Yu Hong: another one bites the dust

Abstract

"Yu Hong: Another One Bites the Dust will feature new figurative and narrative paintings that respond to the architectural and cultural context of the Chiesetta della Misericordia, a deconsecrated Romanesque-Byzantine church founded by Augustinian friars in the tenth century. Conditioned by this architectural site, the exhibition will present Yu Hong’s work outside the bounds of art-historical conventions, examining the artist’s worlding of supernatural realism as a radically anachronistic stance that further destabilizes our notions of contemporary life. In Another One Bites the Dust, Yu Hong borrows images of people, mostly women and children, in writhing poses expressing mental anguish or imminent physical danger, both real and fantastical, from the internet and social media. Set against a gold ground and shaped as large tondos or arched panels, the figures presented confront and upend the epic themes of sacred art while not shying away from the role of painting to portray the sorrows of the human condition. The works in the exhibition upend the epic themes of sacred art while embracing painting’s capacity to portray the human condition—the sorrows, absurdities, and transcendence of bodily existence. The large tondo paintings Birth (2022) and Death (2022) are set against a gold ground: a newborn held by a doctor’s prophylactic gloves and connected to its mother by an umbilical cord will be paired across the nave with the bare feet of several cadavers. The exhibition’s centerpiece will be a ten-part painting, Walking through Life (2019–22), suspended as a semicircle in the choir. Progressing from left to right, each arched panel depicts a scene of different physical stages of life as conditioned and contorted by social norms, gender roles, and political realities."-- Website Lisson Gallery.