ART CITIES: Paris-Han Bing
Han Bing is recognized for her sensitive yet disruptive visual language in paintings that deconstruct pictorial reality and open up new dimensions. Having recently moved to Paris her practice draws on urban elements, including street scenes and architectural façades. She takes inspiration from the textures and patterns that appear in cities, especially the ‘errors’ and ‘glitches’ generated by ripped posters.
By Efi MIchalarou
Photo: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery Archive
Taking inspiration from various sources, including theatre, science and literature, Han Bing allows the dynamics of the works to guide their compositions. She creates using oil sticks and spray paint, occasionally allowing surprises during the process to introduce an unexpected twist to the work. “My paintings are representational at times, but it’s more that there is a dynamic where a few patches have met unexpectedly and turned a bewildering situation into something that made sense to me at that particular moment”, says Han. Her works gradually move towards abstraction as figurative elements are filtered and deconstructed into fragments. In “Got Heart”, her solo exhibition Han Bing presents a group of new, large-scale paintings alongside more intimate and instinctive works on paper. Like her paintings, the title of the exhibition bears witness to the multitude of influences Han has absorbed while living in and moving back and forth between several cultures in Shanghai, New York, L.A. and now Paris. An American vernacular expression meaning “to have courage”, got heart speaks to the artist’s process in which she allows herself to be guided by instinct, embracing accident and chance, rather than following a system or preconceived method. Han Bing describes walking around the city and experiencing visual ‘clashes’, where a serendipitous combination of colors and textures will solidify into a painting in her mind’s eye. She is particularly drawn to the torn posters she sees in the Paris metro. Halfway to being taken down or simply abandoned, the accidental compositions resonate with the artist.’ Back in her studio, she begins with an acrylic base that gives the tone of the painting. This is often influenced by the city she is living in: “I think it might have something to do with the climate and the moisture of the air. ‘In Paris, I feel like the colors have this subtle grey undertone, compared to the palette I used in New York”. Over the ground, Han then sketches out the outlines of the composition, or what she terms “the skeleton”, before adding color – “the tissue”. As she works, the paintings take on a shape and mind of their own: she thinks of them as “creatures”, allowing herself to be guided by them to their final form. The immediacy of Han’s approach is perhaps most evident in the small works on paper on view in the exhibition. They are spontaneous creations in which she allows paint to coagulate into abstract patterns over pages cut out of newspapers. Whether compelled by a title, a text or an image, Han fixes the fleeting ephemera of current events by creating pools of color that partially conceal the photographs below them. Han prefers the term ‘organic’ to the traditional dialectic of abstraction and figuration. Paintings such as “3:33” (2023) in particular elude such binary categorizations. The tile-like patterns in the composition have a familiar urban quality and yet might also function as color fields or grids along Modernist tropes. Others, such as “A Very Lucky Man’s Melancholy” (2023), include more overtly representational elements. Bordered by a broad orange stripe, the image of a theatre appears to be peeling off from a neutral, card-board-colored ground, leaving viewers to wander visually in and out of representation.
Photo: Han Bing, The apartment, 2022, Acrylic and oil on linen, 143 x 177.8 x 2.5 cm (56.3 x 70 x 0.98 in), © Han Bing, Courtesy the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery
Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, 7 rue Debelleyme, Paris, France, Duration: 2/9-7/10/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, https://ropac.net/
