An Exhibition Curated by Yan Pei-Ming
25 September – 23 November 2007
The Red Mansion Foundation, London, UK.
Open Monday to Friday by appointment only
The exhibition will consist of large format self-portraits by Yan Pei-Ming, animation works exploring power and eroticism created by self-taught Gu Dexin and artworks by Yang Jiechang ranging from video to porcelain and ink on silk.
Yan Pei-Ming was born in 1960 in Shanghai, and now works and lives in Dijon, France. His work is very often of large format and mainly bi-chromatic. It deals with the fundamental questions of painting such as portraiture. The pieces presented in this show belong to a specific series of self portraits that he started in early 2006, where he depicts himself in different physical stages. For the Venice Biennale in 2003, he produced a specific series of work where he is at the same time an anti-riot policeman and a hooligan. The self-portrait thus appears as a fantastic representation, showing the artist in invented roles or not yet occurred situations. Yan is participating in the current Istanbul Biennale.
Gu Dexin is one of China’s leading contemporary artists. He first gained attention in the early 1980s in Beijing for his paintings and is now perhaps best known for his installation works created from a variety of mixed and often perishable media such as fruit and meat. In the eight animations presented in this exhibition Gu Dexin shows us a very different style of presentation, distinctly ironic, depicting how humans are controlled and abused by power and eroticism.
Yang Jiechang was born in 1956 in Guangdong Province and now works and lives in Paris. He is an exceptionally versatile artist: his works range from painting, collage, and sculpture to multimedia installation, site-specific works, and performance. Believing that he himself is from a marginal culture in China, Yang Jiechang has been fascinated by movement along with the communication and interactivity which can explore the unseen elements in the world and thus bringing the marginal to the centre. Yang is participating in this year’s Biennale in Istanbul, curated by Hou Hanru.