WANTED

MASSIMODECARLO is pleased to present t his new body of work by Franco-Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming is about the dynamics of desire. The small portrait presented in the gallery’s central room, high above the mantlepiece, is the starting point of the exhibition: it is painted after Lucien Freud’s 1952 portrait of fellow artist and friend Francis Bacon, which was stolen in Berlin in 1988 never to be found – at least to this day. Portraiture is the cornerstone of Yan Pei-Ming’s practice. Best known for his epic, large-scale monochromatic renditions of iconic figures, ranging from popes to emperors and world...

Portrait of Yan Pei-Ming, 2018. Photo: Clérin-Morin

Yan Pei-Ming (b.Shanghai in 1960) lives and works between Dijon, Paris and Shanghai.

An artist of international fame, born into the Cultural Revolution during the Sixties, Yan Pei-Ming became a propagan...

Yan Pei-Ming (b.Shanghai in 1960) lives and works between Dijon, Paris and Shanghai.

An artist of international fame, born into the Cultural Revolution during the Sixties, Yan Pei-Ming became a propaganda artist under the Maoist regime before emigrating to France in 1981, where he first studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, then at the Institut des Hautes-Études en Art Plastiques in Paris.

From the beginning of his career Pei-Ming has stood out for his interest in the human figure and portraiture. He began his series of expressionistic and monumental portraits of Mao Zedong in 1987 before moving on to other world-famous figures like the Buddha, the Pope and Bruce Lee, and private themes like the self-portrait and the figure of the father.

Yan Pei-Ming investigates and discovers in the act of painting how the portrait breaks out of its typical straitjacket and is once again revitalized. The artist famously uses a long, mop-sized brush to create his iconic images, working rapidly with wet-into-wet oil paint, using either a combination of white and black, or red and white paint. With each brushstroke, he literally experiences with his own body the components that form the icon and how those components can be reassembled and given a new meaning.