Artist Spotlight
In his intricately painted silk portraits and landscapes, Hao Liang filters the techniques, themes, motifs, and conventions of traditional Chinese guohua ink wash painting through a contemporary, cosmopolitan sensibility. Referencing projects and oeuvres from a variety of disciplines, periods, and contexts, he weaves together outwardly divergent influences, ranging from classical poetry to modern literature, film theory, and modern art. Much of Hao’s work is concerned with perspectives on temporality. He positions image making not simply as an exercise in technical skill and art historical knowledge, but also as a reflection of lived experience.
Launched in 2020, Artist Spotlight is presented once a month as a regular part of the gallery’s programming. Each Artist Spotlight highlights a work by an individual artist—made available exclusively online for forty-eight hours—together with new editorial features and selected archival content.
Artist Spotlight: Hao Liang features a new ink painting by the artist. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.
#GagosianSpotlight
Photo: Fan Xi
Behind the Art
Hao Liang: Poetics of Li Shangyin
Join Hao Liang in his Beijing studio as he discusses the inspiration behind his latest series of paintings, rendered in ink and color on silk. Evoking the tradition of literati painting, the three works picture imagery conceived in response to passages of poetry by the ninth-century poet Li Shangyin.
In Conversation
Hao Liang and Hans Ulrich Obrist
To coincide with his recent exhibition Hao Liang: The Sad Zither at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, the artist speaks with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist about the past, his beginnings, and his references.
Hao Liang: Emaciation Now: Paintings of My Contemporaries
Travis Diehl pens an essay on Hao Liang’s latest paintings.
Hao Liang: To Forge the Chain of Being
Fan Jingzhong analyzes the classical concepts and references in Hao Liang’s paintings.
Hao Liang: Portraits and Wonders
Hao Liang speaks with curator Philip Tinari about Chinese artists and traditions that have inspired him. New works by the artist are currently on view at Gagosian in New York.
Related News
Video
Hao Liang on “Eight Views of Xiaoxiang”
In this video produced by the arts organization Kadist, Hao Liang speaks about his painting series Eight Views of Xiaoxiang (2014–16). In addition to discussing the tools and methods he uses, Hao discusses his practice within the context of Chinese art history, drawing parallels between ancient masters such as Wu Bin and Dong Qichang and major Western figures like Sergei Eisenstein and Claude Monet.
Still from “Hao Liang on ‘Eight Views of Xiaoxiang’”
Video
Hao Liang on “The Virtuous Being”
In this video, filmed at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Hao Liang talks about his artistic process, his pictorial technique, and his notion of contemporary art, with a focus on The Virtuous Being (2015), a scroll painting that pays homage to the history of Chinese literati gardens.
Still from “Hao Liang on ‘The Virtuous Being’”
Art Fair
Art Basel Hong Kong 2024
March 27–30, 2024
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
www.artbasel.com
Gagosian is participating in Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 with a selection of works by international contemporary artists. The works on view, which embrace a dizzying variety of subjects and approaches, see the participating artists identify fresh ways to disrupt established histories of abstraction and figuration, and instill sculptural and painterly representations of the natural world with complex cultural significance.
Sarah Sze, Turning and Turning, 2024 © Sarah Sze. Photo: Maris Hutchinson
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Duration
Chinese Art in Transformation
Opened September 25, 2020
Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing
www.msam.cn
Duration: Chinese Art in Transformation attempts to show how every moment that stretches is an absorption of the past, and the endless possibilities of the future are based on the past and the present. The exhibition presents painting, sculpture, installation, video, animation, and more from the 1970s to the present. Work by Hao Liang, Jia Aili, and Zeng Fanzhi is included.
Hao Liang, Eight Views of Xiaoxiang—Snowscape, 2014–15 © Hao Liang. Photo: courtesy UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
Closed
The Dream of the Museum
November 11, 2021–April 23, 2023
M+, Hong Kong
www.mplus.org.hk
The Dream of the Museum examines the concept of found objects to show how artists use cultures as source material to update tradition. Beginning with four pioneers of contemporary art—Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Yoko Ono, and Nam June Paik—the exhibition brings together work by twenty-seven artists from across geographies and generations, including Hao Liang and Andy Warhol, who explore chance and found objects in their work.
Hao Liang, Eight Views of Xiaoxiang—Dazzle, 2015 © Hao Liang. Photo: courtesy UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
Closed
Hao Liang in
ON | OFF 2021: Carousel of Progress
February 4–June 5, 2022
He Art Museum, Guangdong, China
www.hem.net.cn
ON | OFF revisits the narrative of a 2013 group exhibition of the same title at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, which reflected on the work of a generation of young artists who came of age in China’s era of opening and reform. Emphasizing the curatorial concepts of return, repetition, and the spiral, this new iteration features the work of around thirty Chinese artists from the “post-globalization” era and is divided into three sections: Gestures of Time, Chambers of Memories, and Multiple Echoes. Work by Hao Liang is included.
Hao Liang, A Thread of Sky, 2021 © Hao Liang
Closed
Hao Liang in
The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10)
December 4, 2021–April 25, 2022
Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia
www.qagoma.qld.gov.au
For its tenth edition, Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art’s Asia Pacific Triennial looks to the future of art and the world we inhabit together. The Triennial includes sixty-nine projects—from large-scale installations and immersive multimedia artworks to sculpture, textiles, paintings, photography, and video—with new and recent work by emerging and established artists and collectives from thirty countries. Work by Hao Liang is included.
Hao Liang, The Chase of Apollo, Act I, 2021 © Hao Liang. Photo: Yang Chao Studio