YUAN YUNSHENG

As the first retrospective exhibition of Yuan Yunsheng since his passing, the exhibition is curated by his son, Yuan Ye. Focusing on the artist’s works from 1978 to 1987, it brings together a selection of his line drawings, prints, ink and color paintings, oil paintings, sketches, and mixed-media works, tracing his artistic explorations across the distinct cultural contexts of China and the United States. The exhibition is both a revisiting of this formative decade in the artist’s practice and a process of rediscovery shaped by the perspective of a family member, grounded in artworks and personal memories. Through this interweaving of artistic legacy and intimate recollection, the exhibition invites viewers to encounter the enduring threads that run throughout Yuan Yunsheng’s artistic practice.

Memory · Line — Yuan Yunsheng, 1978–1987

Curatorial Essay by Yuan Ye

Since my father passed away, I have spent a great deal of time sorting through what he left behind. Ink line drawings (baimiao), Prints, Ink-and-color paintings, Oil paintings, Sketches, Written exchanges—stack after stack, spread across the room until there was barely any space left to stand. At first, I tried arranging everything chronologically, but soon realized that this simply wouldn’t work, as the works had not come into being in chronological order.Some lines ran all the way from Yunnan to New York; others took a turn at the edge of a printmaker’s blade; still others lay hidden beneath the brushstrokes of oil paintings, almost impossible to find unless you looked closely.

The exhibition is called Memory · Line. The two words simply came to me as I was sorting through his things. Remembering is what I am doing now; the line is what he had been working with all along. I cannot claim that these two words can sum him up, but at least they give me a way to keep talking about him.

My father, Yuan Yunsheng, has been discussed in many different ways. The most common account divides his career into two halves: first he painted Yunnan, then he turned to abstraction, with a dividing line called “going abroad” drawn between them. It is a convenient narrative, but the more I look at these works, the less convincing I find it. Before leaving for the United States in 1982, he had already traveled through northwestern China, written Return, O Soul, and produced a substantial body of ink line drawings in Xishuangbanna. He did not arrive in New York empty-handed, searching for a direction. He brought with him a way of seeing that had already become ingrained in his hand, and there it underwent a kind of stress test.

This exhibition, therefore, does not set out to tell another story of “stylistic transformation.” I want to talk about the line. For him, line was never merely a matter of what appeared on paper. In Baimiao, once a brushstroke is made, it cannot be undone. In printmaking, once a cut is made, it cannot be undone. In oil painting, the line may not be visible on the surface at all. It may be concealed in the direction of a brushstroke, the boundary between colors, or a shift in structure. The handwritten characters in his written exchanges are lines too—the traces left behind by thought. Only by looking at these things together can we understand why, when he arrived in America and began working on such a large scale, with gestures of such speed, his hand still retained its power of judgment.

The exhibition begins before Yunnan, with just a small selection of earlier brush sketches and manuscripts. They establish one thing: line, as a means of understanding the world, was already present before Yunnan. Yunnan was not a sudden discovery, but rather the moment when a long-established line erupted with extraordinary intensity. From there, the exhibition moves to the Ink line drawings made in Xishuangbanna and Lincang, presented alongside prints and oil paintings. What I hope visitors will see is not simply “which ethnic groups he depicted,” but how line itself performs the act of seeing—the center of gravity in a posture, the direction of a fold in clothing, the way a plant grows. He later described the use of empty space and deliberate omission in Baimiao as “pure drawing.” This is an idea worth taking seriously. It pulls the Chinese tradition of line out of the category of “national form” and places it within the realm of how we perceive and understand form. The prints and oil paintings are not here as supporting material. They are here to demonstrate that this line can still hold its ground beyond paper.

The next section covers his years in America, focusing primarily on sketch-like works and mixed media, with only one or two large-scale pieces included to provide context. This is the period most easily interpreted as a “turn toward abstraction.” I would rather ask the question in reverse: beneath those seemingly uncontrolled fields of ink, does the judgment cultivated through Baimiao—the conviction that once a stroke is made, it cannot be undone—still remain? Visitors can look for the answer themselves.

I want to emphasize this again: the central concern of his Baimiao was not the decorative representation of ethnic-minority customs, but the ability of line to capture form and growth. That is also why, in selecting works, I have favored structure and movement over festive scenes.

Memory · Line is not an attempt to prove that he was “deeply rooted in tradition.” Roots cannot be established through declarations. They must be demonstrated through choices within the works themselves—choices that can be examined with one’s own eyes. The decade from 1978 to 1987 happens to have left us enough evidence.

Since my father passed away, these works have become neither more significant nor any less weighty. They remain what they have always been. There are marks left by blades, traces of ink, revisions, hesitations, and things he had no time to explain at the moment his hand moved. What I can do is place them before viewers once more, and let the lines continue to speak.

If my father were still here, he would probably think I had said too much.