Ferris Wheel Before Dawn
Dan Zhu
26 May, 2023 – 1 July, 2023
Beijing
Dan Zhu
26 May, 2023 – 1 July, 2023
Beijing
Tabula Rasa Gallery will
present Dan Zhu’s first solo exhibition in China during Gallery Weekend Beijing
2023, Ferris Wheel Before Dawn,
opening on May 26, 2023 at our Beijing Space. This is the artist’ second solo
show with the gallery. The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Yifan Zhang:
I remember when a visitor came to see Dan Zhu's solo show in London in 2022, she immediately cried out, "That's a Fibonacci sequence, isn't it?" The painting in question was The Broken Fruit (2022). This large yellow abstract canvas could be read as a multiple-exposure image of a bean pod falling and snapping in two, rays of sunshine, or even a close-up of a myriad of flying dandelion seeds. Therein lies the fascination of Dan Zhu's work for me: Not because it is abstract and open to interpretation but because many of her works, to me at least, so clearly combine both the microcosm and the macrocosm in a manner that echoes the eternal mysteries of creation and our mind. If you know Charles and Ray Eames's video Powers of Ten, you may recognise an affinity in Dan Zhu's paintings. They are both telescopic and microscopic. The fact that somebody immediately saw mathematical beauty in her paintings is proof that her sensibility is in sync with the rhythm of the cosmos.
Since her London show, I have harboured several questions for Dan Zhu. A happy opportunity arose for me to get some answers ahead of her first solo show in China. We spoke via video link incidentally during the live broadcasting of King Charles's coronation ceremony. My first question addresses the ubiquitous motifs from the kingdom of plants in her paintings. I wonder if early botanical illustrations influenced her. Dan Zhu's answer is surprising: Her father was an illustrator for a science publisher specialising in forest management. Dan Zhu shows me drawings he made of various tree pests and diseases and books and journals of forestry management scattered around her house. Arguably she grew out of that long natural science drawing tradition going back to the 16th century when Chinese doctors and European explorers sought to document our natural world systematically. Her father learned to draw on the job, and Dan Zhu did so by watching him. I joke that she is not self-taught but apprenticed in a Renaissance-like workshop tradition.
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After two non-art degrees, Dan Zhu was determined to become an artist at 23. Her father wanted her to study at CAFA in Beijing. But fate sent her to Europe instead. She tells me that the five years at the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany were the most intellectually stimulating time in her life so far. "It has opened 360 degrees of possibilities to me," she says. Art, music, and the world of ideas, all become her inspirations. She tells me how reading the influential early 20th-century philosopher Henri Bergson has changed her approach to seeing things, "I now have a fly's compound eye." Like many early cubists and surrealists, Bergson's idea of duration and consciousness influence time and narrative in Dan Zhu's paintings. In a Bergsonian world, "abstract" and "surreal" are meaningless, for these terms define themselves against terms such as figurative, landscape or realism, which to Dan Zhu are too artificial. She tells me that "the real world is a huge energy hole" with the certitude of someone who firmly holds a minority view.
Dan Zhu was born in 1985 in Jiangxi. Although she had long enjoyed painting, she only entered art college after turning 25. Dan Zhu must have felt to be in the minority for most of her life. Surprised that the curriculum at Offenbach lacked technical training, she spent a semester at the School of Arts in Ghent. That experience only confirmed to her that academic drawing was not for her. As an intellectually curious outsider, Dan Zhu is naturally drawn to esoteric contrarian traditions. She is against art historical narratives (abstract, surrealism) and art market labels (female, Gen-Z) people tend to give her. Perhaps this anti-establishment or counter-cultural trait has brought Dan Zhu close to occult figures. She has completed her dissertation on the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, a massive inspiration for her. Her research has led her to other mystics, such as the fin-de-siecle Theosophist Rodolf Steiner. I ask if her abstract works contain coded messages, like many of af Klint's paintings do. No, Dan Zhu says, not consciously, but she is quick to quote the cryptic mantra "as above, is below" from The Emerald Tablet, an occultist classic. I suppose she means that on a macro level her work "is [something] below" and it inevitably reflects what is "as above". Like organising a séance, Dan Zhu is very sensitive to the setting and vibe of her studio, she says that the finishing touch (点睛之笔) of a painting needs the power of nature.
Perhaps partly for this reason, Dan Zhu does not consciously plan or do sketches for her painting. "That method of drawing to sketch to colour is very Fra Angelico", referring to the 15th-century Dominican Friar and painter. After visiting the Convent of San Marco in Florence, she became a huge fan. The multiscreen theatrical format of her recent work The Chestnut on the Shore (2022) is a nod to the countless cave-like rooms in San Marco. She has gradually learned to relax and embrace chance and errors in recent years. Dan Zhu recounts a school visit to a David Hockney exhibition in Museum Ludwig, Cologne, where she was amazed by the sheer quantity of Hockney's output. Their professor explained in three words, “he never hesitates.” Dan Zhu says she is learning to leave behind this mentality of embroidery. In Take Off and Run (287 x 456 cm, 2023), her largest painting to date, you can find a full-bodied crimson flower starting from the bottom left corner, rising, running across and falling on the bottom right corner as something existing only in outlines, ethereal, totally relaxed. "This is not objectively a very good painting." I am surprised to hear. Then why show it? Dan Zhu takes a few seconds to think, and replies, "Because it is my first try, because it has enough abundance, and because it is immediate."
Perhaps creating an objectively good painting, whatever that may be, is not the artist's goal here. Dan Zhu often mentions wanting to be bold, experiment with colour, discover, unchain herself, and even cloister up like a Fra Angelico in a convent for a few years. These are struggles with conventions, theories, comforts and temptations. It is as much a spiritual struggle as it is technical. When she succeeds, she will become a mature artist. Many will recognise the sensation of looking into a small puddle of water and experiencing vertigo. It is the sensation of being on the threshold between the microcosm and the macrocosm. It might be an imperfect analogy, but I think Dan Zhu's best paintings often dance along this threshold.
About the Artist
Dan Zhu (b.1985) lives and works between The Hague, the Netherlands and Shenyang, China. Working across painting, drawing and mural, she often juxtaposes natural objects with familiar figures, together transforming into unusual scenes and happenings that are in harmony with energies on site. Dan Zhu was the artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2018- 2019). She has held solo exhibitions at Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023), Manifoldbooks (Amsterdam, 2022), Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2022), C.o.C.A. Award Show at Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam, 2021) and Studio Continuo (Amsterdam, 2018). Selected Group exhibitions include Through Frozen Soil, Desert and Glacier: The 5th Global Overseas Chinese Artists Exhibition, He Xiangning Museum (Shenzhen, 2022); Drawing Now Art Fair (Paris, 2022); NADA Miami Art Fair (Miami, 2022); Smoke & Mirrors, Schunck Museum (Heerlen, 2021); Royal Prize for Modern Painting, Royal Palace (Amsterdam, 2020 & 2019)
Her work has been collected by public institutions and private collections, including the NOG Collection of Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Schunck Museum in Heerleen, Tylers Museum in Haarlem, Ekard Collection, Pereira Collection, and C.o.C.A Foundation (Collectors of Contemporary Art, Rotterdam), to name a few. Her mural painting commissioned by Schunck Museum was completed and exhibited in 2021. Dan Zhu is the winner of C.o.C.A. Award (2020) and the Dutch Royal Modern Painting Prize (2020). Dan Zhu holds a Bachelor Degree of Communication Theory at Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China (2003-2007) and completed a Master of Design at Communication University of China, Beijing, China (2009). Dan Zhu studied at the Kunst and Design University in Hessen, Germany (2010-2020) and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018-2019).
I remember when a visitor came to see Dan Zhu's solo show in London in 2022, she immediately cried out, "That's a Fibonacci sequence, isn't it?" The painting in question was The Broken Fruit (2022). This large yellow abstract canvas could be read as a multiple-exposure image of a bean pod falling and snapping in two, rays of sunshine, or even a close-up of a myriad of flying dandelion seeds. Therein lies the fascination of Dan Zhu's work for me: Not because it is abstract and open to interpretation but because many of her works, to me at least, so clearly combine both the microcosm and the macrocosm in a manner that echoes the eternal mysteries of creation and our mind. If you know Charles and Ray Eames's video Powers of Ten, you may recognise an affinity in Dan Zhu's paintings. They are both telescopic and microscopic. The fact that somebody immediately saw mathematical beauty in her paintings is proof that her sensibility is in sync with the rhythm of the cosmos.
Since her London show, I have harboured several questions for Dan Zhu. A happy opportunity arose for me to get some answers ahead of her first solo show in China. We spoke via video link incidentally during the live broadcasting of King Charles's coronation ceremony. My first question addresses the ubiquitous motifs from the kingdom of plants in her paintings. I wonder if early botanical illustrations influenced her. Dan Zhu's answer is surprising: Her father was an illustrator for a science publisher specialising in forest management. Dan Zhu shows me drawings he made of various tree pests and diseases and books and journals of forestry management scattered around her house. Arguably she grew out of that long natural science drawing tradition going back to the 16th century when Chinese doctors and European explorers sought to document our natural world systematically. Her father learned to draw on the job, and Dan Zhu did so by watching him. I joke that she is not self-taught but apprenticed in a Renaissance-like workshop tradition.
Take Off and Run, 2022- 2023, 287 × 456 cm, Acrylic on paper
After two non-art degrees, Dan Zhu was determined to become an artist at 23. Her father wanted her to study at CAFA in Beijing. But fate sent her to Europe instead. She tells me that the five years at the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany were the most intellectually stimulating time in her life so far. "It has opened 360 degrees of possibilities to me," she says. Art, music, and the world of ideas, all become her inspirations. She tells me how reading the influential early 20th-century philosopher Henri Bergson has changed her approach to seeing things, "I now have a fly's compound eye." Like many early cubists and surrealists, Bergson's idea of duration and consciousness influence time and narrative in Dan Zhu's paintings. In a Bergsonian world, "abstract" and "surreal" are meaningless, for these terms define themselves against terms such as figurative, landscape or realism, which to Dan Zhu are too artificial. She tells me that "the real world is a huge energy hole" with the certitude of someone who firmly holds a minority view.
Dan Zhu was born in 1985 in Jiangxi. Although she had long enjoyed painting, she only entered art college after turning 25. Dan Zhu must have felt to be in the minority for most of her life. Surprised that the curriculum at Offenbach lacked technical training, she spent a semester at the School of Arts in Ghent. That experience only confirmed to her that academic drawing was not for her. As an intellectually curious outsider, Dan Zhu is naturally drawn to esoteric contrarian traditions. She is against art historical narratives (abstract, surrealism) and art market labels (female, Gen-Z) people tend to give her. Perhaps this anti-establishment or counter-cultural trait has brought Dan Zhu close to occult figures. She has completed her dissertation on the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, a massive inspiration for her. Her research has led her to other mystics, such as the fin-de-siecle Theosophist Rodolf Steiner. I ask if her abstract works contain coded messages, like many of af Klint's paintings do. No, Dan Zhu says, not consciously, but she is quick to quote the cryptic mantra "as above, is below" from The Emerald Tablet, an occultist classic. I suppose she means that on a macro level her work "is [something] below" and it inevitably reflects what is "as above". Like organising a séance, Dan Zhu is very sensitive to the setting and vibe of her studio, she says that the finishing touch (点睛之笔) of a painting needs the power of nature.
Perhaps partly for this reason, Dan Zhu does not consciously plan or do sketches for her painting. "That method of drawing to sketch to colour is very Fra Angelico", referring to the 15th-century Dominican Friar and painter. After visiting the Convent of San Marco in Florence, she became a huge fan. The multiscreen theatrical format of her recent work The Chestnut on the Shore (2022) is a nod to the countless cave-like rooms in San Marco. She has gradually learned to relax and embrace chance and errors in recent years. Dan Zhu recounts a school visit to a David Hockney exhibition in Museum Ludwig, Cologne, where she was amazed by the sheer quantity of Hockney's output. Their professor explained in three words, “he never hesitates.” Dan Zhu says she is learning to leave behind this mentality of embroidery. In Take Off and Run (287 x 456 cm, 2023), her largest painting to date, you can find a full-bodied crimson flower starting from the bottom left corner, rising, running across and falling on the bottom right corner as something existing only in outlines, ethereal, totally relaxed. "This is not objectively a very good painting." I am surprised to hear. Then why show it? Dan Zhu takes a few seconds to think, and replies, "Because it is my first try, because it has enough abundance, and because it is immediate."
Perhaps creating an objectively good painting, whatever that may be, is not the artist's goal here. Dan Zhu often mentions wanting to be bold, experiment with colour, discover, unchain herself, and even cloister up like a Fra Angelico in a convent for a few years. These are struggles with conventions, theories, comforts and temptations. It is as much a spiritual struggle as it is technical. When she succeeds, she will become a mature artist. Many will recognise the sensation of looking into a small puddle of water and experiencing vertigo. It is the sensation of being on the threshold between the microcosm and the macrocosm. It might be an imperfect analogy, but I think Dan Zhu's best paintings often dance along this threshold.
Text by Yifan Zhang
About the Artist
Dan Zhu (b.1985) lives and works between The Hague, the Netherlands and Shenyang, China. Working across painting, drawing and mural, she often juxtaposes natural objects with familiar figures, together transforming into unusual scenes and happenings that are in harmony with energies on site. Dan Zhu was the artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2018- 2019). She has held solo exhibitions at Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023), Manifoldbooks (Amsterdam, 2022), Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2022), C.o.C.A. Award Show at Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam, 2021) and Studio Continuo (Amsterdam, 2018). Selected Group exhibitions include Through Frozen Soil, Desert and Glacier: The 5th Global Overseas Chinese Artists Exhibition, He Xiangning Museum (Shenzhen, 2022); Drawing Now Art Fair (Paris, 2022); NADA Miami Art Fair (Miami, 2022); Smoke & Mirrors, Schunck Museum (Heerlen, 2021); Royal Prize for Modern Painting, Royal Palace (Amsterdam, 2020 & 2019)
Her work has been collected by public institutions and private collections, including the NOG Collection of Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Schunck Museum in Heerleen, Tylers Museum in Haarlem, Ekard Collection, Pereira Collection, and C.o.C.A Foundation (Collectors of Contemporary Art, Rotterdam), to name a few. Her mural painting commissioned by Schunck Museum was completed and exhibited in 2021. Dan Zhu is the winner of C.o.C.A. Award (2020) and the Dutch Royal Modern Painting Prize (2020). Dan Zhu holds a Bachelor Degree of Communication Theory at Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China (2003-2007) and completed a Master of Design at Communication University of China, Beijing, China (2009). Dan Zhu studied at the Kunst and Design University in Hessen, Germany (2010-2020) and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018-2019).
Tabula Rasa Gallery (London)
Unit One, 99 East Road,
Hoxton, London
N1 6AQ
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Hoxton, London
N1 6AQ
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