Chen Ruo Bing

Chen Ruo Bing's paintings arise from a concentrated balance of color, light, form and emptiness. On calmly structured color fields appear simple, often softly rounded forms that shift between surface and body, closeness and distance. Thin, transparent layers of color let the structure of the canvas show through and create a depth that works less illusionistically than atmospherically. Form and ground remain inextricably related: at times a color form stands out clearly, at times it seems almost to dissolve in the surrounding light. The deliberate reduction slows the gaze and opens it to the finest shifts of tone, density and space. In this quiet yet at the same time intense painting, experiences of Chinese ink painting combine with impulses from European modernism and American color field painting.