| Description |
Mao Yan contends with the history of portraiture in his work, interpreting figures and faces through a subjective language steeped in the technical formalism he developed while studying in Beijing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mao Yan’s paintings exhibit tropes of portraiture such as the seated nude and oval frames, but cede deliberate representation to style and mood. Aqueous blue, green, and grey tones swirl around, coalescing into smoky figures defined by gestural brushwork. He empties his portrait subjects of interiority and identity, divorcing them from any background or context and allowing paint to take precedence. |