Hsi-Nong Huang: Ships Passing

4 May-13 Jul 2024

Overview

New Art Projects is delighted to present the first solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist Hsi-Nong Huang. Following the completion of her MA in Sculpture at The Royal College of Art, Huang lives and works in London. 

At first glance, Huang’s recent practice explores the dialogue between sculpture, performance, sound and drawing with a focus on historic minimalist interventions and installations, however on further inspection a complex conversation between materials is revealed that both explore and represent an emotional relationship between ‘two halves’. In her sculptures, she creates a meeting point between materials that can hold hidden personal histories, preserve memories, and form a liminal space that allows her past once more to find its way into our present or her future. 

Huang works almost exclusively with wood and metal. By placing metal next to wood, threading wood through metal and balancing metal with wood, she creates a sibling relationship/existence between materials. Hidden in the spaces between these hard planes, hidden texts suggest both a possible conflagration of materials and emotions and missed or fleeting pairings that have passed each other by.

Huang collaborates with these materials: exploring and demonstrating how they can be joined, how they can balance each other. This process encompasses both the weight of the materials and the lightness of her touch. How and where the materials – and we – meet – in time and space – is important. Permanence and impermanence coexist. Some elements might last forever, and some for only a passing moment, as her minimalist forms move together and apart, defining what lasts and what does not.  

“These movements create moments, and these moments make drawings and emotions,
emotions become the duration of a relationship, and articulate a pairing or a passing ship…”

Hsi-Nong Huang completed a BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts and an MA in Sculpture from Royal College of Art. Huang has exhibited both in the UK and China with recent exhibitions including RA Summer Exhibition 2023, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2023); Magnified Ear, A.P.T Gallery, London (2023); Reflections: Part 3: Sculpture by Women Artists, WORKPLACE, London (2022) and London Grads Now. 21, Saatchi Gallery, London (2021). Huang has undertaking a year as an Artist Woodwork Fellow at City & Guilds of London Art School, London (2022-23). She is the recipient of Samuel Ross Black British & POC Artist Grants, 2021 and was selected for the first ever Claudia Rankine Award, 2019.

Hsi-Nong Huang co-curated Testing Grounds, Filet, London (2022) with Rachel Mortlock, Janek Nixon and India Stanbra. She also curated Systems We Have, New Art Projects, London (2022).

Artists