Han Bing | “Saturation” @ Thaddaeus Ropac

2022.06.11-2022.09.24

    Antenna Space is delighted to announce that artist Han Bing participates in the group exhibition Saturation will be open from June 11, 2022 to September 24, 2022 at Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.

    Saturation brings together two generations of contemporary artists whose works explore new forms of experimental, gestural or lyrical abstraction. ‘Saturation’ refers to the expressive power of colour: in colour theory it describes the highest degree of a colour’s intensity. Saturation also evokes our contemporary condition, characterised by the overflow of information and a feeling of emotional and mental overload, which, according to the sociologist Monique Haicault, particularly affects women. The exhibition thus chooses to present the work of women artists, decentring abstraction from a historically male-dominant perspective.

    Abstraction is a process of transformation of the world where the references to visible reality are indirect or deconstructed. Through their conceptual and sensory exploration of colour, their reflection on language and their expression of social and critical views, the artists exhibited in Saturation filter and transform a reality marked by dispersal and overload. Rather than ‘extract’ or ‘simplify’, the concept of saturation allows us to look at abstraction as a way to intensify.

    One of the common threads between the different artists on view is their strong connection to poetry, literature and music, whether it is in the process and manner of painting or as source material. The impulse to express through paint combines with reflections on language, giving way to new forms of lyrical abstraction.

    Poetry is a point of departure for Han Bing, who describes her urban findings as ‘poems by unknown authors’. For Han Bing, ‘painting is a way of resisting the information that is forced on us’. She deconstructs pictorial reality in her work, opening up new dimensions and gradually moving towards abstraction. Having recently settled in Paris, she is inspired by the textures and patterns that appear in the city, especially the ‘errors’ and ‘glitches’ generated by ripped posters. She carefully works each canvas with oil paint, playing with the combination of colours, adding spray paint, integrating accidental lines, letting the dynamic of the work guide the composition.

    How does each artist absorb and transform the world around them? How do they react to virtual and urban environments, marked by an economy of attention? A point of saturation is the moment that precedes and triggers overflow. This instant can be identified in the tension and repetitions present in the compositions on display, their condensed and poetic dimension, the superimpositions of paint and materials as well as their chromatic explorations. The overflow that follows can be observed in the bold gestures and spillings, the improvisations, the transformation of materials, the free associations between image and text and the expansion of painting into installation and performance. Through the atmospheric quality of their paintings, certain artists evoke the further meteorological meaning of the term ‘saturation’ – saturated air contains the maximum amount of water vapour.

    The exhibition features artists from different cultural backgrounds, several of whom reflect on issues of representation and marginalisation in history and today. Behind the aesthetic experience of the works exhibited, critical and political reflections are revealed, making way for an abstraction that can be described as defiant.

    Text courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac.

    Curator: Oona Doyle
    Participating Artists: Han Bing, Martha Jungwirth, Wook-Kyung Choi, Dona Nelson, Mandy El-Sayegh, Rachel Jones, Megan Rooney, Thu-Van Tran.

    Installation Views

    Artists

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