Wanted
MASSIMODECARLO is pleased to present Wanted, Yan Pei-Ming’s long-awaited return to London after five years. This exhibition follows his major commission for the Vatican’s Jubilee in Rome earlier this year, marking a significant chapter in the artist’s international practice.
This new body of work by Franco-Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming is about the dynamics of desire. The small portrait presented in the gallery’s first room is the starting point of the exhibition: it is painted after Lucien Freud’s 1952 portrait of fellow artist and friend Francis Bacon, which was stolen in Berlin in 1988 never to be found – at least to this day.
Portraiture is the cornerstone of Yan Pei-Ming’s practice. Best known for his epic, large-scale monochromatic renditions of iconic figures, ranging from popes to emperors and world leaders, he explores the representation of the human spirit through the medium of portraiture.
Yan Pei-Ming discovered the story of “the stolen portrait” and the fruitless hunt that ensued during a visit to the National Portrait Gallery. In 2001, its robbery was denounced by black and white posters with glaring red letters spelling the word W-A-N-T-E-D, in a style more reminiscent of Hollywood Westerns than the pursuit of a real-life missing artwork.
The canvases presented at MASSIMODECARLO in London all respect the stolen portrait’s original proportions, in varying enlarged scales, each rendering Francis Bacon in different introspective postures. These portraits, like the multiple facets of a diamond - optically similar but never identical – seem to explore the complexity of Bacon’s emotional states.
WANTED IN LONDON Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud represents the friendship at the heart of the exhibition. It is painted after a photograph of the two artists in London, in mirroring poses, a fleeting moment of serenity captured on camera.
With Wanted, Yan Pei-Ming points to the paradox of longing vs. possession, absence vs. presence, and what some are willing to do to get what they want. It should not be lost on us that Yan Pei-Ming chose to reimagine the missing portrait in a way that keeps it just out of reach - its absence still felt, its presence unresolved.
The Artist
Yan Pei-Ming was born in Shanghai in 1960; he lives and works between Dijon, Paris and Shanghai.
From the beginning of his career Pei-Ming has stood out for his interest in the human figure and portraiture. He gained international recognition for his expressive and monumental portraits of historical figures like Mao Zedong, the Buddha, the Pope, and Bruce Lee, while also exploring personal themes through self-portraits and depictions of his family.
The artist famously uses a long, mop-sized brush to create his iconic images, working rapidly with wet-into-wet oil paint, primarily on a two-toned monochrome colour palette in black and white or red and white.
Yan Pei-Ming's work is prominently featured in both private and public collections, including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Heidi Horten Collection; S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Collection Lambert en Avignon, Avignon; Fondation François Pinault, Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain de Bourgogne, Dijon; Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne; Le Consortium, Dijon; Les Abattoirs / FRAC Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes; Musée Paul Valéry, Sète; Collection Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt; Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Banca Popolare di Bergamo, Bergamo; Collezione Fondazione San Patrignano, Rimini; GAMeC - Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo; MAXXI - Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Roma; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Qatar Museums Authority, Doha; Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyongju; Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeongju; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga; Voorlinden Museum, Wassenaar; Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum, Abu Dhabi; Academy of Arts, Honolulu; Honolulu Museum of Arts, Honolulu; The Hawai’i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Honolulu; TIA Collection, Santa Fe.
Yan Pei-Ming’s work was included in The Lyon Biennale (1997, 2000); Venice Biennale, Venice (1995, 2003); the Sevilla Biennale, Sevilla (2006); the Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2007); The Bangkok Biennale (2018), among others.