{"id":253,"date":"2007-01-19T22:47:42","date_gmt":"2007-01-19T22:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/?p=253"},"modified":"2008-10-26T02:51:10","modified_gmt":"2008-10-26T02:51:10","slug":"a-flood-of-details-digging-into-yun-fei-ji%e2%80%99s-source-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/19\/a-flood-of-details-digging-into-yun-fei-ji%e2%80%99s-source-material\/","title":{"rendered":"A Flood of Details: Digging Into Yun-Fei Ji\u2019s Source Material"},"content":{"rendered":"

For ‘Art on Paper’ Magazine
\n\"Yun-Fei<\/a><\/p>\n

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Yun-Fei Ji at his drafting table, courtesy Yun-Fei Ji and James Cohan Gallery<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Yun-Fei Ji\u2019s monumental new landscape paintings, depicting scenes along the winding banks of the Yangtze River just prior to the area\u2019s flooding by the Three Gorges Dam, are composed of imagery sampled from a vast archive of photographs, notes and sketches he has developed on several trips to China over the past five years.\u00a0 In the paintings, day laborers, moving trucks and departing residents occupy the cities and villages amid tranquil, mountainous scenery.\u00a0 The inclusion of fantastical characters and otherworldly scenarios distances the delicate ink on paper paintings from pure documentary.\u00a0 Still, the volume of primary research behind each image is in and of itself highly significant.
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Digital images taken by Ji in 2002 for source material in different areas near Three Gorges Dam. All of the buildings in these photographs are underwater today. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Digital<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Before Ji made his first research trip to the Three Gorges region in 2001, he investigated the area\u2019s rich history and turbulent politics, delving into its literature, following news reports, and reading blogs detailing often tragic stories about locals affected by the dam project.\u00a0 During his travels, he amassed tens of thousands of images and reams of notes, which he organizes by geographic location upon returning to his studio, storing the digital photographs on CDs and filing away clippings and other ephemera.\u00a0 Although he has no routine habit of accessing his archive (and sheepishly admits to sometimes losing track of what he\u2019s collected), for the latest series, Ji dug back through his images in search of the period before the flood.\u00a0 \u201cIn each picture, I can point out a detail that interested me,\u201d he says.\u00a0 The photographs in Ji\u2019s archive depict a wide range of subjects, among them tidily stacked building materials, doors and windows waiting to be taken and reused, scavenging day laborers and the ubiquitous camps of holdout residents who refuse to move until the last minute.<\/p>\n

Ji draws from computer printouts or while looking at photos on his monitor, improvising as much as he copies.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not just adding things up when I work,\u201d he says. \u201cI find details that trigger my interest and imagination and act as a stepping point to something else.\u201d\u00a0 Ji\u2019s sketches can also originate just as easily from an idea generated during a conversation, from a found photograph, or, from other found source materials.\u00a0 In one case, a propagandist magazine cover from the 1950s showing happy farmers in a time of widespread famine inspired an etching of cadaverous landsmen, while in another, accumulated tales from the demolition workers resulted in a painting of a scavenger\u2019s wife communing with the dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is almost nothing that I don\u2019t draw,\u201d says Ji, referring both to the large number of drawings that cover the walls of his studio and fill his sketchbooks and to their varied subject matter, from studies of plant life to half demolished buildings.\u00a0 More often than not, he\u2019ll sketch a subject multiple times; occasionally, Ji collages together disparate sketches, then paints from those.\u00a0 In keeping with his unique style – informed by studies in both Eastern and Western art – Ji explains his process as \u201c\u2026translating everything into line and brushstroke.\u00a0 Though my work uses photography as source material like many Western painters, its very different because I\u2019m not using light and dark shadow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ji\u2019s paintings, like his drawings, result from tireless preparation and intuition.\u00a0 \u201cSometimes, I\u2019ll start with a vague idea, not knowing where I\u2019m going, and slowly it will emerge what the painting is about,\u201d he explains.\u00a0 This approach requires a concentration that the artist likens to walking a tightrope.\u00a0 Each careful step of the painting involves using calligraphy brushes to build up an area with layer after layer of paint, which is applied using brush strokes like the staccato \u2018ax\u2019 or curly \u2018buffalo hair.\u2019\u00a0 Working on a table covered with felt for absorbency, Ji applies paint and sometimes washes it to reduce its intensity, giving the mulberry-paper background of his most labored-over pieces a weathered appearance.<\/p>\n

That Ji\u2019s recent paintings derive from images and notes he recorded as he witnessed the mass relocation effort is poignant, but also helpful in explaining the surreal, disjointed quality that these works sometimes possess.\u00a0 Buildings, people and plant life can appear to float on the painted page like objects bobbing on the water after a shipwreck, and a rock formation is as carefully rendered as a cluster of displaced villagers.\u00a0 The technique evokes the dreamlike way in which memory can function, or history is written, bringing certain details into clearer focus than others and telling stories that might otherwise remain submerged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For ‘Art on Paper’ Magazine Yun-Fei Ji at his drafting table, courtesy Yun-Fei Ji and James Cohan Gallery Yun-Fei Ji\u2019s monumental new landscape paintings, depicting scenes along the winding banks of the Yangtze River just prior to the area\u2019s flooding by the Three Gorges Dam, are composed of imagery sampled from a vast archive of … <\/p>\n

Read more “A Flood of Details: Digging Into Yun-Fei Ji\u2019s Source Material”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[8,18,9,15,14,13,12,17,10,16,11],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-contemporary","tag-critic","tag-exhibition","tag-gallery","tag-new-york","tag-photography","tag-sculpture","tag-tour","tag-visual-art"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BDOD-45","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}