Mixed media on paper mounted on canvas

55×39 cm. 21 5/8×15 3/8 in

Signed in Chinese on bottom right
PROVENANCE
6 Apr 2014, Sotheby’s Hong Kong Spring Auction, Lot 890
Private Collection, Asia

A Prose Poet of Memories
No sooner did the curtain of ’85 New Wave, an artistic movement peaking in the 1980s, come down with the end of the China Avant-Garde Exhibition in 1989, than the younger generation became emotionally depressed and spiritually disoriented. In this historical context, Ye Yongqing embarked on his art series titled Big Poster during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Marked as a significant milestone in his career, this series featured his retrieval of memories and history by means of collage, presented in a sui generis style that contains both oriental and occidental concepts and techniques such as oil painting, print and graffiti rolled into one. To put it another way, this series transcended the rigid symbolic confines of regional cultures, exhibiting a trans-national and cross-identity ethos that knows no boundaries.
The work Untitled finished in 1990 vividly epitomizes the aforementioned ethos. The composition is covered in a collage of independent images derived from Ye’s memories. A narrative thread woven by the artist runs through all the images. On a more specific basis, the man at the center of the composition stops on the outdoor path and looks up at the jet plane passing by. The arrow denotes the direction in which the plane is heading. In general, this work radiates a vigorous aura of expressionism.
The artist also incorporated fragments of newspapers into this work. The wrinkled texture created by daubing with pigment not only gives these printed texts a personal voice-over quality, but also conveys a palpable sense of rhythmic motion of the plane, making this work an organic fusion of the conceptual and the painterly. In this work, the traces of the figure’s movement are reduced to a separate rectangle in a conceptual frame, and the quasi-graffiti strokes are strongly reminiscent of the calligraphy-painting harmony highlighted in traditional literati paintings. Rheological spatial narratives thus metamorphosed into philosophical reflections on the canvas. This work is tantamount to a graphic diary, and a prose poem of memories as well.

Price estimate:
HKD: 120, 000 - 200, 000
USD: 15, 400 - 25, 600

Auction Result:
HKD: 212,400