The Earth, tiny as the egg of a pigeon,
gently I picked it up and place it in my heart.
Ye Yongqing, is known as Chief Ye, was born in 1958 in Yunnan. He has to fly over the world constantly since 1997 because he is a founder of an art space, curator, art critics, agent, urban planner, etc. Ye Yongqing uses “slow scribble” as a reverse way of thinking; he draws magnified and distorted bird in detailed however abstract lines.
At this exhibition, Ye Yongqing is like a migratory bird crossing the Tropic of Cancer. He goes through the imaginary line. In March, the peach blossom season, he departs from Yunnan, the homeland of peacocks as well as where the ancient trade routes of tea and horse pass, to Hulien, the end of the continent and Eurasian plate. Seeing the overwhelming, splendid Qingshui Cliff, the Coastal Range’s farm and the Nature’s magnificent Pacific Ocean make him feel some familiar and strange sorrow at the same time. He plants his one foot on the tropical zone and the other on the subtropical zone. The changing scenery riches his dramatic life. Ye Yongqing reverses logic, paints his artwork as embroidery totems in a slowly but delicate way and which is just consistent with Ye's great variety--going through easily between his literati nobility and sarcastic life.
The Tropic of Cancer marks the line where the northern latitude of 23.5 degrees rests, signifying the geographic distinction, climatic difference, and mysterious powers. Perhaps it's his flying from Yunnan to Taiwan, experiencing a starlit journey, Ye's recent works has grand sight and unlimited thinking which is responding to the gully and vision from his heart. Different from the former simplest dull birds on the unadorned canvas, at this exhibition Ye Yongqing will present his works in which the figures are more deliberate, the lines are more powerful and feeling. The free but abstract background, soft as a dream as if a migratory bird fluttering across mountains and rivers could hear the roaring wind and surging spray, swiftly stands out the rich levels of color-inked fish and bird. Unexpectedly, the elegant disposition could compete with the brilliant peacock with golden background.
“A sleepless bird, failed to resist the temptation of the night, flies into the dark sky.” Birds are not birds flying in the cloud and mist; absolutely solitary but variable big bird composes Ye's creation axis to conversation with the times. There are realistic difficulty within the seemingly free scribble and literati's metaphor. Here see a combination of patterns of the Southern School, addressing the moderation of techniques, and the intervention of mechanical reproduction. In the distorted structure of the picture, he emphasizes the details of raggedness. It is Ye’s skillful roaming of Southern-School ink painting, a work of practice by a craftsman. His art is casual but sensitively creative; it’s also mindful and rational. He makes sketch with such ultra realism, that it enters the shrine of contemporary art.
Ye arrives at many different countries, and leaves again, along by Tropic of Cancer. His mind is on the wing ever since. Time and space for him are on the wing too. He flies to Song Dynasty or even the universe with offhand creation in his painting. Huizong is known as the Emperor of Song Dynasty, his bird paintings are elegant and glorious. And those paintings become Ye’s graffiti of kingfishers that are filled with formal but abstract line structures. Suddenly he flies back to the present to define this world with common everyday things surrounding around. No concern for those love affairs, he approaches the other side of logic, such as the more and the less, complexity and simplicity, the slow and the fast, the big and the small, the elegant and the vulgar, rational and poetic in between. Even though every scenery along flies away, many images are still lingering on his mind. So those living parts and fragmentary regularities on the paintings are like superficiality of all time, soft as a song, as if unmindful, but to purposely compose a suite of mortal world.
“Nothing brought me the drive to paint more than the joy from sketching with yellow dirt bricks on the muddy ground. The woods under a cloudy day, or the sunset glow burning at the shore of Kunming Lake, would give me similar impulses.” If there is no original graffit in his childhood, there will be no Ye's escaping from the present life and drunk into the romance of flowering shrubs. His free maturity stroke and free willfulness couldn't be covered are like a transparent mirror which is the reflection of real spirit and is the forward and instinct in art. “If life does not mesmerize you then it is not life; life would be nothing” The benevolence of time does not lie in eternity, but the moment of encounter. Ye's encounter is not just the lyrical stroke of art but his content with the reality in life.
It is a ferry that crosses the time and space. Ye Yongqing's paintings are made from his endless strides; the far he goes, the road goes marvelous. The Earth becomes as tiny as the egg of a pigeon, then Ye Yongqing looks at the grand sight!
About the exhibition
Duration: Jan 17 - March 22, 2015
Venue: Metaphysical Art Gallery
Courtesy of the artist and Metaphysical Art Gallery.
