Suyi Xu Featured in China Underground

The China Underground magazine reviewed VillageOneArt co-artist Suyi Xu‘s recent artworks, which were marked by reasoned eclecticism and personal coherence in her paintings.

Suyi Xu’s paintings emphasized punctual and intense attention to absorbing visible subjects rather than attempting to produce idealization or transfiguration of reality. Her painting has an intimate adherence to the reality she interprets, without imposing her vision, since her creative energies are inclined to reveal the eternal that adapts: she realistically paints light but directs it where she wants, on particulars or details.

Suyi Xu has always been interested in painting hands, which recurs in many artworks. In “Through A Glass Darkly” she depicts an empty movie theatre in downtown New York where the big screen shows a common scene from a subway cart, commuter hands holding onto the metallic poles, coming in close proximity, but carefully avoiding touching. The artist paints through inner thought and lets the colors speak; their choice and lights instill alienation. She reflects on the contingencies of the time in which the sense of loneliness is amplified, but at the same time, there is a lack of personal space. The cinema is a perfect environment to reaffirm the concept of sharing and alienation; in the end, everyone is alone within themselves, absorbed in personal thoughts, despite everyone participating in the same ritual at the same time.

In her artworks, a pictorial narrative structure tells of something that refers to something else that concerns the same thing or something complementary: a narration within the narrative. Her paintings lead the viewers in a recursive algorithm, that is, the iteration of similar environments in which each repetition or similarity is the starting point for the next one. The repetitions evoke the cycles and loops of life, with elements of vulnerability, humanity, and universality. It creates new perspectives and energy by uniting disjointed realities in spaces, architectures, and interiors that deny time. Even the titles of her artworks have this function, they create a precise identity and are echoes that reaffirm and lead those who approach her paintings to have a more persistent and grasp the series of visual references.