About the Artist:
Roger Hsia is a New York–based painter whose work explores the psychological terrain of memory, connection, and aftermath. Through layered compositions that move between abstraction and figuration, he investigates the emotional residue of human relationships. His paintings and assemblages draw on a diverse range of influences, from Eastern philosophy to modernist gesture, incorporating calligraphic brushwork, collage, and sculptural applications of paint. Hsia’s practice is rooted in emotional honesty and a refined visual language that speaks to the complexity of contemporary identity.
Artist Statement:
I make paintings that live at the edge of contradiction, between figuration and abstraction, structure and entropy, intention and chance. At the center of my practice is the materiality of paint itself. I sculpt with paint, pushing it beyond the surface into wrinkles, tears, and protrusions that catch light and shift with time. These forms embrace imperfection and impermanence, guided by the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi.
I want my works to feel alive, part painting and part sculpture, both monumental and fleeting. They are at once meditations and improvisations, alive with the immediacy of calligraphy or jazz, yet grounded in the apparent solidity of built form. My visual language draws as much from art history and museum walls as from graffiti, collage, film, and music. I am as much a fan as I am a maker, blending what moves me into a language of my own.
Each painting begins as a search for what I call “desert island” art: work that could sustain me with its richness and vitality if it were the only thing I had. I hope the worlds I create on canvas offer the same sense of nourishment and possibility to others, self-contained cosmoses that invite viewers to step inside, slow down, and discover their own connections.
