Danysz Gallery - Shanghai is pleased to present for the first time a solo exhibition of the most active Chinese designer and visual artist in Germany at the moment: Wang Ruohan. A chance to get your fill of roaring colors with a series of bold, assertive paintings by a rising contemporary talent.
Capturing and recording everyday life with a unique style, Wang Ruohan has been noticed worldwide through important collaborations with famous brands including Nike, UGG, Moleskine, Off-White, Farfetch, The New York Times, The New Yorker and the Goethe Institut to name a few. These collaborations brought the illustrator, painter and visual artist international notoriety, putting her now on the forefront of a new generation of creators.
Best known for her bold use of color and her creation of quirky, offbeat characters, Wang Ruohan observes the environment in her own way, building upon disordered and obscure pictures to construct a whimsical world. Using a playful approach to explore the urban space and human behavior, her paintings have neither linear narratives nor cultural backgrounds or individual features. They are out of the ordinary and cunning, full of absurdity and uncertainty, while also being fascinating and relaxing.
"I think reality can be recorded best by a camera, whereas surreality can only come from artworks. It seems like our duty to bring people from reality to surreality through art. It’s kind of like going to the sea... If you swim deep down into the water, you can see creatures down there that are beautiful."
- Wang Ruohan
Through her works, using collage techniques to break up, reconstruct and change the original appearance of usual things, the artist reminds us of the importance of being mindful of the most common elements surrounding us: the city landscape, random people walking in the streets, working or talking to each other. If like her we were able to pinpoint and magnify all those things that we most of the time don’t pay attention to, we would then realize that they are a beautiful source of inspiration and tranquility, making our lives a colorful journey.
Wang Ruohan was born in Beijing. She graduated in 2017 from Berlin University of Art. Her work has been presented in important institutions like the Art Museum of Nanjing University of Arts, the Scotland's National Centre for Design and Architecture, the Yuan Art Museum in Chongqing, K11 in Shanghai, and the Deutsches Museum in Munich. She is currently a professor at the Peter Berens School of Art in Düsseldorf. She lives in Berlin.
