic resurgence, both grandiose and desolate. This sudden burst of life commemorates a period lost in time, where entering these old grounds feels akin to stepping into uncharted territory with no bright sunshine.
In Su Hang’s creations, there’s a palpable sense of density and viscosity, where figures and environments meld together like adhesive, enveloping the world in a haze of mystique. Suburbs, wastelands, forests, and enigmatic figures intertwine on canvas, weaving a tapestry that connects collective experiences and individual imaginations.
In the A Road in the Woods series, Su constructs intricately layered forests through a process of “growth” and “fabrication.” Each shape evolves from the fissure of the preceding event, creating a chain reaction of transformations. Figures, integrated into the forest, traverse deeper into the scene, their backs turned to the audience. For Su, “fabrication” breaks away from the solid foundation of “shaping” developed and trained during the seven college years, as well as the possibility of being wary of falling into the quagmire of “manufacturing” and reaching a spiritual and poetic realm.
Through works like Wading Across the Stones by Feeling for the River, Usual Place, Grow in the Shade, and The Possible and the Elsewhere, Su unveils surreal landscapes where reality blurs with fiction. Stories adapted from real life unfold against the backdrop of suburbs and forests as the sun, positioned behind the skyline as the stage for absurd dramas, marks fleeting moments that pass unnoticed. Yet, as a celestial body with immense heat, it remains shrouded, never casting its light upon the scene.
In Burrow, Godot, and Far and Near, Su explores the intersection of inner creativity and external reality, projecting the human experience onto experimental figures. These works reflect his contemplation of the current AI-generated image trend as he navigates the delicate balance between rationality and human emotion. From “input” to “output,” the artist activates the sensibility and emotions in human nature through “digestion” and translates the abstract language into vivid visual works. The computer algorithms that underpin AI-generated images may be characterized by their rationality, cleanliness, and efficiency, but they lack the memory and imagination of the human brain, which still makes mistakes and remains confused. We cannot deviate from the original impulse of artistic creation and walk straight toward the long road of tools and methods.
Su’s paintings transcend traditional perspectives, deconstructing visual narratives to create a surreal space where images and language intertwine. He replaces the occlusion relationship between foreground and background with the overlay effect of multiple layers, squeezes out contour lines between shapes, or transforms a specific object into another state. Su’s works rely on the relationship between image and language. They use the data stimuli carried by images to adapt to a new painting language and guide the next action through traces of the painting process to derive new images. His paintings display how the world is reconstructed in his brain, reaching a space where reality and fiction overlap.
