Date :April 25, 2015 — July 12, 2015
Location: Contemporary Art Galleries , Suzhou Museum

Yu Hong, as a young art student, reminds us of David (1984), a sketch glowing with spirit and vitality. As a mother, Yu Hong calls to mind her painting series “Witness to Growth” (1999-ongoing).

In a society where men are often given more advantages, it requires much more effort and wisdom for a woman to find a place in the pantheon of artists and scientists. Yu Hong, however, has achieved it. Endowed with the same brilliance as her predecessors, she, as an artist, manifests not only a unique personality but presents a sensitivity and subtlety lacking in the works of her male counterparts.

If one considers “Witness to Growth” as a record of pregnancy, it can also equally be seen as a diary recording the growth of her young daughter, a diary in paintings instead of in words. Against the backdrop of progressing times and ages, her identity as a mother, a woman, a citizen, and an artist blend into one another, highlighting distinctive connotations and implications within each identity: all of this played out upon the canvas.
“Witness to Growth” is her personal experience. Just as there are a thousand different versions of Hamlet in a thousand people’s eyes,so too is each viewer’s idea of growth a personalized one. Each viewer will have their own version of “Witness to Growth”. This is the space Yu Hong leaves for our imagination removed from temporal constraints. Through the display of her paintings in a physical space, she delineates the passage and traces of time.

The growth of a beloved daughter coincides with the maturity of a mother, and the distillation of her temperament and thoughts. The comprehension of time and space changes from a one-dimensional plane to the three-dimensionality of a concurrent realm. It cannot be differentiated through a mere juxtaposition of high and low realms, by contrasting layers of time and space. It is instead an examination and reflection on interwoven spatial and temporal concepts, thoughts and impressions. Space-time is no doubt a raging torrent within which a painter, like a captain steering through a storm, has to be wary to avoid sinking beneath the waves. Yu Hong is, without a doubt, an artist who possesses the foresight to look into the distance and steer the course in her art.

Yu Hong, starting from a one-dimensional horizon, sets out to create a new world. Here it lies before you: a Concurrent Realm.