Yan Pei-Ming
YES!
20 February – 23 May 2009
Opening reception:
Thursday, 19 February 2009, 5:30–7:30pm
The Walter and McBean Galleries
800 Chestnut Street
Tuesdays–Saturdays, 11:00am–6:00pm
Free and open to the public
As if in constant agitation, radiating large, fast strokes that “conquer” the moving ground, Yan’s paintings are not so much frozen structures of color and form as literal testaments to the agency inherent in the process by which they are made—a process that is, notwithstanding, persistently haunted by ideologically suffused memories. Primarily using black (sometimes, red) and white to construct an artificial world beyond the “reality” of the full color spectrum, Yan’s economical portraits of iconic or historic figures (for example, Mao himself, Pope John Paul II, Bruce Lee, and Barack Obama) are, in the most straightforward sense of the word, actions. And, like most actions, these too admit of multiple interpretations.
But the iterating interpretive ambiguity that Yan is able to effect in his portraits is primarily the result of the critically provocative, even politically subversive, painterly force with which he imbues them, thereby deconstructing—as it were, at a stroke—the genre’s classic and prima facie tendencies toward psychological conservatism, generational continuity, hagiography, and, more recently, celebrity worship. Out-Warholing Warhol in the process, Yan manages to place, as if just over the shoulder of the hesitant-seeming mien he in fact depicts, a doppelgänger on the verge of a new—and, more often than not, darker—reach of emotion. Such haunting of the self by the self—the self as its own semblable—is quite literally brought out in the black-and-white watercolor series of diptychlike facing portraits in which the incumbent self is forced to rub up against the self-elect, its own incoming distractedness and mood. To be sure, in a trenchant reworking of this very series (displayed at the Grand Palais in Paris in October 2008), Yan turns the screw and deconstructs his own oeuvre. By juxtaposing an image of President-elect Obama not with another, self-assessing image of Obama himself—as previous such portraits might well have led the beholder to expect—but, rather, with an image of defeated presidential contender John McCain, Yan intimates, as if to concur with those skeptical about the two-party system in the US, that both candidates epitomize merely differential aspects, writ in water, of one another.
Indeed, whether undoing conventionally accepted identities by making visible the logic of their internal differentiation, or demonstrating the ways in which conventionally accepted demarcations disavow all-too-similar similarities, much of Yan’s recent work overtly concerns socio- and geopolitical conflict and the related humanistic questions it engenders. Children from economically underdeveloped nations who suffer from brutality, starvation, poverty, and other disasters are poignantly portrayed side by side with UN secretaries-general and soldiers who have fought in the war in Iraq. Finally, as a way to stimulate and increase public awareness, Yan takes his work beyond the conventional museum space and places it—in the form of flags, posters, and various other “outdoor” manifestations—in the public sphere.
Consistent with the curatorial strategies of SFAI’s director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, Hou Hanru, Yan Pei-Ming: YES! is coordinated and presented as part of Global Figures, a component of SFAI’s Exhibitions and Public Programs. Global Figures presents one-person exhibitions of major artists from different cultures who have importantly influenced the current global art scene. While in residence at SFAI, Ming will work with students, lead workshops, and will also continue to create work in which he records the daily events he encounters in the media.
Artist Bio
Yan Pei-Ming was born in 1960 in Shanghai, China. He moved to France in 1980 where he quickly became a star on the French painting scene. Now known internationally for his larger-than-life, much-sought portraits of political and cultural icons, he has emerged as one of the most dynamic and experimental Chinese/French painters. His expressive style and controlled palette reflect aesthetic influences from both the Chinese cultural tradition and twentieth-century Western conceptual art. He has had solo exhibitions at such venues as David Zwirner in New York, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Saint-Etienne (France), the Shanghai Art Museum, the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou (China), Kunsthalle Mannheim (Germany), and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon (France). Group exhibitions include the 10th International Istanbul Biennial (curated by Hou Hanru), the 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Seville (Spain) (artistic director, Okwui Enwezor, SFAI’s dean of Academic Affairs), the Grand Palais in Paris, the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, and the 1995 and 2003 Venice Biennials.
SFAI’s exhibitions and public programs are supported in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund. Yan Pei-Ming: YES! is also generously supported by Galleria Massimo De Carlo in Milan, David Zwirner in New York, and the Cultural Services of the Consulate General of France in San Francisco.
San Francisco Art Institute
Founded in 1871, SFAI is one of the oldest and most prestigious schools of higher education in contemporary art in the US. Focusing on the interdependence of thinking, making, and learning, SFAI’s academic and public programs are dedicated to excellence and diversity.
SFAI’s School of Studio Practice concentrates on developing the artist’s vision through studio experiments and is based on the belief that artists are an essential part of society. It offers a BFA, an MFA, and a Post-Baccalaureate certificate in Design and Technology, Film, New Genres, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture/Ceramics.
SFAI’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies is motivated by the premise that critical thinking and writing, informed by an in-depth understanding of theory and practice, are essential for engaging contemporary global society. It offers degree programs in Exhibition and Museum Studies (MA only), History and Theory of Contemporary Art (BA and MA), and Urban Studies (BA and MA).
SFAI’s Dual Degree MA/MFA program is ideally designed for students who seek a deep and balanced immersion in both theoretical discourse and art practice. A three-year commitment, the degree consists in an MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art and an MFA in any area of study within the School of Studio Practice (see above).
For more information about this exhibition and other public or academic programs at SFAI, please go to www.sfai.edu or call 415 749 4563.
