Common People
Digital Photograph, dimensions variable
captured with iPhone 8
2017
COMMON PEOPLE 2017-
RUNO B is keen on focusing on the reverse side of things—that is, the rough, down-and-out side—rather than the lofty, imposing façade of God that people commonly see. Therefore, Common People represents RUNO B’s perspective on life. This project has continued from 2017 to the present. Through ongoing observation in the streets, the artist explores these subjects by means of photography, monotype, and painting. Common People functions more as a particular kind of aesthetic: through exaggerated colors, coarse brushstrokes, and distinctive linear forms, combined with collage sourced from magazines and advertising paper, he depicts a world saturated with social alienation and the madness and chaos of consumerism.
He has also never ceased reflecting on food culture. Food constitutes a shared historical memory embedded in everyone’s subconscious. Vegetables and bread contain abundant elements related to the pursuit of recognition and the positioning of identity. From the very beginning, he has favored excavating historical materials as references—religious motifs, mythology, frescoes, and figures from popular novels of China’s Ming dynasty, among others. Illusion, ambiguity between the real and the unreal, and concrete details flicker within these images; three-dimensionality emerges on a two-dimensional plane. As he himself has stated, this is a way of giving concrete form to abstract themes.
The works shown in his 2021 exhibition ASS OF GOD in Shanghai can be seen as an unfolding of the threads of research he has pursued over the years. They reveal how he arranges his “table” within the smallest possible space—an evening banquet that leaves seasoned gourmands both anxious and irresistibly drawn in. These small-scale works and works on paper resemble leaping prose poems, performing genuine emotional fluctuations and fragments of life within a static, unrhymed space.
ASS OF GOD
PATA Gallery, Shanghai, China
2021