The massive semi-abstractions of Yan Pei Ming transcend international borders to captivate viewers from around the globe. While born in Shanghai, Yan Pei Ming only began his formal artistic education after relocating to Dijon, France in 1980, a city which has been his artistic base ever since. Initially influenced by Cubist and Expressionist movements through his admiration for artists such as Picasso and de Kooning, Yan consciously elected to diverge from a direct connection with established movements and instead formed his own distinctive aesthetic, separated from the stylistic influences around him. His unique compositions and controlled palette garnered global attention, and in 2009 Yan Pei Ming was honored as the first Chinese artist to exhibit at the Louvre. Speaking on the confusion resulting from the associations regarding his artistic and cultural influences, Yan jokes that, “I am probably the most Chinese artist in France, and the most French artist in China.” This fusion of both Eastern and Western cultural inspiration has allowed the artist to form a singular universal visual language within his own aesthetic.

Working in an extremely limited palette of colors, Yan’s choice of restricting his compositions to mono- or bi-chromatic schemes stemmed from his desire to separate himself from the artistic movements around him. “Black and white create a world of one’s own,” Yan claims. “An artist has to find and create his own world.” By simplifying his selection of hues and employing minimalist strokes, the artist established his own form of visual expression, reaching beyond the superficial to evoke stronger sensational emotions. “When the color is taken away,” explains the artist, “it becomes another world, it creates the distance between the representation and the reality.” In Yan’s paintings, this distance creates an emotional tension which draws the viewer into the work, forming connections that are able to captivate audiences on a deeper level than simple representation might. Yan further elevates this sense of distance by laying his reduced color palette with large, sparing strokes. Selecting the size of his brushes in accordance with the dimensions of his canvases, the artist often uses brushes up to 50 inches in size. The use of such large brushes allows Yan to create large swaths of various tones.

Where close inspection turns his paintings to abstractions, only more distant examination reveals the entirety of the composition and allows the viewer to grasp the full extent of emotional depth inherent in each piece. The dark, somber selection of colors combined with the minimalist application of paint imbues Yan’s works with a sense of tragic sorrow. For the artist, the subject of morose human emotions provides a stronger appeal. Yan states simply, “it’s more interesting to be melancholic. What’s the point of telling a happy story?” The potency of these darker passions radiates from each of Yan Pei Ming’s canvases, captivating the viewer in deceptively simplistic representations of these hidden sentiments.

Yan Pei Ming’s large-scale work Paysage international, lieu du crime sur Bourgogne serves as an embodiment of these principals of minimalism and emotional representation. Loosely painted in stark tones of black and white, Paysage international, lieu du crime sur Bourgogne presents a bleak, yet oddly serene scene. With gently dripping paint evoking the sensation of a rain-soaked night, a lone house stands ghostly against the shadows of towering trees. Yan’s broad brushstrokes provide a windswept quality to the clouded expanse of sky, as white paint drips slowly down the watery, reflective scene.

With the stormy dark gray tones threatening to overtake the massive canvas, the translucent white forms an illuminated focus, creating the appearance of ethereal reflections on rain-washed surfaces. At once haunting and tranquil, Yan Pei Ming’s Paysage international, lieu du crime sur Bourgogne demonstrates the artist’s singular ability to create expansive scenes which strike a deeply emotional chord.

With only a few strokes of a broad brush in a restrained palette of melancholy colors, Yan Pei Ming manages to reach through the barriers of representation to exude a release of hidden sentiment. For the artist, this unique ability of art to reach into the unknown is his ideal in creating each work. “Art is about man,” says Yan. “It speaks to people…like a mirror, it reflects to us who we are, what we are.”