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L'année du tigre

Yan Pei-Ming

日期
01.02.2022 | 12.02.2022
画廊
Pièce Unique
文件
PRESS RELEASE

Yan Pei-Ming's palette is often bound to two shades: black and white. He lets these two colors play, ooze, burst with one another, and within each other. Yet there is a third color that is just as present in his work: red. Yan Pei-Ming’s red is the most dazzling, the most violent hue, engaging in a dance of life and intensity with his whites. Whites and blacks, sometimes grays, play a role beyond the one that Barthes assigned to photography in opposition to painting: the art of death, against the art of life. His black and white paintings create a suspended moment in time, where we question their very presence.

Amidst this doubt, red creates space to affirm the tragic yet utterly sensitive power of life. When contemplating Yan Pei-Ming’s red works, we are faced with the appalling and sublime spectacle of the fire of existence.

His work manifests this with singular power: it shows a tiger's head, forward facing, roaring, ready to pounce at us. It is as if its head were emerging from the red – moreover the white, the light, consolidates itself towards the center of the painting, the central upper left part and the mouth – as if moving towards the white. Like energy fields held in permanent tension – including even some yellow tints towards the light: the image appears more complex.

Here we are faced with a central feature of Yan Pei-Ming's practice: energy at play. It articulates itself in multiple ways in his work: first, with the energy of the painter, who projects paint so powerfully, so precisely, with so much life onto the canvas. Then, with the energy of animal life: that of the tiger, and that of the painter. Also, with the peculiar energy of the human being, capable of fixing the image of this tiger. Not least with the energy of human life, perhaps threatened: indeed, in front of a tiger like this, if it was real, one would probably be dead...This sense of danger is also that of the intensity of life, which we are given to perceive so entirely thanks to the artist’s mastery of scale and of creation. Finally, with the energy of history itself, because we can see parallels with other works throughout it, both in Asia and in the Eighteenth Century: the tiger, as a bridge of civilizations.

And yet as much as it is concentrated, this very energy seems to be endlessly fading, and this is the beauty of Yan Pei-Ming's work. As monumental as it is, it depicts its own demise; as committed to constructing the image as it is, the closer one gets, the more it disappears; as consistent as it is, Yan Pei-Ming’s work has never ceased to challenge itself. The image composes and decomposes itself; the painter affirms and cancels himself, the energy of the work, counterpart to the painter, is visible without artifice: and yet, Yan Pei-Ming is aware that it is only one component of the greater theater of the world. With this energetic Red tiger head, we are confronted with all the challenges of an artist who has made painting his life, who creates with method – who breaks this same method, and who gives himself completely to a life of existence.

- Donatien Grau

Yan Pei-Ming

严培明(1960年生于中国上海)目前生活工作于法国第戎。


从其职业生涯的开始,严培明就对人物和肖像画产生极大的兴趣。他创作了一系列具有表现主义和纪念意义的画像,如佛像、教皇、李小龙,以及一些包括自画像和其父亲肖像在内的个人主题画作。


严培明从不断地绘画中探索使肖像画脱胎换骨的方式,最为著名的是使用一把长如拖把的笔刷,用黑白或者红白相间的颜料快速在画布上层层描绘出作品中经典的形象。


其作品被众多重要机构收藏,包括:澳大利亚国家美术馆,堪培拉;海蒂·霍顿藏品博物馆;S.M.A.K.,根特;广东美术馆,广州;上海美术馆,上海;余德耀美术馆,上海,蓬皮杜艺术中心,巴黎;兰伯特收藏馆;阿维尼翁;弗朗索瓦·皮诺基金会,巴黎;路易威登基金会,巴黎;新地区当代艺术博物馆,第戎;维勒班当代艺术中心,维勒班;LE CONSORTIUM,第戎;角斗场,图卢兹;巴黎现代艺术博物馆,巴黎;第戎美术馆,第戎;雷恩美术馆,雷恩;保尔·瓦雷里博物馆,塞特;德意志银行收藏,法兰克福;曼海姆美术馆,曼海姆;路德维希博物馆,科隆;BANCA POPOLARE DI BERGAMO,贝加莫;COLLEZIONE FONDAZIONE SAN PATRIGNANO,里米尼;贝加莫现当代美术馆,贝加莫;国立二十一世纪艺术博物馆,罗马;东京国立近代美术馆,东京;卡塔尔博物馆管理局,多哈;善载当代艺术博物馆,庆州;WOOYANG MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART,庆州;马拉加当代艺术中心,马拉加;福尔林登博物馆,瓦塞纳;阿布扎比卢浮宫,阿布扎比;檀香山艺术学院,檀香山;檀香山美术馆,檀香山;夏威夷州立艺术博物馆,檀香山;TIA COLLECTION,圣达非。


严培明的作品曾参加威尼斯双年展,意大利(1995年,2003年);里昂双年展,法国(1997年,2003年);SEVILLE BIENNIAL,西班牙(2006年);伊斯坦布尔双年展,伊斯坦布尔(2007年);曼谷双年展(2018年)。

Yan Pei Ming