The Yang Yu That I Know

“Everybody Gets Hurt”

I came to know Yang Yu only very recently. Zhixin Jiang, my old friend from Beijing, whose son Haochen Jiang knew that I love paintings introduced Yang Yu to me. At that time, I was in Hong Kong and Yu was in Beijing. I requested him to post some of his works on the internet for my reference.

I was a little excited when I saw his Action Series. You can tell from his work that he is a fairly prolific painter and he painted his objects with strong facial expressions. I am always looking for painters who does not simply paint some symbolic images but fully reflects what the famous art critic, Susan Lange, says Art is A Creation of Human’s Emotions. Yang Yu did well in this.

Since then, Yang Yu posted more and more of his paintings onto the website and I studied them over and over again. I found this young man fairly diligent and had created many paintings. His style was changing too.

At the beginning of this year, I was planning to open Total Art Jam in Shenzhen. As Yang Yu was passing by Guangzhou, I invited him to Shenzhen. This made us friends despite of our generation gap. We talked about everything and I learnt that when Yang Yu was very poor, he did not even have the money to buy canvas. But he was not deterred by these difficulties - “If I could not afford the canvas, I could still paint on rice paper”. During this period, Yang Yu had created his excellent Action Series-ELLE,. This reminded me thirty years ago when I was a kid, in spite of my polio, I have to work in the factory at night to earn my education fee.

Yang Yu had inserted his will power and haughtiness unconsciously into his works.

Look at Action Series-ELLE, the protagonist in this painting was himself. He had horrible and sad facial expressions when he hanged himself.  Yet his hands were placed inside the pockets at ease. Some majestic purplish clouds were scattered in the sky while he was standing high on the ground with extreme arrogance.

Some paintings were about feelings and humanism, others just about an object. This painting was obviously about humanism. It’s the natural outburst of his attitude towards life: meeting with difficulties but never to be defeated.

Certainly, haughtiness and moral integrity made a better artist.

Yang Yu did not stay in Shenzhen for very long time. It happened to be snowing heavily at that time and he could not get back to his hometown Hunan Province immediately. Otherwise he could have stayed for a much shorter time. Because of this and my openness character, we had talked in depth without any reservation. When we were talking, I could always hear Yang Yu said “I understood what you said”.

Helping Yang Yu to hold his art exhibition became an obligation for me. At first we were talking about conditions and then these conditions became unimportant and dull. It was really pleasurable to help him. I invited him to come to Shenzhen from Beijing a month before the art exhibition so we could meet and have fun again.

The title of this forthcoming art exhibition will be called “Everybody Gets Hurt”. I asked Yang Yu if he had encountered much failure in his past love affairs and he replied by a bitter smile.

We intended to do something on the opening day of Yang Yu’s art exhibition. Our chief art director, Xueqiang Lin is planning to present “Everybody Gets Hurt” using Strindberg’s magical approach and Brecht’s dialectical thinking to respond to Yang Yu’s works. Actually I had never studied the creative or academic theories of these two masters. But my good friend and partner Xueqiang Lin will help me and Total Art Jam. He is an expert in this field and I believe that we will succeed.

Yang Yu has started to paint portraits since he was a student. He used bold brushwork and strong colors with much exaggerated facial expressions.

The Action Series created after his graduation were strange styled in addition to the exaggerated facial expressions. Sometimes we could see the feminine side of Yang Yu.

Portrait has always been an indispensable object in all artists’ works. And portrait paintings were most difficult. On one hand, as there are just too many portrait painters and giving rise to much comparison, at the same time it will be more difficult to establish a style of your own.  Many contemporary artists in China tended to twist and exaggerate their characters.

Actually, whether a portrait painting is good or bad depends much on the aspiration that it gives to the audience instead of how creative and or how eccentric they may be. A portrait painting could easily end up as a simple. There may be only a very fine and subtle margin between an aspirated painting and that of an illustration, yet it makes hell of a difference.

Actually, not all of Yang Yu’s paintings are touching. But he did have some very classic works. I have selected a couple of his works and shown them to top scholars in the art field.  We shared the same feelings – Yang Yu’s works are rare touching.

The above painting chose two silent classical characters as the background and the protagonist was a non-man, non-woman, contemporary character with extreme anger - a strong contrast between silence and anger.  Further, the complex time lines between these characters offers another dimension for the audience to contemplate.

I like the above painting which belongs to Mermaid Series. The body of the protagonist inclined a little, with the jellyfish floating by its side as if it was dancing. Although no water was shown in the painting, we could feel that everything was inside the water. The facial expression of the subject matter were more subtle than most of his other works and in my opinion it draws nearer to aestheticism. The red color of the red little fish stained the pure white dress of the protagonist and it makes their relationship more intimate.

We understand that some painters attempted to paint sound effect. The most classic example was The Scream created by the Swiss artist Munch.

This painting created by Yang Yu was doing just the opposite. When we focus our attention onto the painting, all surrounding noises will be absorbed by the painting leaving a dead silence between the painting and the audience.

This is how we experience aspiration.

I think all artists should have ideals and pursuing. Yang Yu told me that he only wanted to have a steady life enabling him to focus on his creation of arts. This is very important in the development of Yang Yu’s art career.  Only with such ideal, an artist could develop and control his own work freely without worrying too much about the market.

I strongly believe that if Yang Yu holds onto this idealistic concept, he will end up as a great artist and bring more master pieces to his audience.

Come on, Yang Yu.                                     

Let’s support this excellent young artist and attend his personal exhibition sponsored by Total Art Jam.  Let’s encourage Yang Yu and give him a big hand.

                                                                                                                    Total Art Jam