Please Take Off

Hu Linhao's brush once served as a knife dissecting gloom. In his recent creations in Beijing, he carved through inner chaos: depression lingered like a shadow, colors sank into murky swamps, figures crouched within confined compositions, separated from the world by an invisible wall. Yet since his artistic residency in Shunde, this blade has transformed into dawn's first light - unlocking fresh perspectives and liberating his once self-contained thought patterns.

This exhibition displays all works created by Hu Linhao during his residency in Shunde. These works serve as testimony to his awakening transformation. The shift in perspective: from a self-made cage to open wilderness, from perceiving everything in the world as himself, to standing apart and observing more familiar or unfamiliar people. The figures seen from behind become silent travelers, walking between roads, grasslands, and water bodies, measuring spatial dimensions with their physical bodies. The displacement of focus: his gaze turns toward the textures of stone slabs, the undulations of grass blades, the constellations in the night sky. Minute objects are endowed with divinity, while psychological wrinkles are quietly smoothed away.

What surprised me was that Hu Linhao unexpectedly opened his subtle perception of interpersonal emotions. In the paintings, those figures walking side by side, couples holding hands for wedding photos, even passing strangers, or himself practicing tai chi—all are imbued with emotional undercurrents: the ambiguous distance of being neither too close nor too far, the unspoken silence of words withheld... These unarticulated tensions became a new prism through which he observed the world. When he transferred wedding couples onto canvas, it was not to celebrate love's perfect facade, but to capture the hesitation behind commitment, the anxiety within anticipation, and the reflection on his own experiences. This sensitivity to human connection marked his transition from solitary monologue to a shared space of coexistence with others. The artist began focusing on "symbiotic relationships"—where people are no longer mere individuals, but mirrors for one another that reflect their true selves only through these connections. Simultaneously, Hu Linhao abandoned his previous dark palette, allowing coarse brushstrokes and vibrant colors to coexist—childlike simplicity concealing precise emotional control: as candid as children's doodles, yet harboring both the pain of reality and visions that transcend it.

"Don't Get Better" is precisely the bugle call of this self-struggle and awakening. It resists society's discipline regarding "psychological recovery"—the artist's transformation is by no means a "getting better" that erases scars, but rather forging those scars into armor to face the world directly. Like a newborn infant, he renames all things with an untrained gaze. Here, Hu Linhao invites us to contemplate an imperfect redemption: when everyone urges you to "get better," he tells himself through "Don't Get Better" that living in the present moment is what's best.

Thank Boxes Art Museum for providing the exhibition opportunity for artist Hu Linhao, looking forward to the audience gaining different experiences from Hu Linhao's works.

Yu Fei
June 2025