Tang Shuo: Shadows of Boulder Hill

Shadows of Boulder Hill presents Tang Shuo’s powerful paintings of his childhood experiences in rural China, documenting his concurrent solo exhibitions at Fabienne Levy’s galleries in Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland.

Shadows of Boulder Hill presents a group of seventeen powerful paintings in oil on linen and a selection of drawings by artist Tang Shuo (b. 1987 in Guangxi, China) that delve into his childhood experiences in rural southern China. This, Tang’s first book, documents the concurrent exhibitions of these works at Fabienne Levy’s galleries in Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2023.

Shadows of Boulder Hill marks a significant point in Tang’s career; in 2023 he incorporated narrative threads into his paintings for the first time, depicting young lovers, recluses and wanderers lost in imagined and remembered landscapes of lush vegetation and wildflowers. A selection of the fascinating true stories from Boulder Hill that inform Tang’s practice, personal and collective, are detailed in the gallery notes.

Shadows of Boulder Hill includes a foreword by gallerist Fabienne Levy and an essay by multidisciplinary scholar Dr Matthew Holman. Holman explores the significance of time, place, perspective and memory in Tang’s recent body of work, as he considers the impact of China’s Cultural Revolution on subsequent generations. Tang’s move to the UK in 2020 prompted him to reconsider his past and his identity in a new country. Here, Tang appears as an artist who has found his voice as he eloquently explores scenes of family, friendship, suffering, solitude and survival.