Yan Pei-Ming (B. 1960)

'Art is about man. It speaks to people. Portrait is like a mirror, it reflects to us who we are, what we are’ (Y. Pei-Ming)
Rendered with fluid, impulsive brushstrokes in a subtle grey-scale palette, Yan Pei-Ming’s Bouddha (Buddha) stems from his celebrated series of works depicting the religious icon. Painted in 2000, it takes its place within a practice dedicated to exploring the genre of portraiture through near-obsessive repetition of disparate subjects: from self-portraits, family members, anonymous strangers and crime victims, to cultural and political figureheads such as Chairman Mao, Pope John Paul II, Bruce Lee and Barack Obama. Painted from memory, his portraits distil personal and collective experience into multiple iterations that seek to capture the fragility of the human condition. Born in Shanghai but based in France since 1980, Yan was among the first Chinese artists to leave the country as it took its place on a new global stage. His work fuses the sensibilities of classical Western portraiture with a painterly aesthetic rooted in traditional calligraphic techniques. Using minimal strokes and extraordinarily long, broad brushes – some up to 50 inches wide – Yan’s approach parallels that of Chan and Zen Buddhist painters and calligraphers, who employed similarly large brushes in a bid to circumvent their own conscious self. As evidenced by the present work, his figures exude an almost sculptural presence: a visceral muscularity that serves to underscore their mortality. ‘For me, the portrait is about the soul, about humanity’, the artist explains; ‘through the eyes you can see the person behind’ (Y. Pei-Ming, quoted in Yan Pei-Ming: The Way of the Dragon, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, 2005, pp. 101-102).