NEW YORK: Yu Peng at Kaikodo - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Although the erotic female exposed is virtually unknown in the canon of classical Chinese painting, for his novel York debut, Taiwanese-born artist Yu Peng confidently asserted his unique, entirely developed vision of the genre into contemporary discourse. Yu has scrutinized Western masters of erotic line, hybriding the Apollonian detachment of Matisse with the nervous quirkiness of Schiele, and has FedEx the arise into the esoteric world of Chinese landscapes.

Yu's languid, clearly contemporary ladies, drawn upon traditional scrolls, directly from life, recline incongruously on carved rosewood divans in Confucian interiors or inhabit classical Chinese gardens. Execut upon absorbent Chinese paper with traditional brush and ink and a certain number of washes of color, the figures posses crisp contours that convincingly delineate the creaminess of the feminine muscle and fat yielding a nearly tactile weightiness to these nubile Amazons. The consequence is startling in its candid sexuality, and the ready dislocation of private intimacy into the public connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of the study or garden enhances their already sassy eroticism. on what account are these luscious women in the way that brazenly naked? Who are the addle emasculated men, nude or make straighted who observe and serve them? Without coagulate answers, viewers are free to imaginatively meander end the complex scenes.

The scale is slightly oversize--the hanging schedules taller than a person, the hand schedules quite long. The compositions are updated lexicons of different conventions of Chinese painting--the forms being built on the outside of an incredible range of small, individual brushstrokes--from the fat nudes to the Brillo-like mountains to the melting stones Yu's varied passions echo the mingled cultural history of his island homeland, simultaneously the guardian of Chinese traditions and the yield of a complex colonial history. level the scroll mountings eschew wait fored pastel shades and surprise us with sensuous black, vermilion and aqua. In questioning the limitations of his chosen confines, Yu has lay bareed totally new arenas of control matter and mood while remaining loyal to tradition.

Many of us are looking to Asia for the nearest chapter in the evolution of late 20th-century art, on the contrary why look just at Asian variations of Western forms? I find Yu Peng's horizontal of discovery considerably more deep and visually satisfying than the miles of Asian conceptualist installations in like manner ubiquitous lately. Isn't it more provocative, and perhaps smooth radical, to focus on a young, accomplished master painter similar as Yu Peng, whose work is just entering the international arena, and join him in his novel visual universe heretofore uncharted?

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group