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UCCA presents 'Nature & Innocents' starring Artist Yan Pei-Ming

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Written by rubin   
Saturday, 28 March 2009 16:17

Yan Pei-Ming - Double Emperor (Mao, Puyi) , 2007 - Watercolor on paper Diptych Each work: 154 x 278 cm. - Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery, NY

Beijing, China - UCCA will present Nature & Innocents, an exhibition by painter Yan Pei-Ming, from June 18 to September 13, 2009. Nature & Innocents will stand as a surprising exhibition and for the first time in Yan Pei-Ming’s career, he will produce a show without canvases. Huge landscapes directly painted onto UCCA big hall’s walls, will frame a series of painted flags, representing portraits of 200 new born Chinese children. Imagined as an experimental walk through, the exhibition powerfully conveys Yan Pei Ming’s intentions and gives the audience an opportunity to discover the victims, memories and a vision of united nations in a landscape of crisis.

Yan Pei-Ming has been absorbed in portraits for a long time. He said, ‘I have never felt that it is necessary to put anything around the people; I just want to draw portraits.’ The figures in his portraits – ranging from Mao Zedong, Bruce Lee, his father, self-portraits, to Pope John Paul II and Barack Obama– are so full of action that they become a reflection on the contemporary society of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. His works reflect the artist’s concerns about society’s conflicts and international politics, and present his ongoing concern for the issue of a universal human nature.

Yan Pei-Ming - WatercolorFollowing the artist’s exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, Paris and the San Francisco Art Institute, UCCA is proud to be part of Yan Pei-Ming’s year, presenting the artist in this specially commissioned show in his home country. This is only his second large solo exhibition to be held in China after his solo exhibition ‘After Shanghai, Dijon’ in 2004.

During the Cultural Revolution, Ming says that in his spare time he painted, images of workers and peasants, familiar images that fit in with the ideals of the Cultural Revolution when "Big Character Posters" were blanketing the city’s streets, featuring images of Mao and peasants, but also pictures and stories of revolutionaries. Everyone during that time, seemed to be caught up in the public propaganda, and Ming says he created images that were meant to praise Mao or criticize Confucius or Lin Biao, the country’s fallen military chief.

Hou Hanru, the distinguished curator and critic, says this of Yan Pei Ming. "Ming is certainly one of the most determined and intransigent painters of our time," adding: "Looking at Ming’s powerful work, one becomes fully aware of the tension, and the inseparable connection between art and life."

He is part of a group of artists who are working abroad, elevating the idea of Chinese art to something that is both modern and Chinese, like Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, Huang Yong Ping, Wang Keping and Cai Guo Qiang.

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