Article | Dehua Hou: The Noise of the Flesh | Nan Ke Gallery-南柯画廊

在展览《所多玛一百二十天》中，侯惪华的创作以持续的内在观察展开，指向感知的真实性与存在本身的不稳定状态。他的绘画根植于个人的生命经验，尤其来自他作为视雪症（Visual Snow Syndrome）患者所经历的独特视觉世界。

In the exhibition The 120 Days of Sodom, Dehua Hou’s practice unfolds through a sustained mode of inward observation, addressing the instability of perception and the fragile conditions of existence itself. His painting is rooted in personal lived experience, shaped in particular by his condition as a Visual Snow Syndrome (VSS) patient, through which the world is apprehended in a distinctly altered visual register.

Installation view of 120 Days of Sodom, Jan. 10, 2026 - Mar. 8, 2026, Nan Ke Gallery, Shanghai, ©Courtesy of Nan Ke Gallery, Photographed by Runxin.

在视雪症患者的感知中，世界始终被密集而细微的噪点覆盖，如同无信号电视屏幕般的持续闪烁。这种视觉状态被认为与大脑的感知机制及潜在的精神创伤相关。对侯惪华而言，“噪点”成为了一种通向精神层面的入口。它主动介入形图像诞生的过程，形成其技术语言与视觉结构的重要组成部分。

For individuals with VSS, perception is persistently overlaid with dense, minute visual noise, resembling the constant flicker of a television screen without signal. This condition is understood to be linked not to the eyes but to cerebral perceptual mechanisms and, in many cases, to latent psychological trauma. For Hou, this “noise” functions as an entry point into the psychic realm. It intervenes directly in the emergence of images, becoming a constitutive element of his technical language and visual structure.

在操作上，侯惪华的惯用技法是通过将颜料弹拨到画布上来直接生成这些视觉颗粒。这种源自身体动作的、半随机的方式，将艺术家创作过程中内在的思考与颤动，转化为可以被直观感受的物理表面。

In terms of technique, Dehua Hou commonly generates these visual particles by flicking paint directly onto the canvas. This method—rooted in bodily movement and guided by a degree of chance—translates the artist’s internal thought processes and subtle tremors during the act of making into a physical surface that can be perceived directly.

Detail ｜ Face Unknown. Body the Same

神明的脸无从辨认，但它的身体与我们别无二致，2025

侯惪华 Dehua Hou

神明的脸无从辨认，但它的身体与我们别无二致

Face Unknown, Body the Same，2025

雨露麻布面、丙烯 Acrylic on dew retting flax

83h x 140w cm

©Courtesy of the artist

在具体作品中，身体以灰白、交错、重叠的形式出现。在“容器”（2023）中，身体更像是一具被掏空的外壳，物质性被削弱，精神力量的存在感转而介于表面与内部之间。随着观看角度的变化，结构也在显露与消散之间轮回。在“神明的脸无从辨认，但它的身体与我们别无二致”（2025）中，这种变化进一步推向身体性的层面。物体的边界被不断拉开与扩散，最终趋于消失，如同从相似的肉身中，窥见不可直接估量的神性。

Within specific works, bodies appear in grey-white tones, intersecting and overlapping. In Soma Vessel (2023), the body resembles a hollowed shell: its materiality is weakened, while the presence of psychic force hovers between surface and interior. As the viewer’s perspective shifts, internal structures oscillate between revelation and disappearance. In Face Unknown, Body the Same (2025), this instability is pushed further into the register of corporeality itself. The boundaries of the body are continuously stretched and diffused, gradually dissolving, as if glimpses of an immeasurable divinity emerge from an otherwise familiar flesh.

Installation view of 120 Days of Sodom, Jan. 10, 2026 - Mar. 8, 2026, Nan Ke Gallery, Shanghai, ©Courtesy of Nan Ke Gallery, Photographed by Runxin.

侯惪华有意引入3D世界中的基础语言，如“穿模”“内部观察点”等，作为消解物质坚硬性的手段。这些原本用于构建虚拟真实的技术机制，在他的作品中反而指向一种不稳定的现实感。身体成为在无明确目的、难以辨认的状态中被重新排列的结构单元，秩序于是在持续的漂移与重组中暂时显现。

Hou deliberately incorporates foundational languages of 3D environments—such as “clipping” and “internal viewpoints”—as strategies for undermining the solidity of matter. Techniques originally designed to construct virtual realism instead point toward an unstable sense of reality within his work. The body becomes a structural unit reorganized without clear purpose or legibility, while order appears only temporarily, through ongoing drift and recomposition.

在《所多玛一百二十天》的展览语境下，当肉身被不断推向极端、成为欲望与权力的承载体时，侯惪华的作品提供了一条向内反省的路径。在噪点、虚拟空间与去物质化身体的交织中，作品呈现出一种冷静而持续的观看状态，使存在的问题重新回到感知的源头。

Within the context of The 120 Days of Sodom, where the body is repeatedly driven toward extremes and positioned as a carrier of desire and power, Hou’s work offers a path of inward reflection. Through the interweaving of visual noise, virtual space, and dematerialized bodies, his works sustain a cool, attentive mode of looking, returning questions of existence to the very origins of perception itself.