A soft painting of two figures laying together with a red and pink background.

Xingzi Gu, "Untitled (Cherry Coke or Ocean Flame)" (2024), oil and acrylic on canvas, 54 x 44 inches (images courtesy Lubov gallery)

Alum Xingzi Gu’s Ethereal Paintings Reviewed in Hyperallergic

Artist Xingzi Gu’s (BFA 2018) recent exhibition Pure Heart Hall at Lubov Gallery was highlighted and reviewed in Hyperallergic. The visually soft paintings incorporate elements of drawing and Chinese culture with an emphasis on color.

The figures in her paintings emphasize qualities such as isolation, adolescence, and intergenerational exchanges. They are all reflections of today's youth, particularly in China. They provide duplicitous environments artworks that are both intimate yet isolated, energetic yet quiet, and abstract yet representational. The article states, “This awareness, and the attendant anxieties and feelings of loneliness, haunt Gu’s paintings, imbuing them with sentiment but not sentimentality. Living in the diaspora, Gu is fully aware of being adrift, guided only by her art."