YAN BING

Profoundly influenced by his growth experience in the rural area of northwestern China, Yan Bing’s works revolve around the simplest daily objects and refine them on a spiritual level. The exhibition title comes from a sentence attributed to the Russian writer Anton Chekhov; echoing this wonderful and mysterious sentence. The exhibition is inspired by a journey the artist went on this year. He returned to Gansu alone in spring but deliberately bypassed his hometown. During the nearly fifty days of field walk, Yan Bing started from a river, from east to west, tracing his early memories along the way. At the same time, the artist was perceiving his inner transformation and relief, which results in his new work.

Wild vegetables and wastelands are the core images in Yan’s new body of work. Different from the dignified and gloomy atmosphere in his previous paintings, this series of works are made lighter and broader, aiming to shape the will and dignity of life in the dimness and broadness. As Yan Bing said, “I walked into a new spiritual world at my old haunt. The new feelings and insights took me through the original cognition backward, like walking out of a cloud shadow. Suddenly, everything became clear.”