ArtDepot Gallery is honoured to announce its collaboration with Powerlong Art Museum‑Shanghai to present Monsoon Never Comes, the debut museum‑scale exhibition of exclusively represented artist Hou Jianan. The opening reception will take place on August 21, showcasing over‑twenty easel paintings created by the artist between 2025 and 2026.
前言
Preface
波浪形状的弧线在画面上反复弯折，以计算机建模特有的曲率，描摹着自然风景中一切曲线，在平面上制造出起伏的节奏。与此同时，侯佳男在此次新作中，更注入了一种前所未有的坚实感。那些曾经悬停在空中的、像气球般轻盈的物像，如今沉淀了下来，凸显出稳定的物态。
Wave-shaped arcs bend repeatedly across the frame, tracing all curves in natural scenery with the unique curvature of computer modeling, creating a rhythmic undulation on a flat plane. Meanwhile, in this new body of work, Hou Jianan injects an unprecedented sense of solidity. Those once weightless imagery hovering mid-air, akin to floating balloons, have now settled down, manifesting stable materiality.
浪花、植被、山川，层叠于画布之上，不断蔓延、扭曲、交汇、对抗，却在张力的最顶点，仿佛被按下了暂停键。于是，涌动的波浪、摇曳的树冠、翻搅的云团、连绵的山丘，骤然凝固为岩层般的体积，在平滑的色调过渡与渲染中，逐渐显露出玉石般温润而坚硬的质地。在这一刻，时间获得悬置，流动的物像趋于静止，自然状态下的观看逻辑被艺术家转化为一种对姿态的接纳。
Waves, vegetation, mountains and hills layer atop the canvas, endlessly spreading, twisting, intersecting and clashing—yet at the apex of their tension, time seems to hit pause. Surging surf, swaying treetops, churning cloud masses and rolling ridges abruptly solidify into rock-like forms. Amid smooth tonal gradations and rendering, they gradually take on a texture as warm yet unyielding as jade. At this moment, time is suspended; flowing imagery settles into stillness. The artist reworks the conventional way we perceive nature into an acceptance of pure posture.
希望 Hope
200×300cm, 2026, 布面丙烯 Acrylic on Canvas
侯佳男的创作始终围绕一个核心命题展开，即商品社会中的表征符号如何参与塑造我们的认知。当真实生活在层层滤镜中被遮蔽、被替代，我们似乎以为自己拥有选择，实则只是在被预设好的消费闭环中无限循环。这种被技术手段精心组织的观看结构，折射出的是注意力经济时代特有的视觉逻辑。在侯佳男此前的个展中，社媒时代的表演性盛宴、被算法驯化的视觉经验，无一例外地以戏仿为底层逻辑，用平滑的技法描摹一个个近乎完美的假象，让观众在感官愉悦中，隐约窥见现实与表象之间那道微妙的缝隙。
Hou Jianan’s creative practice revolves around one core proposition: how symbolic representations in a commodity society shape our cognition. Filter upon filter obscures and replaces real life. We may believe we possess freedom of choice, yet merely circulate endlessly within pre-designed consumption loops. This meticulously structured visual experience crafted by technology reflects the unique visual logic of the attention economy. In Hou’s previous solo exhibitions, performative spectacles of social media and vision tamed by algorithms all rest on a logic of parody. Using sleek brushwork to render near-perfect illusions, the artist lets audiences sense a subtle rift between reality and surface amid sensory delight.
本次《季风不再来》展览，则尝试转向诉说另一种应对的策略。在景观社会的眩晕症下，我们本渴望打开一扇通往自然世界的窗，迎接那阵来自远方的、裹挟着湿润与不确定性的自然气象。而此处，偏偏是一个与现实相对密闭的、近乎暗箱般的虚拟空间。在这个空间的表面，画布同时承载了两种隐喻：窗户与屏幕。
This exhibition Monsoon Never Comes seeks to articulate another coping strategy. Dazzled by the vertigo‑inducing spectacle‑society, we long to open a window onto the natural world and welcome the distant monsoon‑charged weather carrying moisture and uncertainty. Contrarily, the show creates a sealed‑off, camera‑obscura‑like virtual space set against reality. On the canvas surface lie two overlapping metaphors: the window and the screen.
阿尔贝蒂曾在《论绘画》中教导画家，应该把画框看作一扇敞开的窗户。透过它，目光得以通向一个合乎透视法秩序的、稳定而真实的世界。而电子屏幕，作为工业时代以降的虚拟视窗，则从根本上瓦解了这一秩序。它不再臣服于单一的透视法则，而是呈现出碎裂的、多元的、可复制的、流动的视觉语法。当多块屏幕并置排列的时候，再现传统下稳定的观看主体便被推向一种持续的游离状态。
In On Painting, Alberti instructed painters to regard the frame as an open window. Through it, the gaze reaches a stable, authentic world ordered by linear perspective. The electronic screen, a virtual viewing pane born of industrial modernity, fundamentally dismantles this order. Rejecting singular perspective, it adopts a fragmented, plural, reproducible and fluid visual grammar. When multiple screens sit side by side, the stable viewing subject of traditional representation drifts perpetually.
侯佳男的新作正是将画布放置于窗户与屏幕的叠加形态之中，不断混淆着透过窗户所见的真实风景，以及屏幕上由算法生成的动态影像。他并不急于区分两者，而是让这种模糊的图像本身成为一种提示，使观者放弃确认的企图，而悬停在一个无法被归类的观看位置，既非窗外那个笃定的凝视者，亦非屏幕之内被数据流裹挟的网民。
Hou Jianan’s new paintings position the canvas as the overlap of window and screen, blurring the line between authentic landscapes seen through a window and algorithm-generated moving imagery on displays. Rather than forcing a distinction between the two, the ambiguous images themselves serve as cues, inviting viewers to abandon the urge for definitive classification. They linger in an uncategorizable viewing position: neither the assured observer outside the window, nor the netizen swept along by data streams behind the screen.
在暴雨来临之前 Before the Storm
150×200cm, 2026, 布面丙烯 Acrylic on Canvas
虚拟图像并非晚近的发明，绘画、镜子、暗箱、摄影、电影，这些制造图像的媒介，始终栖身于光学的话语体系之中，因为光是一切视觉得以显现的前提条件。从柏拉图的洞穴隐喻开始，西方思想便对虚拟图像持有一种结构性的警觉，认为凡是投射而来的，不过是理念的二次模仿，抑或是拟象对实存的取代与僭越。这一古老的怀疑论始终贯穿着图像的历史，直至今日的算法时代，仍在形塑着人们面对图像时本能的不信任。
Virtual imagery is no modern invention. Painting, mirrors, camera obscura, photography and cinema all operate within optical discourse, for light is the precondition of all vision. Beginning with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Western thought harbors structural suspicion of virtual images: projected sights are merely secondary imitations of Ideas, or simulacra that usurp tangible reality. This ancient skepticism permeates the entire history of imagery, and continues to shape our innate distrust of visuals in the algorithmic age.
而在侯佳男的创作脉络中，一直埋藏着另一条线索，便是重建光的逻辑。他试图用绘画制造一种 “反景观”。在他的作品中，光源不再来自画面外部、象征权威与规训的单一方向，而是从画面内部发散出来，且位置不止一处。它们被巧妙地安插在必要的角落，有时甚至无从找寻踪迹，仿佛是从事物的另一面，向我们投来的一束逆向的光。以至于画外的观者与画中的风景，皆被置于同一个水平面上、被纳入同一束逆光之中。观者与物像之间那层曾经确凿的距离，在此被取消了，无论是古典传统中俯瞰全局的绝对之眼，还是景观社会里被子弹效应击中的被动受众，都已不复存在。
Running through Hou Jianan’s body of work is another consistent thread: reconstructing the logic of light. He seeks to create a form of “anti-spectacle” through painting. In his works, light no longer emanates from a single external source symbolic of authority and discipline. Instead, it radiates from multiple points within the frame, subtly tucked into corners, sometimes untraceable—like counter-light cast from the reverse side of objects. Both the viewer standing outside the canvas and the landscapes depicted within occupy the same plane, bathed in this unified backlight. The once unbridgeable distance between viewer and subject dissolves. Gone are both the omniscient eye of classical painting that surveys all from above, and the passive audience struck by the bullet effect in the spectacle society.
编织海面的形状 Weaving the Form of the Sea
20×40cm, 2026, 布面丙烯 Acrylic on Canvas
通过反转光的路径，侯佳男将观看经验的支配权重新收归至作为创造者的艺术家手中。画布取代了视网膜的位置，视觉的逻辑发生了根本性的位移，观者已然成为了被艺术家所构造的光线所笼罩、所穿透的、总体世界图像中的一部分。
By reversing the path of light, Hou reclaims agency over visual experience for the artist-creator. The canvas supplants the retina, triggering a fundamental shift in visual logic. Viewers become enveloped and permeated by light constructed by the artist, integrated as a fragment within the total pictorial world.
当现实已是一片被影像层层覆盖的荒漠，或许唯有通过对眼前景观的逐一解构，才能重新唤醒一种未被规训的视觉感知力。在这片季风不再抵达的窗前，走出框架的可能性，只能寄托于艺术家所呼唤的观看者 —— 那个依然愿意在图像的重重褶皱中，交付出自己的参与和共鸣的人。
When reality has turned into a desert layered thick with reproduced images, only deconstructing the spectacles before our eyes can reawaken untamed visual perception. At this window where monsoons no longer reach, the possibility of stepping outside the frame rests with the beholder the artist invokes—one willing to offer engagement and resonance amid the countless folds of imagery.
涟漪 Ripple
100×70cm, 2026, 布面丙烯 Acrylic on Canvas
艺术家简介｜About the artist
侯佳男 Hou Jianan
1992年生于吉林延边，2014年毕业于四川美术学院油画系本科，2018年毕业于四川美术学院油画系研究生，现生活工作于重庆。
Born in 1992 in Yanbian, Jilin, graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2014 with an undergraduate degree in oil painting, and graduated from Sichuan FineArts Institute in 2018 with a postgraduate degree in oil painting, and now lives and works in Chongqing.
侯佳男擅长提出概念，把绘画当作服务于概念的工具，而非目的。因此，他不会强求于手感、肌理、明暗、形体这些绘画的细节。他会用建模软件得到一些想要的素材，用叠加的丙烯化解数码色彩的单调，把最日常的场景变得平滑而失真，体现出膨胀感和欲望感。艺术家在自己创造的世界里扮演着管理者的角色，以此为基调去构建画面。
Hou Jianan is good at developing concepts and treats painting as a tool to serve the concept rather than an end. Therefore, he will not force painting details such as hand, texture, light and dark, and form. He will use modeling software to get some desired materials, use superimposed acrylics to dissolve the monotony of digital colors, and make most everyday scenes smooth and distorted, reflecting a sense of expansion and desire. The artist plays the manager role in the world he creates, using it as a tone to build the picture.
侯佳男亦擅长以虚构故事为主要脉络来进行创作，他的作品表现出快餐性、 消费性、娱乐性的冲撞感。“这种具有拉伸感的画面，就像如今不断扩大的欲望，”这来自他作为艺术家的敏锐直觉。
Hou Jianan also specializes in creating fictional stories as the central vein, and his works present the sense of fast food, consumption, and entertainment rushes. “This kind of image with a sense of stretching is like the ever-expanding desire nowadays," coming from the artist's keen intuition.
侯佳男敏感地捕捉了网络虚拟的饕餮盛宴带给年轻一代的视觉过剩体验，虚拟性和美丽陷阱般的时代特征成为艺术家刻画的重要主题。他的作品中充斥了膨胀的华丽的虚拟视觉场景，在特定的时空传达网络图示看似华丽却脆弱的体验感，呈现了年轻一 代对现代消费主义社会及大众文化的观察与辨证思考。
He sensitively captures the experience of visual excess brought to the younger generation by the virtual feast of the Internet, and the virtual and beautiful trap-like characteristics of the era become an essential theme for the artist to portray. The fictitious picture environment is filled with inflated and gorgeous virtual visual scenes, conveying the seemingly gorgeous but fragile experience of Internet iconography in a specific time and space, presenting the young generation's observation and dialectic reflection on modern consumerism society and popular culture.
他重要的个展包括:《穿堂风》（德萨画廊，香港）、《野餐》(当代唐人艺术中心，北京)、《不要温顺地走进那片森林》(ArtDepot 艺术仓库，北京)、《发条幻象》 (ArtDepot 艺术仓库，北京）等;
His important solo exhibitions include:
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow(de Sarthe, HongKong), Picnic (Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing), Do Not Go Gentle Into That Jungle (ArtDepot, Beijing), Clockwork Mirage (ArtDepot, Beijing), and The McDonald's Project – Right of Graffiti Drama (ArtDepot, Beijing);
参加重要群展包括:屏幕纵深 (广东当代艺术中心，广州)、Express Vol.2(长亭画廊，东京)、《后我世代—如何书写年轻艺术家》(当代唐人艺术中心，北京)、《适度甜蜜》(Tong Gallery+Projects，北京)、《我与我的赋格曲》(ArtDepot艺术仓库，重庆)等。侯佳男的作品也曾参加洛杉矶 Felix Art Fair、上海 Art021、T Art- Con、香港 Art Basel、Art Central、Fine Art Asia、艺术深圳等多家大型艺博会。
He has participated in important group exhibitions including:
Screen Depth(Guangdong Contemporary Art Center, Guangzhou), Express Vol.2 (Changting Gallery, Tokyo), Post-Me Generation-How to Write Young Artists (Tang Contemporary Art Center, Beijing), Moderately Sweet (Tong Gallery+Projects, Beijing), Me and My Fugue (ArtDepot Center, Chongqing), etc. Hou Jianan's works have also been exhibited at major art fairs such as Felix Art Fair, Los Angeles, Art021, T Art-Con, Shanghai, Art Basel, Art Central, Fine Art Asia, Hong Kong, and Art Shenzhen.