Bullet Shih
Opening reception
Thursday, September 22, 2022, 6pm - 8pm
Bullet Shih
1969 – 2020
Bullet Shih’s substantial production takes on many themes, but his process is one of play, experimentation, and an inward view. The trends of contemporary painting seemed of little interest, and the artist’s conversation is almost entirely with himself and the history of painting, blissfully freed from the stress of accommodating the immediate troughs and peaks of cultural turnover. Shih holds fast to traditional genres which occasionally bleed into one another: portrait, landscape, all-over pattern-based abstraction, and found-image collages and drawings. Sometimes his tightly intersecting patterns will separate to reveal a landscape in the background, other times his portraits will freakishly transform to begin to approximate the irregular polygons or ballooning volumes of his abstractions; other times the portraits will seemingly arrange themselves to accommodate a few words or a line of text.
Throughout his career, Shih’s emphasis on portraits expressed his fundamental engagement with the world around him. For the most part the characters in the paintings are made-up, but we can also safely see them as amalgamations of acquaintances, lovers, self-portraits, and surrogate beings that populated his imagination. There is some of the tortured expressionism and bodily deformations of Maria Lassnig in these beings, but Shih was less excited by caricature. He was more intrigued to try highlighting the dramatic potential of different poses, as well as focusing on differing parts of the body itself. More often than not the sitter is a woman, or at least apparently so—the subject is sometimes androgynous and neutral in expression as well, seemingly challenging the viewer to ask the first question or make the first move.
Shih is forcing us to search the faces and bodies of his creations for a clue as to their presence. This neutrality is positioned to pressure us to question what we are searching for in a portrait and possibly in our own acquaintances as well—entertainment? Conversation? Company? Sex?
In addition to his painting practice, Shih spearheaded his own curatorial program in the form of PUCCS Contemporary Art—calling it “PUCCS” after the idea of “putsch”—a revolutionary action. PUCCS Contemporary Art was a small storefront behind the marketplace on Rackozi Ter. Shih intended it as a workspace and exhibition venue. It was simple: just a large light-filled box visible through a large window. When exhibitions were installed, the light was left on most nights and the art was visible for all to see, all the time. PUCCS, with its lantern-like presence was very much like Bullet Shih himself, always on, always available, and always searching, both in his painting as well as his irrepressible spirit to interact with other artists and to get work out there. The innovations of Bullet’s practice—in particular his utilization of the anonymous as an inspiration—either invented faces, labels and cartons, or rubber stamps—which then gave rise to psychological narratives in the imagination of the viewer, are enough of a lasting legacy for any artist. But his contributions to other artists through personal support and encouragement, was immense. All this added to his beacon-like aura not just as an artist but as someone who profoundly affected an experimental art scene in a place that was deeply worthy and in need of one. The light cast by PUCCS’ window illuminated not just the street outside, but all of Budapest, as did Bullet Shih.
- Edited foreword by William Corwin from a catalogue of Bullet Shih’s work to be published in 2023
Bullet Shih is a neo-naïvïst who was born in New York City to a Chinese father and American mother of Eastern European descent. Bullet was raised in Vermont and resided in Budapest for the last 20 years of his life.
Steven Amedee is proud to present this collection of work. All proceeds from this exhibition will be donated to Bullet’s family.
thumbnail image: Untitled, oil on canvas, 34” x 34”