Resting at the Foot of a Wall, 2022
Yuxiao Ran (Maverick) was born in Chengdu, Sichuan, China in 1996. He studied under a full government scholarship in Singapore from 2011 to 2016, during which he received his first formal art education in Victoria Junior College. In 2020, Ran obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. and he is now pursuing Painting MA at Royal College of Art in London, U.K.
Ran’s paintings are a record, or a re-creation of his present experience. Ran primarily uses representational language to arrange images and motifs from different cultural spaces and times on the canvas. He aims to challenge and subvert our habitual reading of images and symbols. This "collage-like" visual arrangement never relies on predetermined compositions, and seeks to reenact the chaotic realism of contemporary socio-cultural situations. The process of Ran’s creation is a series of calculated, idiosyncratic, and playful engagement with existing pictorial languages in a context of multiculturalism.
Ran posits, “wouldn’t it be extremely dull if painting also has to submit to the inertia of pattern and order?”
Ran posits, “wouldn’t it be extremely dull if painting also has to submit to the inertia of pattern and order?”