Tang Shuo: Borrowed History

PLATO is pleased to present Borrowed History, a solo exhibition by Tang Shuo, opening Thursday, October 8, in our lower gallery, with a public reception from 6–8 PM. Tang’s new paintings draw on memories of his childhood, stories of his ancestors spanning centuries, and a deep connection to the natural world.

The artist grew up in Dashishan Village, a small community in southern China, where generations of the Tang clan lived together. His childhood was closely connected to the land, working in the fields with his parents and brothers, planting crops, cutting wood, and tending sheep. This early experience continues to inform his paintings, where people and nature exist in close proximity.

Tang’s connection to the village eventually led him to look more closely at its history. While searching for its origins, he found county documents describing its founding and began tracing the movement of his ancestors. Around 650 years ago, an early Tang ancestor migrated from Shandong to the Guilin region. Nearly two centuries ago, as the family expanded, another branch moved into the mountains and established Dashishan. When the village eventually reached the limits of its farmland, the family moved again. Migration thus becomes a recurring thread in Tang’s work: families leave one place, settle to another, and begin again.

The physical character of the paintings reinforces their intimacy. Tang works on rough linen, drawn to its ability to hold the brushstroke and allow the image to breathe. His process begins with stories gathered from the village and historical records, which he treats as scripts for imagining a scene. He then photographs himself in the pose and expression of the figure before making a sketch and transferring it onto the linen. As the artist explains, his face and body are “borrowed” to tell stories that extend beyond his own identity.

The lyrical quality of Tang’s works allows them to resonate without requiring the viewer to know the stories behind them. Their emotional force comes through the figures, gestures, landscapes, and atmosphere. Tang’s admiration for Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude reflects this movement between the particular and the universal. He is drawn to the story of migration and the founding of Macondo, recognizing a parallel with his own paintings about ancestors and the origins of a place.

The natural world also provides a connection across generations. The same terrain that shaped Tang’s childhood was traversed by those who came before him. Trees recur throughout the exhibition as companions and counterparts to the figures, framing them, standing in for human presence, and becoming objects such as a walking stick or a signpost. In Vessel, Tang imagines the bare foot of a farmer as a vessel harboring plants. Make Peace with Snakes, based on the artist’s childhood phobia, transforms his fear into a moment of reconciliation.

Tang’s engagement with the past is also an effort to preserve a world that is disappearing. When he was a child, more than two hundred people lived in Dashishan; today, only a dozen or so remain. He continues to document the inhabitants and stories of the village and will eventually publish a book recording its history, which he describes as his “own bible.”

In Borrowed History, Tang Shuo looks backward in order to understand his own place in the present, following the journeys of people across generations. What begins with one family and one village becomes a meditation on how we construct a sense of where we come from—and how those histories continue to affect who we are.

Tang Shuo (b. 1987) received his Bachelor’s degree at the Department of Mural Painting, Guangxi Arts University (2008-2012) and studied Experimental Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing (2014-2015). His recent solo exhibitions include Borrowed History at PLATO, New York (2026), upcoming; My Garden at Steve Turner, LA (2024); The Narrators at Beers London (2024); and Shadow of Boulder Hill at Fabienne Levy Gallery, Lausanne and Geneva (2023).

He has participated in group exhibitions such as Visions of Intimacy (2026), Almost Forgot We’re Moving (2026), Fabienne Levy Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland; Pastime (2026), Phantasma (2026), and Blood as Thick as Water (2025) , PLATO, New York; Nice To See You/ Hope To See You Again, TUESDAY TO FRIDAY, Valencia, Spain (2025); En Route II, HdMGallery, Beijing, China (2025); The Mélange of the Many, IOMO Gallery, Bucharest, Romania (2025); SHOWROOM PRESENTATION at KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin (2024); Family & Friends, BEERS London, London (2023); Patterns of Identity, Prior Art Space, Barcelona (2022); Wilderness of Being, HdM Gallery, London, UK (2022); Sync in Progress, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing (2022); Null Protocol, Func Gallery, Shanghai, China (2022); Talking All Day, Badre El Jundi Gallery, Madrid, Spain (2022); Polychromy, Actual Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon (2022); Return To Flesh, The Room London Gallery, London, UK (2022); That Wilderness Within, PRIOR Art Space, Barcelona, Spain (2022); Identity, Artistellar Gallery, London, UK (2022); and paper., Beers Gallery, London, UK (2022). Shuo has exhibited at major international art fairs, including Felix LA with PLATO (2026); Dallas Art Fair with Fabienne Levy Gallery (2024); Untitled Art Fair in Miami (2023); Art Paris with HdM Gallery (2023); and Asia Now with HdM Gallery in Paris (2022).