EUROPA is pleased to present a Lux, a solo exhibition from Suyi Xu. In her practice, Suyi conceives of image-making as a system that engages drawing as notation and considers symmetry as an orientation to approach the mythic. Through this system, each painting becomes a sight of visitation in which the trajectory of multiple vanishing points builds the logic of the painting, followed by an improvisation and free association that simultaneously unravels and completes the system. Working exclusively on raw linen canvas, she preserves the color of the fabric as the first light of the painting.

Lux presents hallways, facades, knaves, and reliefs, all of which call forth the sublime produced through structure and light. Auguste Rodin carved The Cathedral, a stone sculpture of two distinct right hands belonging to different figures, with their fingertips gently grazing to form an arch-like, prayerful space. In making this sculpture, Rodin treated the empty space between the hands as a living element of the sculpture that symbolized the inner sanctuary or the mind. As we look at Suyi Xu’s latest paintings, we see these architectural spaces as the scaffolding of spaces where the presence of spirit and psyche is called forth and appears between the arches and columns. Pastel blues and pinks bloom in ephemeral clouds, and apparitions infiltrate the built environment, speaking through symbol and intuition from within the hegemony of lines.

In these sites of visitation, Xu’s paintings interpret space and time simultaneously with thought and feeling, communicating a spirituality and mythos of psyche through line, symbol, light and color. Each work reflects a convergence of inner and outer spaces, mapping the peaceful infinity of ephemerality that collects and passes between them. Through Suyi Xu’s image-making system, the form eventually produces formlessness, and logic and intuition coalesce into a poetry of light and spirit.