「Sean Scully：Away from the Sea」| Preparation video | HEM Exhibition

Exhibition information：
「Sean Scully：Away from the Sea」
Date：2024-08-02 - 2024-10-27
It's been three-quarters of a century since his family moved from Dublin in 1949.
Sean Scully stands in front of a canvas, dressed in a white work suit, holding a paint bucket and brush. He paints silently; his body swaying rhythmically, making it hard to tell if his hand guides his body or the other way around. After a while, he stops, steps back, wipes his face with a handkerchief, and gazes intently at the freshly painted color block.
He paints another block just below the one he just finished. As his hand moves, the edges of the color blocks blur, changing the texture each time. The blocks caress, clash, reconcile, and separate as more blocks join the canvas, like converging ocean currents. To Sean Scully, these color blocks and stripes are tangible beings, the evidence of the perpetual flux of the world and his emotions which he has depicted for 50 years. Would he use the color of sky blue or emerald green to capture the burning red of a sunset or flames? No one knows for sure. Only time can tell.
He has traveled extensively, abstracting in the exile of life. He sought refuge in Gypsy homes during childhood, wandered through London slums, with the echo of his grandmother’s singing voice accompanying his footprint -“When Irish eyes are smiling, sure it’s like a morning spring.” Elsewhere, in Morocco, Mexico, or Barcelona, he depicted the soft light and endless night through the gaze of a Dubliner. Emotion-laden color blocks pile up in paintings or sculptures, seemingly self-governing and defying gravity.
Sean Scully has visited China many times, mostly in the north of the country. This time, his works have finally reached the heart of the south. At the He Art Museum, with the dimming or brightening of daylight, the colors in his paintings and sculptures ripple from light to dark. People cast their gazes towards his creations, like stones submerged in the sea.
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Video by LIU Xiangli