Yan Pei-Ming: Night of Colours
Bertrand Lavier: L’affaire tournesols
Vincent Van Gogh with the Self-portrait with Pipe and Straw Hat, 1887
20 September 2014–17 May 2015
Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles
35ter rue du Docteur Fanton
13200 Arles
France
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–6pm
T +33 (0) 4 90 93 08 08
www.fondation-vincentvangogh-arles.org
Inaugurated in April 2014, the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles pays homage to the work of Van Gogh—the artist whose flourishing creativity reached its peak during his stay in the city, between 1888 and 1889—while at the same time exploring his impact upon art today. Within the context of temporary exhibitions, original paintings and drawings by the Dutch master appear alongside works of contemporary art, fuelling rich and fruitful dialogues.
For these new exhibitions, Bice Curiger has invited internationally acclaimed artists Yan Pei-Ming and Bertrand Lavier to show their works. Both are presenting brand new pieces created as in homage to Van Gogh as well as a selection of important paintings and objects from their existing oeuvre.
A (hi)story painter, Yan Pei-Ming is known for his huge dichromatic portraits executed with sweeping brush strokes and dominated by black and white. As a portraitist interested in current affairs, he paints the faces of popular and political figures such as Chairman Mao and Barack Obama, while also making more intimate portraits, like that of his own father. In Yan Pei-Ming’s exhibition Night of Colours, conceived especially for the Fondation, colour assumes a role of unprecedented importance. It develops out of the darkness of night, as it were, in motifs that fuse the topical and the universal in concentrated fashion.
Having designed a spectacular work in the public space inspired by the signature of Vincent for the Fondation entrance gate, in L’affaire tournesols Bertrand Lavier pursues the “Van Gogh touch” that has become characteristic of his painting, and which can be recognized in the heavy impasto with which he covers various objects. Lavier, who refers to the series of works in his oeuvre as chantiers, or “construction sites,” thereby explores the theme of “paint” in road signs, paintings on upholstery fabric, pianos and painted mirrors—among them, a mirror painted with the “Van Gogh touch” in which Vincent’s own Self- portrait with Pipe and Straw Hat is reflected. Being in a position today to make these exhibitions reverberate with an original painting by Van Gogh seems to be an exciting form of mirroring and duplication.
Exhibition curators: Xavier Douroux for Night of Colours by Yan Pei-Ming and Bice Curiger for L’affaire tournesols by Bertrand Lavier
Press relations
Pierre Collet: collet [at] aec-imagine.fr / T+33 680 84 87 71
