Acrylic on canvas

175 × 275 cm. 68 7/8 × 108 1/4 in.

Signed in English and dated on the reverse
PROVENANCE
Important Private Collection, Asia

The Streams Shine Forever, the Dreams Spark in the Night
The Spiritual Place of Christmas Eve, the Monumental Creation of Huang Yuxing

Huang Yuxing was born in Beijing in the 1970s and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is the most high-profile representative of his generation in the contemporary Chinese art scene. With colourful futurism characters, his creations build a utopian world above the reality of his age. His works interpret the time of visual carnival, urbanization, and great social change, to penetrate the young generation's relationship with the city, the future, and the thinking of life and time, which are highly sought after by collectors.

A Fluorescent Christmas, a Surreal Reconstruction of Man and Nature

In Huang's context of creation, the pioneering use of fluorescent colours is the most critical turning point. Dating back to his long-distance trip to the Himalayas in 2009, he was suddenly enlightened in the strong sunlight in the plateau. To transform such powerful visual and psychological feelings into his works, fluorescence has been involved in his paintings since then, becoming Huang's iconic art character. At the same time, he also integrates the inspiration of nature, the experience of life, and the feelings in the urbanization process into his creation, reconstructing the vast field of man and nature, and using the Light and Habitat series to create a unique interpretation of the world.

Completed in 2011, Christmas Eve, is an important representation of the series. It integrates multiple classic elements of him, such as trees, light, and geometric structures, marking the milestone of the large-scale monumental works of Huang.

The Melting Colour, the Surging Light

Different from the direct description of the beams in the Light series, Christmas Eve blends the colours such as emerald green, sapphire blue, pink purple, orange, with the fluorescent paint that represents the light, flowing around the woods, rivers, clouds, steps, and the surface of buildings. A radiant Christmas tree is in the centre of the painting, attracting views from every perspective. The flickering ball on the top is the focus, like fireworks, extending light infinitely from the centre to the surrounding, bursting and penetrating.

When creating, Huang often spreads the thin acrylic colours on the canvas repeatedly, reminding people of the "fine brushwork and heavy colour" technique in traditional Chinese ink painting. The layers of fluorescent colours with different gamuts reflect each other, mapping a surreal space. The artist fulfills a heavy texture into the buildings with overlapping strokes, showing the neatness and coldness of concrete and steel. The contrast of light and shadow is also distinctive. When the shrubs flow into the front and back backgrounds, the colours turn into a smudge of random blending, showing a penetrating essence. Outside the dazzling Christmas square, it creates a divided yet unified vision of the natural landscape and industrial culture. In this way, the artist intends to reflect the contrasting and colourful world in the context of the time. The Christmas tree between nature and humanity lights up the entire city in silence.

The Metaphor of the Geometric Shapes, the Energy of the Macroworld

Since 2011, Huang has been focusing on the exploration of the "world image", naming paintings after places, and constructing surreal fields from clear and intuitive geometric figures. In the split and reorganization of structures, he wanders between reality and fantasy. As a classic representative of this period, Christmas Eve has circular arcs, staggered squares, and strip-shaped stairs, building a tightly knit and wonderful architectural structure. The overlapping geometric spaces enhance the magical atmosphere in the painting. The sunken square in the centre is like a black hole, in which red and blue colours collide and emerge. It seems to extend to a world in another dimension, with unknown variables hidden, encouraging the viewers to spontaneously explore the various connections between the world in the painting and the reality.

Huang further placed the Christmas square in the vast natural background. Echoing with the forest in the background, the Christmas tree is a metaphor for “upward lives”. The Christmas tree was born in nature yet has a different fate from those in the forest. The colourful lights on the tree deprive the “nature” part of it and fill the divinity into it, adding a symbolic meaning of happiness and reunion belonging to the human society. In this eternal space with vitality, civilization and nature blend, coldness and warmth coexist, and the real macroworld echoes. It becomes an ideal spiritual highland for Huang to build novelty and dreams.

“All are past and gone! For truly great person. Look to this age alone.”

――Mao Zedong

According to The Book of Song, Zong Que, a general of the Liu Song Dynasty, was bold at a young age. When his uncle asked him what he wanted to do in the future, he replied: "To ride the long wind and break the waves!" In the art scene from the 20th century to the present, the aspiration of "breaking the wave" has become the spiritual portrayal of many artists rewriting history and creating new patterns. For example, Yoshitomo Nara, a giant of Japanese contemporary art, created a rich image language that transcends the "Superflat". His universal visual language is with the innocence in childhood, the sensibility in adolescence and the rebellious rock spirit. Zhang Xiaogang, a leading artist in contemporary China, depicts the national aesthetics that belongs to a generation with the eternal Big Family faces, reflecting the close connection between individual and social collectives. George Condo, the representative of postwar American artists, fuses classical portrait, Surrealism and Cubism in art history into his "Psychological Cubism", redefining the direction of European and American painting after the 1980s. These artists, born in Generation X and Y, have broken the boundaries between ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, to reach the top of the wave of contemporary art, becoming the masters of this generation.

This autumn, we will present the representative works of 12 important Eastern and Western artists leading the art trend and daring to be pioneers with the theme "Breaking the Wave". From Nara's O.T(Untitled) to the western genius Condo Muse of Volcano; from street art leaders Banksy, Kenny Scharf's wit and creativity to the representatives of Chinese contemporary -Zhang Xiaogang, Huang Yuxing, Wang Guangle, Zhao Zhao, Qin Qi and Zhang Yingnan; as well as Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida's iconic character who strives to break out of the social system, up-and-coming artist Yuichi Hirako and his vibrant little tree man. "One day, I'll ride the long wind, break the waves." Let's feel their interpretation of our time and their indomitable appealing artistic presence!

Price estimate:
HKD: 1,500,000 - 3,000,000
USD: 191,100 - 382,200

Auction Result:
HKD: 1,800,000