NYAB Event - Zhu Yi Yong "Red Star"

Zhu Yi Yong "Red Star"

798 Avant Gallery

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Zhu Yi Yong "Red Star" showcases new works that expand on his ongoing exploration of the popular child’s game, cat’s cradle. The game of cat’s cradle is played all over the world existing in many different forms and under many different names. It harkens back to an age of simplicity and innocence, a time when a child’s imagination is taking form and their interests are beginning to grow. The red star that every child has shaped in their hands carries all the weight of China’s revolutionary past. It is a wry juxtaposition, the children of the future holding in their hands the powerful symbol of China’s collective memory.

Zhu Yi Yong’s Red Star paintings are depictions of children rendered in a highly realistic style. His use of a monochromatic palate to paint the children is offset by the high-keyed string of red that forms the red star in the children’s hands. The children by turn are depicted alone, as well as amongst family. Each child’s red star is unique.

Zhu Yi Yong was born in Chongching, Sichuan Province, in 1957. He studied oil painting at the highly acclaimed Oil department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in China in 1977, in the first class of students to be admitted after the Cultural Revolution. After graduating from the academy he was offered the position of associate professor of oil painting, a job he still holds today. His paintings are critically acclaimed in China; having won numerous awards, and is held in the collection of the Chinese National Museum of Art in Beijing.