Juxtapoz Magazine – Mark Yang is Having a “Lucid Dream” in London

Numerous Smaller Fires presents an exhibition of new paintings by American painter, Mark Yang, at No. 9 Cork Street, London, on look at right until November 26thThe exhibition, Lucid Dream, represents the artist’s first European exhibition, and the very first exhibition of his operates on paper. The artist was born in Seoul, South Korea. He grew up in California, and life and works in New York.

Mark Yang paints the determine but isn’t intrigued in making narratives. In its place, he utilizes the human body as a conceptual leaping-off issue to check out how we entwine, interact with, and read through other human beings.

Yang renders his types in an idiosyncratic, angular, graphically stylized method, treating human body pieces as sculptures to be painted. His palette is composed of darkish purples, acid greens, brilliant pops of yellow, orange, and crimson. He makes use of fluid gestures and undulating traces to create entangled, mysterious, uneven compositions that really don’t right away give absent the plot.

Frequently, the viewer can not discern which limb is related to which entire body. Gratuitous legs wrap close to a one butt whilst various arms writhe in a tangled mass. These nonsensical knots talk volumes through type, human body language, and other visible codes unique to human beings.

Yang generally avoids depicting faces in favor of ambiguity and a sluggish visible examine. When faces do look, they normally sleep… or slumber eternally. Yang paints what he is familiar with, making use of himself as a quotidian design. His figures – male, female, and gender neutral – serve as intellectual clay for their maker, not sexualized amusements. In fact, he exaggerates male nipples, turning them into official things, which resemble eyes and “look” back again at the viewer.

For his Cork Avenue exhibition, Yang grapples with quite a few new themes. He considers the magical system of creating new everyday living, in Yeondu and Lucid Desire. He continues deciphering canonical will work such as Mantegna’s Lamentation of Christ, Michelangelo’s Battle of the Centaurs and Bartolini’s The Demidoff Desk. At last, in Anterior (evening) and Posterior (night time), Yang explores the spectre of the pandemic, as perfectly as other latest earth situations that have brought us illustrations or photos further than comprehension.

Human body language can be ambiguous, as can individuals. At the finish of the working day, Yang’s paintings check out the complexities and worries of comprehending other human beings – a conceptual puzzle most of us confront on a daily foundation.