States Of Tension
Hu Xiaoyuan
Editor: Flash Art Books
Author: Hu Xiaoyuan
Date: 2017
张
力
之
界
An English monograph on the work of Chinese artist Hu Xiaoyuan, featuring an essay by Nicolas Bourriaud and a conversation between Gea Politi and the artist. In his essay Bourriaud asks: “What is the major art issue of our day and age? In the eclectic proliferation of present-day artistic output, most commentators have given up asking themselves this question… In the classical aesthetics hailing from the Greco-Latin philosophical realm, the Beautiful never comes from matter, but from form: it is a principle of unification, a process aimed at rendering the world intelligible, once grasped within an “idea” or a geometry capable of reinstating its coherence. This is tantamount to saying that, when confronted with the question of multitude, which is a global issue, Western thinking finds itself in an awkward position. And that the Chinese “great form” has many things to bring to it.”