Background
Yu Hong was born in 1966 in Xian, Shaanxi, China.
Yu Hong studied at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing obtaining a Bachelor degree in 1988.
Yu Hong studied at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing obtaining a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1996.
At the age of 14, Yu Hong began studying oil painting at the attached high school of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
From left, Kan Xuan, Yu Hong, Sun Yuan, Peng Yu, and Qiu Zhijie are in the Guggenheim exhibition “Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World.” The backdrop is Qiu Zhijie’s ink-on-paper “Map of Theater of the World,” commissioned for the show.
Yu Hong and one of her works.
Singer Li Yuchun models for artist Yu Hong.
喻 红
Yu Hong was born in 1966 in Xian, Shaanxi, China.
At the age of 14, Yu Hong began studying oil painting at the attached high school of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and went on to continue her education at the institution, obtaining a Bachelor in 1988 and later Master of Fine Arts degree in 1996. Yu Hong was originally trained in the Social Realist style.
Since 1988 Yu Hong has been a teacher in the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. From the start, she received training in Realist painting, which over time would translate into her own individual aesthetic language. The core subject of Hong’s paintings has always been human nature, and how human beings grow and exist in this society, in this world. Those figures painted down by her brush, express the feelings and self-analysis of people thrown into the reality of society. She works primarily in oil paint but also in pastels, fabric dye on canvas, silk, and resin.
Yu Hong’s recent solo exhibitions include “Garden of Dreams” (2016) at the CAFA Art Museum (Beijing), “Concurrent Realms” (2015) at the Suzhou Museum (Suzhou), “Golden Horizon” (2011) at the Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai) and “Golden Sky” (2010) at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing). Her work was also featured in “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” (2017) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York).
Idol
2018Heaven on Earth
2018Future
2018Youth May Get Confused
2018A Sky of Oneself
2019Symbiosis
2019Wheat, Coal Bricks, and Clay
2018Lumen
2019Sense of Direction
2016Mortal Coll
2016Crossed Boat
2016Lost in Night
2013Deep Pool
2012Fire
2015Earth and Heaven
2014Snapshot
2016Self-portrait
1989New Age
2017Half-Hundred Mirrors No 16
2018Weight
2018Witness to Growth
1996Yu Hong was originally trained in the Social Realist style, itself indebted to traditions of European Realism, but she has developed a unique and intimate visual vocabulary in oil painting that often takes inspiration from her own life and those of her relatives. She witnessed first-hand the development of the contemporary art scene in China after the Reform and Opening-up, as associated with the “New Wave” movement (1985) and the controversial “China/Avant-Garde Exhibition” (1989). Yu Hong’s urge to directly paint the social reality around her linked her to an emerging movement known as the “New Generation”, a group of young artists who broke away from Socialist Realism, focusing on the realistic representation of the mundane and choosing the people that surrounded them as painting subjects.
Yu Hong often uses existing images as a starting point for her practice, taking photographs and her own point of view to create compositions, rearranging them into new combinations emphasizing the objective connotations of memory. Mixing a larger historical perspective with her own personal history, she investigates how pre-existing images can be reused and rearranged into new compositions.
In addition to drawing from Chinese history and Tang dynasty Buddhist paintings, Yu Hong borrows widely from Western painting traditions, from Medieval Gothic Christian painting to Renaissance frescoes.
Quotations:
"Time is truly awe-inspiring to me. It can change almost everything. It can create something from nothing and make something into nothing, transforming the world completely."
"As an artist, all I can do is to offer some discussion through my work on how, as a human being, you can shape your time, and be shaped by time."
“You only need to change your perspective to discover that this world is very unfamiliar.”
She married fellow Chinese contemporary artist Liu Xiaodong in the summer of 1993. They have a daughter.