Hou Yijie
At He Art Museum

The Young Artist Project of HEM will present Chinese artist Hou Yijie’s solo exhibition The Pulse and the Pause from August 15, 2026. Through a series of mixed-media works, Hou translates his fascination with martial arts, mythic tales, and pop culture into his practice, engaging in self-examination and social observation within his subject matter.

The passion and the solitude may appear as opposites, yet they are two sides of the same experience—within the most intense pulse lies a pause, within the deepest pause burns a pulse.

Hou Yijie’s paintings grow between these poles. Drawing from history, legend, myth, and martial arts fiction, while also incorporating anime, film, and literature, his works depict heroic vengeance and noble sacrifice. Yet these distant stories are never meant to be reenacted; allusions and figures are distilled into symbols, serving as fulcrums for amplifying extreme situations. Only in such dramatic scenarios do the elements diluted in daily life suddenly come into sharp focus.

Hou’s fervor never leads to triumph; even at its most intense, it reveals a sense of isolation. Beneath the surface lies a somber undertone—the solitude of the individual within an immense order, the fate of ideals destined to fail, and the silence left after all clamor subsides.

Underpinning this vision is the traditional spatial awareness. Hou carries forward the technique of scattered perspective, which represents a form of resistance to being constrained by a single viewpoint. This resonates with the “jianghu” spirit he is drawn to, as the essence of “jianghu” lies precisely in its denial of any absolute authority.

This freedom also permeates his brushwork. Lines are not for shaping forms, but for capturing spirit; color does not define volume or light, but instead expresses emotion. He deliberately retains crude, unbalanced “errors,” leaving traces of overlay and disruption exposed—a refusal to polish the picture into a finished product, allowing “unfinished” itself to become a form of completion.

The image thus moves beyond “representation” into the realm of imagery. Hou extracts symbolic archetypes from tradition, yet resolutely transcends it. Using an ancient language, he speaks of the struggles, choices, and loneliness of the contemporary individual within the established order.

Melancholy lurks within exuberant brushstrokes; stillness lies beneath vivid colors. Hou Yijie leaves all this on canvas, allowing every viewer to recognize, amidst the fervor of others, our shared solitary silence.

Date: 2026.8.15 - 2026.11.15

Location: He Art Museum, Foshan, China

"The Pulse and the Pause" installation views, 2026 ©He Art Museum