Lot 1424: YANG QIAN

YANG QIAN
(B. 1959)
Night Life in Beijing
signed 'Yang Qian' in Pinyin; dated '2005' (on the overcasting canvas of the 7th work); numbered '1,2,3,4,5,6,7' (on the overcasting canvas of each work, respectively)
a set of seven oil on canvas
each: 59.9 x 80 cm. (23 1/2 x 31 1/2 in.) (7)
Painted in 2005 (7)

Primo Marella Gallery, Yang Qian - Illusion of Reflection, Milan, Italy, 2006 (illustrated, pp. 46-54).

Private Collection, New York, USA

Enriching the seemingly banal subjects to unexpected heights in illusive photographic documentation, the conceptual flexibility and complex beauty of Yang Qian's aesthetics allude to Gerhard Ritchter's standpoint that "photography altered ways of seeing and thinking, photographs were regarded as true, paintings as artificial. The painted picture was no longer credible; its representation froze into immobility, because it was not authentic but invented." Like producing candid shots, Yang paints fragments of people's stories and explores the human conditions by oscillating between painting and photography by negating both qualities where needed for a compromising result that is poetic yet reflective of a curious flair for the clearer image hidden behind the fogged lenses.

Deeply personal and psychological in content and palette, Yang's canvas is blurred with soft vapors of uncanny gradients in green in Untitled (Lot 1426) and Bathroom Beijing No. 18 (Lot 1425). His vision became progressively more accurate; yet remains seductive in the coy balance between the blurred exposure of the alluring curves and the preservation of the sense of anonymity and mystery to the subject. While his bathroom scenes are poignant in their painterly sensibility created by muted palettes eliciting aesthetic and perceptive tension, Night Life in Beijing (Lot 1424) appears increasingly photographic. A set of seven paintings, it documents a series of episodes that is seemingly consequential, however far from chronological due to their absurd relevance to each other. Finding poetry in everyday landscape, the arbitrary sequence in this work perhaps reveal Yang's exploration of the adaptive trait of human nature, blending and blurring into their surroundings for a harmonized reality. On the other hand, it also simultaneously delves into the atmospheric presence by narrating tales of solitude and comforting serenity in staging episodes that are typically void of human interaction.