Yan Pei-Ming
dal 20/10/2013 al 22/11/2013
Segnalato da
20/10/2013
Yan Pei-Ming
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac - Marais, Paris
Help! Chinese-born French artist summons up immediate history through careful observation of media images. The solo exhibition is constructed around several axes characteristic of the artist's practice. The portrait, the history painting and the vanity.
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is pleased to announce its first exhibition by Chinese-born French artist Yan Pei-Ming. It is several years now since his work was last presented in a French gallery. The exhibition titled Help! will be constructed around several axes characteristic of the artist’s practice. The portrait, the history painting and the vanity will be presented on the three floors of our gallery in the Marais.
In a dialectical and pictorial relation, the secular theme of war and peace enter into confrontation in the main gallery space whereas the icon embodied in the portrait genre and the works on paper will be presented on the other two floors of the gallery.
Yan Pei-Ming summons up immediate history through careful observation of media images. His transformation of these images into huge-scale oil paintings gives a historical dimension to current affairs that is reminiscent of the scandal that greeted Géricault's Raft of the Medusa. The beholder is confronted by the immediacy of an image of historical potential. But the absence of distance gives rise to doubt, to questions and emotion. The exhibition Help! will take on themes peculiar to 'history painting' as well as themes taken from significant current events like the war in Libya or scenes of land and air combat.
“I am reminded once again of Manet and Goya as I stand in front of these works by Yan Pei-Ming – of them more than any other artist because of their constant evocation of the disasters of war, the use of black and white, their devotion to painting. (…) After Marat, lying murdered on the white linen of his bathtub, the procession of the executed and the assassinated stretches forth: Saddam Hussein, Lee Harvey Oswald, John and Robert Kennedy, Gandhi, Che Guevara, Aldo Moro, Martin Luther King, the good and the evil, all on their way, with holes in their bodies, naked, all labelled for the morgue. Always the same story, Yan Pei-Ming tells us. But the story needs its teller, someone with the stature to draw it all together, to pin it down and denounce it, using the tried and tested weapon of paint.” (Henri Loyrette, foreword of the exhibition catalogue)
A catalogue containing new essays by Henri Loyrette and Robert Fleck will be published to accompany the exhibition.
Yan Pei-Ming studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. He lives and works between Dijon and Ivry-sur-Seine. Recent exhibitions include Painting the History, at the Doha Museum (Qatar), and Les Funérailles de Monna Lisa, at the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Opening with the artist present on Monday 21 October 2013, 6-8pm
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac - Marais
7, rue Debelleyme - 75003 Paris
TUESDAY-SATURDAY, 10AM-7PM