A critical look at an emerging artist‘s synthesis of cinematic language, symbolic narrative, and questions of authenticity
“This generation of artists also encourages reflection on how they differ from their predecessors. Figures such as Nam June Paik, Cindy Sherman, Bill Viola and Dara Birnbaum once examined the materiality of media from a McLuhanesque perspective, questioning what television is, what cinema can do and how media shape consumption. In contrast, contemporary artists like Xu employ cinematic language with native fluency. Having grown up in an era defined by memes, social media and promotional imagery, they create within a visual vocabulary already saturated with commercial aesthetics, auteur cinema and representational ideology.”
