Huang Rui - Actual Space, Virtual Space

Huang Rui is a pioneer of abstract painting in China. He co-founded the Stars Group and organized its first illegal exhibition in 1979, at the start of Chinese contemporary art. Through abstracted depictions of Beijing courtyards he found his own pictorial language: geometric abstractions inspired by the Dao De Ching or I Ching, or more gestural compositions based on traditional ink painting. This book is the first major survey of Huang Rui's work, which also includes his sculptural work and focuses on the artist's current position as a globally significant abstractionist who opens up the canvas with circular or moon-shaped cut-outs and incorporates the whole frame construction into his exploration of actual and virtual spaces. As Jennifer Dorothy Lee writes: "Through Daoism and the texts of ancient learning, he presents an understanding of time that transforms matter, the canvas, the oil paint. Daoism allows Huang to treat matter as forces at tension or at war, which in turn lead to transformative processes... his works engage a present that is rife with transformation."