Acrylic on tinplate

164.5 x 190 cm. 64 3/4 x 74 3/4 in.

Titled in English and Chinese, signed in Pinyin and dated on the reverse
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Asia

Forging Ahead in Time Revolution

Yuan Gong's Subtraction Art
“An artist might not do anything special, but his vision allows him to discover something special.”
——Yuan Gong

Yuan Gong was born in Shanghai in 1961 and received his PhD degree from the Chinese National Academy of Arts in 2012. Since the 1990s, Yuan Gong has been creating works from multi-dimensional perspectives through the conceptual art, performance art and visual art. His works reflect the social phenomenon of China and its internal conflicts and contradictions, showing a profound secular philosophy. His works have been collected by the White Rabbit Art Gallery, Guang Dong Museum of Art and Uli Sigg, a famous collector of Chinese contemporary art.

Rising above to Reflect on Current State of Materialism

Yuan Gong returned to China in 2014 and started creating the series of Not in Time Revolution , which further expanded the elimination of the habitual thinking of commercial consumption and restored the original creation concept of objects. Not in Time Revolution that we are showing is the remarkable beginning of this series. This piece focuses on the materiality of food packaging materials in China from the 60s to the 80s. During that period, tin was the most widely used metal, used to manufacture cans and cookie containers. The artist specifically chose tin cans with flaws that were eliminated from the production line. He would then remove the original commercial print design, ridding of all the can's description of product brand, name and age until no details are left. It is as if he is stripping off all excess fame and recognition. All the way down to the naked body. The naked vessel strikes the soul, invoking reflection about the significance of humanity being the carrier of thought.

The Perpetual Cycle of Lost Memories

Andy Warhol, a pop art pioneer in the last century, also drew materials from mass consumer products. For example, he endowed Campbell soup cans with rich colors and repeatedly applied product shapes on cloth, as addition. Yuan Gong's creation process is the polar opposite. He adopts "subtraction painting", and deliberately wipes the information attached to the tin. The advertising text and image information over time, fades away due to oxidation; the once polished surface rusting in the process of qualitative change, and reverting to the element of corrosion resistance that is natural with tin. The artist uses this process to explore the connection between memory and emotion, and presents the "vanished memory" as a real object, generating rheology in the annual rings of time, and implying the reincarnations of the human world in the circle of circulation.

Price estimate:
HKD: 200,000 – 300,000
USD: 25,800 – 38,700

Auction Result:
HKD: 413,000