TANG MAOHONG

This led me to consider reversing the process. If colours are mixed to create a painting, then painting itself can also become a way of mixing colours. In that sense, it becomes natural for the colour patches to remain on the surface and take part in the composition—the painting becomes a palette, where one paints on the palette itself. In the process of painting, the painted image and the color patches shape and complete each other, mutually causal, each with its own integrity.

This is not a new technique, but a way of presenting new relationships on the painted surface: the painted image and the paint that produces it together form a complete composition. These reflect my thoughts on “what to paint” and “how to paint.

Why do I paint in this way? Because it makes me feel grounded.

What is painting? It is not about solving problems, but about holding myself accountable to time.” — Tang Maohong

ShanghART Singapore is delighted to present Simplified, a solo exhibition by the Chinese artist Tang Maohong, opening on 16 May 2026 at 4pm. This exhibition brings together a selection of the artist’s latest paintings, developed extensively over the past two years following his relocation to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It also marks his return to Singapore after his 2019 solo exhibition, and twenty years since his participation in the first Singapore Biennale.

Tang’s new body of work reflects a significant development in his practice, centered around explorations into the process of painting, and its relationship with the result. The act of painting typically results in two outcomes - the image on the canvas and the mixed colours on the palette. The works stem from the approach of mixing colours directly on the painting surface instead of using a palette. This simple gesture collapses two planes into one, creating a mutually-influencing relationship within the same pictorial space.

Originating from a period of constraint, this approach has been refined over the past two years into a more distilled visual language. Tang pares down his compositions to focus on the relationship between the intended image and the residual colour. Deceptively simple, the underlying tension is withheld from the apparent harmonious coexistence of the two elements, experienced only upon prolonged inspection.

Tang’s practice has consistently engaged with the nature of images and how we perceive them. He initially opted to work with animation for its ability to explore the instability of images through time. Forms derived from the real world would morph, dissolve, and reassemble, remaining familiar yet resistant to fixed interpretations. Over time, this temporal process became increasingly condensed, leading him back to painting. What once unfolded sequentially is now internalised, with shifts and transformations embedded within a single, suspended surface.

Operating between abstraction and figuration across different mediums, Tang’s works often resist immediate recognition. His forms appear familiar yet elusive, inviting sustained attention rather than instant interpretation. At the core of his practice is an ongoing inquiry into perception – how images are formed, how meaning emerges, and how both remain inherently unstable.

Across two decades, Tang has continued to refine and distill his approach, pursuing the same fundamental questions with increasing precision. This presentation marks a pivotal moment in that trajectory. The new paintings bring together image, material, and structure into a tightly resolved yet open-ended condition, where process and result are held in balance. For Tang, painting is not a means of searching for fixed answers, but a reciprocal process in which meaning emerges from the act of painting itself.