Warwick Brown Review

Nong Shao Hua brought to New Zealand a selection of his paintings made over the last few years. These impressive works are unlike anything done in New Zealand, but they do employ the Modernist styles of expressionism and surrealism which a number of local artists have used.

Shao Hua’s work is notable for the originality of his compositions, his employment of confusing scale, his restrained use of colour and his diverse and extremely competent paint handling. Although a few of his paintings verge upon abstraction, in the main they are figurative. We see people in a range of settings: open fields, huge halls, crumbling barns, on roughly assembled platforms and small stages, or crouching in nests of junk. Shao Hua’s people all seem to be in some kind of trance, bewildered by or resigned to their situations. They may be seated around a table or gathered in groups. Some may be imbedded in tangled debris, or just standing in isolation. In the one painting they may be depicted at normal size, but accompanied by tine doll-like figures. Elsewhere these tiny figures are seen as if they are far away in the distance, but this distance is impossible because it forms part of a foreground construction.

Shao Hua‘s working method is to lay in a background of thinned paint with broad sweeps of the brush and them to develop his complex imagery over this with scraping and overpainting, utilising the slow-drying quality of oils. The background is usually not worked upon much beyond its initial creation, so in the finished paintings there is a sense of the imagery being packed into the centre. In his best works this centre is crowded indeed, like an old farm shed into which everything possible is crammed, including the farmer, his workers, and his neighbours. What we are seeing and what is happening is sometimes hard to work out. In such paintings the overall range of colours is usually restricted – to sombre blues, greens, greys, and browns. Shao Hua’s treatment of light is expressive – he lights some areas and darkens others. He prefers murky interiors and overcast skies to bright sunlight.

Shao Hua has developed a few symbols that re-appear in his work. There is the shaded electric light, hanging on its cord; the small brightly-lit windows high up in the wall, adding to the claustrophobic effect of his gloomy interiors; the twisted piles of spindly junk, the cylindrical metal mask worn by some of his figures; a man with his head thrown back, lit from below, old bicycles and dogs. Oddly, Shao Hua’s figures are still, whereas the other contents of his rickety structures seem to be thrashing about. If there is any affinity for past art it would be with that of Hieronymus Bosch, but it is only a tenuous link. Bosch’s canvases are filled with frantic, often gruesome activity and are meticulously detailed. Shao Hua’s scenes are still and loosely painted. There is no gratuitous violence – although now and again he tastefully portrays explicit eroticism.

Like all good art, Shao Hua’s repays extended and repeated viewing. Small details previously overlooked will appear; new painterly effects will be noticed. His works leave the viewer puzzled and disturbed. These are important paintings for the present and the future.

– Warwick Brown, New Zealand Art Collector and Author, June 2017