Su Meng-Hung’s Garden of Folding Screens at Art Basel
／Ocula interview by Tessa Molden
Working across printing, painting, installation, and sculpture, Su Meng-Hung draws viewers into a ‘romantic misunderstanding’ of Eastern aesthetic traditions.
Su’s enduring concern with the interpretation of these traditions dates back to the late 1990s, when he studied at Changhua National University of Education before obtaining an MFA in painting from Goldsmiths College, London, in 2005. Employing techniques of image reproduction and appropriation, Su explores how motifs from ink art can be incorporated into contemporary fine art. In The Thorn Birds: Qianlong Emperor’s Arrow -2 (2013), for example, birds and flowers from the late Qing-dynasty paintings are rendered in saturated colours in acrylic paint.
Su’s enduring concern with the interpretation of these traditions dates back to the late 1990s, when he studied at Changhua National University of Education before obtaining an MFA in painting from Goldsmiths College, London, in 2005. Employing techniques of image reproduction and appropriation, Su explores how motifs from ink art can be incorporated into contemporary fine art. In The Thorn Birds: Qianlong Emperor’s Arrow -2 (2013), for example, birds and flowers from the late Qing-dynasty paintings are rendered in saturated colours in acrylic paint.
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In 2019, Su became interested in traditional craftsmanship after seeing a photograph of Coco Chanel’s Coromandel screens—Chinese lacquer screens that primarily reached Europe in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as part of the global trade of antiques. Fascinated by the cultural distance he felt towards the popularised imagery of Eastern art and culture on ornate objects, Su began experimenting with traditional crafting processes as he went from working with antique folding screens to creating his own. His references vary, including techniques borrowed from classical Eastern painting, lacquerware, and silkscreen printing, as well as the use of acrylic paint and digital tools.
At Art Basel’s Unlimited sector, Tina Keng Gallery will present Desolate Landscape on the Golden Screens (2025), Su Meng-Hung’s new installation consisting of eight screens with motifs drawn from three Chinese classics in painting and literature. In anticipation of the opening, Su discussed his evolving approach to folding screens, the physical process of crafting a painting, and navigating domains of the public and private in his new work. |
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TM: Combining lacquer with layers of paint that have been sanded down, your screens explore both Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions. How did craftsmanship become a focal point in your practice?
SMH: I was first drawn to the beauty of antique folding screens when I saw Coco Chanel’s Coromandel screen collection, and I realised the beauty of craftsmanship is something that hadn’t really been discussed in the context of fine art. That curiosity led me to explore the combination between painting and craftsmanship through the physicality of making. I started with antique folding screens, but they were too fragile, so I began making my own wooden panels. This gave me more control over the process—layering paint, sanding, polishing. These physical actions create the textures and surfaces I’m looking for. As I work, the process itself begins to guide the composition, not through deliberate planning, but through bodily engagement with the surface. I see this as a way to connect traditional decorative techniques with contemporary painting. TM: How do you engage with technology in terms of reproducing images?
SMH: Technology enters my practice in two distinct but interconnected ways. Firstly, I borrow the Bientu (變塗) techniques from traditional lacquerware to develop what I call Bientu painting. This method blends painting and craft, creating surfaces that resemble lacquer but are built through layers of acrylic. In this sense, craftsmanship itself functions as a kind of technology; an embodied, time-intensive system of making. Secondly, I use digital drawing tools to recreate traditional images. In ink painting, linmo (臨摹)—the act of copying—is fundamental to artistic training at schools in China. I see digital redrawing as a contemporary form of linmo. Using software, I re-render classical images and transfer them onto silk prints, where I continue working by hand. It’s not about high-tech innovation; rather, it’s about how digital tools can support the slow, repetitive labour of revisiting cultural memory and giving it a new form. TM: Could you talk about the role of kitsch in your work?
SMH: I’ve always been drawn to decorative images that sit at the edge of good taste—visuals often dismissed as kitsch. Since my college days, I’ve collected and used images like flower and bird paintings, folk patterns, and vivid colours. These forms exist between popular culture and fine art. In my work, kitsch becomes a tool, both playful and critical, that allows me to bring everyday aesthetics into the language of contemporary painting, while also questioning what’s considered tasteful. TM: What are your inspirations?
SMH: Some textures in my work resemble Abstract Expressionism or Automatism, but they emerge naturally from the process of sanding, layering, and erasing, not from a conceptual link to those movements. I’m more influenced by artists like Giuseppe Castiglione (Lang Shining), who successfully combined Eastern and Western arts at the Qing court. His hybrid visual language is foundational to my art practice. I also see connections to Pop Art, especially in my use of image reproduction and repetition. These influences come not from stylistic homage, but from shared concerns—translation, hybridity, and the politics of visual language. TM: How does the scale of Desolate Landscape on the Golden Screens push the themes and ideas you have been exploring in your work with screens since 2019?
SMH: Working at this scale lets me turn the screen into something you can walk through. According to Professor Wu Hung (巫鴻) in his essay ‘The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting’, folding screens function as painting, furniture, and sculpture all at once. That combination creates a unique viewing experience, a special installation that viewers can walk through. I was inspired by traditional uses of screens in public from Shangyuan Lantern Picture (上元燈彩圖). This installation takes that idea further, creating a space like a traditional Chinese garden in which the viewer can linger. It expands the idea of painting into something architectural, where the viewer’s body becomes part of the viewing process. TM: There will be eight sets of screens of varying sizes. How do you envisage them to be read and experienced in a European art fair context?
SMH: Folding screens were historically exported to Europe as luxury objects, often admired for their exotic and decorative qualities. In today’s art fair context, those associations still exist. I’m particularly interested in how notions of exoticism will resonate with contemporary audiences. These screens may still be viewed as imported artefacts from the East, echoing a colonial legacy of trade and desire. Through this work, I want to open up questions about how such objects are read—not just in terms of beauty, but also as carriers of cultural projection and historical memory. What does ‘exotic’ mean in a globalised art world? TM: How does the work explore the dichotomy of public versus private?
SMH: Historically, the folding screens represent spatial boundaries, shaping how private and public spaces are organised. In this installation, viewers move through a maze-like structure that encourages shifting between openness and intimacy. Some images are lacquer-like and decorative; others, more hidden and erotic. As viewers navigate the space, they move from public zones into moments that feel unexpectedly private. The screen acts as both surface and threshold, inviting the body to participate in changing states of attention. This dynamic of concealment and exposure is what I find most compelling to explore. TM: The screens contain images from the painting instruction book The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, the Ming-dynasty classic The Golden Lotus, and the Qing-dynasty masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber. What are the threads that connect these three literary pieces?
SMH: These texts represent different layers of Chinese visual culture and emotion. The Mustard Seed Garden Manual is a foundational training manual to ink art, as its repetition and technique shaped how we learn to paint. Dream of the Red Chamber captures emotional subtleties, while The Golden Lotus reveals unexpected depictions of lust and desire. I use images from these sources not to create something new, but to reinterpret and recombine cultural memory. They sit alongside the flower and bird painting from Giuseppe Castiglione, creating a layered, hybrid language. These images carry emotional, aesthetic, and historical weight, showing how traditional patterns can still resonate today. |
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