Oscar yi Hou (侯一鸣) is an artist and writer. He was born and raised in Liverpool, UK. He now lives and works in New York City.
“Oscar yi Hou reconfigures the recognizable. The Brooklyn-based painter, who was born in England to Chinese immigrants, bedecks his portraits with a system of symbols as ostensibly oriental as souvenirs from a Chinatown gift shop. A flock of cranes flutter about. Yin-yang coils burst into balls of flame trailing claw-like tendrils of red smoke. Alongside subjects who sit or stand perfectly still, a double-edged sword burns fitfully; a pentagram sprouts razor-sharp wings; a stream of calligraphy wilts. On view until November 16, his tremendous show at James Fuentes gallery, The beat of life, sees those folds between homage and caricature pucker constantly.” Document Journal
“Birds of a Feather aka: Chinatown Gangsters (2024) shows him next to close artist friends Amanda Ba and Sasha Gordon. They together represent a new guard of Asian painters who are charting alternative paths to complicating identity-based figuration. Their group portrait structurally resembles a folding screen, with actual brass hinges connecting its three panels. In the gangster garb of black suit and unbuttoned white shirt, they channel the Ghost Shadows, or the Flying Dragons, or any number of the other crime rings that ran Manhattan’s Chinatown half a century ago. Each artist seizes a third of the triptych. Like stone lions, they look at us with eyes that say, this is their turf—not ours. We don’t know what sort of foul play lies behind, or whether their stiltedness comes from agonies of guilt, or grief, or fear. These are oppressed people who become oppressors themselves. That metamorphosis is what makes the highbinder so tortured.” Document Journal
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