Han Bing: Atlas
2nd September, 2025 – 4th October, 2025
Thaddaeus Ropac London
Ely House
37 Dover Street
London, W1S 4NJ
An exhibition of new paintings and works on paper marks Han Bing’s U.K. debut at Thaddaeus Ropac London.
Thaddaeus Ropac London will open Atlas, the first exhibition in the United Kingdom devoted to Han Bing, whose paintings are recognised for their subtle yet disruptive engagement with the urban environment.
The exhibition, which spans the gallery’s ground floor, brings together new canvases and a series of works on paper executed on pages of found newspaper — a material integral to her practice. A catalogue, with an essay by the art historian Doris von Drathen, accompanies the show.
Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac
Born in China and now based in Paris, Han Bing has also lived in New York, Los Angeles and Shanghai. Her paintings emerge not from direct observation but from impressions gathered as she moves through cityscapes. She is drawn to torn posters and weathered advertisements, particularly in the subway, where layers of printed matter accumulate like geological strata. These fragments infiltrate her work in the same way they permeate the surfaces of the city.
Each canvas is developed over several months. The artist begins with what she describes as a compositional “skeleton”, then applies layers of colour, the “tissue”. Streaks of pigment and angular planes are repeatedly scraped back and reworked. Recognisable forms are often interrupted by marks that resemble tears or digital glitches.
In they told me it only gets better (2025), a staged domestic table scene, reminiscent of a magazine spread, is ruptured by a large, faceted shape — a kind of “punch”, in her words.
Her titles, often poetic or playful, resist fixed meaning. Drawn from passing thoughts, overheard conversations, fragments of lyrics or lines from films, they open onto an interior landscape. The exhibition’s title, Atlas, refers simultaneously to the mythological Titan condemned to carry the heavens, to the first vertebra of the human spine, and to a network of cultural references that range from The Wizard of Oz to the music of the late American rapper Mac Miller. These overlapping associations chart quests of departure and return — journeys mapped across the anatomical, the geographical and the emotional.
Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac
Alongside the large canvases, the exhibition presents small works produced by transferring paint directly onto sheets of newspaper. The process, similar to monoprinting, leaves the outcome uncertain until the paper is peeled back. Splashes and stains of colour obscure photographs, creating effects akin to light leaks. In these works, everyday newsprint becomes a site of visual disruption, suggesting that in the city — as in painting — images are never static but constantly shifting, gathering new meanings over time.
Han Bing: Atlas opens on the 2nd of September, 2025 until the 4th of October, 2025 at Thaddaeus Ropac London
©2025 Thaddaeus Ropac
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