Chujun Hu

Lives and works in London, UK

Artist statement

My painting practice explores the body as an unstable site of looking, desire and material experience. In my ongoing series Unsettled, bodily forms emerge through dense layers of acrylic paint, only to dissolve again into abstraction. Rather than presenting the body as a fixed or easily recognisable image, I use repetition, excess and painterly accumulation to interrupt the viewer’s attempt to identify and possess it. Earlier works in the series focused more directly on bodily fragments and the tension between figuration and abstraction. As the series has developed, these forms have gradually expanded into environments that evoke landscape, vegetation and organic growth. The body is no longer separate from its surroundings; it becomes entangled with natural forms, colour and movement, shifting between figure, landscape and abstraction. This instability is central to my work. I am interested in the moment when an image almost becomes recognisable but refuses to fully settle. Through layered surfaces, disrupted forms and excess materiality, I explore how the body can remain present while resisting a fixed, consumable image.

Artwork