Hat Series : Cat Woman

Yue Minjun's cloned laughing pink figures are instantly recognizable, and are icons of Chinese Contemporary art. Mixing Warholian pop aesthetics with the uniformity of propagandist posters, the laughing face has been serialised in sculpture, watercolour and prints. The idea behind them came from a painting the artist saw by Geng Jianyi at an art show in Beijing in 1989, which depicted Geng's own laughing face. While Yue is often classified as part of the Chinese "Cynical Realist" movement, Yue himself is reluctant to take on such label. His art is a light-hearted approach to philosophical enquiry and meditation on the absurdity of contemporary Life. The art critic Li Xianting once noted that Yue's works are, "K.a self-ironic response to the spiritual vacuum and folly of modern day China."
Hat Series - Cat Woman (Lot 513) is part of the Hat series which the artist began in 2004. The Hats series was inspired by the olive wreaths medal-winners adorned at the Athens Olympics in 2004. According to the artist hats symbolizes personal identity, social status, nationality, and ethnic identity. For him the series is about a "sense of the absurdity of the ideas that govern the sociopolitical protocol surrounding hats." In Hat Series - Cat Woman, Yue continues to make use of his laughing face motif while wearing the black leather mask of the Cat woman. Cat woman is a fictional character derived from the popular series of comic books and movie franchise Batman. She is a super villainess who is characteristically in black leather body suit and the whip is her chosen weapon. She is a cool super hero with killer instincts, however, when her mask is put onto Yue's pink grinning face, the effect is farcical and ironic. Combined with the directness of the pop art aesthetics, Hat Series - Cat Woman is succinct in its visual impact.