Tabula Rasa Gallery will present Dan Zhu's first solo exhibition in China during Gallery Weekend Beijing 2023, Ferris Wheel Before Dawn, opening on May 26, 2023 at our Beijing Space. This is the artist's second solo show with the gallery.

Dan Zhu was born in Jiangxi, China. Although she had long enjoyed painting, she only entered art college after turning 25. The five years at the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany were the most intellectually stimulating time in her life so far. Art, music, and the world of ideas, all become her inspiration. Reading the influential early 20th-century philosopher Henri Bergson has changed her approach to seeing things, 'I now have a fly's compound eye.' Like many early cubists and surrealists, Bergson's idea of duration and consciousness influence time and narrative in Zhu's paintings. In a Bergsonian world, 'abstract' and 'surreal' are meaningless, for these terms define themselves against terms such as figurative, landscape or realism, which to her are too artificial. She confesses that 'the real world is a huge energy hole' with the certitude of someone who firmly holds a minority view. As an intellectually curious outsider, Zhu is naturally drawn to esoteric contrarian traditions. Her dissertation was on the artist Hilma af Klint and she also cites the Theosophist Rudolf Steiner as an influence. Zhu is against art historical narratives (abstract, surrealism) and art market labels (female, Gen-Z) people tend to give her.

Dan Zhu's works often show a lucid appreciation of the linkages between the macrocosm and the microcosm, and between the natural world and human consciousness. For the artist's debut solo show in China, she presents a series of large scale works on paper and paintings. The multiscreen theatrical format of her recent work The Chestnut on the Shore (2022) is a nod to the cave-like rooms in the Covent of San Marco where the 15th century Florentine friar Fra Angelico painted. In Take Off and Run (287 x 456 cm, 2023), her largest painting to date, viewer can find a full-bodied crimson flower starting from the bottom left corner, rising, running across and falling on the bottom right corner as something existing only in outlines, ethereal, totally relaxed.

Dan Zhu often mentions wanting to be bold, experiment with colour, discover, unchain herself, and even cloister up like a Fra Angelico for a few years. These are struggles with conventions, theories, comforts and temptations. It is as much a spiritual struggle as it is technical. Many will recognise the sensation of looking into a small puddle of water and suddenly experiencing vertigo. It is the sensation of crossing the threshold between the microcosm and the macrocosm – Dan Zhu's best paintings often dance along this verge.

Press release courtesy Tabula Rasa Gallery.