SALOMÉ WU,
Over the Seas of Spillage
Over the Seas of Spillage is the fourth episode of Golden Shower’s format and will be open from Saturday, October 28th to Saturday, November 18th. The show is a solo exhibition by the London-based artist Salomé Wu (1996).
A play of lights and colours, an overwhelming energy embodied by forms, is what we perceive facing the works by Salomé Wu. It is a tactile and visual encounter with our intimacy and what is hidden behind its surface, reflecting our beliefs and doubts on each canvas. A fairy-taled breeze enlivens Salomé Wu’s works, played on blue and rose tones: hanging between abstraction and figurativeness, the artist’s practice dresses spontaneous motifs and surrealist symbols, questioning the perceived reality and making us live in an escaping atmosphere.
Rooted in Romanticism aesthetics, Salomé Wu’s practice explores spirituality’s foundations through lonesome celestial figures in a state of nirvana. The artist’s paintings “capture the moment when things feel on the edge of bursting”, reminding the Romantic idea of the sublime, splitting the viewer’s experience between admiration and reverence, and externalising the impermanence and fragility of life. From their titles to their iconic structure, the artist’s works are composed of emotional fragments and personal experiences, looking beyond their physical happenings as phenomena to their spiritual heritage.
Growing up between Beijing, Tokyo and Singapore, Wu boasts an unusual upbringing with a highly religious grandmother devoted to Christianity and vast religious practices approached by philosophy. Even though the artist does not consider herself part of organised religion, instead, she is interested in the essence of spirituality, alongside the experience of continual displacement that seeps through her art practice, where repetitive motifs lend to the ideals of mysticism.
Salomé Wu (b.1996) lives and works in London, UK. Wu is currently studying for her MA at the Royal College of Arts, London. Wu graduated in 2020 with an MA in Printmaking from Camberwell College of Arts, UK and in 2019 with a BA in Textiles Design & Print from Chelsea College of Arts, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Ode to Oaths’, Guts Gallery, London (2020). Recent group exhibitions include ‘New Mythologies II’, Huxley-Parlour, London (2022); ‘Bliss’, Tube Culture Hall, Milan (2022); ‘Synthesis’ Saatchi Gallery, London (curated by Delphian Gallery, 2022); ‘There Are No Strangers Here’, Canopy Collections x Modernity, London (2022). Wu has been the recipient of the She Curates X CloverMill Artist Residency, Netherlands (2022) and Spread Museum Artist Residency, Entrevaux (2022). Wu’s work has been collected privately, widely in the UK, France, Switzerland and the USA.
