Yan Pei–Ming Tigre, 2017

Yan Pei-Ming has long been fascinated by the arresting visual power of wild beasts and predators. Much like his famous predecessors Peter Paul Rubens or Eugène Delacroix, he is masterful in his ability to render the concentrated energy of an animal ready to pounce, all in tension, dynamism and contained aggressiveness. Frozen in time at a climatic moment, the Tiger (2017) demonstrates the artist’s fascination with the sublime, images of might and power that suggest a deeper truth.

Ming has recently begun to include a wider range of colours in his formerly strictly uniform palette, such as tones of blue and purple. His paintings are executed with great energy and imagination, consisting of distinctively expressive brushstrokes. While his works often appear almost abstract at close range, they become increasingly sharper with distance, an effect intended to blur the lines between reality and imagination.