Han Bing (1986, China) is presenting 7:77, her first personal exhibition to be held at a European institution, at Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain.

Han Bing’s painting is intimately linked to the abundance of images available in the public space. The artist sometimes captures elements from posters mentally and sometimes photographs an advertisement with her phone. From all around her she picks out images which we no longer see because they are in front of us all the time. Back in her studio, she assembles her discoveries very freely over the canvas. Her approach echoes those of the new realists of the 1960s, among them Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains. Villeglé took ripped and loose posters from the walls of the town and transformed them into vibrant and poetic works of art. Like Han Bing today, he revealed the strata of the urban environment, which bear the marks of time and of human intervention. Han Bing willingly evokes the ‘anonymous poetry’ of her paintings. The juxtapositions she creates emerge ‘in unexpected ways’ and very spontaneously. She prefers using the word ‘to grow’; rather than ‘to build’ when talking about her way of arranging the canvas and compares painting to a living, organic material.

Part of the exhibition is devoted to works on paper. Han Bing uses newspaper articles as raw material. She selects them for their aesthetic quality and covers up certain parts of the photographs illustrating the article. By erasing the information, the artist seems to be questioning the place given nowadays to truth and objectivity, and recalling that the world has entered the era of fake news and deep fakes – the ultra-realistic doctoring of video and audio created by artificial intelligence.

The enigmatic title of 7:77 is a sort of mantra. 7 is a sacred number in Taoism and Buddhism. It symbolises enlightenment, spiritual awakening and connection with the divine. It is found in the seven branches of the Bodhi Tree beneath which the Buddha attained enlightenment and in the seven levels of Taoist Paradise. It is also a number associated with luck and good fortune in Chinese culture.

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Original Text from the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac.

Photos ©Aurélien Mole

Images courtesy of the artist, Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Thaddaeus Ropac and Antenna Space.