RU XIAO FAN

Xiao Fan’s artistic and cultural education enriches his works by drawing connections between tradition and the contemporary, between East and West. He describes himself as “a man before nature” whether human or not. When he isn’t creating hybrid flowers with organic appearances, he paints canvases riddled with consumer goods made iconic, some entitled Garbage Bins, denouncing centrifugal and disoriented cultures. Xiao Fan has not stopped sculpting or painting flowers from his Chinese roots, wherein the evocation of floral motifs oscillates between ancient poetry and bloody crimes, whose trauma still remains under the Maoist slogan “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom.” The still life is a recurring theme in his work; whether he paints toys, crustaceans, or bouquets, a vital, though barely perceptible, link draws them all together. Crafted from successive layers of glaze, this gut-like hose is the only source of oxygen in these compulsive representations and invasive floral masses and, overwhelmed, man is on the verge of suffocation.