Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1982, HuiHsuan Hsu is an artist and educator based in Taichung. In 2015, Hsu earned her practice-led PhD from the School of Fine Art, Art History, and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, UK,...
Read MoreBorn in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1982, HuiHsuan Hsu is an artist and educator based in Taichung. In 2015, Hsu earned her practice-led PhD from the School of Fine Art, Art History, and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, UK, specializing in video art and photography. She currently serves as an assistant professor in the Fine Arts Department at Tunghai University.
After many years of working with video art and photography, Hsu has arrived at a pivotal moment in the evolution of creative media. This transition is deeply connected to the intrinsic properties of media, interwoven with life experiences, and involves a migration of ideas within personal creative practices. For HuiHsuan Hsu, engaging with digital tools is akin to a precise choreography, demanding meticulous attention and a restrained sensibility while maintaining clear, deliberate steps.
Conversely, painting for Hsu represents a ritual of encoding self-security. Through complex yet subtle abstract shapes, personal life experiences are folded, accumulated, and preserved within the canvas's space. The creative process begins with the intuitive application of paint and oil, free from prior planning or sketches—like exploring through a fog. Brushes are layered repeatedly, space is developed from a blank surface, and affinities related to memory images gradually emerge on the canvas. Only then does Hsu find a moment to cease painting.
The meaningful titles of Hsu’s works serve as key scenes in short stories, offering guidance and insight. These titles, concrete yet poetically rich, function as distant points on a spectrum of abstract shapes, striving to cultivate an imaginative realm of ambiguous interpretation. Hsu’s paintings are like drifting, attentive companions—sometimes intimate and tender, at other times cold and distant. They whisper to contemporary viewers about the countless serendipitous encounters in life, the seemingly familiar narrative structures, and the cultural and conscious caches that exist beyond rational logic and knowledge.
