Oil on canvas

60 × 60 cm. × 3 23 5/8 × 23 5/8 in. × 3

Signed and titled in Chinese, dated and numbered on the reverse of each piece
PROVENANCE
Acquired directly by present private Asian collector from the artist

Affluent and Sincere Drama of Life
Ouyang Chun's Rare Tripytch on Stage

“I recognize that affluence will afflict an artist just the same as poverty in that making art is like a journey of exile. When I sank into bewilderment, sometimes I may think of ‘the lion, camel and children'. If we compare the life of an artist as fragments, I hope the picture I finally put together is ‘children'.'”
——Ouyang Chun

As one of the most noticed artists born in the 1970s, Ouyang Chun graduated from the art education department of Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in 1994. Despite his solid academic training experience, his inherent talent, his bold and unruly personality, and his sensitive perception of life set him on a completely different path of “rebellion”. Collecting inspiration from the social conflicts in contemporary China and his personal life experience, Ouyang continuously endeavours to create “instinctive paintings” with childlike spirits. Combining the wild and thick oil paints with an unadorned innocence, his works shed the sense of pretension or sophistication of reality, replacing the conventional definition of “beauty or ugliness” with the most affluent and generous real sentiments delivered by the childlike graffiti. He has been invited to hold solo exhibitions at the Austrian National Gallery, me Collectors Room Berlin and the Yanhuang Art Museum in Beijing.

Instinctive Self-Deduction Combined with Widest Imagination

Untitled (Triptych) was completed in 2006 when Ouyang Chun held his second and the most significant solo exhibition in his early career, Luminescent, which marks his mature and striking aesthetic style. As a rarely-seen triptych among his works, the painting appears like a comic strip. The three pieces are equipped with a high-saturated palette including lake blue, emerald green, lemon yellow and earthy wheat, floating like several elegant ribbons. At the centre of each piece is a classical character on Ouyang Chun's canvas with a large oval head, huge ears and scrawling short hair and simple cloth, seeming to suggest the artist himself. The figure is living in such a colourful world far from the hypocrisy, depression and solemnness of the secular world and allowing the deliberate and even wildest expression of the truest emotions.

In the first piece of the triptych, a boy stands in front of a hole that appears out of nowhere on the earth, widely opening his mouth and eyes, shocked by the unknown scene from his eyes. The dark and deep hole is reminiscent of the rabbit hole in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is full of mysteries and indicates the unexpected future. In comparison, the second piece at the centre is immersed in an atmosphere of spring. Under the warm yellow sky, the lush grass is growing. The boy is walking across the river with a giant smile and a kite in his hand. The artist uses some minimalist white wavy lines to suggest the wave patterns on the water surface, meaning the omnipotent self in the childhood fantasy that one could walk over the wave like a legendary swordsman. The last painting shows a boy crying. In contemporary society, “crying” is considered a behaviour of lacking masculinity in many people's stereotypes. However, Ouyang exaggerates this expression on purpose with thick-painted white dots dramatically presenting the tears erupting like fountains. In the empty and silent wilderness, he is a free individual releasing himself regardless of others' perceptions. The work calls for the deliberation of humanity and claims that there is no shame in expressing the authentic self. This triptych voices the curiosity and amazement at the unknowns of one's life, and the unruly sincerity of daring to run and to cry once you fall.

Price estimate:
HKD: 120,000 - 220,000
USD: 15,300 - 28,000

Auction Result:
HKD: 180,000