Yun Yongye | New Moon: Beijing

5 May - 19 June 2021

"Most things leave marks after being filtered by time. They are like the cornerstones for the building of a palace, integrated with mixed thoughts and extraordinary ideas, being painted into portraits in my heart. By concretising infinite desires and fantasies and placing them in antique picture frames with an extreme attention to detail, the condensed layers of paint turned into an amber-like texture, disguising the painting as another silent relic of time and space. For me, it’s almost like the shadows left by art history at night, or like the moment when we are constantly shutting down and restarting. "

                                  

When the sun is down and the new moon rises, things that are not visible in the sunlight appear at night - both hallucinations and dreams. At the beginning of each month of the lunar calendar, when the moon gradually moves away from the sun, the crescent is gradually exposed. This is usually the moment when Yun Yongye starts his new cycle of work. He is used to working late at night, so he can maintain his extreme concentration and depict his imaginary wonderland in the tiny picture space.

 

Yun Yongye is adept at creating small-scale works full of imagination with a strong realistic style. He puts the works in European antique mirror frames that he collects. The pictures reveal strong mystery, symbolism and religious consciousness. He often borrows “materials” that relate to the world that we live in to stimulate fantasies in his mind. Besides, “extracted” body parts, bodies borrowed from Classic Art, hypnotic natural landscapes, and suggestive erotic scenes are still stimulating for the artist which can be seen in the works presented in the show. In “New Moon”, Yun Yongye expands on his response to traditional realism.

 

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. He has held a solo exhibition "L'Innomable" in RS_PROJECTS Art Space in Wuhan, and participated in multiple group exhibitions such as Tong Gallery+Project in Beijing, the Fine Arts Literature Art Center Wuhan, HdM Gallery in Beijing and London, White House Gallery in Wuhan etc.