Sharing of the Sublime Fragments: About My Art Practice

Artist Ren Han collaborated with CPI Haus101 for this special artwork and talked about the aesthetics anchored in the “sublime” in his space: aesthetically, the sublime is closer to the magnificent. By sharing Raphael’s Academy of Athens, the medieval maiden and the unicorn, and other famous European paintings, he demonstrated the initial understanding and feeling of the sublime in Western painting. Ren Han mentioned that the sublime is different from beauty in that it is not elegant or harmonious, but an experience that provokes awe, fear and even pain.
The sublime is defined as the opposite of beauty. The artist talked about the sublime aesthetics contained in Chinese landscape painting and the coexistence of man and nature under the concept of Taoism. Ren Han repeatedly mentions that art is truly complete when people are involved in the work; sublime art is not only distant and grandiose, but also needs to be appreciated and explored by human beings.