A major retrospective of pioneering Chinese abstract artist Hsiao Chin’s work has opened at the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Latvia. A new film exploring the artist’s practice and global influences can be found on the Wallpaper* Instagram
A major retrospective of pioneering Chinese abstract artist Hsiao Chin’s work has opened at the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Latvia. A new film exploring the artist’s practice and global influences can be found on the‘When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money,’ says Hsiao Chin, quoting Mark Rothko in a new film created in conjunction with his retrospective at the Mark Rothko Art Centre.
It’s Hsiao Chin’s own vision that sets him apart in the story of abstract art, which was often weighted towards American art in the mid-20th century. When Hsiao Chin began finding his artistic pulse in the late 1950s and early 60s, abstraction was in the wake of Informalism and in a volatile mood of action, both described by the artist in the film as ‘more actions than thoughts’. He was in search of something different, more meditative, what Rothko deemed ‘pockets of silence’.
Though his artistic origins were in oil paint, it became too lethargic a medium for Hsiao Chin, and he turned to acrylic , which he found to have a similar immediacy as Chinese ink. Works such as see the circle motif, a symbol for heaven in Chinese culture, take centre stage, anchoring the paintings in a sense of spiritual balance and harmony.Hsiao Chin was also instrumental in bringing Chinese contemporary art, and creative voices from Chinese diaspora, into the Western conversation.
So where do Rothko and Hsiao Chin share common ground? In abstraction, certainly, but they are bound by something deeper, and even more intangible: spirituality. They first met in 1968 on Hsiao Chin’s first visit to New York and became friends, with Hsiao Chin gravitating towards Rothko’s rejection of consumerism and use of abstraction as a spiritual portal.
Installation view: ‘In My Beginning Is My End: The Art of Hsiao Chin’, Mark Rothko Art Centre, Latvia.Hsiao Chin infused his visual language with a distinctly international flavour. This is a meeting of Hsiao Chin and Mark Rothko. It’s also a meeting of East and West; terrestrial and otherworldly; introspection and global vision; beginning and end. It also proves that in art, these boundaries need not exist.
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