HOLDING YOUR BREATH FOR THE REVEAL - THE CONTEMPORARY MAGIC OF YING YEFU

Like many things in the new China, Ying Yefu’s paintings have evolved very quickly. In just four solo shows held at ART LABOR and a swath of group exhibitions both here and abroad during the past few years, artist Ying Yefu has been through three legal name changes, and gone from being a young graphic designer demonstrating raw, undeniable talent to one of the best artists of his generation, collected by individuals around the world, including a large contingent of Mainlanders. Despite the name changes and the development of self, his artist name Ying Yefu and the buzz surrounding his paintings remains as constant as the ever upward trajectory of his painting career.

With this new series of 22 gongbi ink paintings, he has chosen to explore a theme that has arrived as quickly as the future did for China. When, ten years ago, China was still struggling to find its feet in a new society, a generation of youth was exuberant with the new opportunities provided by technologies and social media, and of new aesthetics and fashion to experiment with. Now we find ourselves a decade further along, with the so-called “gelatin generation” firmly set into adulthood, and much of that cheerfulness has been left behind. In its place is a more internationalized version of anesthetization of self through drug use, alcohol abuse, and occupations of the time wasting variety to tune minds away from the futility of hopefulness for a future that might meet earlier expectations of a more utopian China. People here were waiting for the pain to go away, and it hasn’t, only to be replaced with a more insidious emotion, the deep slow realization that things aren’t going to get any easier or interesting except for a very select few.

There were some amongst the people thinking the future would bring ease of life, new opportunities, and the freed up time to follow new pursuits and occupations. Amongst these art works using symbolism as examples of wasted effort or unrealistic goals is a doctor operating on a lobster. One embraces the study of technologies that will be useless in a short time, or the plethora of new medical scams to increase your bust size in hopes of getting a job, the idiocy and sheer oddity of such pursuits that has become the norm for an entire generation of youth. People are looking to new magic, in the form of medicine and technology to deny the forces of gravity, the impossibility of pulling the curtain of dirty water off the sorry tableau of an existence sodden with mendacity.

Yet despite this scorn for a society taken to measuring useless achievements, or perhaps because of this, Ying Yefu also takes the time to challenge himself in achieving challenging artistic goals previously disregarded by artists working with gongbi painting. With his series of “kungfu” paintings with their positively vibrating tri-toned lines, he manages to take a very flat, uncompromising and static art form and inject movement into these action themed paintings. The kungfu series is excellent example of the dedication and steadiness with which he yields his ink pens, for one very rarely sees paintings of such sheer ability in handling ink on rice paper. They are, simply put, stunning in their delicacy of line, sheer perfection in every stroke of the brush. His dedication to improvement of an entire art form, for all followers and practitioners raises his art to a level above simple commentary on all that ails contemporary society, an easy target for any artist.

In choosing to include these paintings in a show mostly dealing with the more negative aspects of his contemporary society, he never loses his appreciation for the more noble elements of the Chinese past, the refined sensibility of martial arts, and the greater side to the Chinese culture. He also includes outright shouts of optimism in his “Pierce the Peach” series, in which man is in a pitched battle to defend the earth from all that assails it, framed in a peach, a symbol of longevity in Chinese culture. His return to the essential struggle for life that most people might have found themselves in 15 to 20 years ago in China, away from vain entertainments and shallow pursuits, bringing the artist back to a more noble place in his traditionally oriented Chinese mind. In my mind, Ying Yefu represents the type of new man, dressed up to dine at the international table, yet preferring to eat with chopsticks and maintain a sense of self in the face of an onslaught of empty internationalized etiquette.

His honesty as an individual and as artist shows up as the universally recognized strength expressed through these delicate paintings, exceptionally fine lines on rice paper, which in their excellent composition and clever ideas, transcend cultural parameters to be admired as examples of truths about character, society and mutually experienced emotions. As a self taught artist in a society of followers waiting for instruction, this kind of listening to one’s heart rather than “learning” of the correct methods to success, has brought him into the spotlight of the contemporary art scene and we are very pleased at ART LABOR to once again bring you the ever improving paintings of one of China’s best emerging artists.

Shanghai

Nov, 2011