Exhibition View of Keep Gathering
From November 22 through to December 28, 2025, Tan Tan’s solo exhibition Keep Gathering is on display at Double Double Gallery in Beijing. Through the two mediums of oil painting and pastel on paper, the artist draws inspiration from “home”, capturing everyday visual fragments from various corners of her home and the “simulated homes” in IKEA stores. These range from kitchens, dining rooms, and living rooms, to smaller details such as a corner of a bookshelf, chairs and tables, cosmetics, or a candlestick on the table. Using her signature technique of palette knife, she scratches and portrays, distilling the ordinary into forms that are both familiarly intimate and lively, yet also offer a slightly “estranged” portrait of “home”. In her paper-based works, the artist uses the unique hazy texture of pastels to overlay both private and public spaces with a dreamlike, detached subjectivity. As curator kikizhu writes, “To keep gathering is to keep moving forward.” For over a decade of practice, Tan Tan has consistently maintained an honest self‑examination, resulting in works that appear stylistically distinct yet modest in demeanor, and she keeps achieving one stage of breakthrough after another.
Keep Gathering
By kikizhu
From one to two, then to three, steady accumulation brings a certain frequency, and within that frequency lie hints about form. Under the title Keep Gathering, Double Double Gallery presents the second solo exhibition of artist Tan Tan, showcasing a new phase of her oil paintings and pastels on paper.
Tan Tan, Food Bowl and Water Bowl, 2025. Oil on canvas, 26 × 38 cm.
Tan Tan, Candle, Planter and Bookcase, 2025. Oil on canvas, 60 × 90 cm.
Tan Tan, Photo, Poetry and Art Album, 2025. Oil on canvas, 50 × 60 cm.
Tan Tan, Cleansing Oil, Facial Cleanser and Vase, 2025. Oil on canvas, 60 × 50 cm.
Tan Tan's works immediately strike viewers with their sensitivity to color and masterful control of composition. While their formal qualities are striking, they rarely spring from pure imagination; instead, they are crystallizations of images refined and transformed from things the artist has observed, shaped through long periods of deliberate practice. In her latest works, “home” becomes the theme: her own home-studio—an environment saturated with personal traces—depicted in oil paint, and the interior scenes of an IKEA showroom—spaces constructed as “simulated homes” for product display—sketched with pastels on paper. Navigating the differences and similarities between these two spaces allows us to construct multifaceted understandings and imaginings of home. As Xavier de Maistre suggests in Voyage autour de ma chambre [1], a “defamiliarized” perspective can liberate the most ordinary objects from the veil of utility, revealing their inherent forms and textures. Tan Tan’s extraction of everyday scenes reminds us that subtle details always hold information worth uncovering, and that infinite charm resides within the simplest combinations of one, two, or three elements.
Tan Tan, Sunscreen, Eyebrow Pencil and Eyebrow Gel, 2025. Oil on canvas, 38 × 26 cm.
The Artist and her creative scene of Sunscreen, Eyebrow Pencil and Eyebrow Gel.
Tan Tan, Chair, Blanket and Yoga Mat, 2025. Oil on canvas, 65 × 90 cm
The Creating Process of Blanket and Yoga Mat
In her oil paintings, Tan Tan continues her long-standing method of using a palette knife rather than a brush. The crisp lines created by the knife’s edge and the solid planes sculpted by its surface complement one another. The artist's mastery of this technique yields compositions that are rustic yet not heavy, relaxed yet richly textured. We see how thin layers of pigment engage the canvas's texture in the composition, how the contour lines emphasized by color-block recession borrow the visual language of printmaking, and how seemingly simple glazing achieves unexpectedly nuanced gradations, transparencies, and light effects. Beyond the stylistic maturation, we also observe the artist's internalization of modern painting concepts dating back to Cézanne in spatial relationships, alongside a Morandi-like yearning to infinitely approach a subtle state of perfection.
Tan Tan, Drawing Cabinet, Art Album and Folder, 2025. Oil on canvas, 90 × 120 cm.
She uses a palette knife to create rich variations in color blocks, texture, and edges.
If in the oil paintings Tan Tan treats objects as subjects to be depicted like portraits, then in the works on paper, the presence of objects can be understood as a technique to express human absence. The hazy granularity of pastel emphasizes a visual illusion—bustling marketplaces fall silent under Tan Tan’s brush, while empty chairs and glowing lights set the stage for a typified narrative. Throughout her oeuvre, a tempered, non‑urgent attention to humanity can always be felt. In her new works, solitude and warmth coexist; within these objects designed and constructed for people, we find echoes of ourselves, and feel a still comfort in the juxtaposition of similar products.
Tan Tan, Home Office, 2025. Pastel on paper, 25.5 × 32.5 cm.
Tan Tan created her work at IKEA.
Tan Tan, Storage Room, 2025. Pastel on paper, 12 × 16.5 cm.
Tan Tan created her work at IKEA.
To keep gathering is to keep moving forward. For over a decade of practice, Tan Tan has consistently maintained an honest self‑examination, resulting in works that appear stylistically distinct yet modest in demeanor. Centered around an unchanging core, her painting subjects and specific techniques have evolved steadily and gradually. With the new works on display as a medium, we warmly invite you to enter Tan Tan's realm of ease and self-possession, achieved after this phase of small breakthroughs.
Tan Tan, Dining Room, 2025. Pastel on paper, 28 × 19 cm.
Tan Tan, Kitchen, 2025. Pastel on paper, 25.5 × 33 cm.
Tan Tan, Breakfast Nook, 2025. Pastel on paper, 24.5 × 16.5 cm.
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[1] Xavier de Maistre (1763—1852), the first person to propose the concept of "indoor travel" is known for his work Voyage autour de ma chambre (1795).
About the Artist
Tan Tan
Born in Beijing in 1990, Tan Tan currently lives and works in Beijing. She graduated from the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree, during which she received a national scholarship. In 2013, she received her master’s degree in Book Arts from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. She is currently a faculty member in the Printmaking Department at CAFA. Tan Tan never creates imagined scenes out of thin air, as she believes that the imagined is always logical and predictable; only the unknown that exists in the real world can be truly astonishing. She has long been observing the world around her, yet the objects themselves are not what matter to her. In her eyes, objects are pure forms—and it is form itself that captures her interest.
About the Curator
kikizhu, An independent curator, writer, and book artist.
About the Exhibition
Curator: kikizhu
Exhibition Period: 2025.11.22 - 2025.12.28
Venue: Double Double Gallery
Courtesy of the Artist and Double Double Gallery, edited by CAFA ART INFO.
