HdM Gallery Beijing is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by artist Xue Ruozhe, Fire Resistant, the first solo exhibition since the artist and the gallery began their collaboration.
The intention of this exhibition is drawn from the properties of specific materials, 'flame retardant' refers to the property of the material itself or treated materials to significantly delay the spread of flame, a process of interruption and delay that forms an interesting counterpoint to Xue Ruozhe's creative approach, which in recent years has developed his precise, steady and deliberately slow advance in the field of figurative realism. This exhibition Fire Resistant will present the artist's recent works in a comprehensive manner, using canvas painting, video and sculpture as media.
As an ancient subject in art history, self-portraits and portraits have been a constant thread in Xue Ruozhe's long history of creation, and today they are closely related to issues of consciousness, perception, identity and social environment. Artists from Rembrandt to Schiele, Bacon, Picasso, Frieda, Andy Warhol and others have devoted a great deal of effort to creating self-portraits and portraits. Most of the works in this exhibition, or rather most of Xue Ruozhe's works in recent years, are constructed from images of friends close to Xue Ruozhe. But when we follow his vision to the border of reality and surreality, Xue Ruozhe shows us how he presents his portraits in an almost self-analytical way through a kind of mirror refraction. In the artist's view, painting may not necessarily respond to this era, but consciously or unconsciously, it must respond to the painter's own experience and the long history about painting. In a way, all paintings are 'self-portraits'. For Xue Ruozhe, self-portraits are both expressions and inner monologues, in which he repeatedly shifts roles and deconstructs space with restrained and subtle colours in the roles of observer and observed, creating deeper layers for interpretation, not just the 'still life' and 'still life' that appear at first glance. It is not only the 'still life' and 'scene' that appear at first glance. As artist Xue Ruozhe says in his self-description, 'Only by penetrating the visible image can we read the more essential structural arrangement of the picture: colour bites, brushwork, colour overlays, and spatial alternations.'
Born in Jiangsu in 1987, Xue Ruozhe graduated from Studio 3 of the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2012 as an undergraduate, and from the Painting Department of the Royal College of Art in 2015 as an MFA. He has received the Neville Bostons Award, the Gordon Luton Award for Plastic Art, and the Tom Bendheim Award for Figurative Painting, among others, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Outstanding Asian Art Award. His paintings repeatedly move between the borders of the real and the surreal. In a deliberately restricted and dense palette, he is constantly subtracting, skilfully imbuing the images with qualities of timelessness and suspension.
Press release courtesy HdM GALLERY.
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