TANG SHUO
Tang Shuo is a Chinese artist who grew up in a small area of Southern China known in English as Boulder Hill. Recently, he has moved his practice to the United Kingdom in 2020, where he has begun to fully devote himself to his artistic practice. Tang began experimenting with different materials while still studying art in Beijing, where he was able to continue his exploration of media (and theme) after graduating, before finding painting to be his preferred medium and his subsequent relocation overseas.
With this radical shift in environment and culture, Tang felt compelled to re-examine his work with the relationship between the individual and society as his premier concern. The work features a recurrent single or small group of dark-skinned Chinese persons, their tanned flesh suggesting a labourer or farmer, who seems to be captured in or just after moments of labour, duty, or action. These figures are broad-faced and bodied, (reminiscent of Diego Rivera’s paintings of Mexican peasants and field-workers) and the moments in which Tang chooses to portray his figures is telling. These are normal, everyday country persons exalted into magnified poses. The M.O. is similar to, say, Kehinde Wiley, who presents everyday black people or persons from gangs in scenarios previously reserved for, say, 17th-century French Royals.
Tang’s technique is both realist and stylized, perhaps re-establishing and negating both the varied sets of values new and old he finds himself questioning. Issues of politics, human rights, religion and identity rest just beneath his refined surface, and where memories of Tang’s childhood upbringing in the village of Boulder Hill informs everything he does: “Boulder Hill is not just a physical place name, it is also the starting point of my current thoughts, behaviour, and way of life.” This inescapable sensibility is reminiscent of an Asiatic reinterpretation of Grant Wood’s enigmatic American Gothic and larger ouevre, depicting a carefully contrived version of rural life combined with a strong sense of foreboding and loneliness.
“The canvas has become my paradise. Painting is a mysterious practice for me. It is an inner feeling that cannot be expressed in words.” But through his handling, Tang’s deeply introspective work is bucolic, idyllic, and even slightly mysterious, as he re-tells the stories of local shepherds, lumberjacks, hunters and farmers by painting himself (and reiterations of himself) as the central figure in these roles. Through his paintings, Tang imagines himself living and working like them, the individuals who have formed the fabric of the micro-society of Boulder Hill, and subsequently the artist we see today.
TANG SHUO (b. 1987, Guilin, China) currently lives and works in London, UK. He graduated from Guangxi Arts University with a bachelor’s degree in Mural Painting. After that he studied Experimental Art at Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing.
Solo exhibitions include: The Narrators, BEERS London, London, UK (2024); Shadow of Boulder Hill, Fabienne Levy Gallery, Geneva (2023); Shadow of Boulder Hill, Fabienne Levy Gallery, Lasuanne (2023) and; Boulder Hill, Ojiri Gallery, London (2023). Forthcoming solo exhibitions to be held at Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2024) and König Galerie, Berlin, Germany (2025).
Group exhibitions include: Family & Friends, BEERS London, London (2023); Patterns of Identity, Prior Art Space, Barcelona, Spain (2022); Wilderness of Being, HdM Gallery, London, UK (2022); Sync In Progress, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2022); Null Protocol, Func Gallery, Shanghai, China (2022); Talking All Day, Badre El Jundi Gallery, Madrid, Spain (2022); Polychromy, Actual Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon (2022); Return To Flesh, The Room London Gallery, London, UK (2022); That Wilderness Within, PRIOR Art Space, Barcelona, Spain (2022); Identity, Artistellar Gallery, London, UK (2022) and; paper., Beers Gallery, London, UK (2022).
Art fairs include: Untitled Art Fair Miami, Steve Turner Gallery, USA (2024); Art Paris, HDM Gallery, Paris, France (2023); Artgeneve, Fabienne Levy Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland (2023) and; Asia Now, HDM Gallery, Paris, France (2022).
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TANG SHUO: THE NARRATORS
6 Jun - 13 Jul 2024There’s a curious development happening in the ongoing narrative of Tang Shuo’s work where the occupants of his former home Boulder Hill (or Da Shi Shan, 大石山) have all slowly morphed into variations of the artist himself. This seems symbolic, even melancholic, where an artist aspires to pave the lacuna between fact and memory and continues inserting himself into the role of the Chinese farmer, worker, neighbour or family member.Read more -
FAMILY & FRIENDS
30 Nov - 20 Dec 2023Our final exhibition of 2023 brings together existing and longstanding gallery artists (Hyangmok Baik, Jonni Cheatwood, Deborah Segun) alongside those whose solo exhibitions begin in 2024: including Liam Alvy, Jack Kabangu, Tang Shuo, and Christina Zimpel. Also exhibiting in the group show are a slate of fresh new perspectives, including Peter Larsen, Zoe Spowage, Hannah Wilson and more. The purpose of this exhibition is to introduce new artists into our roster amidst the artists whose practices we have championed for some time. We anticipate an exciting mix to present to our friends, collectors, and followers.Read more -
PAPER.
23 Jan - 26 Feb 2022paper. is a group show designed to introduce 32 talented international artists to new and existing collectors, visitors to the gallery, and online followers. The thirty-something invited artists hail from all over the world and include both gallery artists and a number of fresh talent.Read more