Another One Bites the Dust

Artists

Yu Hong

Press release

Yu Hong: Another One Bites the Dust will feature new figurative and narrative paintings that respond to the architectural and cultural context of the Chiesetta della Misericordia. The site-specific cycle of paintings depicts the arc of the human experience—birth, life, and death—and combines the raw crudeness of social reality with pictorial conventions drawn from Byzantine and Italian Baroque painting to forge a style that may be called “supernatural realism.” Yu Hong borrows images of people, mostly women and children, in writhing poses expressing mental anguish or imminent physical danger, both real and fantastical, from the internet and social media. Set against a gold ground and shaped as large tondos or arched panels, the figures presented in Another One Bites the Dust confront and upend the epic themes of sacred art while not shying away from the role of painting to portray the sorrows of the human condition.

Curated by Alexandra Munroe. Organised by the Asian Art Initiative of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, supported by Lisson Gallery.