Yu Hong

Chinese painter Yu Hong (born 1966) constructs modern-day fables and complex, allegorical compositions that channel historical, narrative-driven art as seen through a fiercely contemporary lens. Her newest series is inspired by the elegiac funeral depicted in Island of the Dead (1880–1901), the most famous work of Swiss Symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901). Each painting by Yu features figures on a solitary island beset by crashing waves. Each entry represents a different emotion, underpinned by dread, until the viewer is able to, in Böcklin’s words, "dream into the world of dark shadows." This body of work expands on the large, dramatic scenes Yu exhibited as part of Another One Bites the Dust, her first major solo exhibition that occurred during the Venice Biennale, characterized by their grandiose, often grotesque depictions of contemporary social anxieties.

Published to accompany a major site-specific installation in Venice, Yu Hong: Another One Bites the Dust offers an in-depth examination of the work of one of China’s foremost living artists, renowned internationally for her virtuosic large-scale figurative paintings. Yu Hong’s (born 1966) practice centers on humane depictions of contemporary life that are both deeply personal and astute in their observations of larger societal realities. Featuring beautiful installation photography of Venice’s Chiesetta della Misericordia, this book presents a new cycle of works painted on gold ground that depict the arc of human experience while referencing aspects of Buddhist narrative painting, Byzantine icons and the Italian Baroque. Through her lushly painted stories, she considers the radical changes pressed on humanity by the speed and totality of globalization, the existential climate emergency, diaspora and dispossession in many parts of the world, and the uneven histories of postcolonialism. Yu Hong’s subject is the precarity of meaning in the face of calamitous disruption.