Yu Fan

In the oeuvre of Beijing-based sculptor Yu Fan—whose recognizable creations are sleek, glossy, and delicate—disparate themes and characters collide. While one body of work is comprised of dainty mythical white horses, another series portrays elongated Chinese everymen. Yu’s work also ventures into more serious dialogues with both the history of Western art and Chinese politics—The Death of Liu Hulan, for example, juxtaposes a disconcertingly slick, Pop-inspired style with subject matter relating to the dramatic 1947 beheading of a young female Communist Party member.

Yu renders his sculptures in fiberglass, copper, and bronze, making his shiny polished surfaces by covering these primary elements with bright car varnishes. As such, they consistitute a marked departure from Yu’s performance and installation work of the early 1990s. At that time, Yu collaborated with his contemporaries Sui Jianguo and Zhan Wang—all three were young instructors at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing—to stage interventions at the site of demolished school buildings.

Yu’s work has been included in major exhibitions at the Israel National Museum, the Singapore Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and Chicago’s Smart Museum, in addition to the Shanghai Biennale.