Gong Xu: Tiger Arhat

HOW+ is pleased to announce the opening of Tiger Arhat, solo exhibition by Gong Xu, on July 15, 2022, at HOW+SPACE ONE.

Shanghai-based young artist Gong Xu is an independent art practitioner slash brand owner. Known for a very distinct personal style, Gong Xu manages to unfold diverse artistic expressions and subversive world-views through bold colors, narrative structures and the delineation of the cultural background unique to those born in the 80s and 90s while retaining elements of traditional eastern culture.

Born in the zodiac year of tiger in 1986, he is in the third round of zodiac year of birth. Tiger Arhat as a work to commemorate the year of special meaning marks a kind of continuation of his The Twelve fierce animals of the Chinese zodiac project. The exhibition takes household folk tales and literature as its source of inspiration, and presents a mind-opening and unconventional perspective of interpretation. Seeing himself as a narrator of the contemporary times, the artist takes the position of the imaginary "painter from Dunhuang" and shares his perception of traditional literature and folk culture in a non-preachy and story-telling manner. The contrasting combination between a philosophical delineation of temples and bar elements featuring entertaining and pop colors presents an intriguingly vivid imagery.

In terms of the form of the works, the artist has also managed to make a breakthrough and tried something different from before. This time he endeavors to put large-scale installation on view in juxtaposition with the comic-book style paintings to imbue new verve into the interpretation of the totems of Zodiac symbols. As a matter of fact, the comic-book style derives from the cave paintings in Dunhuang which, to some extent, are like a panoramic comic book. By building connection between the paintings and two large-scale tiger installations, the artist manages to transform the two-dimensional images on the paintings into three-dimensional, which brings a visual spectacle to the viewing experience of the audience.

Take the work Pilgrim Wu Song Teasing a Tiger for instance. It reshapes the relation between the protagonist Wu Song, the famous tiger-beater, and the tiger, breaking the viewers' fixed impression of the widely familiar story and inspiring new and different associations through re-narration. The exhibition intends to cast light on the artist's adoration for an amicable and harmonious nature as well as his perception of the pop elements of the "now" while diluting the sense of violence commonly seen in traditional folk stories. In the meantime, the exhibition also probes into the difference between the depiction of characters in the East and the West by interweaving different cultures into the same context.