Contributed by Taylor Bielecki / In Shuyao Huang’s exhibition “Still Becoming,” currently on view at Art Cake, she investigates color, repetition, and form as modes of experiencing time, interruption, and the transformation of space. Diving deeply into color theory and in line with her longstanding practice, Huang uses strong, simple bands of color as pacing intervals to pull us in and slow us down. The color and thickness of each band are deliberately calculated. The soothing pastel mixtures in, say, Almost the Same, encourage patient contemplation, whereas starkly confrontational primary colors urge jumping to the next. Rather than functioning as a repeated motif, the stripes are a flexible framework for imparting subtle variations in rhythm and affect, which she accomplishes by shifting their proportion, spacing, and color accumulation.
Huang draws on the work and processes of Agnes Martin, whose work reflected a lifelong search for stillness, beauty, and sublime peace. Both artists are inspired by Taoism and Zen Buddhism. But Martin sought to capture abstract sensations of nature – light, air, silence – in paint. Huang’s quarries are time, rhythm, energy, and stillness. She employs the Chinese I Ching text – Book of Changes – to generate intense focus on the choice of color, the width of the bands, and their placement within her compositions. Yet nothing seems forced, it just seems to happen.
The show comprises three interconnected sections designated Breath, Interruption, and Becoming, reflecting a kind of existential timeline embedded in Huang’s work. It opens with Journal 1 Life, a modular expanse of small works that simulates a long, luxuriant sigh, then changes rhythm with works like Balance and Collapse or Interdimensional Dialogue: Confession, in which asymmetry and frenetically layered gestures introduce instability into the ordered arrangement of the colored bands. In Interdimensional Dialogue: Confession, Huang blends color-field applications with lyrical line, drawing broadly on Brice Marden’s oeuvre to stretch and challenge her sense of calm. In Becoming, the last section, larger-scale paintings regain a more structured rhythm, though Huang strategically allows traces of interruption. It Doesn’t Quite Stay or Untitled features blank canvas peering through the bands of color, revealing fresh ground for exploration and demonstrating the rich organic continuity of a well-conceived and assiduously developed art practice.
Right: Shuyao Huang, Balance and Collapse, 2024, oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
“Shuyao Huang: Still Becoming,” Art Cake , 214 40th Street, Brooklyn, NY. Through August 30, 2026.
About the author: Taylor Bielecki is a Brooklyn-based artist and writer and the Studio and Gallery Supervisor in the Fine Arts Department at Pratt Institute.
