Ruoxi Jin — Galerie Mennour, Paris
Presented as part of the Émergences #2 exhibition at Mennour Gallery, Ruoxi Jin unveils nine sculptures that appear fragile at first glance, yet conceal a rare plastic and conceptual strength. The viewer is struck by the tension between formal delicacy and symbolic density, as if the precariousness of the material mirrored the fragility of the world it seeks to reveal.
A recent graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris (Guillaume Paris’ studio), Ruoxi Jin (born in 1997 in Harbin, China) develops a polymorphous and resolutely conceptual practice. Her often enigmatic works evoke alternative realities—suspended possibilities—which she imagines as unstable sets of a mental theatre, weaving a continuous thread between visible and invisible structures, between truths and myths that shape our perception of reality.
One of the six laureates of the second edition of Mennour Émergences, she offers in this group presentation a singular project, deeply rooted in artistic tradition while boldly turning inward, toward the intimate. Her sculptures—composed of subtle combinations of heterogeneous materials—construct silent yet vibrant narratives, where mineral and organic, memory and projection, disappearance and awakening intersect. It is a poetic vision that uses form as material for compositions joyfully chaining together associations, encounters, and contradictions—material portraits of fleeting ideas and transient existences.
With quiet audacity and remarkable finesse of execution, she creates works that defy expectations and challenge symbols. Her sculptures are ambivalent presences: they emerge from another time—or another temporality—from an inner space, while remaining firmly grounded in the here and now. In this ability to bring the ephemeral and the lasting, playfulness and gravity into conversation, every element contributes to staging a new mystery—an extension of the one already surrounding us.
The viewer navigates a multiplicity of sensitive layers: evocations of past lives, fragments of forgotten stories, nods to classical forms revisited with discreet irony. Beneath the controlled surface lies a desire to probe the limits of representation and memory. These fragile, almost floating constructions give shape to the essential ambiguity of any metaphysical pursuit: a world where being and appearance, the visible and the invisible, blur without ever fully resolving.
By subverting codes and playing with symbols, Ruoxi Jin reactivates the artistic gesture in its deepest dimension: that of momentarily connecting seemingly irreconcilable alterities, creating a shared affect, and opening—through the cracks of the visible—the possibility of a common gaze, one that doesn’t quite know why it feels so well accompanied.
Exhibition Mennour Emergence #2, The Blue Hour with Matias Agafonovas, Zoé Bernardi, Clémence Gbonon, Amine Habki, Ruoxi Jin, and Nicolas Lebeau — From March 26 to May 10, 2025, Mennour Gallery, 5 rue du Pont de Lodi, 75006 Paris — "Learn more"://www.mennour.com/exhibition/mennour-emergence-2
