Mao Yan in Dufftown
20 Nov - 20 Dec 2010
MAO YAN IN DUFFTOWN
20 November - 20 December, 2010
Mao Yan in Dufftown, Scotland, co-organized by ‘2010 Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Program’ and ShanghART Gallery, will open at ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai, Saturday, Nov. 20th, 5pm (the exhibition will continue till Dec 20th, 2010).
It is a kind of fashionable to categorize artists according to their geographic background, and art according to novelty of subject and media etc. An artist from busy China who goes to the remote highlands of Scotland during the world expo summer of 2010 to paint some portraits of people is exceptional..
Mao Yan
From ‘My Poet’ and ‘Portrait of X•S’ (1996 ) etc to the ‘Thomas’ Series (1999 till now) , recently exhibited at the Shanghai Art Museum), the Nanjing based artist Mao Yan made his name as a quite and exceptional painter of people. Mao Yan’s portraits, executed mostly in strictly controlled monochrome grays (oil on canvas, sometimes also in crayon on paper) are respected for their precision and sober, no-nonsense concepts. Mao Yan’s portraits confront us with a person, the paintings don’t indulge in artificial complexity, but are often daringly composed, they introduce a human being, but don’t use any forced narratives to get this people closer to us. The two-dimensional shapes, his vague silhouettes integrate perfectly with the background to get the viewer close to the subject.
Scotland / Dufftown
In all Scotland are less people than in Nanjing, a city of over 6 million, where Mao Yan lives and creates most of his works: Dufftown, the place in Scotland where Glenfiddich, the whisky company is located and where it invites the artists to work, counts around 1500 people, hardly the size of a no-name housing complex in China today. Mao Yan went to Dufftown this summer, stayed there, returned, met people, and created his portraits to be seen at this exhibition.
A portrait doesn’t need thousands of people, just one person, just hast to get this one person right. And from there we can see the world.
Mao Yan, born in 1968 in Xiangtan city, Hunan Province, graduated from Oil Painting Department, China Central Academy of Fine Arts, in 1991. He now lives and works in Nanjing.
20 November - 20 December, 2010
Mao Yan in Dufftown, Scotland, co-organized by ‘2010 Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Program’ and ShanghART Gallery, will open at ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai, Saturday, Nov. 20th, 5pm (the exhibition will continue till Dec 20th, 2010).
It is a kind of fashionable to categorize artists according to their geographic background, and art according to novelty of subject and media etc. An artist from busy China who goes to the remote highlands of Scotland during the world expo summer of 2010 to paint some portraits of people is exceptional..
Mao Yan
From ‘My Poet’ and ‘Portrait of X•S’ (1996 ) etc to the ‘Thomas’ Series (1999 till now) , recently exhibited at the Shanghai Art Museum), the Nanjing based artist Mao Yan made his name as a quite and exceptional painter of people. Mao Yan’s portraits, executed mostly in strictly controlled monochrome grays (oil on canvas, sometimes also in crayon on paper) are respected for their precision and sober, no-nonsense concepts. Mao Yan’s portraits confront us with a person, the paintings don’t indulge in artificial complexity, but are often daringly composed, they introduce a human being, but don’t use any forced narratives to get this people closer to us. The two-dimensional shapes, his vague silhouettes integrate perfectly with the background to get the viewer close to the subject.
Scotland / Dufftown
In all Scotland are less people than in Nanjing, a city of over 6 million, where Mao Yan lives and creates most of his works: Dufftown, the place in Scotland where Glenfiddich, the whisky company is located and where it invites the artists to work, counts around 1500 people, hardly the size of a no-name housing complex in China today. Mao Yan went to Dufftown this summer, stayed there, returned, met people, and created his portraits to be seen at this exhibition.
A portrait doesn’t need thousands of people, just one person, just hast to get this one person right. And from there we can see the world.
Mao Yan, born in 1968 in Xiangtan city, Hunan Province, graduated from Oil Painting Department, China Central Academy of Fine Arts, in 1991. He now lives and works in Nanjing.