Tu Hongtao is a Chinese painter whose large-scale landscapes infuse the dynamism of Chinese calligraphy with post-war abstraction, drawing inspiration from both real and imagined environs to evoke a lyrical journey through space and time.
Read MoreBorn in Chengdu in 1976, Tu Hongtao studied at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute before graduating from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 1999. At the turn of the millennium the nation's economy was soaring and an attendant urbanisation was in motion. Tu moved to Guangzhou and Chongqing, where he sold clothing at a local market to support his artistic practice.
Tu Hongtao's early artworks observe densely crowded and anxiety-ridden metropolises whose homogenous landscapes provide a backdrop to the attenuated bodies of women in sexually suggestive poses, such as Chengdu, Tokyo or Shenzhen (2006).
In a 2015 interview with Christie's, the artist stated: 'As an outsider, someone who had just landed in this community, I was completely overwhelmed... These intense works produce a claustrophobic atmosphere where everything is for sale, even people'.
Tu returned to Chengdu in 2008, settling in a village near his hometown.
The agricultural environment of his studio triggered an artistic transformation, resulting in a departure from his earlier Neo-Pop approach toward a deeper investigation into the histories of landscape painting. Tu's foundation in classical Chinese painting provided a basis from which to do so, bridging Chinese literati traditions of calligraphy with Western aesthetics. He has stated: 'Western abstract art is based on [the] representation of the physical and then its deconstruction... Chinese painting has always had an innate abstract sense. Traditional Chinese landscape paintings show this through their use of single lines and blank space'.
Tu Hongtao synthesised the influence of historical Chinese painters with the post-Modernist achievements of Cy Twombly, Brice Marden, and David Hockney. Like Hockney, Tu composes his landscapes from several photographs, often reworking sketches to create composite spaces in which multiple viewpoints convey the passing of time. In The Forgotten (2012), for example, trees, and water are suspended within ambiguous spaces and highly animated brushwork.
Tu has also closely observed the narrative techniques of Jin Dynasty painters such as Gu Kaizhi (c. 345–406), whose Nymph of the Luo River provides the direct inspiration for Tu's Goddess of Luo River (2016–2018). Gu's horizontal scroll situates figures in isolated intervals to show a linear narrative unfolding, while Tu's contemporary vision offers moments of vivid colour and a fractured perspective that imbues the canvas with a durational quality.
Tu Hongtao's later paintings reflect an increasing turn towards gestural abstraction, with few, if any, recognisable forms. His 2022 solo exhibition Dusk at LGDR Paris featured a suite of ten new paintings developed with the concept of 'dusk' in mind—as a state of transience, potential, and beginnings—inspired by an 8th-century poem by Tang dynasty poet, Du Fu.
Despite many of the works' titles referencing natural elements, as in Mountains and Rivers (2020–2022) or The Valley After Rain (2020–2021), their corresponding images reveal little of these suggested vistas. Instead, Tu imbues his esoteric style of representation through the emotive qualities of gesture and colour, with a melancholic ochre-based palette and a network of varied brushstrokes and marks.
Tu Hongtao has presented work in solo and group exhibitions internationally.
Solo exhibitions include Dusk, LGDR, Paris (2022); Twisting and Turning, Lévy Gorvy, London (2020); Tu Hongtao, Lévy Gorvy, Hong Kong (2019); A Timely Journey, Long Museum, Shanghai/Chongqing (2018); Melting Point of Desire, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2017); The Landscape, Yeo Workshop, Singapore (2016).
Group exhibitions include Return to Nature, Lévy Gorvy, Hong Kong (2019); The Clouded Peach Blossom Spring, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2018); Déjà vu: Painting as the Art of Signification, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2018); Asian Impression: Chinese, Japanese and South Korean Contemporary Art, Long Museum, Shanghai (2017).
Tu Hongtao's works are held in major collections worldwide, including the Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Long Museum, Shanghai; Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney; Zhi Art Museum, Chengdu; Powerlong Museum, Shanghai; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai; Fosun Foundation, Shanghai; Shenzhen Art Museum; and Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou.
Amy Weng | Ocula | 2022
