Ben Brown Fine Arts presents the return of young Chinese artist Ye Linghan to their Hong Kong Project Room following on from his highly successful solo exhibition Floating Spring last year.

The paintings and works on paper that comprise Ye's second solo exhibition Animal Portraits echo the age old literary practice of using animals as protagonists such as the much loved Tortoise and the Hare from Aesop's Fables, the legend of Rabbit in the Moon and the complex characters of George Orwell's Animal Farm. The animal protagonists in these stories possess human qualities and failings, and attributes such as the ability to speak and to reason.

Using classical Western portraiture as the point of departure, Ye's paintings and drawings employ the traditional techniques and formal compositions that are characteristic of the genre. In Animal Portraits, Ye's non-human subjects are painted in a manner reminiscent of formal portraiture from the sixteenth century, suggesting starched ruffs, heavy brocades, and architectural details. However, these abstract studies deconstruct the metaphorical nature of his animal subjects, the solemnity and austerity of Ye's Animal Portraits alluding to the disruption of the established order of things.

About the artist:

Born in 1985, Ye studied mural painting at the highly regarded China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2009, and currently lives and works in Beijing. A constant innovator, Ye's diverse practice includes animation, filmmaking, photography, painting and drawing. In addition to exhibiting and screening his works in the last year in the Netherlands, Korea and Taiwan, Ye recently participated in the prestigious Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Australia and the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal in Shanghai as part of the group independent animation show The Garden of Forking Paths.

Image: © Ye Linghan, Ben Brown Fine Arts