Gu’s software of dry pale layers of oil and acrylic soaked into the canvas parallels the portray fashion of Chinese language watercolors. The usage of this system to render photos of androgynous adolescents evokes a world that shares one thing with the Japanese-German painter and ceramicist Leiko Ikemura, whose work is presently on view at Lisson Gallery in New York. What these artists have in frequent is a powerful curiosity in that second when the person has not but needed to give up their fantasy life in an effort 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 the isolating years of the pandemic throughout their mid 20s, when many individuals spend a number of time socializing. By pairing the figures, however not ever depicting them in intimate moments, Gu reminds this viewer of the alternative ways individuals 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 give attention to the lit match as an alternative of one another. A firefly hovers beneath the awning underneath which they’re standing. It’s within the particulars — the linear stems and stalks in most 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 mixture of line and stained shade reveals an artist working to replace China’s creative legacy on their very own phrases.
Xingzi Gu, “Pinwheel” (2025), oil and acrylic on canvas
In “Pinwheel,” what seems to be like two younger girls trip 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’d learn as college uniforms, however they don’t look like speaking or sharing something. The time interval of the portray is just not clear, which may recommend the persistence of sure legacies, resembling college uniforms. I don’t suppose Gu is making a remark as a lot as observing a characteristic 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 could be learn as surrogates for the artist; they’re collectively however remoted members of a small neighborhood in by which being cut-off was a figuring out characteristic. These are individuals who have inside lives and are usually not at all times positive which approach to go. There’s a disappointment 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 June 21. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
