Li Yan (artist)
Li Yan is an oil painting artist, born in Jilin, China in 1977, who lives and works in Beijing, China.
Accident Series
Li Yan put on a series of paintings called his Accident Series at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The actual names of the acrylic paintings were Accident No. 5 and Accident No. 6. "Approaching painting as a forensic activity, Li's works are comprised of groups of small canvases to reconstruct disaster scenes as elaborate narratives."
The main point of Li Yan’s accident series is to show the microcosmic power of violence in an individual setting. When disaster is portrayed as a whole, Li Yan feels that much of what actually happens is lost to the viewer. For instance, when a news helicopter flies over a burnt down area of a town, the whole picture of the town just looks chaotic, and the viewer only gets a sense of a town burning down. When Li Yan takes a giant disaster, and paints individual parts of the disaster, he feels the actually expression of disaster is portrayed in a better way to the viewer.
Yan will paint something as large as the giant disaster itself, but then also something as small as a room where things have been pushed to the floor. With the combination of these elements, the viewer can almost put themselves in the shoes of someone who is at the actual scene.
Solo exhibitions
- 2007 Accident，Platform China，Beijing
- 2008 Quotidian Truths -Paintings by LiYan, Moronokiang Gallery, Los Angeles
- 2009 Snippet, Yamamoto Gendai Gallery, Tokyo
- 2010 Accidents, Galerie Ling, Berlin
- 2011 The Catastrophic World -A Chinese paints our age, Ling Gallery, Berlin
Selected Exhibitions
- 2002 Graduation Exhibition of Eight Fine Arts Academies，Hexiangning Art Museum，Shenzhen
- 2004 Zhen Xing Northeast Industry District Fine Arts Exhibition，Liaoning Art Museum，Shenyang
- 2004 The 10th National Fine Arts Exhibition—Oil Painting Exhibition, Guangdong Art Museum，Guangdong
- 2005 The Second Chengdu Biennale, Chengdu Contemporary Art Museum, Chengdu
- 2007 First Venice Cyber Biennale
- 2007 Beijing Lightning Factory First Exhibition, Beijing lightning factory
- 2008 <Self—experience> Young Artists Group Show, Platform China Beijing
- 2008 China trifft Berlin, Emerson Gallery, Berlin
- 2008 Fear, Wedel Fine Art, London
- 2008 The Revolution Continues: New Art From China, Saatchi Gallery, London
- 2009 CHINA URBAN, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland
References
- "Li Yan - Artist's Profile". http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk.
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