Yu Youhan, 2018 10-4, 230x302cm, Acrylic on canvas, 2018.
From March 14 through to July 10, 2025, Shenzhen Art Museum presents Youhan and Yu Youhan: Yu Youhan's Early Experience and Late Style at Hall 10 &11. Curated by Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu, the exhibition is organized by Shenzhen Art Museum and co-organized by YING Center for Contemporary Art. With over 100 artworks and rich documentation spanning Yu’s oeuvre over half a century, it is the first large retrospective of Yu Youhan, the Chinese abstractionist-turned-pop artist since his decease in 2023.
Holding Mr. Yu Youhan's solo exhibition is precisely an important move by the Shenzhen Art Museum in sorting out the art context and promoting the development of contemporary art. The exhibition seeks to reveal the conceptual underpinnings of his stylistic evolution by fostering a dialogue between his early practice and his later one. It also aims to establish an intertextual connection between the artist’s personal trajectory and the development of Chinese contemporary art in terms of their intellectual undercurrents.
Yu Youhan, Figures and Porcelain, Acrylic on canvas, 90x110cm x2, 2000-2001
Yu Youhan, 1980-1, 39.5x54cm, Oil on paper, 1980
Born in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1943, Yu Youhan passed away in 2023. His artistic life traversed across several tumultuous periods in the historical course of contemporary art in China. His art emerged from a period of the society characterized by dramatic shifts and he subtly translated his reflections on life and culture into his works. In his later years, he fully digested and reactivated his early creative experiences. As a result, his late works appeared to be constantly changing, flexible, fluid, and tranquil.
Yu once summarized the factors that shaped his art as such,“On the one hand, they might be the emotional stimulations brought about by society itself; on the other hand, they might be trends in global contemporary art; and furthermore, they might be the influence of local historical and reality issues. I painted the collisions among the three.”This general description can encompass nearly every stage of his works, which vary considerably in forms and subject matters.
Yu Youhan, 1983-11, 108×78cm, Acrylic on paper, 1983
Yu Youhan, 1986 06, 160x130cm, Acrylic on canvas, 1986
Yu Youhan, 1991 19, 77x77cm, Acrylic on canvas, 1991
This exhibition depicts Yu's creative life through two mutually reinforcing spectrums: his early experience and his later style. His early experiences include post-impressionist landscape paintings in the 70s, his exploration of modernist forms in the 1980s, which culminated with the “Circles” series, under the influence of Cultural Fever of the time. As to his later styles, which were formed from 2002 to his last days, he continued to re-project the experiences he had accumulated through previous stages, ultimately delivering a relaxed and natural “late style” that transcended time while releasing the joys and discoveries of his early years. As early as in 1983, Yu Youhan recognized in Picasso's art the quality of infinite variations both in various stages of his practice and in every single part of his painting, colors differing in edges and lines varying in ending points. He thus held himself up to such a standard. It’s this self-expectation that can unify all of Yu's later inventions.
Yu Youhan, 2013 12 31, 247x207cm, Acrylic on canvas, 2013
Yu Youhan, 2019 3-6, 107x160cm, Acrylic on canvas, 2019
Yu Youhan, 2019 3-6, 107x160cm, Acrylic on canvas, 2019
From “Youhan” to “Yu Youhan,”it is a journey that encapsulates an artist's continuous growth and self-expansion. Decades of contemplation and exploration in art empowers Yu’s works with unsurpassed breadth and depth, offering a rich legacy for the art world. Yu Youhan's practice proves such a point: in art, the search for artistic creation within oneself can go all the way to the end.
The Shenzhen Art Museum is the oldest art institution in Shenzhen， with the motto of "rooted in the local, facing the global; anchored in the present, looking to the future", the museum has witnessed and borne the historical development of Shenzhen's art, constructed the context of modern Chinese art, and actively fulfilled multiple roles as a disseminator of Chinese art, an observer of contemporary art, a comber of the art context, and a constructor of urban culture.
About the Artist
Portrait of Yu Youhan (Photo by Yu Yu)
Yu Youhan was born in 1943 in Shanghai, where he continues to live till his death in 2023. He graduated from the Central Academy of Art and Design, Beijing in 1973.
One of the most important and influential artists in China, Yu Youhan’s artistic practice dates back to the 1970s, while the 1980s is widely considered the beginning of Chinese contemporary art. As a leading pioneer of Chinese abstract painting and political pop movement, Yu's oeuvre combines multiple perspectives, investigating the structure of cultural identity in China through various pictorial techniques. His paintings—ubiquitous yet intriguing—has had a major impact on the art scene, and inspired a younger generation of artists.
Yu represented China at the 22nd São Paulo Biennale, Brazil (1994), the 45th Venice Biennale (1993) and the 1st Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (1993). His works have been presented in numerous prestigious venues worldwide, including YU Youhan: Eternal and Ever-changing, G Museum, Nanjing (2022); Cycle · Freedom: Yu Youhan’s Abstract Works in the 2010s, ShanghART, Beijing (2020); The Representational and The Abstract, The Long Museum, Chongqing (2018); Shanghai Beat - The Dynamism of Contemporary Art Scene in Shanghai, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan (2018); Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A. (2017); Yu Youhan: The Representational and The Abstract, ShanghART, Shanghai (2017); Yu Youhan Retrospective, PSA China Contemporary Art Collection Series, Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2016); YU Youhan 1973-1988, Long Museum (West Bund), Shanghai (2016); Yu Youhan's Paintings, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2011); Out of Shanghai, Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst, Otterndorf, Germany (2009); Writing on the Wall: Chinese New Realism and Avant-Garde in the Eighties and Nineties, Groninger Museum, The Netherlands (2008); Yu Youhan: Landscape of Yi Meng Shan, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2004); Chine, le corps partout? (China, the body everywhere?), Museum of Contemporary Art, Marseilles, France (2004); Ah! Us, ShanghART Fuxing Park, Shanghai (1999); China/Avant-Garde Art Exhibition, National Art Museum of China, Beijing (1989) etc.
Courtesy of ShanghART.
About the Exhibition
Youhan and Yu Youhan: Yu Youhan's Early Experience and Late Style
Curators: Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu
Dates: March 14 – July 10, 2025
Venue: Hall 10 & 11, 3F, Shenzhen Art Museum
Organizer: Shenzhen Art Museum
Co-organizer: YING Center For Contemporary Art
Exhibition Planner: Wang Xinni, Zhao Jianying
Courtesy of Shenzhen Art Museum.
