Closer Still

Closer Still

Intimacy lies not in seeing more,
but in staying longer with what we see.

Intimacy lies not in seeing more,

but in staying longer with what we see.

XINGXIN HU - SHUCHEN HUA - XINXIN DIN - ZONG YU 08.09 - 22.09.26

XINGXIN HU - SHUCHEN HUA -
XINXIN DIN - ZONG YU

08.09 - 22.09.26

Hands-on is delighted to present Closer Still,
the first online exhibition of works by Xingxin Hu, Shuchen Hua, Xinxin Din, and Zong Yu.

Hands-on is delighted to present Closer Still,
the first online exhibition of works by Xingxin Hu, Shuchen Hua,
Xinxin Din, and Zong Yu.

Hands-on is delighted to present Closer Still, the first online exhibition of works by Xingxin Hu, Shuchen Hua, Xinxin Din, and Zong Yu.

We have grown accustomed to associating more information with greater knowledge. More images, more access, more disclosure seem to promise a fuller understanding of one another. Yet, as our lives become increasingly visible, the relationship between seeing and knowing appears less certain. What does intimacy mean at a time of hypervisibility?

Closer Still unfolds through glimpses and moments of partial revelation. Rather than offering a complete view, these fragments foreground subtle elements that are easily overlooked: a gesture, a trace, a surface, the suggestion of something beyond the frame. It is often within such details that a different kind of proximity emerges, one that depends less on what is shown than on how closely we attend to it.

The exhibition invites us to resist the speed with which images are so often encountered today, proposing intimacy instead as a way of looking: a gaze that requires time, attention and a willingness to remain with what is not immediately apparent.

artworks

artworks

Xinxin Din

Bath towel, 2025
Oil paint on linen
50 x 40 cm

$ 1,100

Xinxin Din
Diary Pages, 2026

Oil paint on linen

60 x 50 cm

$ 1,400

My work explores the relationships between time, memory, and present experience. I attempt to observe the present through a perspective of "looking back at now from the future": precisely because I am aware that this very moment will eventually become the past, the unfolding everyday becomes all the more real and precious. Painting thus serves as a quiet mode of observation, allowing fleeting existence to be re-perceived before it dissolves into memory.

— Xinxin Din

Shuchen Hua

Beheld, 2026
Tempera on board
50 x 60 cm


$ 4,720

I paint the micro-theater of their blooming and withering, their intimacy and exposure - a state of being teetering between shelter and revelation. "Beauty is not something we impose upon things. Beauty is the wound things inflict upon us. How to regard these wounds? I offer only a gaze - an equal and attentive gaze upon the beauty of fragility and all its traces of survival."

Before things are defined by words like "beauty" or "sorrow," they are simply themselves, happening - fleeting instants.
"You possess it only when you have not yet arrived."


— Shuchen Hua

I paint the micro-theater of their blooming and withering, their intimacy and exposure - a state of being teetering between shelter and revelation. "Beauty is not something we impose upon things. Beauty is the wound things inflict upon us. How to regard these wounds? I offer only a gaze - an equal and attentive gaze upon the beauty of fragility and all its traces of survival."

Before things are defined by words like "beauty" or "sorrow," they are simply themselves, happening - fleeting instants. "You possess it only when you have not yet arrived."


— Shuchen Hua

Group exhibition: Closer Still

08 - 22 September 2026

Group exhibition: Closer Still

08 - 22 September 2026

Xingxin Hu
Peach Plum Pear,
2026

Oil on canvas

45 x 45 cm

£ 3,000

Xingxin Hu

Same Old, Same Old, 2026

Oil on canvas

30 x 50 cm


£ 2,500

Xingxin Hu

Hot Cross, 2025
Oil on canvas
30 x 24 cm


£ 1,500

My practice centres on the female figure. Tight framing, like diary notes, shapes how I approach the image, carrying a sense of privacy rooted in everyday life. I reflect on female identity, the body and desire, intimacy and absence, and the subtle emotional resonances that linger in between. In this context, the body is not simply a figure to be seen, but a psychological and relational space shaped by memory, touch, distance, and daily rituals. The work sits in conversation with painterly traditions that understand the body as emotional terrain.


— Xingxin Hu

My practice centres on the female figure.
Tight framing, like diary notes, shapes how I approach the image, carrying a sense of privacy rooted in everyday life. I reflect on female identity, the body and desire, intimacy and absence, and the subtle emotional resonances that linger in between. In this context, the body is not simply a figure to be seen, but a psychological and relational space shaped by memory, touch, distance, and daily rituals. The work sits in conversation with painterly traditions that understand the body as emotional terrain.


— Xingxin Hu

Zong Yu

Waiting I, 2026

Oil on canvas

90 x 60 cm


$ 3,125

Zong Yu
Waiting II, 2026

Oil on canvas

100 x 80 cm

$ 3,750

Beauty, for me, resides not in idealized perfection, but within the genuine texture of lived-in experience. Before feelings are labelled as ‘melancholy’ or ‘serenity’, they exist merely as fleeting, tangible instants.

What I seek to convey is not only my personal observation, but also the viewer’s own unspoken memories - those ghosts of everyday moments one has never fully named, yet always carries within.

— Zong Yu

References

References

XINXIN DIN


  1. Albrecht Dürer, Alex Colville, Anselm Kiefer, Wolfgang Laib, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané

  2. Five Faces of Modernity — Matei Calinescu

  3. The Magic Mountain — Thomas Mann

  4. Ran — Akira Kurosawa

  5. Wild Strawberries — Ingmar Bergman

SHUCHEN HUA


  1. Invisible Cities — Italo Calvino

  2. Autobiography of Red — Anne Carson

  3. Splendor Solis — Salomon Trismosin

  4. Voynich Manuscript

  5. Piero della Francesca

XINGXIN HU


  1. Domenico Gnoli

  2. Nymphomaniac — Lars Von Trier

  3. Jo Ann Callis

ZONG YU


  1. Contemporary Chinese Realism

  2. Western Classical Figures

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