Yan Jingzhou’s Absurdist Solo Exhibition: Love is Love

Description

Curated by Sherry Wang and exhibited in Tang Contemporary Art, Yan Jingzhou’s solo exhibition Love is Love features various acrylic paintings of the figure Buster across everyday scenes like building sandcastles at a beach and sitting at dinner with others. Yet hints of absurdist theatre and tension underlies these everyday scenes, revealing themes of love and identity as well as geopolitical relations. Works also pay homage to the classics or reinterprets the cultural genes though the use of Chinese idioms, portraying a fluid translation of cultural identity.

Works include “Buster Table,” where three characters sit around a poker table, with piled chips resembling a geopolitical map of power, metaphorically betting on fate; “Sugar-Coated Beast,” where festive atmospheres are juxtaposed with hollow and detached expressions to showcase an unspeakable loneliness amidst celebration; and “Fake Nirvana™,” where Buddhist iconography mixes with the game of whack-a-mole to humorously peel back harsh truths with a playful game-like attitude.