Rao Fu – Dynamische Stille: Gewalt und Lebendigkeit der Farben

We are excited to present the first solo exhibition of new paintings by Rao Fu, titled Dynamic Stillness: Violence and Vibrancy of Colours. Inhabited by creatures that are both human and yet entirely the product of the artist’s imagination, the works of the renowned Chinese artist provide insights into dreamlike scenes that often tilt into the nightmarish.

Rao Fu was born in Beijing and has lived in Dresden for more than twenty years. Before moving to Germany, he studied design from 1999 to 2001 at Tsinghua University in Beijing. From 2002 to 2010, he enrolled at the Dresden University of Fine Arts to further his studies in painting, graphics, and art therapy. During his studies with Siegfried Klotz and Elke Hopfe, he focused, among other things, on the traditional painting methods of the Dresden School. In 2008, he became a master student and continued his postgraduate studies with Professor Ralf Kerbach.

During his studies, Fu received a DAAD scholarship for Fine Arts in 2006 and a scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation from 2008 to 2012. In the following years, he received a scholarship from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony in 2014 and, in 2016, the Heimspiel scholarship from the same foundation, sponsored by the Baumwollspinnerei Leipzig. In 2017, he won the scholarship of the 14th Hallenkünstler of the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei, and in 2020 he was awarded the Denkzeit scholarship from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony.

Works by Rao Fu are held in notable collections including the National Museum of History and Art in Luxembourg (MNHA), the Dresden State Art Collections, the Städtische Galerie Dresden, the Saxon Art Foundation, and the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei. His works are regularly exhibited in Asia and Europe, including at the renowned Galerie Perrotin, and are represented at major international art fairs such as Art Basel Hong Kong, Asia Now Paris, Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, Art Taipei, Art Düsseldorf, and many others.

The Fantasies of Seeing: On the Paintings of Rao Fu

He trusts the eye more than the mind. Rao Fu, born in Beijing in 1978 and now living in Dresden, moved to Germany at the age of 23 out of a joyful desire to travel and discover other cultures, and from a deep curiosity about original works—particularly those of Romanticism—which he had previously known only from reproductions. When confronted with the question of why he relies more on seeing than on thinking, Fu responds with scepticism. He sees no need to question this organically developed preference, as his paintings derive their immense appeal precisely from enabling us to see fully before allowing us to think freely.

Fu considers it unnecessary to ask about any “surplus” of seeing, as his mysterious paintings—imbued with an atmosphere of the uncanny—do not yield greater clarity through rational interpretation. Free of direct referents, his works do not depict recognizable reality. Instead, reality is transcended and transformed into ambiguous dream zones saturated with darkness and melancholy. While echoes of lived experience may be sensed, they are so altered that viewers encounter the figures as if they were alien beings with unfamiliar features and skin tones.

Fu deliberately resists analytical interpretation. He provides minimal explanation of his themes not to mystify, but to avoid rational decoding—what Max Ernst termed “interpretation.” “I paint open pictures,” Fu explains, “to prevent the viewer from interpreting them in only one direction. I don’t make preliminary sketches and I don’t want to control the image. I start from a vague idea that gradually becomes more concrete, but never fully fixed.”

His process is intuitive and reactive. “I respond to colour, to form, to whether a surface is large or small. I paint from my inner perception of the world and from my engagement with works of the old masters, who also created group scenes. When a painting risks becoming too gentle or harmless, I counteract it by all means. Creating sustained tension is my goal.”

The underlying meaning of Fu’s painting emerges from the unconscious. His work aligns with Surrealism’s concept of écriture automatique, privileging intuition, inner vision, and emotional perception over conceptual planning. While formal considerations are important, they are always tied to reflections on human existence in a world shaped by violence and brutality, and the irreconcilable distance between the individual and the mass.

One painting depicts a group of surveilled people operating sewing machines, condemned to produce cheap mass goods. Their anonymity, lack of individuality, and enforced submission to the collective become apparent only gradually. Faces—reduced to eyes and mouths—are mask-like and devoid of distinguishing features, with skin rendered in unnatural colours. The scene’s lack of a clear spatial setting intensifies the sense of alienation: it is unclear whether we are inside a factory or outside in a landscape. The boundary between interior and exterior dissolves, leaving no space of safety, a latent threat reinforced by dark clouds overhead.

Another work shows a melancholic boy seated on a red plastic chair beside a small dog, gazing in wonder at a transparent plastic bag half-filled with water. Inside floats not a fish, but Venus—the Roman goddess of love, desire, and beauty—like a genie captured in a bottle. Fu explains that the boy is a portrait of his son, who spends his time absorbed in the computer rather than watching the clock on his wrist. This scene, too, unfolds in a liminal space between inside and outside, where a mountainous landscape and pink sky flood the interior, dissolving spatial boundaries and placing the viewer in a state between dream and reality.

— Heinz-Norbert Jocks, Art Critic and Curator