“I left my hometown / My hometown appears,” begins a poem by artist Shuling Guo titled “Temple II,” which shares its name with her forthcoming solo exhibition at Hollis Taggart Downtown. Drawing on sacred symbolism and nature, Guo delves into her memories of growing up in Chaoshan, Guangdong Province, China, and the area’s unique mixture of spiritual and folk traditions. Her dreamlike, symmetrical works speak to the harmony of the cosmos as much as they nod to the balance of life and the sublime.
Guo’s paintings in Temple II explore memory, presence, and loss, and their creation coincided with both the birth of her daughter and the death of her grandmother. Burgeoning blossoms, delicate flames, and glowing ribbon-like tendrils allude to the transience of life, its beauty, and its fragility.
The artist views the body as a temple, including the mind, which links one’s physical experience to the psychological and emotional. Guo is influenced by her earliest interactions with ceremony and ritual in Guangdong Province, where locals practice Daoist and Buddhist traditions alongside folk customs. “Guo made frequent visits to her village temple, where local wood carving, murals, and sculpture became part of her visual memory,” the gallery says.
Religious imagery, especially from the Early Renaissance, informs Guo’s compositions, especially with the addition of arch-like features within which flowers droop or birds perch. The combination of oil paint and colored pencil creates diffused, otherworldly forms that also evoke the effervescent spiritualist paintings of Agnes Pelton, and orchids and other flowers suggest sensuality and human anatomy not unlike Georgia O’Keeffe. In Guo’s works, “these different visual traditions converge as a way of exploring devotion and ritual,” the gallery says.
Temple II opens on October 15 and continues through December 5 at Hollis Taggart Downtown, 109 Norfolk Street, New York. The show will also feature the artist’s first mural, which transforms the gallery into an immersive, meditative space. See more of the artist’s work on Instagram.
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