Sihan Guo’s practice meditates on the possible dissociation of human subjectivity led by today’s information technology. Her works evoke the idea of disintegration, absence, and self-erasure by experimenting with the materiality of painting. In her work, the orientation toward a human-less, subject-less, and collapsed vision of space denotes an object-oriented fantasy overriding any human perceptions. Her inspiration often comes from deserted places, dilapidated monuments, and the imagination of the present man-made world as future remains — situations where human capability is alienated and relinquished.

 

Through her back-and-forth sculpting of paint and different treatment of surfaces, the almost recognizable shapes or silhouettes are, however, quickly struck down beneath the negative space. Apparitions of figures and architecture are indefinitely incarcerated by this foiled attempt to proceed and be present onto the surface. What pulls for attention, then, is the landscape dissolving in-between presence and absence, reality and virtuality.