A Language With out Phrases
Rising from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Hui-Hsuan Hsu has spent over twenty years carving a considerate, nuanced path within the artwork world. Now primarily based in Taichung, her work spans portray, pictures, and video artwork, reflecting a profession wealthy with inquiry into notion and creativeness. Educated in the UK, Hsu earned a practice-led PhD in 2015 from the College of Leeds, the place she centered her analysis on the connection between digital media and creative apply. Along with her art-making, she spent almost a decade as an assistant professor at Tunghai College, guiding college students via the complexities of up to date visible expression. But, 2025 marked a pivotal shift—Hsu selected to depart academia and dedicate herself totally to portray, a medium that has turn into each her expressive outlet and her refuge.
Hsu’s transition from digital varieties to the tactile act of portray reveals an evolving creative philosophy rooted in emotional authenticity and embodied expertise. The place video artwork and pictures as soon as allowed her to have interaction with the precision and construction of digital instruments, she now finds portray to be a quiet ritual of security and introspection. In contrast to the managed choreography of digital manufacturing, her course of with oil and canvas unfolds with out premeditation. Paint is laid down intuitively, varieties emerge from repeated brushwork, and area takes form via gradual layering. This absence of planning shouldn’t be an absence of intention; as an alternative, it’s a type of belief—belief in reminiscence, in feeling, and within the unconscious to information the composition towards its last kind.
Her titles function anchoring factors, usually poetic but grounded in particular experiences. They perform like narrative cues in a dream—hinting at storylines that will or might not unfold. In Hsu’s work, abstraction is rarely disconnected from life. Her work embody a quiet duality: concurrently intimate and aloof, they stand as elusive companions to the viewer. These visible items whisper about encounters that form us, moments remembered however not absolutely understood, and the lingering cultural residues that kind beneath the floor of on a regular basis notion. Reasonably than in search of to elucidate, her work invitations the viewer into an ambiguous area the place which means stays superbly unsettled.
Hui-Hsuan Hsu: When Reminiscence Paints the Floor
The seeds of Hsu’s creative journey have been planted throughout a seemingly odd childhood outing that became one thing quietly transformative. On the age of eight, she watched Vincent and Me, a 1990 Canadian fantasy movie a couple of younger woman who time-travels to Nineteenth-century France to satisfy Vincent van Gogh. The woman’s direct engagement with Van Gogh’s expressive brushstrokes left an enduring impression on Hsu, who, in her doctoral thesis years later, would replicate on this encounter as a formative second. The movie not solely launched her to the act of art-making but in addition embedded in her the concept mediated experiences—cinema, on this case—can profoundly form notion and creativity. This early second signaled her lifelong curiosity concerning the boundary between direct expertise and its illustration via media.
Regardless of her rising ardour, Hsu didn’t comply with a linear path to turning into a full-time artist. For years, her apply existed alongside educational duties, part-time work, and private upheavals. The choice to transition absolutely into portray was not born from sudden inspiration however from sustained introspection, sharpened by life occasions between 2020 and 2021. Throughout this era, she navigated a divorce, relocation, and the isolating rhythms of the COVID-19 lockdowns. These experiences cracked open a brand new area for emotional exploration—one which pictures and video, with their technological mediation, might not comprise. As an alternative, she turned to portray as a technique to course of unresolved feelings and reconnect with tactile immediacy.
Returning to portray throughout a time of private and international uncertainty, Hsu found that abstraction supplied her an area the place language fell brief. Working from dwelling, usually whereas mentoring portray college students, she discovered that the medium allowed for a deeper dialog—one which wasn’t structured by principle or constrained by kind. Her technique grew to become a type of dialogue between herself and the canvas, the place pigments might articulate the inexpressible. It was much less about depicting the world and extra about listening to it via coloration, texture, and kind. In abandoning the body of photographic accuracy, she embraced ambiguity as a type of fact—messy, unresolved, and deeply human.
Instinct, Abstraction, and the Echoes of the Acquainted
Hsu’s summary work are wealthy with emotional residue and refined references. Reasonably than starting with outlined imagery, her course of unfolds as a response to reminiscence, fleeting impressions, and unconscious associations. Inside every canvas lies a sluggish excavation of kind, the place private historical past meets sensory instinct. Usually, a well-recognized form or temper will emerge—an echo from {a photograph} seen way back, a coloration from a childhood reminiscence, and even a picture sourced from the pixelated landscapes of on-line video video games. These fragments turn into the silent protagonists in her compositions, guiding her brush and shaping the emotional undercurrents of every work.
A quiet second of recognition serves because the climax in Hsu’s course of. After layering, revising, and reimagining the canvas, there comes a pause when one thing inside the portray clicks into place—a way of déjà vu that alerts completion. This encounter with familiarity doesn’t resolve into clear narrative however hovers simply on the fringe of understanding. On this means, her work resists didacticism and embraces openness, permitting viewers to carry their very own reminiscences and associations to the visible area. The portray turns into a mirror, not of bodily likeness, however of emotional and mnemonic resonance.
The affect of artists similar to Eva Hesse, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edvard Munch, and Peter Doig could be felt in Hsu’s dedication to temper, natural construction, and the inside panorama. From Hesse, she attracts an appreciation for repetition and gesture; from O’Keeffe, an understanding of abstraction as a method of intimacy. Munch’s emotional weight and Doig’s dreamlike atmospheres additionally echo in her items. But, Hsu’s work is unmistakably her personal—quiet however intense, structured but improvisational. The comb shouldn’t be merely a software, however an extension of emotional inquiry. By means of every stroke, she provides viewers entry to the liminal area between seeing and feeling, between reminiscence and materials.
Hui-Hsuan Hsu: Work That Converse in Shifts and Shadows
Amongst Hsu’s latest works, The Christmas Tree by the Sea (2024) holds explicit significance. A sq. oil portray measuring 174 by 174 centimeters, it captures the distinction between festive symbolism and private melancholy. The title references a selected winter reminiscence in Brighton, England, the place she as soon as stood by a swaying Christmas tree on the pier, surrounded by joyful kids and solemn adults. Whereas the vacation setting may counsel heat and celebration, Hsu felt a creeping disquiet—an consciousness of uncertainty and isolation. That second crystallized into a visible and emotional metaphor, now layered into the floor of the canvas. In its atmospheric tones and summary varieties, the piece echoes the emotional weight of Caspar David Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea, distilling solitude into visible kind.
One other compelling work, Late Summer time Seaside Journey: Watermelon, Coast and You (2022), started with out sketches and advanced via improvisation. Initially horizontal, the portray shifted to a vertical format as Hsu adopted intuition over plan. Subtropical warmth might have knowledgeable the palette—muted blues and greens suggesting each summer time’s heaviness and the cool isolation of a sun-bleached coast. A small crimson block close to the underside heart, added late within the course of, turns into a silent character within the piece: distant, detached, like a half-eaten watermelon deserted on a seaside. This object, seemingly easy, speaks volumes concerning the complexities of connection and absence, and the emotional residue that adheres to seasonal rituals.
Her most up-to-date piece, Cat TV (2025), provides a playful but deeply reflective perception into the mechanics of her artistic course of. The portray emerged via a tactile, spontaneous engagement with supplies—moist wipes used as makeshift brushes, spiral patterns fashioned via round rubbing, and layers constructed via interruption and revision. Impressed by the back-and-forth relationship between cats and their favourite style of YouTube leisure, Hsu parallels her creative engagement to that of a cat chasing motion on a display screen. She is each the painter and the viewers, concurrently guiding the marks and being captivated by them. Dwelling with two cats who usually intrude on her work, she discovered herself blurring the strains between commentary and participation, creator and responder. In naming the piece Cat TV, she wryly acknowledges the surreal suggestions loop of her personal studio apply—the place art-making turns into each a recreation and a meditation, a chase and a discovery.
