Far Away

24 Oktober - 17 Nopember 2007

Pameran tunggal lukisan karya Hui Xin

Art Seasons
Jl. Kemang Timur 63B
T 6845-3980

Hui Xin utilizes a technique that brings his work close to popular advertisements. Whether it be the effect of composition, form, texture and colour, the end result is something that looks computerized, full of a post-industrial feel. The dancing cranes, shady bamboo thickets, dragons in rosy clouds – these classical images of Oriental origin have been chosen by the artist and placed in a surrealist setting, as if he were rearrange the world to suit himself. Hui Xin always seeks to produce a joyful and beautiful image for his audience in his artwork. He layers secular visual impressions of “Beauty” together in his work, the sensual pleasure one feels before the startling visual effects is stimulating in a way akin to modern culture itself. We may be certain that popular mass culture has indeed had its effects on the younger generation of artists and their demands to experience an aesthetically pleasing life. They prefer to use a direct approach, a more casual form to experience and manifest their experience of life.

I have joked with Hui Xin, saying “You are the only true “glamour” artist; you represent the traditional forms of popular culture with splendid style.” Hui Xin’s composition of his pictures is different to the work of any other artist included in the term “glamour” art. What is emphasized in Hui Xin’s works is the experience of the images jumping off the canvas; it is free from the piling up of any ideas of political and cultural significance. He prefers to use a simple form to make his observations about traditional images in a modern context. These classic symbols of Oriental culture have been stylized in Hui Xin’s paintings. In his work we can see that a picture can be far and away from the basic idea of a painting. This results in a deliberate arrangement, with a distinct feeling of ‘design’. There is an underlying similarity here with the works of American artist Jeff Koons. The possibilities of painting are expanded, the rebirth and re-enactment that the artist brings to the traditional image is full of the standards and techniques of that tradition. The canvas is nothing more than an information media, a carrier for his demands of the traditional painting techniques that he only appears to overlook. From being designed on a computer, to the print-out, to the final painting of the picture – what may seem to us to be work as monotonous as that on a production line, affords the artist considerable pleasure. The artist is given the opportunity to act as a designer too. Such a novel work ethic has already become relatively common amongst the young generation of artists.

In Hui Xin’s works we see the appearance of a unique contemporary visual form, which turns the painted picture another carrier of the public image. Hui Xin’s paintings utilize a ‘Western’ form of representation to release/translate the ‘Eastern’ aesthetic world. A Beauty that is more ‘glamorous’ and more ‘secular’, which is precisely what is exciting about his artwork.

Hui Xin graduated from oil painting department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. He was born in 1977 in Xinjiang. He lives in Congqing now.

Zhu Tong 2006

An excerpt from
“The Visual Nature of ‘Startling Beauty’ – Hui Xin’s Paintings”.