XIAO GUO HUI
THIS SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WATER
Opening 17 September 2026, 18-20h
18:00–20:00h: Opening Reception at the gallery with Drinks and Apéro
19:00–19:30h: Introduction Walkthrough with gallery director Fabian Lang
You are, however, also welcome to visit us already between 11:00 and 18:00h for the ZURICH1 SEASON OPENING DAY.
Please register for the introduction walkthrough here under this link.
Galerie Fabian Lang is proud to present its second solo exhibition of works by Xiao Guo Hui, a two year long inquiry into the ontological capacity of contemporary painting. Building upon his inquiry into what painting can achieve in an age saturated with digital media, this new body of work uses human conflict, the theatre of conviction and the quiet mechanics of everyday life as its point of departure to observe the contemporary "Human Comedy".
Xiao’s practice draws deep visual and spiritual inspiration from Early Renaissance masters such as Giotto and Piero della Francesca. Aligning with the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s assertion that painting “reveals the invisible within the visible,” Xiao rejects mechanical, single-point perspective precision in favor of an embodied, manual and deliberately imprecise practice—the “three Hs” (Head, Heart, Hand) rooted in the tradition of “disegno”. Shades are achieved by layer upon layer of paint, until the light radiates from the canvas towards you. Contours are fluid; the representations are inventively impressionistic. Objects sometimes seem to merge from one thing into another. There is something happening everywhere.
In contrast to the distracted temporal flux of digital media, the artist utilises the static canvas to condense existential drama into a singular, contemplative image that preserves a quiet, maybe ironic distance from the visible world. One quickly moves from the big picture to interpreting individual occurrences. One simply gets caught up in making connections, marvelling, discovering and interpreting.
From this reflective stance, Xiao examines how modern society constructs certainty, rigid moral positions, and ideological divisions that function as new secular orthodoxies. Observing these social tensions from a distance with a mixture of seriousness and quiet playfulness, his paintings do not judge or offer moral conclusions. Instead, they invite viewers to reflect on the deep entanglement of freedom, belief, and conflict in contemporary life.
Three key works may exemplify the subtle thematic arc. The children’s game, 2026, shows what appears to be a close up view into a children’s block battlefield. Driven by an instinctive desire to compete and imitate adults, their game carries neither ideology nor allegiance. The second painting Les zebras, 2026 depicts three lions in an almost comic-book way, hunting a zebra on the savannah while the surrounding herds drink and mate undisturbed, exposing nature's evolutionary threshold of survival and apparent indifference. The third work This side of the mountain, the other side of the water, 2024-2026 is one of the key works in the exhibition. “It turns to humanity’s oldest affliction: war.” (Xiao), focusing on ordinary citizens watching far-off violence through screens across national borders. It explores how political propaganda legitimises destruction while geographic distance fosters a collective apathy. It’s all over Beaudrillard’s hyperreality again: “the representation of the war replaced the actual event, making the media broadcast the only "reality" viewers experience”.
We know better but since it’s intangible it doesn’t touch us enough. Are we naiv? Icarus, 2026 is asking: how close do we have to get before we get burned? Are we getting carried away?
Together, these paintings pose an unsettling question: “Is war an inevitable byproduct of human intelligence, or an atavistic impulse from which civilisation has never truly escaped?” (Xiao).
Just as when someone dies, Xiao’s works snap us out of our dull, listless existence and reveal to us what the ‘here and now’ truly is. Is this jolt to our consciousness not precisely the purpose of art? It performs the indispensable service of helping us to become aware again.