About

Tan Mu Research publishes essays and critical writing on the art of Tan Mu.

The essays collected here examine the subjects, histories, and ideas that inform Tan Mu's painting practice: submarine fiber-optic cable networks and the geopolitics of connectivity, quantum computing and the aesthetics of scientific apparatus, glacial time and planetary memory, lunar surfaces rendered through machine vision, the freediver's body as an instrument of perception, and the broader question of how painting can serve as a mode of inquiry into systems that operate beyond the threshold of ordinary sight.

Tan Mu (b. 1991, Shandong, China; lives and works in Paris) is a contemporary artist whose research-driven practice examines the hidden infrastructures of technology, data, and signal shaping contemporary life. Combining traditional oil painting with expanded visual tools including microscopes, satellite imagery, and scientific visualization, her work translates abstract systems into lived experience. She holds a BFA from Alfred University, New York, and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at BEK Forum, Vienna (2025) and Peres Projects, Berlin and Milan (2022), and group exhibitions at the ERES Foundation, Munich; Arario Gallery, Shanghai; and YveYANG, New York. Her work is held in major private and institutional collections including the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Spain, and the A.R.M. Holding Art Collection, United Arab Emirates.

New essays are published regularly.