Jasmine Hsu

Crossing IV
acrylic on paper
12 x 12 in.

Jasmine Hsu is a Taiwanese-born American artist. She graduated from SCAD Savannah College of Art with an MFA in Photography and Computer Art. Painting from her own experience, Jasmine creates abstract visualizations using mixed media to convey just how different and similar her two cultures are. The artist currently lives and works at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City.

Jasmine Hsu offers works that exist simultaneously within the genres of abstract expressionism, minimalism, and color-field painting. Large panels containing areas of neon hue overlaid by mercurial, mineral pigmentation imbue these works with a geological temperament whilst layers of paint, sanded and cut away in various sections, reveal a multi-media approach concerned in equal measure with the powers of intention and chance.

Coming to her painting practice from an established background in photography and its various printing techniques, the artist shares that her art making is in some ways inspired by the technique of “polaroid emulsion lift”.

Comprised of fields of colored media, the paintings of Jasmine Hsu are inspired by the placid, watery stains of Helen Frankenthaler and also the active, accretive terrains of Anselm Kiefer, holding as “main event” the revealed histories of their own creation. As the sheer face of a rocky mountainside can reveal the various colorful strata of its own mineral composition and an urban brick wall can be the site of an incidental visual collage, comprised of years of wheat-pasted printed ephemera and partially decipherable adverts, Jasmine Hsu’s paintings reveal shifts in inspiration over time, a respect for material agency, and a good deal of pop sensibility.

© Jasmine Hsu