Eastern philosophy is the starting point for artist Huang Rui’s work. He translates the spatial and esoteric principles of the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching into a highly contemporary visual language. Combining geometric blocks with color, he applies his own logic, transforming the invisible into a tangible work.
Can the invisible Yin and Yang of the Eight Trigrams be transformed into a tangible, contemporary carpet? Recently, renowned contemporary artist Huang Rui, who has been practicing abstract art for 46 years, has taken on a new venture. He collaborated with the carpet brand Tanyan Weaving to translate his signature “Spatial Structure” series into an artistic carpet.
Huang Rui is an artist with a certain contradiction in his nature, both traditional and rebellious. On the one hand, his artistic career has always been characterized by breaking through established paradigms. In 1979, he launched the “Stars Art Exhibition,” hanging his bold and free-spirited sculptures and paintings directly on the iron fence east of the National Art Museum of China. This exhibition, which defied the conventional wisdom that art could only be exhibited in museums, caused an unprecedented sensation at the time.
On the other hand, he was deeply fascinated by traditional Eastern culture, particularly the profound principles embodied in the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching, which later became a perennial theme in Huang Rui‘s work. However, Huang Rui, known for his rebellious nature, did not incorporate traditional the Eight Trigrams elements into his work, nor did he consider expressing the dialectical philosophy of yin and yang in a concrete way. In the 1980s, he pioneered the “structural abstraction” style, transforming his perception of the principles of heaven and earth into a kind of “encrypted communication”—presented in his artworks through combinations of geometric blocks and colors.
As the name suggests, Huang Rui‘s representative work, the “Spatial Structure” series, stems from his exploration of the Dao of Space. His inspiration comes from the architectural texture of Beijing’s Siheyuan courtyards—the square rectangular frame is both a materialized symbol of traditional spatial order and a metaphorical response to the cultural rift and rebirth experienced during modernization.
In fact, when Huang Rui began this series, he had not yet completed reading the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching. However, he felt the timing was perfect. “Fortunately, I was in a state of ignorance. For me, the basic concepts and lines were fixed, but the specific path had to be chosen on my own.” This prevented his work from falling into a state of stagnation.
Over the years, Huang Rui has continuously explored the infinite possibilities of “space” and the Dao. Besides creating art installations across various media, he often seeks inspiration in his daily life. This led him to wonder whether the “field” presented in “Spatial Structure” could be integrated into everyday life in another form. This collaboration with Tanyan Weaving is a response to this thought.