Ke Yi · Behind the Scenes Project: Episode IV —— Yin Yan's Personal Project "The Fur of the Other" will open on October 11th. The exhibition will showcase several paintings and small sketches created by the artist in the past two years and will run until November 26th.

The exhibition title "The Fur of the Other" is derived from the gaze at the surface of animals. Fur, as the most direct external form, can be soft or hard, shiny or dull. It can bring comfort and closeness, but it may also cause discomfort and estrangement. Just like a covering, it keeps us only on the surface of the animal and prevents us from truly entering its inner life.

In Yin Yan's creations, cats become a pervasive image, the product of his warm and wild imagination. But they are not just 'cats', this otherness is not reflected through a single species, but points to a wider range of animals. The reason why cats have become the main image is that as semi domesticated animals, they happen to be between human intimacy and unfamiliarity: they are both endowed with symbols of "cuteness" and "healing", and often appear in a cold, detached, and difficult to control posture. In the work,these "cat shaped animals" are further extended into a vague existence - they may be cats or other unnamed creatures, "others" that human culture cannot fully define.

Yin Yan uses dense and ambiguous painting language to move these animal images between concrete and vague, constantly generating and mutating. The stacking and dissolution of brushstrokes create a sense of "overload" in image communication, causing viewers to constantly be startled between familiarity and strangeness.