ArtDepot is pleased to announce the presentation of Luo Dan's solo exhibition 'Transcendence' at the 798 Art District space in Beijing, featuring a selection of the artist's easel paintings and installations from the years 2023-2024. The exhibition opens with a VIP preview on Friday, 9 August 2024, and the official opening will take place on Saturday, 10 August 2024, and will run until 15 September 2024.

Preface:

In this world, transcending requires first acknowledging that time is not linear, but rather an intricate web. Paint is spread wantonly, occasionally dripping down, seeking to entwine the swiftly leaping rays of light. Yet, light resists being ensnared; it must continue to illuminate those who dance. These are the individuals who strive to break free from all constraints, their sole aspiration being to become eternal transcender with free will.

Creating mental images is the duty of these transcenders. These images are the remnants of time, fragments of memory, the paths of light beams, and the mottled traces of color. The narratives and emotions recorded within them are repeatedly awakened by the media that bear them, thus gaining a pulsating life force. Consequently, echoes of history, omens of the future, and reflections of reality converge here, absorbed, assimilated, and digested by those who transcend.

The leaps of time also redefine space. Each shape segmented by light and color transforms into an independent world. Space is no longer the restrictive frame of forms but an infinitely proliferating structure. Various ancient, novel, and incredible elements are integrated here with new meanings, reconstructed as vivid events in the contemporary living space. The boundaries and barriers between tradition and modernity, the classical and the popular, the East and the West, become blurred.

In the exhibition "Transcendence", Luo Dan epitomizes the devout transcender, murmuring about his journeys and experiences. These words eventually condense into visual texts through repeated experimentation with media. The content is continually analyzed, deconstructed, and then archived as collective memory, inviting viewers to browse, recall, and ponder.

Luo Dan, the post-80s artist, the germination and development of Chinese contemporary art, just coincide with the trajectory of personal growth, scar art, local art, ideological liberation, 85 new art trend... For Rodin, the important stage events that have been specially recorded in the history of Chinese contemporary art are natural and personal growth experiences.

In Luo Dan's memory, those uncle predecessors who have become famous and married now, their studios, small single dormitories... The campus of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in my memory is like a utopia of its own system. In Luo Dan's memory, when he was a child, the door, walls, and even furniture in his home were covered with his graffiti paintings, and he felt that "painting is a matter of course" and for his revealed interest, his father Luo Zhongli, who is also an artist, did not oppose or suppress, and even often accompanied Rodin when he was young. 

The memory from this childhood graffiti experience is reflected in Luo Dan's current creation, especially the more abstract and paintery works in recent years. The free and controlled brushstrokes, dragging pigment textures and flowing colors form a special contrast with the printing texture and smooth spray paint used in the background, both in texture and form content. It also makes these painterly characters and illustrations more prominent in them, giving viewers a strong visual impact. Luo Dan began to learn the violin from kindergarten, to primary school, Luo Zhongli will even ride a motorcycle after class every day, after nearly 40 minutes of driving every day, send Luo Dan to the teacher's house to learn the piano, after two hours of practice, and then Luo Dan home... This situation continued until the fifth grade. On the one hand, because Luo Dan's excellent academic performance, on the other hand, Luo Dan did not like boring piano practice at that time, so his contact with music stopped briefly in Luo Dan's junior high school. But Luo Dan admitted that when he was a child, he still had some very special feelings about music, and these memories have a higher readability after years of polishing and looking back from an adult perspective. It can even be said that these memories have influenced his creation to a certain extent - in Luo Dan's own words, "people still can't help but choose or get close to some things that have an impact or cross with their childhood life, and painting is just one of the most intuitive forms of this influence." 

For painting, Luo Dan believes that every artist will have their own story, different art forms, but also different ways of telling stories. In Luo Dan's works, especially in his early works, you can see a high purity of color and a strong sense of fluorescence. Different colors of light act as the role of dividing the picture, making light the ruler of the color block, and constructing an image full of rhythm and spatial sense. Luo Dan reached adulthood during his undergraduate study at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. Or rather, the period when his personal creative style took shape coincided with the vigorous development of culture after the year 2000. This enabled his paintings to record the wonderful individual lives and youthful memories. For Luo Dan, this was an extremely true life experience and also an expression of the manifestation of that era and environment at that time. Luo Dan when he was in college, he was no longer a naughty boy who was forced to practice the piano when he was young, and he showed a strong interest in music, especially rock and roll, according to his words, "did a lot of messy, irregular, non-painting 'transactional work'". Luo Dan's university career began in 2000, in the year that represents the "new century", China obtained esoteric qualifications, is about to join the WTO, Internet users multiplied, Chinese film frequency won international awards, including the contemporary art market, is also considered to have begun the first large-scale outbreak in 2000... In the memory of countless people, it was a time of growth, vigor, energy and hope. In the new era, with the nourishment and edification from art and music, Luo Dan also acquired a new, performing feeling, or immersive memory of music, and a strong inspiration and impulse for artistic creation -- the vitality and energy of youth, coupled with the colorful atmosphere of The Times. Luo Dan, the images in the picture seem to burst with infinite vitality. Those moving bodies, the posture of stretching and spreading, and the cry and expression of fighting without scrutine. not only show the memory of youth and vitality of individuals, but also show the collective feeling of comfort, publicity and full and strong emotional color of The Times. As Luo Dan himself said, "Youth itself will contain a kind of primitive impulse, and even do not need a clear position or too heavy thinking, because you lived in that situation at that time, creation means, more is a painting state, a way of expression and catharsis, which is the reflection of their own life state." I think this is also a place where I work differently (from the previous generation of artists)." 

Art history scholar Wu Hong's book "The Double Screen". Those images in the history of ancient Chinese art through screens or window scenes not only completed the extension and expansion of space, but also conveyed the spiritual pursuit of ancient literary figures in the cultural context of that time with the content of landscape, chess and poetry. In Luo Dan's personal creation process, from deconstructing images with highly pure colors at the beginning, to trying different materials, from wood, acrylic to metal and even mirror, Luo Dan immersed in the construction of heterogeneous space, whether it is mirroring or overlapping space in the picture, he constantly made attempts in his creation. "I think it is a time and space formed by color, which can include the self and object of different time dimensions of the past, present and future. It is a very mysterious and attractive spatial presupposition, and this presupposition also has a strong Oriental cultural connotation."

Therefore, it is not difficult to explain why Luo Dan, who was immersed in painting music and filling dazzling light space in his early days, has a large number of Dunhuang fresco elements represented by caisson in his recent creations. In fact, in both eastern and European religious worship Spaces, the top of the building is often given special treatment - the caisson in the grotto represents the rising Buddhist world, and the zenith painting in the church depicts the divine world in the sky. In Luo Dan's eyes, these traditional religious drawings "often correspond to the purity of the spirit, with a divinity and empty inspiration separated from the reality of the human world, and to some extent, with the extreme visual experience brought by the immersive stage lighting, there is a clever consistency."

For Luo Dan, who often goes abroad to exchange and participate in exchange exhibitions, the reference to Dunhuang murals more represents a collective cognition of the nation. In Luo Dan's early works, it is not difficult to see elements representing Chinese culture such as facial makeup, blue and white or dragon and phoenix patterns. "I think my works should not be just my own content, but have more understanding and expression of traditional culture. You are digesting tradition, but Eastern and Western cultures are really colliding with you." Therefore, in Luo Dan's paintings, we can see those Italian graffiti, the dancing posture of American street dance and the traditional Chinese symbols. These images, which were conceived in the collective civilization, were re-created by the artist and displayed as a whole in the space where the picture was constructed.