The Hours
Chou Chu-Wang
周珠旺
Production date
2015
Object Detail
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
152 x 118.5 cm
Notes
Since 2003 Chou Chu-Wang has been selecting stones as still-life subjects, studying them carefully and developing an unusual painting technique to record their beauty and diversity. His subjects are often found on the banks of the Linbian River, close to its mouth at the South China Sea, near Chou’s hometown in rural Pingtung County, where he still lives and works close to his family’s farm. Walking by the river and along the seashore, he observes the stones in their natural surroundings, slowly deciding which to use in a painting. He brings the stones back to the studio, takes many photographs, and begins the laborious process of building up his surface of tiny dots, dashes and marks on the canvas, layer over layer, then carefully painting the negative spaces between them.
'The Hours' depicts an apparently random arrangement of rocks upon a pebbled ground, blue-grey shadows throwing them into sharp relief. They are grouped in the centre of the canvas, as if seen from the air. We have no sense of scale; the rocks might be monumental in size, or small enough to hold in the palm of the hand. A close-up view reveals the multitudes of dabs and flecks of separate colour, applied as lighter hues over a dark ground to make up each stippled, weathered surface. Recalling the speckled shells of the duck eggs that Chou collected and sorted in his early life, they possess a humble beauty. Like the broken brush marks of Cézanne, or the pointillist dots of Seurat, the touches of Chou’s brush create a syncopated rhythm across the surface of the work, but on an infinitely smaller scale, evoking the constellations of the night sky, seen from light years away.
'The Hours' depicts an apparently random arrangement of rocks upon a pebbled ground, blue-grey shadows throwing them into sharp relief. They are grouped in the centre of the canvas, as if seen from the air. We have no sense of scale; the rocks might be monumental in size, or small enough to hold in the palm of the hand. A close-up view reveals the multitudes of dabs and flecks of separate colour, applied as lighter hues over a dark ground to make up each stippled, weathered surface. Recalling the speckled shells of the duck eggs that Chou collected and sorted in his early life, they possess a humble beauty. Like the broken brush marks of Cézanne, or the pointillist dots of Seurat, the touches of Chou’s brush create a syncopated rhythm across the surface of the work, but on an infinitely smaller scale, evoking the constellations of the night sky, seen from light years away.
Accession number
2015.431