Archive for June 14th, 2007
Watercolors of Yan Pei-Ming
Yesterday, I stepped into David Zwirner not expecting to see anything exciting, but as I turned the corner of the initial gallery, I was taken aback by the gigantic, beautiful watercolors of Yan Pei-Ming. The first gallery had one huge oil painting, which had good energy, but wasn’t anything particularly exciting, but the 5 by 9 foot watercolors on paper organized in grids that gave them context and even greater heroic scale than the individual oil paintings are great!
Part of what I love about these are the exact draftsmanship from a distance and the abstraction formed by the droplets and pools of watercolor as one approaches the paintings.
I think that painting is most exciting when abstraction is collapsed into graphic representation to create rich textures which these watercolors accomplish.
I also enjoy new takes on portraiture that present political or social undertones, in this case reflections of social and civic power. Yan Pei-Mings paintings at David Zwirner come down this weekend.