Yun Yongye’s is primarily a miniaturist. His works on paper, produced with a pencil, are often round-shaped with a diameter of a few centimeters. Within it, a single suggestive element incorporating an unusual twist is conventionally depicted in countless detail: fragments of statues lying below a small sphere, dissected limbs and body parts, skinned animals and empty draperies. Lying or sometimes hovering in an undefined space they invariably contribute to a sense of unease and stir a desire to discover their origin. The oil paintings further enrich this vocabulary. Encased in antique golden frames, they look like precious objects or curios from a gone-by epoch. Their subjects are painted in the manner of old masters with painstaking details. Though seeming familiar at first, these traditional subjects are subverted by surrealist details that undermine their conventional appearance: statues have human eyes, gardens are flooded by strangely colored clouds and Christic figures shamelessly relieve themselves. Yun Yongye revels in the sabotage of ordinary pictorial topics by erotic innuendos, implausible elements and unusual arrangements. His paintings are erudite but humorous pastiches that mock the traditional artistic heritage of art school students.
Born in 1990 in Hainan, Yun Yongye graduated from the Department of Oil Painting of the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts. He now lives and works in Wuhan. His work was the object of a solo presentation at RS_PROJECTS Wuhan and part of group shows at Tong Gallery Beijing, the Fine Arts Literature Art Center Wuhan and White House Gallery Wuhan.