29 Nov 2007 to 19 Jan 2008
Hours : Tuesday through Saturday, 10 - 6 pm
Robert Miller Gallery
524 West 26th Street
10001
New York, NY
New York
North America
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Yan Lei, Sparkling - Stewardess, 2007 Oil on Canvas, 200 x 143 cm
Robert Miller Gallery is pleased to announce the first New York solo exhibition of the artist Yan Lei. The show includes recent paintings from his Color Wheel, Landing and Sparkling series.
The Color Wheel works are the result of an elaborate process of deriving and applying distinct colors to a radial grid of concentric circles printed on canvas. Beginning with the central dot, each successive circle builds upon the previous. The outermost color of one painting then becomes the starting point of the next, making each work part of a continuous cycle. The gradations become visible the closer one stands to the canvas and meld into blended hues as one steps further away. The artist based the Landing series on vintage promotional material from the airline industry and other pop images. These paintings ironically relate to becoming part of an art world jet set and receiving its attendant benefits, and they build upon Yan�s previous work critiquing the system by which (particularly non-Western) artists become well known internationally. The Sparkling series includes images from pop culture placed against shimmering bands of paint radiating from the center of the canvas. This sunburst of color lends an optimistic aura to the works, yet Yan�s criticality is nonetheless present. In Dog Year-Bull, for example, the Charging Bull near Wall Street, symbolic of economic optimism and prosperity, stands dominantly over a group of canines at its feet. The artist notes that the Year of the Dog, 2006, coincided with the largest auction ever of contemporary Chinese art held at Sotheby�s.
Yan Lei was born in 1965 in Hebei, China and currently lives and works in Beijing and Hong Kong. He has exhibited at museums including The Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; HK Art Centre, Hong Kong; Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; De Appel Art Center, Amsterdam; and Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland. His work has been included in the 50th Venice Biennale, Documenta 12, and the 25th Sao Paulo Biennale.
