Exhibition
Shen Han
Intimate Morphology
Duration_ September 14–October 19, 2019
Opening_ Saturday, September 14, 2019, 6–8 PM
Opening_ Saturday, September 14, 2019, 6–8 PM
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Gallery Vacancy is pleased to present Intimate Morphology, Shen Han’s solo exhibition from September 14th to October 19th, 2019. Building upon the unprimed canvas, Shen Han’s seemingly random pigment patches construct a consistent yet incoherent rhythm and pitch, a fragmented landscape without concrete imagery as basis. With Shen’s powerful brushstrokes, his lithe yet graceful lines generate an aura of breathing melody, weaving the arbitrary relations between marks and forms, mobilizing through the cadenced color zones. The tendency and experience of vision for image reading are tempted, intervened, and idled in the tangled perspective of Shen, thus, the exposed landscape is weaved into a frame of stillness. Consciousness is repeatedly confirmed and then discarded, connecting the montage-like narrative through sensibility and imagination. The intertwined visual elements wrapped in ambiguous narratives and configurations uncover the inner emotions, outlining a contradictory matter that can be perceived both as forming and as descending in the void of uncertainty.
Gleaming through the misty color patterns, the oscillating gestures in Shen’s latest paintings are reflected as gymnastically extended human forms, which are generated from the artist’s physical movements and rhythm during his creative process. The enigmatic forms in Ocean Without a Shore meld and infiltrate with the fluid color blocks. The irregular yellow oil paint constantly erodes the territory of the vermeil block, along with the tendency of the empty spaces, implying turbulent emotions and tension masked under the vaguely outlined body form. The large-scale triptych is named after the Russian composer Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka, a story of violence and lust unfolded between Petrushka, a ballerina and a Moor. The musicality and théâtralité are reflected in Shen Han's rich brushwork and magnificent color palette. Diffused as a whole but later recalled in details, the affections and fascinations of the artist render through equivocal clues of Shen’s imaginative brushwork, coinciding with the viewers’ own reminiscence and subconsciousness as the re-representation of personal imageries. Shen Han, born in Hangzhou in 1988 now lives and works in Berlin. He graduated from Berlin University of the Arts in 2017 with a Meisterklasse degree in Fine Arts in the class of Burkhard Held. Shen attempts to find the relationship between painting and the body by constructing pigment patches, gestural lines and allusive spaces. Crumbling and dismantling within the presented picture, Shen’s interest in the manipulation of fragmented spaces and the nuance of figuration and abstraction builds the invisible order in chaos. Past exhibitions include: The Trajectory of Dream at Galerie Paris-Beijing (Paris, 2019), Open Up at Edmond Gallery (Berlin, 2018). Shen Han had exhibited at Gallery Vacancy (Shanghai), J: Gallery (Shanghai), Galerie Anette Müller (Düsseldorf), Colonia Nova (Berlin), Villa Renata (Basel), Tang Contemporary Art (Bangkok) and Wuhan Art Museum (Wuhan). |
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