Huang Dan’s paintings channel sometimes melodious, sometimes atonal energies in a rousing rhythm of life, harnessing new colours and materials. She continues to simultaneously depict structure and abstraction, forms and vitality. On her journey “from much to half, to less, to none”, Huang’s latest paintings becomes more abstract, yet assertively precise and righteous.

In search for the universal laws and things in life, Huang follows her heart, her consciousness of the need to paint. She does not pre-set an end result before beginning to paint. As Huang said herself: “My paintings are ambiguous and unpremeditated. I don’t know what I want; I only know what I don’t want. Of course, I have inspirations and there are things that touches me. Yet my paintings have no depicted concept or system. I create as I feel the need to create, and I ponder upon it only after I have created. To be precise and righteous, there is a certain parameter, but the result is often unknown to me until I feel the painting is done.”

Huang’s new paintings become channels of energy, depiction of the universal law of growth, the most primitive laws in life, the pure rhythm of vitality: from the inside to the outside, from the meagre bottom towards the ample top. Born in Guanxi, China in 1979, Huang Dan moved to Beijing to study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts: she graduated with a BA from the Department of Traditional Chinese Painting in 2001. In 2004, she was awarded an MA from the same institution. Currently Huang resides in Beijing.