Gu’s utility of dry pale layers of oil and acrylic soaked into the canvas parallels the portray fashion of Chinese language watercolors. The usage of this method to render pictures of androgynous adolescents evokes a world that shares one thing with the Japanese-German painter and ceramicist Leiko Ikemura, whose work is at the moment on view at Lisson Gallery in New York. What these artists have in widespread is a robust curiosity in that second when the person has not but needed to give up their fantasy life so as to enter the grownup world. On this regard, their work is about resisting that compromise, and the have to be productive and conformist that accompanies it.
Xingzi Gu, “Lend me a light” (2025), oil and acrylic on canvas
On the similar time, the figures’ sense of vulnerability and emotions of being cut-off are palpable. This may be as a result of Gu, who was born in 1995, lived by means of the isolating years of the pandemic throughout their mid 20s, when many individuals spend a whole lot of time socializing. By pairing the figures, however not ever depicting them in intimate moments, Gu reminds this viewer of the other ways folks discovered methods to spend time collectively whereas remaining aware of the specter of COVID-19.
Not one of the pairs within the work make eye contact. In “Lend me a light” (2025), a determine smoking a cigarette holds a match to the opposite individual’s cigarette. Each deal with the lit match as a substitute of one another. A firefly hovers beneath the awning below which they’re standing. It’s within the particulars — the linear stems and stalks in lots of the works, in addition to the smudged clusters of leaves on the timber in “Pinwheel” — that we are able to see the fluidity of Gu’s calligraphic line. The mix of line and stained shade reveals an artist working to replace China’s inventive legacy on their very own phrases.
Xingzi Gu, “Pinwheel” (2025), oil and acrylic on canvas
In “Pinwheel,” what appears like two younger girls journey a single seat bicycle, whereas a small canine friends over the rim of the basket within the entrance. The 2 figures are dressed identically, in what we would learn as college uniforms, however they don’t seem like speaking or sharing something. The time interval of the portray isn’t clear, which might recommend the persistence of sure legacies, reminiscent of college uniforms. I don’t suppose Gu is making a remark as a lot as observing a function of each Chinese language and US society.
Dwelling within the diaspora, and utilizing a historically European medium (oil paint) that connects to Chinese language watercolors, I sense the figures in Gu’s work may be learn as surrogates for the artist; they’re collectively however remoted members of a small group in by which being cut-off was a figuring out function. These are individuals who have inside lives and are usually not all the time positive which solution to go. There’s a unhappiness to those work, which may be their truest topic.
Xingzi Gu, “Dropping needle” (2025), oil and acrylic on canvas
Xingzi Gu: Fluffing the Foliage continues at CLEARING gallery (260 Bowery, Nolita, Manhattan) by means of June 21. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
