Ignorance Buried Here

Yuxiao Ran’s solo exhibition Ignorance Buried Here presents more than ten recent works by the artist.

Yuxiao Ran’s paintings are a record of his existing experience in the present or a re-creation. He mainly uses figurative language to arrange images and symbols from different cultural Spaces and times on the canvas. And such “collage-like” visual arrangements are never planned in advance – he hardly ever sketches for the paintings. Sometimes, the first scene will be the sky in Yongchuan, his hometown, on a summer day, and sometimes, there will be a large blank canvas with only half a pair of scissors hanging on a thumbtack. Yuxiao Ran values such “random thoughts” very much because they constitute his “present”, although these “present” often point to things in the past. However, if the artist’s paintings emphasize anything, it is that as the images slowly accumulate on the picture, the identity information they originally carried in time and space becomes less important. By separating image languages from their original context, Ran Yuxiao wants to challenge, question, and subvert our habitual reading of the meaning of image symbols in a playful way. Such a way of creation will naturally produce chaos and a lack of logic, but for Yuxiao Ran, this chaos is not just a reality of his own living in the current social environment: “The order we experience in daily life is because we are more inclined to rule than randomness, which is human nature. But it would be a bit boring if the painting had to conform to this inertia unconditionally.”

Yuxiao Ran is not only the creator of the work but also an audience and a critic. None of the images that exist on his canvas belong to him, so their symbolism is always fluid and ethereal. Every time they’re seen, it’s a moment of new life.