About the Artist
Brian J. Xu is a multi-disciplinary artist finishing his BFA at the University of Southern California. Born in Texas and raised in the Silicon Valley, he spent his formative years surrounded by the creative innovatively of the Bay Area and the logicality of computer programming. While ultimately pursuing the arts, his perspective on creative expression is influenced by the object-oriented practicum of his upbringing. Working in primarily physical and quasi-digital mediums, his works question the contemporary self’s relation to a world increasingly invested in simulation, utilizing gestures of long exposure photography, sculpture, garment, and painting to do so.
Xu is the recipient of many awards including a 2022 solo exhibition in the Helen Lindhurst Gallery, a 2018 Scholastic Arts and Writing Gold Key, a 2018 Scholastic Arts and Writing Silver Key, and has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including the 2019, 2020, and 2021 USC Roski Annual Student Exhibition hosted by the Fisher Museum of Art. He currently splits his time between Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
Body and Soul (triptych), 2022
Father and Son, 2022
About the Work
Human too human is a series of long exposure photographic prints and ceramic sculptures centered on the idea of pushing and pulling the human beyond representation and abstraction. The idea of capturing movement in the stillness of a static medium such as photography creates the sensation that the body is in motion despite being caught in a frame of time. Contrasting with the solidity and fleshed out quality of ceramics, the juxtaposition of soft ethereal photographs with tangible sculptural surface describes the nuanced qualities of existence in the 21st century.
Human too human is a series of long exposure photographic prints and ceramic sculptures centered on the idea of pushing and pulling the human beyond representation and abstraction. The idea of capturing movement in the stillness of a static medium such as photography creates the sensation that the body is in motion despite being caught in a frame of time. Contrasting with the solidity and fleshed out quality of ceramics, the juxtaposition of soft ethereal photographs with tangible sculptural surface describes the nuanced qualities of existence in the 21st century.