Huang Rui Dance of I-Ching – Sixty-Four Hexagrams, 2015 Oil on canvas 255 x 154 cm x 2 Huang Rui, (b. 1952, Beijing), is one of China’s most highly regarded artists and was one of the main protagonists of the first non-conformist art groups in 1979 China. A leader of the Stars Group (Xing Xing) and exhibition, he was pivotal in the art movement that initiated some of the first free art expressions in the Post-Mao era bringing together like-minded artists such as Wang Keping and Ma Desheng. As a seminal figure of the Dashanzi Factory 798 Art District, Huang Rui has sought to express art’s function as a reflection of society and its strength in addressing contemporary concerns, since co-organizing China’s first public art exhibition in Beijing in 1979. Today, his works are literati based, text and form with ironic undertones creating deep meanings. Inspired by poetry, Zen, architecture and the I-Qing his works are rooted in Chinese history and philosophy yet are strikingly contemporary. Huang Rui often creates works that contrast black and white as well as greys using different materials.
