House of Day, House of Night
2024.08.10 - 2024.09.14
Artist: Hua Shuchen
The title of the exhibition is taken from the novel of the same name “House of Day, House of Night” by Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. The artist Hua Shuchen works from a “narrator” perspective, trying to intercept a moment in her work, creating an empty room that belongs to her and to which she adds stories, images and experiences (what has happened, what is happening, what is yet to happen). The unique idea allows Hua Shuchen to have multiple parallel threads while ensuring that the linear narrative is not disrupted. It also coincides with Olga Tokarczuk’s strategy in her book: there is no need for a particular central plot to weave all the stories together, and there are no traditional ups and downs or a clean grand finale; they are linked only through the repetition of experiences, ideas, time and space, people and things, and each problem resolves itself - or unresolved, as the case may be.In Hua Shuchen’s works, the multi-perspective narrative takes the viewer into an event of “looking for symbols”: at first glance, there is nothing more than everyday landscapes, trees, windows, flowers in pots. But her creation is based not only on the observation of reality, but also on imagination. She re-examines the everyday landscape and unearths the mysterious and prophetic elements that go unnoticed. Thus, through a series of subtle images, such as the tree standing alone before the storm, the tree wrapping around the building endlessly, the tree higher than the office building, the lily standing alone in a vase, the flower ripening and falling, the orchid embracing in front of the window …… the viewer can see a concrete and real mysterious world in Hua Shuchen’s works.
“There is no pattern of life so boring that it cannot be changed by poetic principles, and there is no combination of objects so meaningless that it is impossible to find an informed connection between them.” The artist links the subconscious intention with the sensory fragments of life, and through the method of “automatic writing”, visualizes the real feelings of the objects, thus awakening the emotions and thoughts that are neglected and suppressed in the daily life. The windows in Hua Shuchen’s painting symbolize time, and they divide the picture into house of day and house of night. House of day is the life of people when they are awake, while house of night is the dream of people after they fall asleep. But the people who are supposed to appear in the house as the main characters are intentionally hidden by the artist - they are missing. To a certain extent, the deliberate concealment is actually a kind of revelation, just like blindfolding a person's eyes but he is eager to watch, covering a person’s mouth but he wants to cry out even more. Man begins in house of day and ends in house of night. The vicissitudes of generations and magnificent histories are but fleeting dreams of this land.
It's not that Hua Shuchen doesn’t paint people, it’s just that she hasn’t figured out where to put them yet - so she first transforms people and herself into shadows and branches of trees outside the window, the potted plants in front of the window sill, the flickering candles on the table, and even the light of the lamp through the glass. Hua Shuchen has long established on the credo that artworks can be both simple and profound, linking fragmented realities and dreams into one great picture through the recurring daily images inside and outside of the house during the day and night, where people’s absence simultaneously suggests that they were once there and are about to come, from a wider perspective, Hua Shuchen’s works allow for a balance between certainty and uncertainty, the known and the unknown, solidity and fluidity, thus building a larger whole.
“I think sometimes I am not a human, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground.”
