Tong Gallery+Projects will host the latest solo show of artist He Xun —Kalavinka. In this exhibition, the artist continues his inquiry into the relations between painting language and literature practice, which he has already begun to experiment in connecting literature practice such as the distich, correspondence with painting mode from 2015 till 2018. In his investigation into this relationship, the artist has been persistently concerned with another literature practice—rhyme and has already tried a little bit in his painting. This exhibition lasts till 1st December 2019.

Two groups of his recent painting in this show with distinctly different formal languages are displayed in two exhibition halls, which formulates the general sense of language and rhythm. The artist He Xun tries to paint with different manners of “pronunciation”; he seeks to simulate the literature attribute of “rhyme” by presenting the parallelism of the “essential vowels” consisted in the figures. The linguistic rhyming is then visualized in images, even becomes the visual logic in the flat space, which is commensurate between literature and images. Hence Kalavinka is about “pronunciation and modelling” and is an intensive presentation of rhythmic images.

The subject Kalavinka is a buddhism term, which refers to a holy bird. It is said that its voice is as beautiful as song, fantastic and touching, which gives it another names “exquisite sounding bird”or “goodly sounding bird”. In Buddhist sutra, it is often depicted as the wonderful speech or talk by Buddha and Bodhisattva. The artist borrows the reference of this term from Buddhism to guide his painting and the audience. By creating the Synesthesia, the artist expects to inspire reflection and observation about the subtle relationship between figure and image, between writing and modelling. Furthermore, in the epoch which is characterized with fast flow of image and information, he expects to embark an intellectual experiment in retrospective to visualize the endangering cultural habits by painting.

As an artist, He Xun discovers the compatibility between forms and figures, between language and mass in his painting and writing. He acquires a mysterious yet bazar feeling in the gap between the two, then he works specifically and diligently when he continues to contest and compromise, conceal and confuse between the two. The artist is expecting the shared rhyme between contemporary culture and everything and receiving more wonderful persistence and continuance.

About the exhibition

Dates: Oct 19, 2019 – Dec 1, 2019

Venue: Tong Gallery+Projects

Courtesy of the artist and Tong Gallery+Projects, for further information please visit www.tong-gallery.com.