Swan Crash
Tony Guo

Swan Crash is a new series of paintings by Tony Guo, exhibited at Season Aotearoa 13 February–15 March 2025. Continuing Guo’s characteristic use of allegory and absurdism, this series reflects on familial histories rooted in 20th-century China. Exploring how his family’s relationships to collective labour, survival, industrialism, materiality and escape continue to impact his own being and queerness, Guo wrestles with the power hierarchies still bound up in these embodied histories. The long tail of these 20th-century upheavals finds its way into Guo’s life in Aotearoa, which he navigates here through the idea of 祸 (huò), which can be interpreted as ‘accident’, ‘crash’ or ‘disaster’. Guo says, ‘from mischievous childish acts to a sense of fated tragedy … [祸] resonates with how I understand my queerness. … My painting process and my queerness are similar. Both are a series of quirky, playful accidents … [that seek] to break free.’

Tony Guo works within the mode of figurative oil painting, creating expansive canvases that feature human and animal figures caught in surreal, allegorical scenes. Born in Tāmaki Makaurau, Guo grew up in China and Aotearoa, and his personal experiences seep into his work alongside the upheaval that’s shaped his family’s movements. Yet Guo avoids the literal representation of these histories in his paintings, instead cultivating a sense of invitation, intrigue and possibility that remains open ended. Guo has said, ‘I don’t want people to obsess over meaning in [the work], but I want them to see texture, tactility, layers and gesture of the paint as a luring point into the realm that I have built in the painting.’ By turns whimsical, erotic, comedic, sombre and unsettling, Guo’s works may evade specific interpretation but they are firmly rooted in human feeling. He graduated from Auckland University of Technology with a Master of Visual Arts with Honours in 2022.