Hsu Tung Han sculptures fuse past, present and future into one work. The Taiwanese artist skillfully sculpts figures – birds, human figures and their parts – from blocks of wood, adding and removing cubed segments as if to transform them into a monochrome series of pixels. This process makes them look like objects that have materialized from a laptop screen into real life.
The work of Taiwanese artist Hsu Tung Han is of fundamental importance in terms of materiality. Like a puzzle connecting two worlds, these human sculptures are made from a single block of wood. The meaning is to question time, interruption, manual labor, nature and the digital attraction of human beings. The process of pixelisation also recalls the fragmentation of our remnant element, DNA.
The artist uses clay models and sketches to give a basis to the work. Then he moves on to blocks of wood such as walnut, teak or African wax wood. Each work never seems to be completely finished even if each of them arrives after a laborious process. Each sculpture is based on a dynamism that seems to give it life and set it in motion. The present is transformed into the past, the future is transformed into the present. The works suggest our relationship with the screen, presenting the increasingly distracted way in which we see the world.
Text by Elisa Scotti
