Thierry Goldberg is pleased to present Somnambulist, an online exhibition of paintings by Yifan Qian. The exhibition will run from May 24 to June 7, 2024.
Yifan Qian captures moments of personal distress through a working process that is both captivating and immersive. Infused with an otherworldly sense of color and space, Qian transforms washed-out, cool tones into raw expressions of melancholy and wonder. The resulting compositions evoke a dreamlike ambiance, bridging the gap between the artist's psyche and the audience's perception, while inviting the viewer into her experiences of heartache and loss.
Somnambulist emerges as a mesmerizing body of work where Qian's brush dances with the elusive specter of sorrow, filtered through the surreal prism of memory. Each panel serves as a portal to an ethereal dimension, where planetary bodies waltz amidst the flickering static of television screens, encapsulating the ephemeral stillness of moments past. With a deft hand, Qian delicately weaves layers of pigment, crafting textured portraits that beckon the viewer to engage in a delicate dance of empathy and introspection.
Qian's self-portraits create lingering visions of woe: the large, unblinking eyes of each portrait gently but insistently command the viewer’s attention and empathy. In Eevee II, 2023, Qian’s penetrating stare locks onto the observer, drawing them into a world where a cartoonishly cloudy sky juxtaposes her somber, haunted countenance, darkened by blue, bruise-like shadows.
Qian’s studies of her own emotions take on a more fanciful form in the eponymous painting of the exhibition. Somnambulist, 2024, depicts a television hovering in a celestial void. On the screen, her enigmatic portrait is tinted by the color test bars of a signal-less channel.
In a similarly fantastical turn, Untitled, 2023, contains a doll’s-room-like box, finished with a tiled floor and vertically striped wallpaper. The upper half of Qian’s face rests on top of the box, bisected beneath the weight of her own contemplation, inviting viewers into a whimsical realm where the boundaries of reality and imagination blur seamlessly.
Qian peculiar self portraits explore the boundaries of the surreal while simultaneously delving into the emotional depths of her personal struggle with psychic angst. Through the intricate interplay of symbolism and introspection, Somnambulist becomes a haunting meditation on the fragility of perception and the elusive nature of memory.
Yifan Qian (b. 1996, Zhejiang, China) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA in Fine Art from The Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, and a BA from Zhejiang sci-tech University, Hangzhou, China. This is her first exhibition.