“I see my canvases as a metaphor for the human condition: feelings of anxiety, turbulence and unpredictability. I love the gesture of compressing passages in my paintings onto such a flat surface. For me, the act of painting helps relieve my own anxiety, too.”
— Fang Yuan
Visually striking and unapologetically bold, the works of Chinese artist Yuan Fang can be understood as the physical representations of memories, emotions, and vulnerability. Now known for her dynamic abstractions, her gestural style explores complex human experiences by transforming such concepts into fluid brushstrokes on canvas. Rejecting the notion that art should carry narrative elements, Fang states ‘[drawing] kind of became my way of escaping from reality. So I think that drawing practice later [became] my painting practice. I don’t want to see anything you can find in reality. So that’s why I paint abstraction.’ i
Featuring bright shades of white, orange and light blue, Battleground 05 is a chaotic jumble of lines and shapes that mirrors Fang’s spontaneous process. Adding black swathes of impasto into each stroke not only highlights the visual contrast of colours, but also embeds the curves with the illusions of movement, mimicking the creeping anxieties and disorder found in daily life. More than a mode of therapy to relieve Fan’s self-estrangement, her work can be considered an open invitation to the viewer, beckoning them to join the turbulent yet ebullient journey of self-discovery.
Born in 1996 in Shenzhen, Fang is currently living and working in New York City. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts MFA programme in 2022, where she was awarded the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award for Exceptional Achievement. Her work has been exhibited at multiple solo shows such as Stratospheres (2023), Half Gallery, New York, Yuan Fang: Expanse (2022), Bill Brady Gallery, Los Angeles and Yuan Fang: Emptiness and Mirror (2021), Hive Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing.
The artist in her studio
i Yuan Fang, quoted in Keith Estiler, ‘Hypeart Visits: Yuan Fang’, Hypebeast, 3 May 2023, online
Provenance
ATM Gallery, New York Private Collection, China Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
New York, ATM Gallery, Battleground, 24 March - 1 May 2022