At Dawn
Yage Guo & Bo Sun
27 April - 27 May 2023
Private View: Wednesday 26 April, 6 - 8.30pm
Biomorphic forms and petals catching first light. The work of Bo Sun and Yage Guo meets at the point of the natural sublime; a symbolic reckoning at the moment of confrontation between humans and all other nature. While Guo wields linen-cradled flora set in the soft exposure of the atmosphere’s imposing light, Sun constructs techno-futurist skeletons, clad with bluebells and pastel-coloured plastics evoking gelatinous flesh. The works metamorphose from prehistoric, to post-anthropogenic, to supernatural, articulating a reflection on and reverence for structural design in nature and across industry.
Guo observes flowers and plants as subjects, reforming them through a sentimental process of transformation, often using this repeated process as a way to bridge the gap between urban existence and nonhuman nature. Sun’s process is colder, more mechanical. He appropriates shapes such as the moth, cutting them into perspex and aluminium to exact a kind of invasion; a type of mark making that inserts biological patterns into structural engineering and robotics. The sharp edges of Sun’s forms, often evoking mirrored or concrete architectural cityscapes, contrast the breathtaking, fleeting instances that inspire Guo, exacting a play of hard and soft that moves in the philosophical space between the earthly and the cosmological; between day and night.
Yage Guo, The Invitation of the Night, 2023, oil on panel, 35.5 x 27.9 cm
Yage Guo (b. 1998) lives and works between London and Shanghai. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 2017-2022, where she gained both her BA and MA Fine Art (Honours). Guo’s practice spans a wide range of disciplines, including oil paintings on wood panels and canvas, pencil drawings, and bookmaking. Selected group exhibitions include: A Gauzy Flame, Herald Street, London (2023); Under the Jaguar Sun, Kravitz Contemporary, London (2022); Eat Drink Man Woman, 180 The Strand, London (2022); What Now?, PM/AM Gallery, London (2022); ASSEMBLE, V.O. Curations, London (2022); Pathways on Paper, South Parade, London (2022); and Knocking it out of the Park, Gallery 46, London, (2021).
Bo Sun (b. 1998) lives and works in London. He gained his BA Fine Art (Honours) from Central Saint Martins in 2022. Group exhibitions include Baggage Claim, Staffordshire St, London (2023); Your Heart to A Dog to Tear, Take Courage Gallery, London (2022); MacArthur Park, Cromwell Place, London (2022); Upcoming Promises, Simulacra, Beijing (2022); Kissaten/Tea Room, UCL Japanese Gardens, London (2022); Meltdown, Ridley Road Project Space (2022); Port of Call, Changing Room Gallery, London (2021); Flaming Moth (duo exhibition with Tuesday Towey), Changing Room Gallery, London (2021); and Do I Belong T(here), Harlesden High Street, London (2021).
