PROVENANCE:

Aura Gallery, Hong Kong

EXHIBITED:

Yin Zhaoyang, Recent Works, Aura Gallery, Hong Kong, April 6 - May 4, 2007

This painting is to be sold with a certificate of authenticity signed by Aura Gallery, Hong Kong.

Yin Zhaoyang's oeuvre is most commonly associated with images of Tiananmen Square and Mao rendered through the lens of mythology. Born in 1970 and educated at the Beijing Academy of Art in the years just after the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, Yin attempts to redefine the iconic figure with shifting political agendas. He insinuates his own experience by blurring his images, an assertion of personal expression. The style that is partially influenced by the German painter Gerhard Richter who turns photographic images into pictorial expression. In his interview with Wei Xing, Yin mentioned that, "Richter illuminated him in mind and Francis Bacon gives him another possibility in art language."

Yin's paintings of Mao are not catered for the market demand. At a time, he has gone through all the books related to Mao, therefore, he just want to draw him in a new way, a way in which Yin could see Mao in a normal Chinese's eyes who lives in the 21th century. He wants to represent a distance, a distance between Mao's time and nowadays. Yin's depiction of Mao can generally be divided into three different time periods. First, the Yan'an period, Mao really became a powerful player in the political scene. Second, the 50's and 60's, after the revolution had triumphed when Mao was caught between his vision of the ideal society and the reality around him. The third stage of the 70's, it was Mao's twilight years when everyone bowed obediently to him. Each time period carries very different emotional valence.

The middle and late period of Mao portraits depict by Yin are drawn in a unique perspective of the artist. This series employs imaginary, fable-like images. The current lot is one of the most fascinating and surreal of Yin's Mao portrait of the third stage. It depicts the iconic power through a mesmerizing ripple of concentric circles. The figure and the background are basically rendered in two major tones: red and blue. Red is a code for maintaining a politically correct status in the communist context. In traditional Chinese culture, it also has positive associations to fortune, fertility, happiness, and success; while the blue represents a bright future, symbolizing a new era. At the same time, the primary colors used evoke the pure color field explorations of Mark Rothko, giving the portrait deeper emotional resonance than a straightforward realistic depiction.