Just Joking
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Andrew James
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This Saturday 19th April 6-9pm we will have an opening party for Chinese artist Zhou Yilun. The exhibition will take place at Andrew James Art at 39 Maoming Bei, Shanghai in the newly extended gallery space which now covers 300 Sqm in a period colonial mansion.
Hope to see you in the gallery this Saturday night for the opening, if you can't make it, the show will run till the 18th May. You are always welcome.
Art Work Introduction: I am please to introduce the second Zhou Yilun exhibition at Andrew James Art in Shanghai.
There are two things I quickly realized about the artist, the word “shocking” springs to mind. One he is a cool and funky individual with his Mohawk haircut, piercing and tattoos. He seems to lead a carefree life enjoying all the fun a young man can have in today’s society. His warehouse studio/apartment strewn with paintings, discarded paint tubes, drum kits, mountain bikes, large sound system and a little cute cat! The other thing I quickly noticed is that he has a real eye for art and is shockingly good. He has the ability to paint very classically and by the book but also the ability to be a free spirit and buck current trends. His paintings have a sense of freshness and youthfulness which is to be admired but also the maturity of a skilled hand. He is a driven young man who lives and breathes art and creativity but at the same time seems to have a punk, almost Banksy feel to his work. His friends call him “Pen Pen” which is Chinese to spray paint.
We hope you enjoy this collection of paintings dating from 2007-2008.
- City Weekend
says -
Artist Zhou Yilun, "Pen Pen" ("to spray paint") to his friends, carries a funky vibe--Mohawk haircut, piercings and tattoos. His artwork borders on the provocative, bucking current trends to deliver a modern twist to classic brushstrokes, resulting in shocking, Banksy-like images of women and the world through his eyes.
© 2007 Beijing Ringier International Advertising Company. All rights reserved.
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Explicit, Humorous and Fresh
Andrew James Art is showing some oil paintings by the young artist Zhou Yilun under the title Just Joking. The paintings range widely in their content from tigers to soccer players fighting to girls in bikinis splashing around. However, the paintings are unified stylistically with an extremely enjoyable, very fresh brushstroke that is at times more controlled and at others more expressionistic. Zhou lets his colors run into one another, creating a generally dirty, not too pristine look. What makes his paintings successful are the Chinese phrases written across them. It would be easy for any text to overwhelm a painting, but Zhou cleverly blends the characters in so that they are not immediately legible, which strikes a balance between image and text. As we detect what the words say, we are given a lens through which to contemplate the paintings. Designer Adverts-Chanel (2008) and Designer Adverts-Louis Vuitton (2008) show women holding designer bags in advertisements; a large red star is brushed across the former, a muddy "Louis Vuitton" cuts across the latter. Zhou questions materiality here and what "Louis Vuitton" and "Chanel" really mean. In another painting, Running Fast-UFO (2008), a UFO casts a beam onto two running tigers, while in the background a pagoda stands untouched. This is a very bizarre scene, with a humorous quality. Do the tigers represent something else? Are they running from the UFOs? Perhaps “running fast” refers to a larger concept, perhaps not. The most recurring subject in Zhou's work is women, especially women as objects in bikinis (Splash, 2008) or naked women masturbating (Full Blossom, 2008). In Full Blossom and Flowers Will Blossom In Spring (2008), women are placed next to pink, blossoming flowers. It is obvious that a parallel can be drawn between the two, but what is Zhou's stance on the objectification of women? And how do these sexually explicit images function in a sexually repressed Chinese society? Is Zhou "just joking" around? Is art as a whole just a kind of joking around? --Helena Zhang, Issue 9, Art Review