Kang Xu (b. 1991) 徐康
Xu Kang was born in Wuhan, China, in 1991 and received his MFA from Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in 2024. He currently works and lives in Wuhan. The artist dissolves the conflict between dreams and reality by distorting, deforming, and combining real elements. The artist breaks the visual habits and conventions, making the picture seem to be placed under the scrutiny of an enhanced lens, and the things we are familiar with also give way to various weird scenes. His works have been exhibited in mainland China and European regions, including London, Wuhan, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Ningbo.
The concern for the spiritual research context runs through Xu Kang's works. In these works, the human body and images do not refer to specific objects. What the artist is really interested in is capturing the spirituality beneath the shapes. The reason why he is interested in images such as "biscuits" and "bread" is that they are simple, common, and diverse artificial foods, but when combined with the human body in the paintings, they can cleverly reflect the complex and profound social and political connotations hidden beneath the picture.
In the six paintings in the "Fitting Relationships" series, Xu Kang's works are presented in meticulous detail and on a small scale. The artist often applies multiple layers of acrylic paint and oil paint on the panels to create the illusion of stone or metal. The heavy and square wooden frame symbolizes the rational calculation of space and time, while the composition with a certain religious and sacred meaning makes each panel present as an independent but interconnected story for the audience to peek into. In each work, the artist uses allegorical symbols to create his own visual universe.
徐康1991年出生于中国武汉,2024年硕士毕业于湖北美术学院,现工作生活于武汉。艺术家通过扭曲、变形和组合现实元素,将梦境与现实之间的冲突消解。艺术家打破了视觉上的习惯和常规,使画面仿佛被置于一个强镜头的审视之下,我们熟悉的事物也让位于各种怪异的场景。徐康的作品曾在中国大陆与欧洲地区展出,包括伦敦、武汉、重庆、深圳、上海、宁波等地。
对精神研究脉络的关注贯穿在了徐康的创作中。人体和物像并不指涉具体的对象,艺术家真正感兴趣的是捕捉形状之下的精神性。这也正是他对“饼干”、“面包”一类意象感兴趣的原因:简单、普遍又多样的人造食物与人类身体相结合,却能巧妙地映射隐藏在画面之下复杂而深刻的社会政治内涵。
六幅“契合关系”系列绘画中,徐康的作品以细致入微的细节呈现,规模小巧。艺术家经常在面板上涂上多层丙烯酸涂料和油画颜料,以产生石头或金属的幻觉。沉重方正的木框象征了被理性计算的空间和时间,而带有一定宗教和神圣性意味的构图,又使得每个面板呈现为独立又相互关联的故事,供观众窥视。在每幅作品中,艺术家都使用寓言符号来创建属于自己的视觉宇宙。