An original founder of the avant-garde art Stars in 1979 and now vocal advocate for the 798 Art District, Huang Rui is an artist whose works avoids easy taxonomy. Over the years his works have taken on many forms. Most of them are characterized by a spirit of rebelliousness and an interest in exploring how the human condition faces up to the impenetrable walls of authority.
Huang Rui's works convey a daring simplicity, captured by the clean geometry and symmetry of his installation works and the consistent reliance on primary colors in his paintings and sculptures. All of his works stand alone as objects of beauty. At the same time, Huang Rui is a highly socially engaged artist who incorporates important political and historical references into his works. He has a particular fascination with Chinese political slogans from the 1980s reform era, which, using tidy, controlled brushstrokes, are deliberately enlarged on stark white canvases. Nearly three decades since the formation of the Stars, and fifteen years since his return from self-exile in Japan, Huang Rui's works continue to be inextricably linked to the society that he lives in.