Exhibition Preview: "The Endless Shore - Hu Ke's Sculpture Exhibition"

"The Endless Other Shore - Hu Ke Sculpture Exhibition" is about to open! This is the first exhibition of artist sculptures produced by Lan Art, so stay tuned!

From the mirror image of reality to the endless shore

—Two contexts of Huke's sculptures

Hu Ke's works arouse strong resonance among viewers with their unique sculptural language, incomparably delicate emotional capture, and profound understanding of social reality. His creative world was once dominated by a character who was lonely, confused, and dissolved by traditional gender boundaries. These figures are not only the materialization of Huko's sculptural skills and conceptual expressions, but also a true portrayal of his inner world, revealing his deep doubts about his own existence and his constant hesitation. These images tell his questioning and reflection on human nature, society and even the universe in a silent sculptural language.

The figures and scenographic narrative arrangements in Hu Ke's sculptures are not accidental, but the mirror space that he constantly reconstructs in the process of individual self-reflection and questioning, and the emotional monologue of his inner loneliness, self-doubt, and confusion about the outside world. This authentic monologue and visual transformation, which originates from the artist's heart, reveals itself in the solidity of sculpture in Huko's work, thereby reinforcing the solidity of the narrative situation and emotional experience in Huko's sculpture. Completely different from the blunt fictional stage set, we are no longer in front of us a fragile, false, and fleeting fiction, but a situation that is full, dense, and unchanging like reality.

Reality is fixed and unchanging, and sculpture should be similar to it, and the uniqueness of Hu Ke's creative method lies in the expression path formed by his skillful treatment of the language of sculpture and the spiritual world. He combines tactile perception with visual perception, and he reorganizes experience, understanding and expression into the language of sculpture, which can accurately transform inner emotions into external visual images. Hu Ke is a desperate shuttle between calm technique and strategy, the feeling of being here, and the immediacy of responding to reality. This is the main reason why his sculptures resonate with the viewer, and the viewer's gaze can penetrate from the surface to the inside.

Whether it is a visceral monologue or a mirror space for conceptual expression, Huke's past works are strongly metaphorical, although this metaphor has lost its fictional character due to its strong emotional expression. But he may be aware of a very paradoxical problem – that the various components of a scene that are related to the metaphor are interrelated, and in order to make this correlation vivid, it needs to be insisted on in this way. Does the linguistic understanding of sculpture translate into a question of the merits of identifying metaphors? Is it because of the success of the metaphor that this method is being replicated?

If the metaphorical mode remains in the role of transfer, substitution, and illustrative narration, the metaphor will not be given any new meaning. Or, suppose we take a more macro view, where the world itself is a collection of metaphors. Therefore, Hu Ke's sculptures in recent years have appeared with a variety of elements and themes, such as horses, bamboos, Taihu stones, astronauts, ladders, etc. From the appearance of this change, the inner transformation of Huko's work can be seen: from the past to the future, the acceptance of adventure, the ubiquitous change, the plasticity of time and space. We do not deny that there is still metaphor in Huke's current sculptural grammar, but he has transcended the perceptual and emotional monologues of the past, and we see more self-affirmation after recall, identification, and rediscovery. Hu Ke's past works were more of a critical consciousness, but now he uses a broad vision and a gentle way to construct new possibilities on the other side of the endless world.

Like Huko, all of us will go through a process of self-discovery, self-pulling, and self-acceptance. In this process, there is no such thing as good or bad art, only the individual's different ways of responding to the structure of self, other, and world at different stages. Compared with the loneliness and sorrow of the past, Hu Ke's current works are more full of indifference and freedom that the weather is cool and autumn, and he has reached a reconciliation with himself and the world. Today's life is driven by large-scale statistical probability calculations, where time and space are injected with all kinds of information in the same calculation methods, and are endlessly monotonous pastimes on the Internet and screens. On the contrary, I feel that the secular indifference and freedom in Hu Ke's works is the best state to pierce the monotonous and empty daily reality of the present.

Cui Fuli is the curator

Art critic and director of the Oura Museum of Contemporary Art

May 3, 2024

About the Artist: Hu Ke

Hu Ke was born in Hunan in 1978, graduated from the Sculpture Department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2005, and now lives and works in Beijing.

Hu Ke ，1978 Born in Hunan, China.2005 . Bachelor’s Degree, Sculpture Department, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute,Chongqing ,China.

Solo Exhibitions:

2024 "The Endless Shore - Hu Ke Sculpture Exhibition"

Lan Art Chengdu

2016 "Rewriting Beyond Reality - Hu Ke's Solo Exhibition"

Art + Shanghai

2007 "Hu Ke Solo Exhibition", Art Scene, Beijing

Selected Group Exhibitions:

2023 "Radiation and Resonance - Chengdu Biennale Parallel Invitational Exhibition", Art Museum of Sichuan Conservatory of Music

2022 "Mountains and Rivers: Liuzhou Contemporary Installation Art Exhibition", Liuzhou Museum

2021 "New Perspectives - Special Exhibition on the 1st Anniversary of the Establishment of China Cultural Center in Kuala Lumpur", Kuala Lumpur

2018 "Jet Lag", Barbizon City Hall, France

2017 "Curitiba Biennial", Curitiba Art Museum, Brazil

2017 "Blank Script—Constructing Meaningless Meaning", Art Museum of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts

2017 "Crossing", China Cultural Center, Sri Lanka, China Cultural Center, Thailand

2016 "Art Nova + Overseas Touring Exhibition in Singapore", China Cultural Centre, Singapore

2015 "Young Art + Young Artists Promotion Program", Museum of Contemporary Art, Beijing

2014 Nanjing International Art Exhibition, Nanjing

2014 "Ideal Light - Young Artists Invitational Exhibition", Li Art Museum

2014 "Intention to Pingshan - Chinese and Foreign Sculptors Invitational Exhibition", Shenzhen

2011 "2011 Suzhou Art Museum Annual Invitational Exhibition", Suzhou Art Museum

2009 "The 35th Japan AJAC Exhibition Chongqing Touring Exhibition", Chongqing, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute Art Museum

2009 "Lingsheng-2009 Chinese Art Critics Nomination Exhibition", Museum of Contemporary Art, Beijing

2007 "Youth Creativity Project" Annual Nomination Exhibition of College Students, Today Art Museum, Beijing

Collection:

2023 Zhengzhou Municipal People's Government

2023 Art Museum of Sichuan Conservatory of Music (Chengdu)

2014 Li Art Museum (Changsha)

2011 Suzhou Art Museum (Suzhou)

2007 Today Art Museum (Beijing)

Winning:

2014 National Arts Fund - Young Artists + Best Art Award (Beijing)

2007 "Youth Creativity Project" Annual Nomination Exhibition for College Students, Bronze Award, Today Art Museum, Beijing

"The Endless Shore - Hu Ke Sculpture Exhibition"

Curator: Cui Fuli

Producer: Luo Wentao

Producer: Orchid Art

Exhibition period: May 11 – June 10, 2024

Exhibition opening: Saturday, May 11 at 14:30

Opening hours:

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday 14:00-17:30

Saturday/Sunday 10:00-18:00

Building 26, Xinyu Street, Luzhen attached to No. 211/311 Lan Art