{"id":20177740,"date":"2024-10-30T01:24:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T08:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.metrosiliconvalley.com\/?p=20177740"},"modified":"2024-10-30T01:24:58","modified_gmt":"2024-10-30T08:24:58","slug":"phillip-huas-triton-museum-show-evokes-an-edenic-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metrosiliconvalley.com\/phillip-huas-triton-museum-show-evokes-an-edenic-paradise\/","title":{"rendered":"Phillip Hua\u2019s Triton Museum Show Evokes an Edenic Paradise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Phillip Hua\u2019s art practice, Atlas<\/em>, a 13-foot-tall tree, signaled a definitive change in his approach to scale. When Hua and I spoke about \u201cYou Can Never Go Home Again,\u201d his first solo exhibit at the Triton Museum, he recalled, \u201cAt the time, I was working in a frame shop where you\u2019re always thinking about conservation of the artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The colorful tree at the center of Atlas<\/em> is an inkjet monotype, wrapped in transparent packaging tape and distinctively mounted on newspaper spreads from the Wall Street Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atlas, <\/em>like all of the pieces hanging in the gallery, creates an illusion of different ecosystems colliding. The viewer is drawn to the canvas by the central image(s)\u2014a tree, birds in flight, a cricket, flowers or sea creatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hua\u2019s flora and fauna are drawn or painted in lush, aqueous hues. Though he\u2019s of Vietnamese descent, Hua said they\u2019re reminiscent of the Chinese brush paintings he saw hanging in the houses of his family\u2019s friends when he was growing up. \u201cIn traditional brush painting, they\u2019re meditating on nature, observing it while they\u2019re painting,\u201d Hua explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Image<\/a>
Phillip Hua\u2019s \u201cAtlas\u201d<\/em> (2010) is constructed of inkjet monotype and packaging tape on Wall Street Journal newspaper pages.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hua\u2019s meditations on trees and animals also allude to more urgent, contemporary concerns. His mother\u2019s small farm at the back of the San Jose house he grew up in has since been turned into a housing development. The natural world and the creatures that inhabit it are depicted as totems of a lost world that still exist in the artist\u2019s memory. His use of shapeshifting color patterns\u2014dots and squares cut adrift as they expand into elegant smears and splotches\u2014evoke an Edenic paradise. Whereas the presence of newsprint and packing tape suggests an aggressive age of industrial collisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a trip to China with his father, Hua once witnessed areas of staggering urban growth coupled with smog-filled skies. Where commerce and nature meet, there\u2019s only one guaranteed outcome. \u201cEconomic development comes at the cost of the environment,\u201d Hua said. \u201cIt was right there in front of me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he returned home, Hua developed a series of environmentally themed abstract landscapes. \u201cI started playing with the idea of a tree on paper because there\u2019s a poetic relationship there, where you\u2019re looking at the image of a tree in its new form\u2014one that we have commodified, cut down and changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hua\u2019s range of mixed-media canvases, whether as digital monotypes, video installations or on newsprint, are made up of multiple layers that overlap in visual folds. They suggest fields of motion where decay might intrude but the narratives are never static. They keep changing depending upon the way the light catches glints of gold. Or, by the imperfect intersection of angles and corners that communicate competing stories in the foregrounds and backgrounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Phillip Hua\u2019s \u201cPast\/Future Tense<\/em>\u201d video installation is on view at the Triton Museum of Art.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the digital portrait Past\/Future Tense<\/em>, Hua explained that the layers are different iterations of the same image. \u201cThe aesthetic combines different ways that we create and see images,\u201d he said. \u201cI rendered the portrait with different dot sizes until they got progressively bigger, to the point where they almost got abstracted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Hua will print those iterations, typically five versions, onto rice paper to paint on them, before scanning them back in. \u201cI grid them out, cut them up and place them back in their respective spots,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the subject of the world\u2019s disappearing forests, polluted waterways and endangered species lists suggest a mournful exhibit, only one piece stands out as manifestly elegiac. Loss Lullaby <\/em>holds a giant white cricket in place on a black background. Golden stars and planets light up the night sky above it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Phillip Hua\u2019s \u201cLoss Lullaby\u201d<\/em> (2024) comprises acrylic, spray paint, collage, pastel, pencil, ink, and 22k gold leaf on wood panels.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a kid, I used to explore creeks and fields, catching bugs,\u201d Hua said. \u201cI would go to bed on a hot summer night and hear crickets.\u201d When he visits his mother in the same house now, decades later, the sound of crickets has faded away. In the intervening years, the region has experienced an economic boom. Office parks and housing have paved over many of those green spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am coming home but there\u2019s a sadness there. It\u2019s not what I remember,\u201d Hua said. \u201cA core of inspiration for my work is\u2014What did we lose and what did we gain? And was the trade worth it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You Can Never Go Home Again will be on view through January 12, 2025, at the Triton Museum, 1505 Warburton Ave., Santa Clara. Open Tuesday\u2013Sunday, 11am to 4:30pm. tritonmuseum.org<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The natural world and the creatures that inhabit it are depicted as totems of a lost world that still exist in artist Phillip Hua\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14789,"featured_media":20177742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[1865],"tags":[1778,6205],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n