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until 14.06. | #4225ARTatBerlin | Galerie Kornfeld shows from 26. April 2024 the exhibition Dynamische Stille: Gewalt und Lebendigkeit der Farben by the artist Rao Fu.
Under the title “Dynamische Stille: Gewalt und Lebendigkeit der Farben” (“Dynamic Silence: Violence and Vibrancy of Colors”), we are looking forward to the first solo exhibition of new paintings by Rao Fu. Inhabited by creatures that are both human and yet entirely the product of the artist’s imagination, the works of the renowned Chinese artist provide insights into dreamlike scenes that often tip over into the nightmarish.
Rao Fu was born in Beijing and has lived in Dresden for more than twenty years. Before moving to Germany, he studied design at Tsinghua University in Beijing from 1999 to 2001. From 2002 to 2010, he then enrolled at the Dresden University of Fine Arts to deepen his studies in painting, graphics and art therapy. During his studies with Siegfried Klotz and Elke Hopfe, he explored, among other things, the traditional painting methods of the Dresden School. In 2008, he became a master student and continued his postgraduate studies with Professor Ralf Kerbach.
During his studies, Fu received a DAAD scholarship for fine arts in 2006 and a scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation from 2008 to 2012. In the following years, he received a scholarship from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony in 2014 and, in 2016, the Heimspiel Scholarship from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, sponsored by the Leipzig Cotton Mill. In 2017, he won the scholarship of the 14th Hall Artist of the Leipzig Cotton Mill, and in 2020 he was awarded the “Denkzeit” scholarship of the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony.
Works by Rao Fu can be found in the collections of the National Museum of History and Art in Luxembourg (MNHA), the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Städtische Galerie Dresden, the Sächsische Kunststiftung and the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, among others.
Rao Fu’s works can be seen at exhibitions in Asia and Europe, including at the renowned Galerie Perrotin. They have also been exhibited at major international art fairs such as Art Basel
Hong Kong, Asia Now Paris, Art 021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, Art Taipei, Art Düsseldorf and many others.
The fantasies of seeing: On the paintings of Rao Fu
He trusts the eye more than the mind. Anyone who confronts the painter Rao Fu, who was born in Beijing in 1978 and now lives in Dresden, and who came to Germany at the age of 23 out of a joyful desire to travel and discover other cultures and also out of pure curiosity about the originals, for example of Romanticism, which he had previously only known from pictures, with the question of why he relies more on seeing than on thinking, encounters fierce resistance out of justified skepticism. He is not tempted to question this organically grown preference. Nor does he see any sense in it, as his pictures develop their immense attraction precisely because they first make us see fully and then allow us to think freely.
Indeed, Fu even considers it superfluous to ask about the surplus of seeing, as it provides neither him nor us with any additional understanding in the face of his mysterious painting, which is borne by a precarious atmosphere of the uncanny. Free of referents, his works contain nothing that depicts or reproduces, no direct reference to things that we can identify with reality as it appears to us in everyday life. The real and that which is the case are transcended and the curtains of reality are pushed aside in order to penetrate into ambiguous dream zones saturated with gloom and melancholy. Correspondences to experiences and situations can certainly be established, but they are so transformed and alienated that we encounter what we see before us as if we were aliens with eyes and mouths and a different skin color.
Fu makes it difficult to analyze his works. Information about his themes is correspondingly sparse. Not because he relies on mystification for mystification’s sake, but because he wants to avoid rational questioning, what Max Ernst called “interpretation”. “I paint open pictures,” says Fu in conversation, “to prevent the viewer from interpreting them in one direction only. I don’t make any preliminary sketches, I don’t want to control anything, I start from a certain idea. At the beginning it is still vague, but only gradually becomes more concrete, but never to the point where it becomes too clear. It is important to me to paint an open picture so that it cannot be interpreted in just one direction.”
When asked whether everything develops out of the painting process, he explains: “I react to a color, to a form and to whether it is a large or a small surface. When I paint, I refer to my inner perception of the world and the works not only of old masters who also created group paintings. As soon as a picture threatens to become too sweet and sink into harmlessness, I work against it with all means at my disposal. It’s about creating a never-flattening tension. That is my goal.”
The hidden meaning that can nevertheless be crystallized from his painting springs from the source of the unconscious. Fu taps into this by approaching what he conjures up on the canvas by means of colors and forms, both sensitively and associatively, from brushstroke to brushstroke. He is interested in the alogical, the poetic and, above all, the heightening of tension. In this he is close to Surrealism with its “Écriture automatique”. Consequently, we are not dealing here with any mental constructions, with no conceptual painting, but with a painting that is derived from intuition, inner experience, inner seeing and inner feeling.
For him, a passionate painter who has never wanted to do anything other than paint, it is first and foremost about the coherence of a picture that makes it true and credible. Although formal considerations are to the fore, they always relate to the theme of man’s existence at the mercy of a world dominated by violence and brutality, and to the irrevocable distance that exists between the masses and the individual.
One example of this is a picture showing a group of people under surveillance, condemned to operate sewing machines to produce cheap mass products. The fact that these are workers without qualities, who are anonymized and anything but free, and that they have no subjectivity and no life of their own, but are forced to subordinate themselves to the collective, is a possible interpretation that does not immediately impose itself on us. It only reveals itself to us slowly, moment by moment. In addition to the seated people, we also discover standing people who seem to be exercising control over those who are working incessantly. Their appearance is no different from that of the crowd, and they are not free either. Without exception, the faces, all grimacing or mask-like and without distinguishing features, consist only of eyes and mouths. Whether green, red, yellow or blue, their skin color does not correspond to the natural one. The fact that the colors are not realistic means that the scene not only makes us feel alienated. It also makes us feel the strangeness in the bodies, the high degree of alienation. Fu intensifies the irritation, which becomes unbearable, by placing the situation in a sphere of total placelessness. We cannot tell whether we are inside a factory or outside in the countryside. The transition between interior and exterior space is not only fluid here, it has disappeared. There is no space that offers protection, and this latent threat is made clear by the dark clouds in the background.
Another picture shows a sad and thoughtful boy, sitting on a red plastic chair at a table with a small dog, who watches curiously as the dog marvels at the contents of a transparent plastic bag half-filled with water. For it is not a fish that is swimming inside, but a Venus, the Roman goddess of love, erotic desire and beauty. She looks like a genie caught by the boy, swimming towards him and wanting to touch his eyes, which are held very close to the plastic bag. When asked why the boy is wearing a watch, Fu tells us that the picture is a portrait of his son who, instead of looking at his watch, spends his time on the computer and loses himself in it. This scene of attempted tenderness cannot be localized either, because it too is located in the transition zone between inside and outside. At first you think you are in an interior space, but the mountainous landscape with river and pink sky floods the interior. Here, too, the separation has been removed. And this not only makes us doubt the stability of everything and the lightness of being. It also puts us in a different state of consciousness between dream and reality.
Heinz-Norbert Jocks, art critic and curator.
Opening: Friday, 26. April 2024, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibition dates: Friday, 26. April 2024 – Friday, 14. June 2024
To the gallery
Image caption: Rao Fu, Summer night, 2024, Oil on canvas, 113 x 185 cm
Exhibition Rao Fu – Galerie Kornfeld | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Gallerie | ART at Berlin
