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Lot Essay
In the summer of 2012, Yuan Yuan spent three months living in rural Scotland as part of an artist residency program hosted by the Glenfiddich whisky distillery near Dufftown. “The little town only had about a thousand or so residents, and two thousand animals,” recalls Yuan in an interview with Artforum Magazine. “Living in the town for three months there was a very complete sense of quiet.” As an outsider to the sleepy village in which he found himself, the works Yuan produced that summer highlight the region’s strong sense of local history while exploring themes of time, abandonment, and decay in his depictions of architectural space, deriving inspiration from the unique scenes and structures he encountered in the Scottish countryside.
This monumental diptych, entitled Elgin Station (Lot 18), is the largest of the dozen or so works exhibited after Yuan Yuan’s return to China in the fall of 2012. Its subject is an abandoned train station, located about 25 km from the area where Yuan Yuan was living during his summer residency. Built in the early 1850s, Elgin Station welcomed travellers for over a hundred years before being shut down in 1968, due to disuse after train lines stopped running through the area. Yuan’s painting focuses on the station’s Victorian glass roof, painting the dilapidated glass and metal with extraordinary sensitivity. Cracks, holes, and the layered streaks of dirt and discoloration that have accumulated over the decades are all captured in meticulous detail, brought into sharp relief by the luminous violet-blue of the sky that can be glimpsed beyond.
Elgin Station represents a unique departure from many of Yuan Yuan’s other works, which often depict the full depths of an interior space. Here, the artist has chosen to frame the work as if we are looking upwards at just one small section of roofing, filling the whole canvas with large oblong blocks of colour. The piece tends remarkably towards the abstract, and at first glance the composition recalls the geometric works of hard-edge abstractionists or colour field painters. By painting the simple struts of metal and glass in this way, Yuan showcases the transcendental qualities of his subject, maximizing the impact of the structure on the viewer’s own understanding of time and space.
By capturing the beauty of abandoned places, Yuan’s oeuvre highlights the human activity that once took place within these structures, and the deliberate thought that went into their design and construction. “I am trying my best to identify the residual traces left behind,” says Yuan. “Not so much what the place has now, but rather what this place used to be for a long time, which no one can take away and cannot be seen.” The effect is one of intense nostalgia for a past time and place, felt through the lens of the artist’s own experience and memory. Close examination of Elgin Station reveals a subtle blurring of lines and boundaries, reminiscent of the early works by Gerhardt Richter that were based directly off of old historical photographs. Like Richter, Yuan Yuan’s paintings blend the real and the imaginary, reflecting the haziness of memories in one’s own mind.
Though the styles and locations of the interiors that Yuan depicts in his oeuvre vary widely, they all allude to the imperfection of individual memory, and the heightened profundity of viewing these spaces through the lens of the artist’s own perceived experience. By choosing to highlight the quiet elegance of a hundred-and-fifty year old structure that most would deride as derelict junk, Yuan highlights the inevitable passing of time as it affects the built environment that we create around us, constructing his own version of time and place from his own imagination and memory.
This monumental diptych, entitled Elgin Station (Lot 18), is the largest of the dozen or so works exhibited after Yuan Yuan’s return to China in the fall of 2012. Its subject is an abandoned train station, located about 25 km from the area where Yuan Yuan was living during his summer residency. Built in the early 1850s, Elgin Station welcomed travellers for over a hundred years before being shut down in 1968, due to disuse after train lines stopped running through the area. Yuan’s painting focuses on the station’s Victorian glass roof, painting the dilapidated glass and metal with extraordinary sensitivity. Cracks, holes, and the layered streaks of dirt and discoloration that have accumulated over the decades are all captured in meticulous detail, brought into sharp relief by the luminous violet-blue of the sky that can be glimpsed beyond.
Elgin Station represents a unique departure from many of Yuan Yuan’s other works, which often depict the full depths of an interior space. Here, the artist has chosen to frame the work as if we are looking upwards at just one small section of roofing, filling the whole canvas with large oblong blocks of colour. The piece tends remarkably towards the abstract, and at first glance the composition recalls the geometric works of hard-edge abstractionists or colour field painters. By painting the simple struts of metal and glass in this way, Yuan showcases the transcendental qualities of his subject, maximizing the impact of the structure on the viewer’s own understanding of time and space.
By capturing the beauty of abandoned places, Yuan’s oeuvre highlights the human activity that once took place within these structures, and the deliberate thought that went into their design and construction. “I am trying my best to identify the residual traces left behind,” says Yuan. “Not so much what the place has now, but rather what this place used to be for a long time, which no one can take away and cannot be seen.” The effect is one of intense nostalgia for a past time and place, felt through the lens of the artist’s own experience and memory. Close examination of Elgin Station reveals a subtle blurring of lines and boundaries, reminiscent of the early works by Gerhardt Richter that were based directly off of old historical photographs. Like Richter, Yuan Yuan’s paintings blend the real and the imaginary, reflecting the haziness of memories in one’s own mind.
Though the styles and locations of the interiors that Yuan depicts in his oeuvre vary widely, they all allude to the imperfection of individual memory, and the heightened profundity of viewing these spaces through the lens of the artist’s own perceived experience. By choosing to highlight the quiet elegance of a hundred-and-fifty year old structure that most would deride as derelict junk, Yuan highlights the inevitable passing of time as it affects the built environment that we create around us, constructing his own version of time and place from his own imagination and memory.