Oil on canvas

170×230 cm. 66 7/8×90 1/2 in

Signed and titled in English and dated on upper left
EXHIBITED
9 Sep – 8 Oct 2010, Light─ Huang Yuxing’s Drawing Exhibition, Red Bridge Gallery, Shanghai

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Asia

Waging Artistic Battles in a Kingdom of Colors
King by Huang Ming-Che
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them： the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision； I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.”
——Immanuel Kant
Huang Yuxing, who graduated from the Mural Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, is one of the most watched post-70s artists of China’s contemporary art scene. Unlike the grand majority of his contemporaries, who have generally gravitated toward conceptualism, Huang is more focused on using painting to express his own visual experience to explore the personal experiences and life attitudes of the younger generation as they come of age. He pursues the mystique of artistic language, attempting to stimulate the viewer’s senses directly and give the viewer an intense resonance, a quality which has earned his works the admiration of collectors.
The large-size work Light （2010） is the masterpiece of Huang’s Light series, which bears witness to the critical turning point in the artist’s creative style. The work uses a forest as a background （characteristic of most of the artist’s work during that period）, with abstract, almost equally-spaced lines representing the towering trunks of trees to form the upper half of the canvas. The dazzling fluorescent yellow furnishes large patches of color between the trees, creating a striking visual sensation. On the barren earth within the bottom half of the canvas, two human figures are stacked one on top of the other. By juxtaposing people’s physical bodies with the natural world, the artist continues to explore the interaction between people, and in fact, these two individuals represent the dual identity of our so-called primitive animal instinct and role in a civilized society, which both exist in each and every person.
Starting with his Light series, fluorescent colors began emerging in Huang Yuxing’s paintings, and much like a beam of light, these colors project themselves powerfully onto the canvas. This inspiration derives from the picturesque scenery that the artist witnessed on his long journey through the Himalayas in October 2009. He applies the famous words of the great philosopher Immanuel Kant to remind himself to adopt a steadier, more mature mindset in his continued quest to explore the human body, life, and nature, and with the use of hot fluorescent yellow, Huang pays tribute to the blazing vitality of youth.

Price estimate:
HKD: 160, 000 - 260, 000
USD: 20, 500 - 33, 300

Auction Result:
HKD: 531,000