About artist:
Ruyun Gao is a shanghai-born artist, his practice is based on installation, sculpture, painting and photography. He use mechanical movement with no intended form or rhythm, to avoid subjectivity and emotion. when confronting the pieces the viewer maintains a certain distance, which helps to desensitize their perceptions as these “art works”. This allows the viewer to enter a space of deep contemplation. His black lines follow designated paths and rhythms, drawing together and then apart. This constant cyclical movement leaves the observer with undefined time and space which sketched from geometric lines. I make use of the mathematical form of infinite convergence, creating “mathematical objects” endowed with structure, function, number, space and movement.
Ruyun Gao
Happy Couple，2024
Stainless-steel, nylon rope, fishing line, acrylic pigment
60h x 50w x 6.5d cm
© Courtesy of the artist and Nan Ke Gallery
The conceptual artist Jorge Eielson, renowned for his quipus art, once remarked,“ I am convinced that poetry is not only a verbal fact.” In his works, "poetry" exists simultaneously in the forms of precise writing and visualization. Stepping into Nan Ke Gallery's new exhibition, "Position; Reposition" one can sense Ruyun Gao's response to this contemplation, as well as its adaptation, extension, and integration within his own cultural context.
In the evolution and expansion of language, "design language" is often more familiar. It is arranged in a meticulous logical form and aims at communication and service, aligning with the common usage of narrow language. However, in the realm of contemporary art, "language" continues the purpose of "communication" in another dimension, focusing on morphemes, contexts, and the evocative "images" themselves.
Ruyun Gao
LOOP LOOP e，2023
Acrylic, stainless-steel, motor
60h x 40w x 6d cm
© Courtesy of the artist and Nan Ke Gallery
This is particularly evident in conceptual art. Art critic Javier Montes describes the birth of conceptual art pieces as a process of "encrypting" and "deciphering": the artist disassembles concepts that are too ambiguous, abstract, and emotional to be encapsulated by language into molecules of objects, images, and movements, and then reassembles them like constructing sentences to form an artwork.
Ruyun Gao
Awareness - 2301，2023
Black walnut，nylon rope
80h x 100w x 6.8d cm
© Courtesy of the artist and Nan Ke Gallery
This process is akin to poetry: fragmented, stream-of-consciousness emotions and insights are encapsulated in images rooted in a specific cultural environment, reorganized into the creator's rich inner landscape. Like throwing a stone into water, it stirs and provokes the viewer's mind, achieving a shared empathy that transcends translation.
Ruyun Gao
Awareness - 000，2024
Stainless-steel, nylon rope, fishing line
150h x 110w x 6.3d cm
© Courtesy of the artist and Nan Ke Gallery
"Position; Reposition" is such a "poem beyond dimensions". It conveys without relying on flat text, further reducing the mechanical loss during the transformation of forms. As one ascends through the exhibition space, the works themselves complete the "dimensional upgrade" from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, from points, lines, and planes to spatial constructs. This process synchronizes with the integration of poetry: from granular imagery to elongated linear sentences, culminating in a complete, immersive, and imaginative three-dimensional poetic narrative.
Ruyun Gao
LOOP 2023-1，2023
Acrylic, stainless-steel, motor, acrylic paint
41h x 41w x 12d cm
© Courtesy of the artist and Nan Ke Gallery
Ruyun Gao
Zoom，2019
Mixed media on canvas
190h x 110w x 4d cm
© Courtesy of the artist and Nan Ke Gallery
The exhibition begins with Ruyun Gao's small-scale installations from the LOOP series. Concrete, solid short line segments are guided by invisible transparent fishing lines, moving in regular trajectories, mirroring the mental mapping of single images as they act and connect in the brain. The exhibition ascends, with the Awareness and Zoom series presenting longer line segments, reflecting the balanced tension of consciousness and thought in the brain, akin to complete sentences gradually being pulled into shape by various forces, ideas, and inspirations.
Ruyun Gao
Disturbance，2024
Pool, sand, motor, nylon rope
500l x 400w x 450h cm
© Courtesy of the artist and Nan Ke Gallery
On the third floor, the large-scale installation "Disturbance" (2024) forms a meticulously considered, complete "poem." An entire wall is transformed into a gentle light source, reminiscent of the traditional aesthetic of "words end but meaning is infinite," with a vast area of blank space. The snowy landscape piled on the floor and the naturally formed black water pools evoke the tranquility and infinity of a Zen garden. However, the traditional rake is transformed into the artist's signature material—line segments, continuously carving ephemeral yet perpetual traces in the water.
The entire space reimagines a thinking pavilion, inviting viewers in and providing a steady stream of subtle contemplation, narrating the labor of creation poetically. Simultaneously, the space itself, like a complete poem beyond paper and textual dimensions, creates an immersive, restful ambiance, stirring the viewer's thoughts and sparking endless associations. As Marcel Broodthaers remarked, "The artist is the author of definitions", "Position; Reposition," in the form of a poem, compresses the gap between traditional aesthetics and contemporary art representations, integrating and unifying them within the space of Nan Ke Gallery.
Text by Roxane Fu
July 16, 2024
