Meet the Artist // Suyi Xu

Could you tell me about your background and the project you are proposing for this three-month residency here at GlogauAIR? 

I grew up in Shanghai and have been living in New York for the past 10 years. The city became the center of my life until I decided to spend the last two summers in Berlin. I don’t feel attached to either of these places; instead, I’m in a constant state of change that has been the theme of the last few years of my life. I conceive my painting as a contemplation on space, interiors, and architecture that gradually morphed into a meditation on light and space. I realized with the last body of work I did that space is not a fixed thing. Bachelard describes the house as a psychic state. I’m no longer making a painting about a space that is timeless, eternal, and unmoving; instead, they’re about an ephemeral phenomenon, like the weather, subject to changes and with its own temporality.

My current project in the residency is site-specific, and it came up spontaneously, because I spent the first month trying to arrive in this room. I started setting up fabrics and draperies as a way of softening and negotiating with the room. I’m following a similar pictorial language to the one I use when I compose a painting, using symmetry as the backbone to construct an image—like this fabric centerpiece in my room, which also uses symmetry as a starting point, while gravity and air shape the rest of the composition.

 

Would you elaborate on the central themes you explore in your work and share what draws you to these subjects on a personal level?

Articulating my spaces is important to me. Thinking of negative spaces rather than positive ones is something very true to my practice. I see lots of things emerging out of empty spaces instead of the area that I’ve actually painted. David Hockney said that if you look at a Rembrandt drawing you see the space between two strokes and you can feel the air and atmosphere in between these strokes, so he manages to convey a presence through absence, and I think of that a lot in my own work.

Also, this representation of a comfort space that you can see in my works, I think it comes from my years living in New York, which is a very condensed and intense city, and for someone who’s very sensitive like me, it can feel very claustrophobic from time to time. It also has this high contrast between an extreme architectural and cultural grandeur that’s juxtaposed by the raw and sad reality that you can see everywhere in the number of homeless people. I’ve struggled a lot with finding a place that I feel safe and comfortable, that also offers some sense of grace, this is why I’ve been trying to compensate for that in my work, trying to dream up places that can offer me this solace. 

 

Are there particular artists, writers or thinkers who have significantly influenced your creative journey? 

There are so many. From an art historical point of view I was very influenced by things like the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish painting. I draw a lot of the motifs and architectural symbolism from that period of time. I read that someone said about Jan Van Eyck’s work, that his painting is like an anthology of reflective surfaces, and I think that really spoke to me in my work, because the reflective surface opens up a space for philosophical meditation. I have also been inspired by Simone Weil, a French philosopher and mystic. The main thinking of hers that influenced me is this idea of void and empty space, she talks about how grace can only enter when there’s a void to receive it and that it’s grace itself which creates this void. The way I approach my paintings is very similar, because I always start from the surrounding area and I gradually work my way into the center, so in the process there’s a lot of empty space that’s left. Sometimes I will intentionally wait a long time to finish a work so that I can feel the sparks of momentum to finish it and I think that’s my visual interpretation of this quote.

 

Your paintings invite the viewers to enter into alternate realms, ethereal, almost spiritual spaces. Could you walk me through your creative process when crafting these environments? Is there a specific emotional or contemplative state you hope to evoke in the audience? 

I don’t consciously think of my work as an alternative realm; instead, I see it as a reality that already exists within all of us, and I’m just summoning it in my work. The longer I’ve made art, the more I realize that the boundary between imagination and reality is very porous. Reality can be malleable and subject to one’s inner state, so my creative process is very much about emphasizing this fluid state of being. Usually, I don’t immediately start painting when I enter my studio. I take time to ease myself into the state of painting: I might sweep the floor first or spend several hours drawing as a warm-up exercise, and when I finally feel pliable and ready, I begin painting. So I would say that the majority of my creative process is about getting myself into the right state for painting.

As for hoping to evoke certain emotional states in viewers, I don’t think that’s something I can really control, and I like everyone bringing their own self to my work. But if I think of myself as the viewer, I would say I’m aiming for a sense of completeness.

 

Interview Vanesa Angelino (@vaneangelino)

Photos Leon Lafay (@leonlafay)