"Mysteries" is art work serial oil painiting albums By modern artist Lily Yu, who currently resides in Beijing Lily Yu’s paintings reflects scenes of ghost movies...."i am not much for horror movies, possibly because I love words more. The words are better for describing the subconsciousFeeling to the supernatural life forms, as words are much more imaginativeThan visual scenes. Many years ago, I once watched a ghost movie, whichname I couldn’t remember. But I still rememberedA long length shot crawling like a snake through somewhere, or flourishing,or deserted, or luxurious, or isolated. You cannot help but feeling lost at the fallingof no flowers, gloomy at the returning of no swallows. The audience often pent uptheir breath to wait for something to happen, but nothing happens. This is the mostartistic visual shot in my memory"Lily Yu’s ark work extrudes has almost no color, exceptfor the black and white. The canvas is full of black ‘trees’, evenly painted, withthe edges of their trunks, branches and shadows blended into each other. White,however, is unevenly and liberally used to cover the trees, and to create the effect ofdistance, intricacy and layer-upon-layer. The grey is an obscure area, made by repeatedlycovering, scratching and washing. Lily Yu amazingly uses western paintingmaterials to create a misty effect we see from Chinese ink paintings. This is why somepeople often take her work as ink painting, which is of course a misunderstanding. Chineseink is ink, which has only black color. By controlling the ratio of ink and water,the permeation of Chinese art paper, proper limits for white, black, white andgrey are created on Chinese ink painting. There is actually no white color among theso-called five colors. What is worth mentioning is that ink painting expresses thesubtle inner feelings by the coordination of heart and hand. However, Lily Yu’s picturesare hazy and fuzzy, but always with geometry patterns or lines, deserted buildings,or broken sculptures inset on them, in addition to the sudden intruding leopardsometimes. All these elements trigger a kind of time-travel feeling, mysterious andweird. This surrealism skill is quite like what is used in western ghost movies, in which thedislocation of an object in another spacetime may create absurd scene. Lily Yu depictsthe same kind of scenes repeatedly, which means there is a kind of isomorphismbetween these scene and her heart. Lily Yu is a beautiful girl, who can relateto people around her in reality in a very pleasant way. There is a big conflict, in theeyes of people, between Lily Yu’s charming appearance and her queer heart,between her flexibility in real life and the illusion on her paintings. This is a sweetlyincomprehensible contrast. The city youth at Lily Yu’s age are mostly the single childin their families. They experience the huge changes taking place in China. They livenot to worry about their bread and butter or their education. With excessive carefrom their parents, less playmates, the rapid development of internet, they don’thave to relate to the reality to much. Like flowers in greenhouse, they grow up withtheir life well-planned, happily but find their souls no roots.Actually, the whole world is changing. Modern telecom and transportation arehighly developed. The time-space boundary is getting more and more indistinct, andthe time differences are getting more and more intricate. In recent years, the word“Time-travel” fascinates lots of young people, while trans-boundary, weird, violentaesthetics also become fashionable spirit consumption and comfort. The mostinteresting point of Lily Yu’s works lies in its slightly cruel beauty, which may exciteyour nerve and save you from the boredom of excessive materialism, and makeyou lost in your self-conceived garden and have your heart and soul rested for a littlewhile.03-2015
