Wenhui Hao’s canvases extend far beyond the boundaries of abstraction. Her compositions carry a visceral energy that echoes the inner workings of the human body — its measures of life and the schisms that come with. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2024, the Chinese artist’s paintings have become increasingly bound to questions of the female body and its transformations. Working with layered impasto and saturated colour, she probes: How do creation and destruction, pleasure and pain, prevail within the flesh?
For Coming Up Roses at London’s Berntson Bhattacharjee gallery, Hao joins artists Preslav Kostov, Jemima Murphy, James Shaw and Xu Yang in a group exhibition exploring memory, emergence, and renewal. Here, her brushwork pulses with a rhythm and liquidity that reveals traces of wounds beneath layers of colour. In Uncanny Valley (2025), a large square canvas dominated by feverish reds, scattered blues, greens, and yellows, she evokes a body in metamorphosis, wounded and luminous. In Improvisational Dance (2025), Hao draws in cooler tones – this time punctuated by bursts of warmth spilling out from the bottom right. Across both paintings, lush surfaces conceal violence, and tenderness becomes visible only in the ruptures of colour that break through her brushstrokes – in the brief moments where the canvas melts away.
Before the opening of Coming Up Roses last week, I spoke with Hao about everything from the technical to the intimate. In our conversation, we discuss the intricacies of her practice, how her painting builds itself through instinct, and how certain memories remain quietly embedded beneath the surface. What is revealed through our interview is Hao’s gentle strength, a softness that mirrors the resilience of her body and the honesty of her own story, reflected in her artwork.
