Xiao Fan RU
Born into a family of scholars,Xiao Fan Ru was introduced to calligraphy at a very early age. After studying at the Nanjing Academy of Fine Arts (1977–1982), he moved to France and continued his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, from which he graduated in 1986.
Private Choice presents a mirror from the “La Voie d’or” collection, a series of furniture pieces that blend fragility and strength, grace and heaviness.
In China, bamboo has always been a favorite subject of artists, poets, and philosophers. In recent years, it has become a recurring motif in Xiao Fan Ru’s paintings and sculptures. The artist highlights its simplicity and the elegance of its lines, its ability to bend without breaking, to surround and protect, while also revealing its deeper, metaphysical, and spiritual meaning, which relates to the Confucian tradition of seeking the golden mean.
The idea is todraw inspiration from the vitality of bambooand to move forward in an infinite spiral, in harmony with nature and the world. According to these principles, the shape of the circle represents a path (the Tao) whereemptiness opens itself to inner resonance and the flow of breath.
Presentation taken from the text by Pascale Le Thorel for ColAAb.
Biography
Xiao Fan Ru was a laureate of the Casa Velázquez in Madrid (1988 and 1990). His works have been exhibited in France at the Centre Pompidou (1989), MAC Lyon (2005), the Cernuschi Museum (Paris, 2011), and the Guimet Museum (Paris, 2020). In China, monographs have been dedicated to him at the Shanghai Art Museum (2005), the Rong Kun Fine Art Museum in Beijing (2014), and the Suzhou Museum dedicated a retrospective to him in 2017.