Han Bing: Capturing the clues of the times in abstraction Interview of the artist by Shen Yiren

When interpretation becomes daily life and the stage becomes reality, how magical will life be? In her documentary film "Paris is Burning", Jennie Livingston focuses on the marginalized groups in Harlem, New York, from the 1970s to the 1980s - men, African Americans and queer people, when these identities are mixed in the same person, he is destined not to have an easy life.

Although there seems to be no direct connection between the feasting and feasting of Harlem and the artist Han Bing, who was born in Shandong, she who now lives in Paris, studied in Beijing and New York, and lived intermittently in Shanghai and Los Angeles due to work, is deeply attracted by it, influenced by this movie.

(...) Han Bing noticed that the creative concepts of documentaries and paintings are similar - because they are both rich worlds drawn from real life and re-created, they are traceable and familiar, but the output is It's a completely different and unfamiliar story. In Han Bing's paintings, familiar explicit elements such as Mickey Mouse, Picasso's works, rose windows, and theatres are clearly visible, but in the process of resetting, reorganizing, and reshaping, she uses scraping, overlapping, and Inkjet painting, smearing and other methods disrupt the logic of representation, making it difficult for the viewer to locate between chaos and rationality, as if they were frozen in the moment of explosion - the sense of chaos not only comes from physical changes on the visual level, but also from the brain Shutdowns that occur due to the inability to process information in a frightened state.  (...) 

Interview

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You are accustomed to capturing inspiration from real life, and there are also popular elements in the pictures. In this exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, images such as theatres, Mickey Mouse, and rose windows appear. How did you decide to use certain cultural symbols in your work?

Han Bing: These elements are the clues of the times. I spy them in the light that shines through the gaps in my daily life. They appear in my world, and I accept them happily. I did not use them intentionally or avoid them intentionally. This process is organic, as if the painting knows what it should absorb and choose. The warmth and familiarity of Mickey Mouse may bring some kind of healing, but that's not my purpose.

What cultural symbols are you paying attention to lately?

Han Bing: In recent years, I have been thinking about the differences and cultural backgrounds between Chinese and Western philosophy. The title of this exhibition is got heart. This is a very common everyday expression on the street, which almost means "you are quite talented". African Americans will use it to express appreciation. Later, a friend told me that "you are brave" in French has a similar expression, which literally translates to "you have a heart." Although "心" in the modern Chinese context is not much different from that in the West, "心" in hieroglyphs and Chinese philosophical systems does not have the same meaning as "心" in the West. This word seems very simple, but it carries a very rich meaning. What is the connection between American street slang and Wang Yangming’s philosophy of mind? I'm very interested in these topics. In addition, in recent years, I have particularly enjoyed looking at Western church murals and Chinese temple murals. I was in Padua last year seeing Giotto and thinking about the connection between the presentation of the mural and my perception of the peeling posters in the urban landscape. Including how we, as modern people, appreciate these works. In 2016, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York held an exhibition on unfinished works. There are similar elements in my own works. There are aspects that are particularly complex and slowly built up over time, and there are also aspects that are particularly abrupt or more abstract. I love this conflict. The exhibition A Very Lucky Man's Melancholy has a feeling of being torn apart: a large block of orange invades the theatre, and there is peeling wallpaper on the side, as if There are many forces interacting with the image from different angles.