Yan Pei-Ming
Selfportrait, 27/08/2007
oil on canvas
59 x 59 in. (150 x 150 cm)
Photo: André Morin
Yan Pei-Ming with Yan Pei-Ming
curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio
19 march - 27 JULY 2008
Twenty large format works, oils and watercolors, many of which, will be shown for the first time, will offer the public a chance to see Pei-Ming’s work in an exhibition created around a theme selected by the artist and the curator. The exhibition is organized into four sections: Self-portrait with Landscape, Self-portrait with Religion, Self-portrait with Relatives and Self-portrait with Life and Death. The title suggests the central subject of the exhibition, the self-portrait which is present in each room and is in continuous dialogue with the other subjects displayed. This choice follows from the consideration that every work is in some way a self-portrait of the artist even when it does not directly depict him.
The exhibition underlines the technique the artist uses: painting. In particular his painting makes heavy use of matter and it’s produced with violent brushwork, thus representing a bridge between the East, his origin and the West, his cultural homeland. These two areas are represented by the large oil canvases on the one hand and his watercolors on the other. However his painting never makes reference to a precise geographical setting but becomes synonymous with atemporality and non-place: East and West combined in a mixture of styles, elements and subjects. The use of watercolors is important to the artist, he uses it to paint the series of children the life in its early stages and the skulls and self-portrait as a hanged man, and therefore the end of existence.
