Han Bing is a contemporary Chinese artist whose abstract paintings capture ephemeral moments observed in cityscapes and urban architecture.
Read MoreHan Bing received her BFA (2008) and MFA (2011) from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. In 2013, she graduated with an MFA from Parsons School of Design in New York.
Han Bing deconstructs urban states into fragments of colour, using media including oils, acrylics, spray paint, and oil pastel. Featured regularly in her work are cool colours associated with cities, such as grey and black, along with brilliant, saturated colours.
Central to Han Bing's paintings are the patterns and textures found in cities, particularly those of old posters. Jagged forms with white edges appear in the acrylic paintings DLTA (2016) and Les Nights (2017), which are evocative of torn posters on walls.
The urban spaces depicted in Han Bing's works are derived from New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, and Paris. Abstracted into slabs and fragments of colour, they elude recognition as individual places, but come together as portraits of modern cities.
Han Bing's solo exhibition Company (2021) at Galerie Marguo in Paris featured new paintings based on images of posters and construction barriers in New York. These urban references are often personal to the artist, who has stated that these sights are 'available and invisible to some but the moment I discover them, they are mine'.
The titles of Han Bing's works are often lifted from interviews that the artist listens to while painting—which span subjects in science, literature, and theatre, among others. Examples include It Blew My Mind That They Are Doing Nothing (2020), a painting presenting a close-up of a pair of hands holding a white object, or Compete, Survive, Reproduce (2020), a work in which an assortment of bold colours are packed into a rough, grid-like structure.
Han Bing's paintings have been presented internationally in solo and group exhibitions.
Select solo exhibitions include Company, Galerie Marguo, Paris (2021); A Labile Boundary at Best, Antenna Space, Shanghai (2020); territory to be tamed———if not later then when, Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2018).
Select group exhibitions include Saturation, Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris (2022); Fifteen Painters, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2021); Meditations in an Emergency, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2020); The Crossing, Gallery Exit, Hong Kong (2018).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022
