Person
Artist
Xu Hongming
徐红明
Date of birth
1971
Place Of birth
Hunan, China
Biography
Xu Hongming, born in 1971 in Hunan Province, has developed a uniquely Chinese aesthetics of abstract painting. His stated aim is ‘to do for Chinese art what Mondrian did for Western art’.
Xu’s innovative ink paintings recall the soft-edged, hovering forms of Rothko, but he has been particularly associated with Gao Minglu’s concept of Chinese abstract painting as ‘maximalism’, informed as much by Daoist philosophy as by western modernist influences. His work may be understood as belonging to the recent category of ‘Contemporary Ink’ in which artists reinvent and re-imagine the conventions of literati ink painting in order to connect with the contemporary world, yet also enrich an important Chinese cultural history. Xu’s work has been exhibited internationally since 1999, most recently in ‘Out of Ink: Interpretations from Chinese Contemporary Art’, a 2019 exhibition curated by Karen Smith at Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey. Xu Hongming lives and works in Beijing.
Xu’s innovative ink paintings recall the soft-edged, hovering forms of Rothko, but he has been particularly associated with Gao Minglu’s concept of Chinese abstract painting as ‘maximalism’, informed as much by Daoist philosophy as by western modernist influences. His work may be understood as belonging to the recent category of ‘Contemporary Ink’ in which artists reinvent and re-imagine the conventions of literati ink painting in order to connect with the contemporary world, yet also enrich an important Chinese cultural history. Xu’s work has been exhibited internationally since 1999, most recently in ‘Out of Ink: Interpretations from Chinese Contemporary Art’, a 2019 exhibition curated by Karen Smith at Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey. Xu Hongming lives and works in Beijing.
