EGG Gallery is pleased to announce that Hu Shasha's solo exhibition will open on December 8 , 2018. This is the first solo exhibition taking place at EGG Gallery.

Referral

A Song of the Degrees’

In her paintings, Shasha Hu plays with two heavy tropes: that of addressing the complexity of the contemporary surplus of image-production and that of engaging with a medium that is easily considered either conservative-nostalgic or nothing more than a straight-forward commercial option 

If both scenarios would not leave much room or options in between for ‘art’ itself, it is in the attitude of ‘playing’ with these insidious clichés, that Shasha finds her way to present works whose simulated carelessness and apparent casual approach, generate an unspecific and diffuse freshness of intention and execution.

Trained academically and used to explore different techniques, mediums and compositions, she has avoided to follow a rational progression towards a typical and recognizable style to pursue an investigation in the possibilities that the act and the routine of painting still possess in a multi-media, hyperconnected, image saturated context such as today’s reality.

Shifting from the lyrical and colorful juxtaposition of heteroclite elements to the minimalistic but still spontaneous reduction to pseudo-geometric forms, jumping from the representational to the abstract, passing through the scribbling and the calligraphic gesture, Shasha is literally cooking images with all the ingredients she knows, avoiding the conundrum of the ‘one and only way’ and responding with humor and lightness to the today repetitive and too often mechanical routine of exhibiting paintings in a gallery space.

Walking around and looking at these works gives a particular feeling: seems like Shasha, (how unconsciously or not is just for her to say), had imagined an analogic transposition of  swapping between endless images on a mobile phone screen, in which the physicality of the paintings with their quite large format, their variety of techniques, subjects, composition, quotes and palette, ironically attempts to counter balance with a mimetic but ‘real’ experience, our loss of faith in images and  the numbness generated by the digital saturation of synthetic media.

The sincerity and generosity with which she communicates her faith in the act of painting, resonate in this idiosyncratic choice or works that, instead of stealing the viewers’ energy, it re-distributes it through its own audacity.

Alessandro Rolandi

Beijing, November 2018       

Lake may sit

Mixed material  

230 x 120 cm

2016

Finnish artist holding Maomao

Mixed material  

210 x 160 cm

2016

Play until bright

Acrylic, Oil bar  

130 x 150 cm

2016

Hu Shasha

Hu Shasha was born in 1986. She is currently based in HUantie Art District, Beijing, where she resides and works. She graduated in 2008 from Heilongjiang University with a bachelor degree of Fine Arts. In 2012, Hu furthered her studies at the University of Arts, in London, where she took a general English course. During the summer in 2017, she took an intensive advanced painting program at the Columbia University, School of Arts.

Solo Exhibition

2018 Fresh Mark, EGG Gallery, Beijing

Group Exhibition

2018 John Mores Painting Prize China, Minsheng Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai

2017 Wish You Were Here, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, New York

2016 China, Bottle, Wind, Goethe Institute, Beijing

2016 Art Utopia, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing

2009 China-Korea Group Exhibition, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul

2008 Rock Color Painting Exhibition, Heilongjiang Art Museum, Harbin

Statement

My recent works are a series of dark and humorous water colored style paintings, gathered from personal and collective memories. I acquired most of my painting techniques from various jobs and studies from Beijing, London and New York. I earned traditional decoration techniques from Wei and Jin dynasties portrait brick and latest western social art form. Furthermore, I combined vintage second hand magician pages, pictures of daily living objects and architectural elements to suggest new perspectives and build relationships between art works, the art studios and our living spaces.

I use various computer screen colors in my work to reference environment and cultures. By adopting the perspectives of Gods and bystanders, I try to display my understanding of the status quo of the confusing changes caused by post-internet globalization. I try to establish a direct visual communications and trust with people with different cultural background and personal beliefs. I choose to use fast and delightful strokes, combining the performance act and posture of art to create paintings simultaneously, hoping to achieve symbolism, humor and human emotions through the usage of photo references.