Arts
SINGAPORE—In 2004, British artist Paul Huxley made the first of several visits to China and was immediately taken by the bold formalised versions of Chinese characters used on public signs everywhere.
“What struck me is that many of these characters looked like my paintings. It looked like I could have already done those,” Huxley explained.
The aesthetics of the signs greatly appealed to him and he started to photograph and study them, building up a collection that inspired him in later works. “The only problem is that I had no idea what these characters meant, and I really couldn’t justify using words I didn’t understand. I like to be an expert on my own work, and I don’t like to be unsure of anything. My painting is very precise.” Once he had all the characters translated, Huxley decided which ones to use in his work.
Some of the works in the resulting series are now on show at The St. Regis Singapore hotel until Oct 24th.
Huxley explains that while he started from the pure aesthetics of the characters, he later moved on to focus on their meaning as well. In 2006 he created a sequential group of seven large canvases entitled “Gong, Zhu, Lan, Tian — Tian, Geng, Lan.” Each painting was intended to stand alone as an abstract composition in its own right but placed in sequence they could be roughly translated to read “people make blue sky – sky even more blue.” The works were exhibited at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing in 2006 and were acquired by a Hong Kong-based company.
A feature of the St Regis installation are four large paintings each of which represent a Chinese character for a specific color, with Huxley using an intense shade of that color in painting the character.
Huxley says he has now done around 15-20 painting in this series and though he hasn’t added to it since 2010, “doesn’t like to close the door on anything.”
