Image: VOLKER Weihbold
There are singers whose stature and demeanor would be described as reserved and inconspicuous. But as soon as they sing, their voice rocks the room.
You can experience something similar with visual artists – like with Yan Pei-Ming. When the 62-year-old came to the Francisco Carolinum (FC) in Linz yesterday to present his “Portraits” show, the native Chinese initially seemed like a fleeting, quiet but devoted guest.
The portraits of the artist, who is regarded as the leading representative of his homeland in this field, are exceptionally large in format, even room-high, but have an even more massive effect.
Yan Pei-Ming’s works depict faces of power. But not exclusively those that one would expect from the historical tradition of painting. And certainly not in the sense of the euphemistic service of lovely grandeur. On the second floor of the FC (formerly the State Gallery) there are about 15 works in four rows each, which appear almost small in relation to Yan Pei-Ming’s monumental works. The socio-political explosive power unfolds the sum of the parts of this arrangement. In addition to Angela Merkel, Volodymyr Selensky, Ursula von der Leyen, Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump, special trios catch the eye: the imperial couple Elisabeth and Franz Joseph next to Elisabeth’s murderer Luigi Lucheni as well as Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie next to assassin Gavrilo Princip.
Left China at 19
Yan Pei-Ming, represented by Ropac from a world-renowned gallery, expands the painterly historiography focused on elites to include those “little” people who influenced the course of things on a grand scale. Just as he also remembers raped women, war victims or US soldiers.
In China, Yan Pei-Ming experienced the extent to which systems, whose fate is controlled by a few, cut into the biographies of the “simple” masses: in a one-room apartment with more than ten siblings, he witnessed the cultural revolution that took place under Mao Zedong claimed hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. At 19 he went to France, where he studied art and now lives and works.
The hardships of his growing up probably resulted not only in a keen power of observation on a global level, but also in sensitivity for what touches deeply on an individual level. The monumental portraits of his mother give the impression that the deceased woman is looking straight into your soul.
The works (oil on canvas), which are created thanks to climbing aids in the hall-like studio, also reveal massive skill. Thought out with precision, they combine a feel for facial geometry and how paint, brush and line can make people appear three-dimensional, lively and authentic.
Yan Pei-Ming primarily uses the spectrum between black and white. A painter with an impressive sense of the important role gray tones play in questions of power.
Yan Pei Ming“Portraits”, from tomorrow until August 23, ooekultur.at
Source: Nachrichten
