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PhillipsX Presents A TRIBUTE TO TRADITION: Another clue about Huang Yuxing
The Exhibition Showcases Huang Yuxing’s Tribute to Traditional Chinese Painting and Craftsmanship
On View at Phillips’ Asia Headquarters in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District from 11 September – 4 October
Hong Kong – 4 September 2024 – PhillipsX, a selling exhibition platform operated by the global Private Sales team at Phillips, is pleased to announce A TRIBUTE TO TRADITION: Another clue about Huang Yuxing, a brand new project by the acclaimed Chinese contemporary artist. Taking place from 11 September to 4 October at Phillips’ galleries in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, the exhibition showcases Huang Yuxing’s tribute to Chinese tradition. It goes beyond contemporary art, emphasizing the curatorial approach. The artworks chosen for A TRIBUTE TO TRADITION not only cover the artist's iconic oil paintings, which have been setting records in the auction market but also present a series of unseen creative attempts by him. They include Chinese ink paintings drawn by Huang Yuxing during his teenage years, landscape paintings that offer a contemporary interpretation of traditional Chinese shan shui works, and a collection of pieces such as a purple clay teapot sculpture, lacquerware, ceramics, as well as hand-carved stamps that showcase his passion for ancient craftsmanship. These exemplify his love for traditional Chinese landscape painting and embody his enthusiasm for the ancient and ever-evolving craftsmanship passed down through generations of Chinese people.
Dina Zhang, Head of Modern & Contemporary Art, China, Phillips, said: “We are honored to collaborate with Huang Yuxing to present his incredible body of work through this project, which combines the artist’s creations as a special plot and interprets the fusion and correlation between ancient and present, Chinese and Western, tradition and contemporaneity, as well as craftsmanship and art. This exhibition allows viewers to see Huang’s versatile creative skills, which span a wide range of media and interpret traditional aesthetics with a unique contemporary perspective. We look forward to welcoming collectors who admire Huang Yuxing and art enthusiasts to our Asia headquarters for this opportunity to experience and celebrate the artist's extraordinary talent and creative practice.”
Huang Yuxing, said: “I am a Chinese painter, and I think learning traditional Chinese techniques is compulsory. For me, ‘contemporary’ and ‘traditional’ are like two intertwined strands of DNA, with spirals that connect and conflict with each other. Although they grow in different soils, they absorb the same nutrients. They are two distinct timelines, yet they often overlap and cover each other. By integrating innovative techniques from both East and West to interpret traditional skills, I hope to bring new life to these long-standing artistic traditions.”
Among the exhibition highlights is Seven Treasure Pines Teapot, which presents a fierce collision between traditional techniques such as purple clay and lacquer, and Huang Yuxing’s contemporary landscape art, paying homage to tradition. For the first time, Huang collaborated with the purple clay master Mr. Wang Qiang, combining his signature palette of fluorescent colours with two intangible cultural heritages: purple clay art and lacquer. The overall shape is round at the top and square at the bottom, echoing "the dome-like heaven embraces the vast earth.” The image displayed on the teapot is inspired by the artist’s monumental Seven Treasure Pines, a seven-panel painting executed in 2016-2019, which presents viewers with a radiant cosmos with a fantastical tableau resplendent in luminous jewel stone.
Seven Treasure Pines captures and embodies Huang’s deep fascination for Tibetan Buddhism. From left to right, each panel represents one of the Treasures of Buddhism: coral, agate, pearl, gold, silver, tridacna stone, and azurite, exploring the immensity of the universe. The teapot sculpture is octagonal to showcase the integrity of the painting, and it symbolizes eight planets in the solar system by being divided into eight parts. The octagonal body of the teapot serves as a window frame of the view, which appears to be an outdoor scenery or an installation. The lid knob and lid are composed to represent "the sun" and "the moon," resembling the rise and fall of the sun and the moon, echoing the concept of heaven and earth, expressing the vibrant circle of life. The teapot handle is made using the lug technique, enhancing its upward feel. It is embellished with mother-of-pearl inlay, creating a shimmering effect against the lacquer background reminiscent of stars in the night sky. Lacquer is a natural resin extracted from lacquer trees with a long history in Chinese culture as intangible cultural heritage. Crafting exquisite lacquerware involves numerous complex processes; replicating Huang Yuxing’s Seven Treasure Pines requires hundreds of layers of colouring techniques. The purple clay used to make the sculpture is the dark reddish-purple clay, known as Dicaoqing, which comes from Ding Shu Township in Yixing, Jiangsu Province.
A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains is a work by the Northern Song dynasty court painter Wang Ximeng, now housed in the Palace Museum in Beijing. The artwork depicts the beautiful mountains and rivers of the Northern Song dynasty and is regarded as a masterpiece in traditional Chinese landscape painting. Highlighted in the exhibition is Composition: A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains 1-6 which presents Huang Yuxing's reinterpretation of A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains. He deconstructed the long scroll into six sections, removed the colours typically found in traditional landscape paintings, and presented his magnificent vision of mountains and rivers through pure composition. The six segments display completely different wide-ranging landscapes. At the same time, the use of simple black-and-white tones echoes the traditional Chinese painting concept of "ink divided into five categories," reconstructing the artistic conception of rivers and mountains through a visual experience based on black, white, and gray.
Since childhood, Huang Yuxing was exposed to calligraphy, seal engraving, and traditional Chinese painting. This exhibition also presents a rare collection of ten stamps carved by the artist in the 1990s. This collection includes two seals with names and eight leisure seals. His stamps cover many subjects, combining adherence to ancient methods with expressions of contemporary styles. The engraving style is inspired by the Eight Masters of Xiling, mainly using the small seal script that originated in the Qin Dynasty while incorporating both red and white scripts. Huang Yuxing's seal works integrate calligraphy, painting, and childlike innocence into a unique aesthetic expression that complements each other without imitating ancient artists.
For this project in Hong Kong, Huang Yuxing created Endless miles of mountains and streams with a total of 66 editions. The composition of the work is based on his painting Nine Dragons. The imagery corresponds to the Northern Song Dynasty artist Fan Kuan's Travelers Among Mountains and Streams currently held in the Palace Museum in Taipei. The work adopts the typical panoramic composition of Northern Song landscape painting. Distant mountain peaks stand tall against the sky. In the middle, a prominent pine tree appears as a personified or anthropomorphized element in the artist's brushwork, making the landscape painting livelier and fuller of charm. Like Travelers Among Mountains and Streams, Endless miles of mountains and streams follows the classic 2:1 aspect ratio, and it is mounted as a vertical hanging scroll.
In addition to a series of exquisite works that express Huang Yuxing's passion for traditional Chinese landscape and craftsmanship, this exhibition also offers a work from the artist's well-known Bubble series. This series of works joyfully depicts Huang Yuxing's profound reflections on the experiences of time and space through visual metaphors of organic life forms. The Bubble series is an unapologetic celebration of Huang Yuxing’s deep reflection on the human experience in time and space. Huang’s artistic practice entails a long-running investigation into the individual’s life experience in parallel to the natural world. Stemming from reoccurring motifs of rivers and swirls in the artist’s oeuvre, the Bubble series discusses the topic of dissolution, demonstrating a sense of eternity that underlies the ephemeral existence of bubbles themselves. The human experience is visually represented as bubbles caught in various states of motion, as fleeting and volatile as the temporary existence of an individual’s life. Huang’s signature approach during this period was to superimpose geometric forms delineated in thinly veiled neon colours to create delicate depth and texture, which is well-demonstrated in Bubbles.
Works from the Bubble series are also a bold practice for the artist in exploring "perspective" in paintings. After receiving formal training in drawing from professional art institutions, Huang Yuxing presents bubbles on the canvas using the scattered-point perspective method often employed in Chinese landscape paintings. He said, "The ancient Chinese’s understanding of perspective in landscape paintings has restructured all things and phenomena in the world within the paintings, giving our world a new appearance, which has provided a great deal of inspiration for this series."
### Location: Phillips Asia Headquarters, G/F &1/F, WKCDA Tower, West Kowloon Cultural District, No. 8 Austin Road West, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Date & Time: 11 September – 4 October, Monday to Friday, 10am-6pm; 21-22 September and 28-29 September 11am-7pm ABOUT PHILLIPS Phillips: where the world’s curious and bold connect with the art, design and luxury that inspires them. As a leading global platform for buying and selling 20th and 21st century works, Phillips offers dedicated expertise in the areas of Modern and Contemporary Art, Design, Photographs, Editions, Watches, and Jewelry. Auctions and exhibitions are primarily held in New York, London, Geneva, and Hong Kong, with representative offices based throughout Europe, the United States and Asia. Phillips offers a regular selection of live and online auctions, along with items available for immediate purchase. Phillips also offers a range of services and advice on all aspects of collecting, including private sales and assistance with appraisals, valuations, and financial planning. Visit phillips.com for further information.
PhillipsX is a dynamic selling exhibition platform operated by the global Private Sales team at Phillips, the destination for international collectors to buy and sell the world’s most important Modern and Contemporary art, design, and luxury items. Through PhillipsX, Phillips’ influence extends beyond the realm of auction and into the broader global cultural landscape by offering a boundary-less discovery, selling, and buying experience based on the traditional retail gallery model. PhillipsX highlights notable artists and creators of the 20th and 21st centuries, creating new and important dialogues around established and emerging artists, movements, genres, and mediums. Through PhillipsX, the team continues to modernize collecting experiences with imagination, expertise, and relevancy.
PRESS CONTACT: Ingrid Hsu, Head of PR and Corporate Communications, Asia Ingridhsu@phillips.com +852 56316776
PHILLIPS NEW YORK – 432 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022 PHILLIPS LONDON – 30 Berkeley Square, London, W1J 6EX PHILLIPS HONG KONG – G/F, WKCDA Tower, West Kowloon Cultural District, No. 8 Austin Road West, Kowloon, Hong Kong |
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