Duyi Han: Visions of Bloom: Suhe Haus, Shanghai

Duyi Han (b. 1994) has made a name for himself on the international scene since 2020 as a Chinese avant-garde scenographer and collectible furniture designer. “Visions of Bloom” (琳琅) is his first solo exhibition in China, presenting all-new major works commissioned by CHERUBY. The exhibition explores his identity as a multi-disciplinary artist and brings together the worlds of art and design. With Claire Shiying Li’s curatorial vision, “Visions of Bloom” will succinctly showcase an amalgamation of Duyi Han’s personal research in alternate architectural histories, his in-depth knowledge of cutting-edge technology and production techniques, and a multi-layered exploration in cross-disciplinary thinking. The exhibition consists of an all encompassing wall and floor cover installation titled “Proteine Grottesche”, an animated video “Visions of Bloom” which transforms artifacts into natural creatures, a collectible bench with embroidered upholstery “Synthesis of ATP” and multiple framed pictures made of embroidery on silk.

“Visions of Bloom” is designed like a miniature Chinese treasure gallery on the first floor of Suhe Haus, reflecting Asian philosophies and Eastern and Western architectural legacies. “Proteine Grottesche” is a wallpaper and floor covering installation that consists of “Myriad Antiques” (Bogu patterns) made with 3D protein molecule models inspired by interior ornaments from the Qing dynasty and mural compositions of the Domus Aurea in Rome. Duyi Han uses published 3D models from RCSB Protein Data Bank as building blocks to formulate a cross-cultural art historical matrix, a palace of pictorial data aggregation. With scholarly taste, he collects myriad of visual sources from biology and archeology, blurring the lines between life-forming and art-making. Han explores an existential truth and an awakening perspective in his celebratory portraits of nature and artifacts.

In the center of the exhibition, there is a video installation titled “Visions of Bloom”, reminiscent of Western timepieces brought to Emperor Qianlong which symbolizes sophistication in craftsmanship and pre-modern curiosity in time-based art. Duyi Han independently creates rendered animation clips and assembles them in accidental fashion, alluding to a Buddhist Huayan school belief that all things and phenomenons are interchangeable and compatible with each other. In front of the screen, an upholstered bench displays embroidered diagrams depicting the synthesis process of ATP in cells of living organisms, all of which framed by decorative curtains with hints of a cosmic zen atmosphere and a queer sensibility. Duyi Han reimagines the notion of an ornamented room or a scholarly garden in the trajectory of Chinese history, experimenting a cross-pollination of science and art history for a multi-layered and multi-cultured sensorial universe.