Hu Youben creates his paper art on the basis of Chinese traditional paper making techniques and by means of bleeding with ink and water on paper and creasing and folding to form shapes. The motif of such exploration is the action and counter-action on space. It is an unforgettable path in visual art, a great allegory of the extension of life.

Hu spends very long time in analyzing the various possibilities in the visual expressiveness of rice paper. Not only does he consider the connotations and denotations of the ink and the indigenous tensile force of the brushstrokes, but also the possible artistic expressiveness of the integration of ink brushstrokes and rice paper as a whole. Hu started his exploration from traditional ink and wash painting on mirror panels and hanging scrolls. Then the plane paper was folded and an enrichment and alteration of the visual effects of ink and wash images appear. This is a remarkable achievement. Hu's art with paper in recent years may be divided into paper relief painting, paper sculptures and paper installations. The attention paid to the characteristics of paper and the exploration of the expressiveness of ink on paper and beyond the space of the paper helps to continuously enrich and expand his realm of paper art. These works bear his profound sentiment toward paper and ink and are full of the artist's awareness of life itself. He constantly breaks the existing boundaries of matters and try to extend beyond the physical forms of paper and ink to reach out toward the infinite space and nature's territory. From the ground surface to that of the wall, an invisible but perceptible life extends in this space. It originates from the tradition and bears the awareness for heaven and earth characteristic of the Chinese people. It is grand, powerful and exciting, like a river of time and history that brings us on-lookers yonder to the future. It is also like a cloud that carries us away to experience the free and unfettered universe and being as once felt by our ancestors.——Gao Ling