Yongxuan Li
Wenona School
DUSK SLIPS INTO NIGHT
Collection of Work
Oil on board, photographic book, screen
My body of work examines the ambience and ephemerality of urban life. Individuals blend into the city’s flow, slipping in and out of memory like brief flashes caught on a surveillance camera. In public spaces, vehicles become transient capsules of mass transit and industrial ritual. As if through the lens of the camera, which sees, records, deletes and forgets, I represent the mechanised, emotionless lives within the metropolis. Fragments of light framed within liminal spaces convey the detached, fleeting nature of existence in the urban landscape.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Edward Hopper, Fan Ho, Ben McLaughlin, drezzdon
Marker's Commentary
This evocative and moody body of work captures moments in the broader narrative of a city at night. Dramatically lit and eerie, evoking the surreal scenes of De Chirico and Hopper, these urban compositions offer vistas of back streets and alleys, deserted stairs and train carriages. A pervasive sense of loneliness prevails. Some spaces are populated, but the figures are small or masked, devoid of specific identity, their presence transient. The painting series employs a limited palette of phthalo blue and black, with unnatural pops of yellow illuminating darkened spaces. The artist's control of tone has successfully created three-dimensionality in the buildings and tunnel forms.
A dialogue is established between the paintings, short film and photographs in the series, examining aspects of our urban world with a focus on our contemporary psyche. Within the paintings, there is a cinematic narrative, as if each scene is a momentary fragment caught on film by a surveillance camera. Like different stage sets, the artist has inserted a mise-en-scène into the composition. This body of work examines our world, where such images are ever-present and prevalent. Through introspective paintings, film cuts and a detailed book of photographs, the deeper societal, psychological and philosophical truths about solitude and memory are revealed. It offers a collective experience, exploring how urban environments can be places of both anonymity and isolation.