胶囊上海｜闫欣悦：夏日迷雾
城市的声音微弱，风儿不敢紧绷它的琴弦，城市的面孔洋洋得意，如同儿童正在为夜晚准备梦想，要把椅子交给清晨。
——阿多尼斯，《沙漠》
The city’s voice was too tender, even the winds would not tune its strings. The city’s face beamed like a child arranging his dreams for nightfall, bidding the morning to sit beside him on his chair.
–– Adonis, Desert
As a young artist, Yan Xinyue continuously dedicates her creativity to exploring painting through in-depth investigations of a scope of different themes. From office workers in suits and deformed motorbikes, to figures wandering the streets, Yan resituates moments of struggle and anxiety within a dramatized setting, infusing them with a dose of innocent playfulness and romantic imagination. Underlying the dream-like image is an orchestrated process of emotional reverse; through her treatment of colors, lines, light, and space, she invites viewers to revisit moments from her life. Released from the weight and tedium of everyday reality, the viewer empathizes with the artist by experiencing her visions in the familiar context of the city.
When comparing painting with literature, Yan’s works are like short stories that dichotomize the metropolis with personal everyday life experiences. Free of the restraint of serial works, she embraces intuitive moments of inspiration, exploring the possibilities of painting without constraint or fear. Surprises hide in the details that the artist carefully arranges: in the Heartbroken Motorbike series, cords exposed from the fractured motorbike resemble fluttering blood vessels. The vibrant colors transform a brutal car accident into a joyful moment of motorbike’s strike and rest. In Hold On #1 and “Mother” (Edmund in Cormio), the juxtaposition of a pink color block, exotic leopard print, and snakeskin creates a sense of conflict. In her recent works painted in 2020, Yan started to experiment with painting waterdrops scattered in the foreground, diluting the sense of melancholy with a playful and lively tinge.
闫欣悦 Yan Xinyue | 西西弗里在2020 Sysyphus in 2020 | 2020 | 布面油画 oil on canvas | 50 x 42 cm
However, unlike short stories, Yan’s paintings do not formulate specific narratives, but rather depict fleeting gestures and emotions in the moment. More precisely, her paintings, rooted in her imagination and reproduction of urban life, blend observation with memory and fiction, and reflect the artist’s Proustian way of thinking and the complexity of reality and human emotions. Noteworthy is Yan’s highly stylized treatment of edges and background. Fluxes of saturated colors render the image with a psychedelic sense of motion; the subject shades onto the background – lines and edges are blurred using different techniques of brushing, highlighting, overlay and dripping – shrouding the canvas with an obscure and mysterious haze, and taking on an aura unreplicable in the electronic age.
关于艺术家 ABOUT THE ARTIST
闫欣悦（1992年出生于黑龙江，成长在广东）目前⼯作⽣活于上海。她于2018年取得⽐利时安特卫普皇家美术学院（Royal Academy of Fine Art Antwerp）绘画专业的硕⼠学位。
闫欣悦的个人展览包括胶囊上海的“夏日迷雾”（2020，中国上海），群展包括在胶囊上海（2019，中国上海），荷兰Kunstpodium T画廊（2019，荷兰提尔堡），A+亚洲当代艺术空间（2019，中国上海），De Brakke Grond弗拉芒文化中⼼（2018，荷兰阿姆斯特丹），巴黎艺术城（2017，法国巴黎）等。
Yan Xinyue (b.1992) is a Chinese artist who currently lives and works in Shanghai. She graduated from Royal Academy of Fine Art Antwerp (Belgium) with a MFA in painting in 2018.
Yan Xinyue’s exhibitions include solo exhibition "Summer Mist" at Capsule Shanghai (2020, Shanghai, China), group exhibitions at Kunstpodium T (2019, Tilburg, Netherland), Capsule Shanghai (2019, Shanghai, China), A+ Contemporary (2019, Shanghai, China ), De Brakke Grond - Flemish Cultural Center (2018, Amsterdam, Netherland) and Cité internationale des arts (2017, Paris, France).
画廊观展需要至少提前一天通过下方的胶囊上海小程序预约👇，预约通道将在8月9日开放。如有造成不便，我们深表歉意。
The gallery is open by appointment only. Please make a reservation at least one day prior to your visit via the mini-program below👇. The booking system will open on August 9. Thank you for your support!