人态一 1994

Xu Hongming made this painting, 人态一, with what looks like a near-obsessive, repetitive mark. It's a field of figures, or are they marks that suggest figures? This kind of edge is where the real juice is. I’m drawn to the almost mechanical quality of the image, which on closer inspection reveals a kind of hand-wrought imperfection. Each little person is slightly different, slightly wonky, like a crowd made up of individuals. The surface is pretty flat, but you can see the brushstrokes, especially in the darker lines defining the figures. There’s a tension between the overall sense of uniformity and the subtle variations in each mark. It's a reminder that art is made by people, not machines. This reminds me of work by Agnes Martin, who also explored repetition and variation. With both artists there's a sense of art as an ongoing conversation, a constant push and pull between control and chance. What do you see?