I left my hometown / My hometown appears, begins a poem by Shuling Guo titled Temple II, which shares its name with her forthcoming solo exhibition at Hollis Taggart in New York. Rooted in sacred symbolism and the natural world, Guos dreamlike, symmetrical paintings reflect on growing up in Chaoshan, Guangdong Province, Chinaan area known for its intricate blend of spiritual and folk traditionsand trace themes of memory, presence, and loss. The body, including the mind, is regarded by the artist as a temple that binds physical sensation to psychological and emotional experience.
Origins, rites, and reverberations
Guos earliest encounters with ceremony in Guangdong, where Daoist and Buddhist practices coexist with local customs, form an enduring matrix for her visual language. Guo made frequent visits to her village temple, where local wood carving, murals, and sculpture became part of her visual memory, the gallery says. The paintings production coincided with the birth of her daughter and the death of her grandmother, and their imageryburgeoning blossoms, delicate flames, and glowing ribbon-like tendrilsmeditates on beautys transience and lifes fragility. Religious imagery from the Early Renaissance shapes Guos compositions, often through arch-like devices where flowers droop or birds rest, while her use of oil and colored pencil on linen over panel yields a diffused, otherworldly surface. The works have been noted for recalling the spiritualist canvases of Agnes Pelton, and orchids and other blooms carry intimations of sensuality and human anatomy not unlike Georgia OKeeffe.
Works and a new immersive mural
Hollis Taggart presents Temple II from October 15 through December 5, and the exhibition will include the artists first mural, which transforms the gallery into an immersive, meditative space. Titled pieces shown include Half of the Moon Anchors between Two Mountains (2026), oil and colored pencil on linen over panel, 16 x 20 inches; Purple Glow (2026), oil and colored pencil on linen over panel, 20 x 16 inches; Portrait X (2026), oil and colored pencil on linen over panel, 12 x 12 inches; Portrait IX (2026), oil and colored pencil on linen over panel, 24 x 12 inches; Tune Is in the Tree II (2026), oil and colored pencil on linen over panel, 30 x 24 inches; and Portrait VIII (2026), oil and colored pencil on linen over panel, 24 x 12 inches. In Guos practice, the gallery notes, these different visual traditions converge as a way of exploring devotion and ritual.
Temple II distills personal history and collective ceremony into balanced, luminous images that hold grief and joy in equal measurean invitation to step through the arch of memory and dwell, briefly, in stillness.
