Huang Yuxing

signed in Pinyin and dated 2012

Beijing Commune, Beijing
Acquired by the present owner from the above

China, Beijing, Beijing Commune, Huang Yuxing, 26 April - 3 June, 2012
China, Shanghai, Minsheng Art Museum, Alluvial - Huang Yuxing, 5 September - 4 October, 2015, pp. 108-109

AD Design & Art, China, October 2015, inside page

This work is generally in good condition. There are two webs of minor cracks and minor paint loss along the mid-left edge. When examined under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
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In terms of medium, Huang Yuxing has alternated between oil and acrylic paint; his clearly and vividly portrayed subjects include trees, soil, mountains, open fields, and even empty space itself. He transforms the identity of the creator into one of an earnest and romantic translator who provides a perspective through which we can see the true essence of things. He allows us to glimpse the warm, dark, unusual colours, perpendicular structures, and labyrinthine dimensions of ostensibly quotidian objects and scenes. By building his Surrealism on the basis of a figurative reality, the artist compels us to believe in its authenticity. It is a reality that we cannot touch, but must view through the eyes of the artist. We can commit to memory what was originally a fleeting moment. The artist sears this moment into a precise recording, and thus makes it eternal.

These works process an intense Expressionistic style reminiscent of the dreamlike paintings of the South African artist Marlene Dumas. The shapes of objects are not highly figurative or exact, so we must rely on our own tastes to make sense of the images. This freedom of interpretation is the ultimate gift to the attentive viewer, and each painting contains ample room for energetic exchange. Appreciating the painting becomes a private delight of projecting one's individual consciousness. The viewer's experiences, perspective, and personality determine the orientation of the content, but in the end, we all arrive at the same terminus by different routes: the subjective perceptions and feelings of the artist. Dense colours do not imply a childlike thoughtlessness; rather, they could be dangerous pitfalls or joyful adventures. The painting is a landscape of human life, and also perhaps an endless totality. The focal point lies in how you understand your own status on the journey of life.

As a member of the generation of artists born in the 1970s, Huang Yuxing deliberately avoided the turn toward Conceptualism that many of his peers made. Right from the start of his career, he focused on the close relationships between tactility, physiological perception, and emotional metaphor. All of his works relate to life itself. In his early work, he focused on the relationship between humans and nature, but unlike his recent work, which features rich colours, those early paintings were filled with black human forms, scattered organs, and dark settings. The artist did not demur from expressing his attitude towards reality and his own suppressed emotional world. Then, in 2009, he gradually shifted into a new period of macroscopic perspectives. Oceans and seas, rivers and forests, air bubbles and hidden treasures: he used bright colours to interpret the essence of the world. It was as if the artist, after a long and arduous journey, finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel. The paintings demonstrate a profound realisation: people are capable of diverse perspectives. They can freely explore different aspects of the world. They have the power to advance and to retreat, the power to choose. They are the masters of their own worldviews.

The artist subsequently extended his microcosmic explorations in his later "River" and "Bubble" series. In these works, meteors, sunrises, and whirlpools appear in novel, unexpected forms. They possess the courage to depart; they occur, appear, shatter, and dissipate. But each moment is also part of a cycle, painstakingly repeated, such that time and space seem to congeal—though the generation of energy never ceases. Thus, when we revisit the "Factory" series, we see that these paintings are a forebear of the "River" series, and both examine the vitality of microcosmic worlds. If the "River" and "Bubble" series use a single moment to capture eternity, then "Factory" is the earliest means of preserving energy that the artist discovered.