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Lot Essay
“Everyday life is ordinary, yet it reveals itself in a ‘new’ light in painting.” —Xia Yu
During his university years, Xia Yu came across tempera and became obsessed with the medium that dates back to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Tempera reached its zenith during the Renaissance, and it was employed by masters such as Titian and Rembrandt in subsequent eras. Tempera paint is thin and transparent, and it is applied in layers with meticulous precision, akin to a meditative practice that requires a considerable amount of time and effort. Xia Yu uses tempera as a medium for self-expression, allowing light to float and settle on the canvas, conjuring up everyday scenes observed and envisaged by the artist. While employing a classical medium from Western art history, Xia Yu grounds his work in traditional Chinese aesthetics, creating a jade-like haziness, ethereality, and clarity in his painting.
Picking Up Files was first exhibited in Xia Yu’s solo exhibition Subjunctive Mood in Shenzhen in 2019. The work depicts a seemingly ordinary scene of labour, yet it resounds with a sense of conflict. Dressed in suits, the characters are bent over, squatting or kneeling, picking up scattered pieces of paper from the floor as if forced into submission. It brings to mind Millet’s The Gleaners, as the conflict between peasants and landowners in Millet’s painting is transformed into the hidden hierarchical tensions within the urban machine. The characters in the painting are silent, yet their suppressed and fragmented feelings diffuse like light, spilling beyond the canvas. The viewers are gripped by these overflowing emotions, skirting between helplessness, resentment, grievance, and numbness, as we are unconsciously triggered by these sentiments of contemporary life. In utilizing the attributes of tempera, the artist uses rubbing and polishing techniques to create blanks in the composition, constructing a scene with a digital vibe that is reminiscent of a glitching digital screen. These blank “glitches” blur the boundary between the real and the virtual; they offer a breathing space for both the viewer and the characters in the painting, while evoking a complex and atmospheric vision.
During his university years, Xia Yu came across tempera and became obsessed with the medium that dates back to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Tempera reached its zenith during the Renaissance, and it was employed by masters such as Titian and Rembrandt in subsequent eras. Tempera paint is thin and transparent, and it is applied in layers with meticulous precision, akin to a meditative practice that requires a considerable amount of time and effort. Xia Yu uses tempera as a medium for self-expression, allowing light to float and settle on the canvas, conjuring up everyday scenes observed and envisaged by the artist. While employing a classical medium from Western art history, Xia Yu grounds his work in traditional Chinese aesthetics, creating a jade-like haziness, ethereality, and clarity in his painting.
Picking Up Files was first exhibited in Xia Yu’s solo exhibition Subjunctive Mood in Shenzhen in 2019. The work depicts a seemingly ordinary scene of labour, yet it resounds with a sense of conflict. Dressed in suits, the characters are bent over, squatting or kneeling, picking up scattered pieces of paper from the floor as if forced into submission. It brings to mind Millet’s The Gleaners, as the conflict between peasants and landowners in Millet’s painting is transformed into the hidden hierarchical tensions within the urban machine. The characters in the painting are silent, yet their suppressed and fragmented feelings diffuse like light, spilling beyond the canvas. The viewers are gripped by these overflowing emotions, skirting between helplessness, resentment, grievance, and numbness, as we are unconsciously triggered by these sentiments of contemporary life. In utilizing the attributes of tempera, the artist uses rubbing and polishing techniques to create blanks in the composition, constructing a scene with a digital vibe that is reminiscent of a glitching digital screen. These blank “glitches” blur the boundary between the real and the virtual; they offer a breathing space for both the viewer and the characters in the painting, while evoking a complex and atmospheric vision.