Mind Set Art Center is honored to launch “Flaming Image: Rao FU” to mark the end of autumn. Curated by German art critic Christoph Tannert, the exhibition consists of over 20 of FU’s latest oil paintings, watercolors and sculptures. This will be FU’s first-ever exhibition held at the MSAC in his near six-year-long collaboration with the gallery. The show is set to run from 14 October through 24 November, 2023. An opening talk between Rao FU and KAO Tzu-Chin, assistant researcher at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, will be held at 2:30 p.m. on 14 October, followed by a reception at 4:30. We extend a warm invitation to all of you.
Rao FU was born and raised in China and later moved to Germany to further his art education. Thanks to his mixed background and education, FU has become exceptional at fusing and expressing different aesthetic qualities in his work. His formally in the Dresden school of painting, which in itself is an accumulation of Europe’s finest artistic treasures, including Baroque art, Classicism, Romanticism, and Impressionism. The wide range of influence has infused FU’s creativity with impressive range and variety. He is known for using bold brushstrokes and saturated colors to created epic landscapes with ghostly figures sporadically painted in. The expansive composition and the contrasting elements allow the artist to explore the palpable tension and drama of human interactions.
Fu has shown new progress in his latest works. In “Baima Lake” and “Dutchman’s Pipe Cactus”, the artist has gone bolder than before and mixed striking brushstrokes and splendid colors to explore his subjects’ struggle in love and lust. He continues to lay down lines and colors in a way only he could. On top of that, FU has managed to infused an element of Symbolism in his paintings to elevate their impact. The artist’s own curiosity, his observation the minor occurrences in daily life and the hallucinations in his subconsciousness have all inspired and live on through his paintings.
In the large-scale triptych “Night Feast”, Rao FU manipulates perspectives to create an epic narrative of the human spirit and longing juxtaposed against an endless earth. He channels the illusions of the real world through his rendering of the mirage-like landscape and subjects engaging in ritualistic acts. A looming giant leans slightly forward holding a holy item for sacrifice, as if he’s a priest trying to awake the human spirit in the endless night. Smaller human figures are seen scattered across the scene, their expressionless faces reflect our collective anxiety and escapist tendencies when facing the great uncertainties of our day. FU has attracted our attention, transformed our perspective and point of view, much like curator Christoph Tannert once stated, “FU narrates from different places and times, from ‘today’ and ‘back then’ and from times in between. There are echoes of art from other epochs, tying in with a reflection on the art of today and the question what distinguishes the present from the past or the future.”
About the Curator
Born in 1955 in Leipzig, Christoph Tannert is an exhibition curator and author. He studied classical archaeology and art history at Humboldt University in Berlin from 1976 to 1981. Since 2000, he has served as the artistic director at Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, a well-known international cultural center in Berlin. Numerous exhibitions curated by him and his publications can be found in exhibition catalogues, anthologies, and the specialist press. He is also the Co-Curator of 'Geniale Dilletanten – Subculture in Germany in the 1980s' in Dresden.
