“NO LIFE truly dies into nothingness, the past shifts and reforms to give rise to the new”, painter Shuang Jiang contemplates ahead of the opening of Ronchini Gallery’s Flourish: Gestural Abstractions in Bloom.
She is one of four women painters participating in the exhibition, all of whom use nature as a starting point and turn landscapes into sweeping, gestural abstractions. The group show also marks the gallery’s move to Mayfair’s Conduit Street; Jiang’s sentiment of renewal and transformation is echoed in this new chapter for Ronchini.
Born in 1999, Shuang Jiang is the youngest artist participating in Flourish. With the show opening during London’s Frieze week, I felt that this discourse between four artists from three decades is perhaps reflective of the art world’s wider commitment to fostering cross-generational connections and amplifying new talent. At Frieze London, the fair’s Artist-to-Artist section (which debuted in 2023) spotlights emerging voices that were nominated for solo presentations by internationally renowned artists.
Shuang Jiang, A Spinach Scent on my Face, 2025, oil and oil stick on canvas, 120 x 80 cm
Beyond the tent that week, Unit Gallery’s Don’t Look Back (25 September – 25 October 2025) similarly grouped multi-generational talent together to highlight how certain themes endure over time. Jiang tells me that her studio space is close to that of fellow Flourish artist Michele Fletcher (b. 1963). “Dialogue with the other artists broadens my perspective”, she explains.
Shuang Jiang’s paintings are vibrant explosions of colour and markmaking, with lines, strokes, and smudges that appear concurrently conscious and spontaneous. “I don’t sketch with a specific piece in mind”, she tells me when I ask if her initial process sees her mapping out marks with precision. “I collect tiny, fleeting sparks from daily life as inspiration; they surface naturally as I create.” In collating details from her own lived experience, Jiang’s work is revealed as deeply personal, finished paintings becoming something of a diary.
Shuang Jiang, Bind Me!, 2025, oil on canvas, 120 x 80 cm
While her work sees her turning largely inwards, the artist has found that a fixation on humankind alone can prove unhelpful. Looking to nature and the universe in equal measure has been a way of rationalising trauma; Jiang contextualises her own feelings by focusing on something bigger than herself. “Humans, nature, and the cosmos share the same duality of fragility and resilience”, she tells me. “Beings repeat cycles of dying and flourishing”.
For this line of thinking, she credits Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou, whose ‘death-life’ approach emphasises this infinite pattern. In his writing, the cycle is frequently likened to natural phenomena; much like his view of life and death, day and night repeatedly bleed into one another, and winter will always turn to spring.
Zhou suggests that death is an inevitable part of a cosmos that is perpetually transforming. “Recognising that connection pulled me out of my darkest days”, Jiang shares. It is this duality of pain and prosperity that underpins Jiang’s practice, finding its way to the fore through the contrasting marks on her canvas.
Shuang Jiang, Snowman in Love with Fire, 2025, oil and oil stick on canvas, 120 x 180 cm
Her works may be grounded in ancient philosophy, but the paintings’ names mirror their vivid, dynamic appearances. In Snowman in Love with Fire, deep reds and oranges take centre stage, with brushstrokes angled like licking flames seeping towards cooler whites and blues towards the right side of the canvas.
Though taken from her own diary, the name may recall Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Man, the 1861 fairytale in which a snowman falls in love with a stove. “It’s an apocalyptic love”, Jiang tells me. “A one-time passion that is warm, tender, and ruinous.” I’m immediately reminded of the Vanitas genre of still life painting, which makes evident the transience of life in the face of desire for worldly pleasures.
Shuang Jiang’s fascination with life’s fleeting nature extends beyond her artistic practice; this idea becomes a way of understanding her existence. “Individual lives fade like erased programs”, she realises. “Yet their echoes persevere. My children will carry my love and teachings, and I will live on in the memory of those I love. Everything is connected.”
by Rosie Lowit