10 Chancery Lane Gallery is proud to present the renowned Chinese artist Huang Rui’s works from 1984-2000 at The Armory Show 2019. This important body of works, as an important chapter in his 40-year long career, is newly released from the artist’s studio and will be exhibited for the first time in America.
Huang Rui (b.1952, Beijing) is one of China’s most highly regarded artists and one of the pivotal protagonists of the first non-conformist art groups, The Stars Group (Xing Xing ζζη»δΌ), to emerge from China in 1979. The Stars Group used art to promote social ideologies and initiated some of the first free art expressions in the Post-Mao era, bringing together 23 like-minded artists including Wang Keping, Ma Desheng and Ai Weiwei. They saw themselves as the pinpoints of light in an otherwise endless night, the two Stars Exhibitions at last broke the stranglehold of Communist Party orthodoxy and set the stage for the future freedom of artistic expression in China. On the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the 1979 Stars Exhibition, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery’s program throughout the year will be about this historically important event.
In 1984, Huang Rui moved to Japan where his paintings turned to focus on the depiction of space. His black and white ink paintings during the 1980s are abstract, expressive and experimental. They convey energy, strength and emotion as they embody the power and freedom of pure abstraction for an artist who was now free in Japan among the milieu of the Japanese Gutai and Mono-Ha artists. Although, inspired by the Tao and other Asian ancient philosophies to open up a unique spiritual plane, Huang Rui broke from Chinese traditional ink painting to use ink as a medium of experimentation sometimes using textiles or other materials within his works. At the same time, he made works with thickly applied brushstrokes of oil on canvas, creating new forms of abstract art expressing the spirit between objects and the space surrounding them.
Katie de Tilly, Director of 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, comments ”His works are finely crafted and meticulously finished. Within a minimalist exterior there hides mountains of meanings and connotations stemming from ancient Chinese philosophy, modern-day political hypocrisy or current society’s middling obsessions.” Huang Rui’s early abstract paintings are in the process of being rediscovered for their true artistic and historical value and represent a new framing of reality for contemporary Chinese art.
