Gao Hang Opens 'Screen Life Drawing' at Tang Contemporary Beijing
A high concept, low-poly cultural critique.
Houston-based artist Gao Hang makes a powerful homecoming with Screen Life Drawing, his first solo show in China, at Tang Contemporary Art’s Beijing Headquarters.
At first glance, his neon figures and low-poly forms might recall the clunky charm of ’90s video game graphics, yet beneath the titular punchlines, like Your Boss and Your Boss’ Boss and Two Good Looking Asians, are powerful observations of a “carnival of virtual identity,” as the gallery describes; a reality where “self-improvement” takes the shape of KPI competitions and existential meaning has been hollowed out.
Intentionally awkward and, at times, visually dissonant, in Screen Life Drawing sketching gets an algorithmic treatment: technical flaws become aesthetic emblems and an in-person reality crumbles at the hands of digital filters. “This dislocation reveals the existential dilemma of digital natives: their visual experiences have been restructured by data models, the boundary between the real and the virtual has been blurred into a chaotic flow of perception through interface interaction.”
Rather than critique of reality, the artist deconstructs the very critique itself. In this space, Hang isn’t here to offer answers, but to hold a funhouse mirror up to our scrolling selves — asking what’s left of “real life” when everything’s been rendered.
The exhibition is now on view through June 7.
Tang Contemporary Beijing Headquarters
2 Jiuxianqiao Rd,
Chaoyang, Beijing,
China, 100102
