Rong Bao

Carl Kostyál is delighted to present the debut solo exhibition of London-based Chinese artist Rong Bao (b. 1997) with the gallery in Hong Kong. The exhibition Bao Rong Is Also Me, Two!✌️ is the artist's debut exhibition in Asia, and follows on from her 2023 exhibition at Saatchi Gallery, ‘Rong Bao is Me'. Known for her surreal, childlike and energetically subversive aesthetic, Bao's sculptures and introspective self-portraits blur the boundaries between the organic and the synthetic, the intimate and the alien.

"Welcome to the playground of bold softness and unapologetic expression. A universe crafted in campy pinks, purples and blues, where biomorphic totems reign supreme, ingesting, vibrating and spasming across their dominion. At the heart of Bao Rong Is Also Me, Two!✌️ lies the colossal ‘The Hole', a PVC popish extravaganza, which dares viewers to crawl inside its soft, unyielding exterior. At its entrance, a sunflower-like ruffle bursts open, its tendrils reaching towards the Hong Kong jungle. When the sculpture is dormant– that is when the artist is not inside of it, performing– a pair of helpless, eerily mindless prosthetic limbs dangle from its exit, swaying to a hypnotic rhythm.

Bao's practice is an ongoing rebellion against the pressure to conform. Drawing from her own experiences with neurodiversity since childhood and the playful irreverence of youth, Bao creates tactile, joyous forms that resonate deeply with a generation embracing fluid, layered identities - constantly evolving, always in flux.

‘Shivering Bloom', a trembling bulbous beast studded with protrusions—viruses, alien tech, or pure mischief—comes alive at the flip of a switch, jiggling and wobbling in a neon glow. Complementing it is the silicone ‘Belly Button', which rises and falls like a breathing belly. Its pulse mirrors the body's natural cadence, a hypnotic dance of expansion and contraction, like a melting, ever-reforming doughnut. Then comes the monumental ‘Spit', a technicolor sea creature rotating in imaginary currents. The sculpture is a visceral abstraction of bodily thresholds—a cervix, a stoma, a gateway between inner and outer worlds. Its pneumatic sighs and elastic distortions mirror the artist's fascination with permeability and connection. It pulses like a breath, soft yet unyielding, inviting you to step into the unknown. Together, these works turn the gallery into a multi-sensory space of collective catharsis, creating a haptic symphony—part body, part dream, part delicious, impossible confection.

Returning to her early training in oil painting, Bao presents ‘Pride & Prejudice', 2025, a continuation of her popular self-portrait series, a diptych that reinterprets her artistic roots with a subversive twist. Delicate brushstrokes collide with grotesque exaggeration, embodying the tension between self-perception and external judgment. ‘Pride' is a smirk, a dare, a resistance to mundane expectations, while ‘Prejudice' is a carnival of grotesque charm, a face that refuses to be tamed.

Bao's art screams, whispers, and giggles all at once. It is a provocative exploration of deviation and alienation, order and chaos. Through her work, Bao invites viewers to revel in the messy, the restless, the gloriously imperfect. This is art that doesn't just demand to be seen—it demands to be felt, in all its quivering, vibrant, neon-lit splendour."

—Di Liu

Born in China and trained at the China Academy of Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 2021), and the Royal College of Art (MA, 2023), Bao has quickly emerged as one of the key artists of the post-digital generation working with sculpture. Since her Saatchi Gallery debut, ‘Bao Rong is Me' in 2024 - the first solo exhibition by a female Chinese artist at this renowned venue – Bao has exhibited at a host of institutions, including Kunstmsuseum Den Haag, Netherlands (2024); The Bomb Factory Art Foundation (2023); and Tang Museum, GuangDong (2023). In April 2025 Bao will take part in the exhibition ‘Allora & Calzadilla' with Francesco Gennari and Silvia Rosi at Pinacoteca Agnelli. In 2024 Bao was commissioned by the Tate Collective to create a piece inspired from the Tate Collection, and in 2023 theColab commissioned Bao to create a public sculpture at Somerset House in London.