Rongjun Zhao

Rongjun Zhao (b.1995, China)

Education Background

2020-2022, Royal college of Art, Print

2014-2018, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Print BA

Short-term training in Art and Technology at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2019

Residency in China Guanlan Original Printmaking Base in 2020.

Rongjun Zhao prefers to be alone in a remote wilderness, in a vast, desolate, limitless natural environment. As a result, her works are influenced by the environment, exploring the self-unconscious experience of nature from a perceptual standpoint. Her practice is varied, encompassing painting, printmaking, photography, as well as the use of some natural materials. She is adept at expressing her feelings through the properties of the materials themselves.

According to Bachelard, all circumstances and things are attached to multiple meanings, and the human perspective can only describe a small fraction of the world.

Because I believe this, I like to express my feeling through visuals that are chaotic, imprecise, and ambiguous.

Here's what I’m thinking: the possibility of everything that grows out of the noise.

The natural sights I observe all around me, the old walls in the city, surrounding the usual spectacles, and all those things that have never piqued anyone's curiosity are my inspiration.

Aren't we forgetting the world of things themselves？ The voice-less things once placed as decor.

They don't appear to be special, yet they are.

They exist in the objective world, yet they are not limited to their image.

Their surfaces are fluid, and I'm curious about what lies beneath them.

I'd like to abandon the conventional fixed discourse context in search of these objects that flow beneath the ambiguity.

Like old traces on a wall, they seem to be constructing new space.

My work is based on the self-conscious understanding of these traces, the image association between self-experience and the subconscious, the search for the cracks outside the inherent rules, and the infinite possibilities created by self-perceived exile. They emerge spontaneously from the nature of the wall, the object, the real and illusory collision, and relevance.

Spontaneous game 1

Spontaneous game 2

Spontaneous game 3

Spontaneous game 4

Spontaneous game 5

Spontaneous game 6

Spontaneous game 7

Spontaneous game 8

Spontaneous game 9

Spontaneous game 10

This is a pastel drawing series.

I enjoy the sensation of directly touching the drawing with my hands. Perhaps the power of touch comes from the material itself. My finger daubs on the drawing. The blur caused by the daubs seems to form a crack, and this crack is the possibility.

It was as if I were creating a blurred area on paper, beginning with natural or man-made old traces on the wall. I had no idea where it would go, and it wasn't decided by me. It's something that happened on its own, spontaneously, perhaps in relation to nature, perhaps not. Nobody can describe it precisely because it is an uncertain "Possibility." And this type of subconscious exile, this random interpretation, it's almost like a game.

Medium:

Pastel on paper

Size:

32*24, 64*48

Land

Bonfires and Trees

Birds on the Road

Crowds and Flowers

Seals and Rocks

Branches and Candles

Do you sense a connection between them?

Lands, Forests, Wilderness, Telecom poles

Stones and Seals

Bonfires and Candles

The birds in the forest seem to be perched on the debris on the roadside…

I try to make a relationship between them. They were not originally in the same space or at the same time, yet I let all the seemingly unrelated things' conversations happen.

However, when I put them together, I realized there was no need to make such a deliberate connection.

The relationship happened from the moment they existed.

Medium:

Photograph

Size:

Variable

Spontaneous Game - Pebbles, Pebbles, Digital print

All nature materials have their own inherent properties, like pebbles, as if polished by time and water. The image of digital print, on the other hand, has been given a new significance on the pebble.

The images on the pebble are the result of the tininess self colliding with nature. The majority of them are based on my experience in nature and the open wilderness. Nature is a grand field. The vast nature is connected with the self, resulting in a silent dialogue and collision out of a silent force. This power is eternal, yet it is private and distinct between each individual and nature.

This power is embodied in the pebbles, which seem as an inscription that can be preserved forever. They are also related to my drawing, and are a mirror of my subconscious at the same time.

Medium:

Pebbles, Digital print

Size:

Variable

OUTSIDE THE WINDOW, Digital print, canvas, cotton thread, collage

Is the view we see real?

I am looking for the gap between

the vague and the illusory in which

all the rules do not exist.

nothing is complete

nothing is real and clear.

Everything is just like a game,

freely combined into their

appearance.

But everything that unfolded

before my eyes was like an

iceberg showing only one corner,

and no one could see its entire picture.

The work consists of digital printing on thin Japanese paper, and then collage. Every day I see the same branches from my window and photograph them as elements of collage on a full tree that is divided into multiple sections by the window. These branches, which are not of the same time, give a new, different life to another space of the tree.

Medium:

Digital print, canvas, cotton thread, collage

Size:

10*15

Rongjun Zhao

Rongjun Zhao (b.1995, China)

Education Background

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About

Royal College of Art