25 July – 26 August 2015

The defining element of Yan Pei-Ming’s pictorial style to date has been its bichromatic approach. The contrast between black and white – or, more rarely, between black and red – subtly varies nuances of light and shade and imbues each subject with a sculptural dimension. For some time now, however, the artist has been generously expanding his palette. 

In this group of works, Yan Pei-Ming explored a wider chromatic range, though remaining faithful to his style of vigorous and ample brushstrokes. Viewed close up, his paintings were powerfully abstract, but give way to a figurative intensity as one backs up to view them from a distance and as the contours of each subject re-emerge. 

In his Aggressive Beauty exhibition, Yan Pei-Ming opted to combine fundamentally different themes. Eminent figures drawn from the history of religion and art were juxtaposed here with the most savage animality. However, these visually disparate motifs, theoretically antinomic in nature, had a common denominator: power. The subjects expressed a muffled strength or an immediate brutality before revealing their potential to draw us in and, even, mesmerize us.