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Lot Essay
You Jin’s act of painting is like climbing up a floating staircase. Every choice of colour or line that he makes resembles a challenge against the existing self – with each step taken, the next step of the stairs is born out of heart, and all blends into a harmonious unison. The canvas is a mirror to the artist’s exploration of his inner world, as it reflects the many emotions of life from the centre of the tremendous composition.
At the centre of Not That Story is a floating staircase that ascends through the clouds against a boundless horizon, an entry for the viewer into this spritual palace. The staircase becomes narrower on the way up, like an infinite bridge that extends upwards. It leads the soul into different realms, giving a unique spiritual nuance to the transcendence of time. At the end of the film The Truman Show, Truman risks his life to climb up the “staircase to Heaven” to chase the real life he has never lived. In the Tang dynasty, the Mogao Cave painters also employed the three-dimensional perspective that is akin to the staircase; it evoked the Buddhist sukhavatī, a visual manifestation of the illusory realm of buddhas and spirits. The staircase in this painting leads the viewer into a vibrant, mystical and boundless universe, where one enters into another realm of life.
You Jin shatters the plane and constructs multiple perspectives on the two-dimensional canvas, erasing the boundary between reality and fantasy, while the realm is revealed between angular and flowing blocks of colours. Delicate, ephemeral and fantastical, You Jin’s work brings to mind the wild visual language of Futurist painter Umberto Boccioni. You also employs contrasting colours to delineate outlines, instilling intangible emotions and time into distinct shapes. It is as if the artist has torn time into shreds, and collected all that is beautiful in the world. It melts into strange and dazzling lavas that flows through everyone’s dreams.
At the centre of Not That Story is a floating staircase that ascends through the clouds against a boundless horizon, an entry for the viewer into this spritual palace. The staircase becomes narrower on the way up, like an infinite bridge that extends upwards. It leads the soul into different realms, giving a unique spiritual nuance to the transcendence of time. At the end of the film The Truman Show, Truman risks his life to climb up the “staircase to Heaven” to chase the real life he has never lived. In the Tang dynasty, the Mogao Cave painters also employed the three-dimensional perspective that is akin to the staircase; it evoked the Buddhist sukhavatī, a visual manifestation of the illusory realm of buddhas and spirits. The staircase in this painting leads the viewer into a vibrant, mystical and boundless universe, where one enters into another realm of life.
You Jin shatters the plane and constructs multiple perspectives on the two-dimensional canvas, erasing the boundary between reality and fantasy, while the realm is revealed between angular and flowing blocks of colours. Delicate, ephemeral and fantastical, You Jin’s work brings to mind the wild visual language of Futurist painter Umberto Boccioni. You also employs contrasting colours to delineate outlines, instilling intangible emotions and time into distinct shapes. It is as if the artist has torn time into shreds, and collected all that is beautiful in the world. It melts into strange and dazzling lavas that flows through everyone’s dreams.