From September 21, 2023 to January 29, 2024, Yu Hong will hold her first large-scale solo exhibition "Night Walk" in North America at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, USA. This exhibition will present a series of new creations and recent works, including nine paintings including "Night Walk" (2023), which bears the same title as the exhibition title.

In these works, Yu Hong interweaves her personal experience and memory with the major collective memory of contemporary China, presenting the changes of the times through grand compositions. The pictures of the works remind people of the magnificent scenes in the works of classical artists such as Michelangelo during the Italian Renaissance, and at the same time echo the language and implication contained in traditional Chinese paintings.

Yu Hong puts characters full of complex emotions in chaotic or noisy dramatic and surreal scenes, and establishes a subtle and profound relationship between the characters and the environment dialogue. The unsettling quality of her group portraits is a metaphor for human fragility and the anxieties of separation and cohesion that pervade society today. However, these works also convey the indomitable resilience of human beings and an eternal hope that exists in imaginary places.

About Yu Hong

Yu Hong is famous for creating and depicting large-scale contemporary figurative paintings. She received training in social realism painting techniques during her school days, and later developed a unique visual style. Through delicately portraying her personal experience , reflecting the lives of their peers and witnessing the great changes in Chinese society. Yu Hong mainly creates paintings, but also uses pastel, textile pigments, silk and resin and other media. Under a unique female perspective, Yu Hong's practice focuses on the relationship between individuals and society as a whole, especially the role women play in society.

Photography and ready-made images are the starting point of Yu Hong’s creation. She reassembles the photos she has taken according to the mutual relationship in the composition , in order to analyze the way of memory formation. The "Golden" series created between 2010 and 2011 reflects the artist's long-term study of traditional Chinese paintings, Dunhuang, Kizil Thousand Buddha Cave murals and Western traditional paintings. Her perception of real life is through the medium of gold foil are connected in series.

Yu Hong’s recent works are magnificent in scale and theme, combining art and architectural space to create an immersive painting environment. Created between 2014 and 2015, although the "Parallel World" series depicts the characters around Yu Hong in real life, the pictures show the imaginary sense of time and space in the fable, cruising between illusion and reality . Under Yu Hong's perceptual perspective combining macro and micro, what is presented is a picture of life that is rich in layers and profound in meaning. From the inner world to the infinite universe, from the individual to the collective, the world Yu Hong depicts goes far beyond the surface of the canvas, between reality and dreams. As she herself said: "As long as you change your perspective, you will find that the world is very strange."

Yu Hong was born in Xi’an, China in 1966. She studied oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in the 1980s, and graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1996. Since 1988, Yu Hong has been teaching at the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include "The Realm of Saha", Long Museum, Shanghai (2019); "A Dream in the Garden", Art Museum of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (2016); "Parallel World", Suzhou Museum, Suzhou (2015); "Golden World", Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (2011); "Golden Sky", Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2010). Her work was featured in the group exhibition "Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World" at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2017.

About the exhibition

Lisson artist Yu Hong

Solo exhibition "Night Walk"
Savannah College of Art and Design Art Museum, Atlanta, USA
September 21, 2023 to January 29, 2024

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