Liang Hao: Gesture and Speech
2023
BANK is thrilled to announce that the solo exhibition "高手 Gesture and Speech" by artist Liang Hao will open on August 5, 2023, and will run until September 16, 2023.
"The word (Master) holds a dual meaning. On one hand, it serves as a description of technical proficiency in language, and on the other hand, it directly refers to the subject matter concerning technology. In this context, 'Master' serves as the title. The subject of the master is the hand, in other words, being a master of hands. What continuously intrigues me about "hands" is a book by paleontologist and anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan, titled Gesture and Speech. The English title of this exhibition is derived from this book. Leroi-Gourhan believed that gestures and language are twin products that embody thought, giving rise to our technological and social achievements. These perspectives on prehistoric technology, archaeology, and the development of human behavior and culture continually prompt me to adjust and augment my understanding of hands." — Liang Hao
It is always the same hands, reaching out from the edge of the canvas and opening up at the center of the painting. It is the hands that are in motion, palms up and fingers clenching – stretch, grip, hold, touch, press, cut, chop. The hand appears in sync with its reflections from every angle, on the surfaces of the objects which it approaches and comes into contact with, the ones that look just like reflective mirrors: neat geometric shapes, a curved surface that resemble a convex metalized film, the edge of a blade, the outer case of a lighter. These two hands – from the fingers, the back of the hands, the skin, to the curve of the nails, and the appropriately subtle muscle bulge – each part of them is well-proportioned, smoothly clean, and absolutely impeccable. However, they possess a sense of unreality. The two hands appear to stretch out from a world devoid of time, they move, but, in an uncanny fashion, their movement morphs into eternity. They look familiar but do not completely belong to us. The owner of the hands shrouds their identity in secrecy. This pair of hands reaches out to greet our eyes in such a manner, gently caressing the realms of the sensorial, the concrete and the real with their distinct gestures. It exists somewhere higher up, like an idea- hand. These are the hands in a painting. This is a painting about hands.
Always, we see these two hands in Liang Hao’s paintings. Always, these hands enter the canvas plane as if alluding in their own way to the artist’s laborious efforts that are invisible behind the canvas. The secret of the hands also contains the secret of the painter. Without this connection, on what basis do we laud the master hand? Unexpectedly by chance, a viewer of the painting lets out a gasp of admiration, which deeply moves the heart of our artist: the word used to compliment skills is also the very subject of this technique. The skilled hand. Doing things with two hands means an operation, with the operated being a tool or instrument. Hands are valued as they are because they open the door for artistry, invention and techniques, as Bernard Stiegler stated. Hands teach human beings to conquer space, weight, density and quantity. Hands gives form to a new world and leaves its imprint wherever it has been.
The hand combats the material it is going to transform and wrestles with the form it is going to alter. This is what Henri Focillon said. But Liang Hao employs his hands – after the first draft on canvas, he will cover, polish and conceal the two hands as well as all the trace of their labor, again and again – to keep recollecting and beckoning another pair of hands. The hands in a painting stand on a slightly higher ground above the hands in reality. At the same time, for the artist, they represent the ideal hands which never stop achieving a new pinnacle of technique. These hands pass from one painting to another, driving the development of an ever-evolving image and fueling its circulation, movement, transformation and regeneration on these continuous, repetitive and mutually echoing surfaces. The painter’s work thus skillfully traces the infinite process of man’s imitation of nature in a limited sequence of images.
