Yu Hong: Garden of Dreams

Curator: Fan Di'an

Exhibition Directors: Ma Lu, Wang Huangsheng

Assistant Curator: Chen Ye

Exhibition Coordinator: Qi Peng

Hosted by: China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA)

Organized by: The School of Fine Arts, CAFA

CAFA Art Museum

Exhibition Dates: 2016.9.29 - 2016.10.30

Exhibition Location: 3rd Floor, CAFA Art Museum

Exhibition Opening: Thursday 29.9.2016 5PM

PRESS RELEASE

　　Hosted by the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), and organized by The School of Fine Arts, CAFA and CAFA Art Museum under the Director of CAFA Fan Di'an's curation, "CAFA Annual Fine Arts Nomination Exhibition 2016 – Yu Hong: Garden of Dreams" will open at the CAFA Art Museum on Thursday, September 29th 2016 at 5PM.

　　"Yu Hong: Garden of Dreams" will present 19 new paintings from the artist's most recent work since 2014 as well as three glass sculptural pieces which were created in the Czech Republic. This exhibition continues to explore the multi-perspective approach to understanding the world which was examined in "Yu Hong: Concurrent Realms" (Suzhou Museum, 2015), which juxtaposed Yu Hong's exquisite naturalistic renderings with collated images of scenes and figures from disparate times and spaces that encompass the vast span of; ancient to contemporary periods, Eastern and Western cultures, and blend dreamscape with reality. "Garden of Dreams” can be considered as an exposition of a park scale, but it also points to a mental construct, the former stemming from the artist's inspiration of a real life garden that had fallen into disrepair. This garden motif appears as the focal element in the similarly titled painting Garden of Dreams. The spiritual undertones of the work is based in two layers of implications: on the one hand there is the relationship between Yu Hong's works and the exhibition space, something which she has focused on for a long time, and the thoughts on the implicit meaning of the term "garden" translated onto the space and works of "Yu Hong: Concurrent Realms". She has adopted this skill to fit the spatial peculiarities of the much more contemporary space of the CAFA Art Museum exhibition space. On the other hand, the spiritual construction points to the creation of an unrestricted mental space, which encompasses all experiences of peace and beauty, absurdity and jocosity, and ignorance and simplicity experienced by the figures in the paintings. According to the curator Fan Di'an, "Her painterly language can be described as 'documentative fiction'

　　which has not fully cast aside the tenants of a realistic figurative language and at the same time takes a rich swath of human figures, carves out their most detailed physical characteristics and pairs these together with archetypal surrealist images and dreamlike elements. The result is complex, supremely beautiful and remains long in the mind of the viewer even after only a passing glance." As a curator, he sees the works in the "Garden of Dreams" series as possessing "an entirely new spatial construction. It is one that is three-dimensional, intricately entwined and magical that creates an immense visual disorder between the human figures and their surroundings, resulting in a wide chasm between 'here' and 'there'. This work pulls open vertical depth and creates horizontal dislocation. In many ways she is similar to a theatre director. Her stage is the canvas on which she directs each and everyone of her characters; each protagonist is an offshoot of her mind. It is within this theatrical arrangement that Yu Hong's painting becomes a purer, more self-possessed means of expression which constructs an 'extreme setting' that is displayed in the forms'movement of this visual era implanted in the experience on the canvas. In this sense, Yu Hong is constructing an entirely new method of painting." In the work Wasted Spring, she borrowed inspiration from the paintings of Henri Rousseau that depicts a fantastical dreamlike landscape featuring two female figures, which in fact turn out to be two cyber-diaists who had gone viral. Ever Higher, Ever Further constructs a parallel world in which reality and surrealism fuse together without contradiction. Three different people stand on three different heights on the same telephone pole, when they are juxtaposed against each other in the form of a single triptych, the individual realistic depictions transform into a state and construction of surrealism. In Snapshot, Yu Hong paints animals as the main subject matter for the first time, but they are animals adopting the mannerisms and feeling of humans. In painting them the animals being photographed and taking photos themselves, Yu Hong further peels away the nature of human form and presses closer and closer towards her creation of the "Garden of Dreams".

　　26 years have passed between Yu Hong's first group show at the CAFA Art Museum and "Yu Hong: Garden of Dreams". This time returning to the museum in a solo exhibition, after numerous transformations in her way of thinking, Yu Hong and her artistic creation have entered into a more familiar period. In the early 1990s, Political Pop and Cynical Realism were the two major trends in Chinese Contemporary Art, but Yu Hong was more focused on the lives and personal internal experiences of her young contemporaries, many of which she painted against simple monochrome backgrounds. These varying painted forms of her contemporaries led her to be categorized as a "New Generation Artist". For the "Witness to Growth" series that she started in 1999, Yu Hong used a format of self-portraiture placed together with real historical images as one. After a period of time as just a preliminary explorer her work transformed to exhibit an immensely profound resonance with her contemporary environment. Her creation would reach a more strongly poetic level in the "Gold" series (2008-2011) of paintings, which further revealed the artist's continuous research and appreciation of traditional Chinese painting, the paintings of Dunhuang, the Kizl Thousand Buddha Caves and traditional paintings from the Western canon, linking these all together to create a more wide-reaching and profound result.

　　For "Yu Hong: Wandering Clouds" (Long March Space, 2013) she shifted focus from the external form of an individual inwards into their interior emotional states and situations. Beginning with "Yu Hong: Concurrent Realms" (Suzhou Museum, 2015) up until "Garden of Dreams", by placing scenes and figures from reality into surrealist realms, Yu Hong gradually expanded the scope of her artistic creations whilst simultaneously painstakingly using her method of artistic creation to observe the inherent nature of groups and the individual. This creative method alternating between interior and exterior states has been termed by the curator as "a sort of self-imposed journeying" which comes about "through her own spirit clashing against the outside world, the 'dreams' are not dreams but her awakening, the 'return of a secret sound' emanating between her spirit and the real world."

　　Alongside the exhibition, a catalogue of the same name CAFA Annual Fine Arts Nomination Exhibition 2016 -- Yu Hong: Garden of Dreams will be published, edited by the Director of CAFA Fan Di'an. The catalogue will include a foreword by Fan Di'an in his position as curator, as well as writings by the Director of the CAFA Museum Wang Huangsheng, the young art historian Lu Mingjun, the curator-critic and Sichuan Academy of Art Professor He Guiyan and Art magazine co-editor Sheng Wei which all address Yu Hong's new works. Additionally an interview with the artist undertaken by the curator Karen Smith as well as image reproductions of all 22 works from the exhibition will appear in the catalogue.