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Earlier than the Beijing-based artist Solar Yitian got here to be recognized for her vibrant collaboration with Louis Vuitton, she was acknowledged as China‘s “it” artist who likes to color decapitated Ken dolls that seem eerily glamorous.
A toddler of the ’90s, the 32-year-old Solar is a member of China‘s “open door” era, an period that coincided with the fast rise of private wealth as China got here to be referred to as the manufacturing facility of the world.
A lot of Solar’s work evokes her reminiscences of rising up in Wenzhou, a producing hub that produced many self-made millionaires within the Nineties.
A Ken portray made in 2020 by the Chinese language artist Solar Yitian.
Courtesy
“Outlets usually bought counterfeit Barbie and Ken dolls after I was little, and I keep in mind taking them aside, which was very easy as a result of they had been faux,” stated Solar of her “Ken” collection, which made its debut in 2019, not lengthy after she completed her undergraduate research within the portray division of China Central Academy of Superb Arts.
“Folks see quite a lot of violence in my remedy of Ken, as if I sliced his head off and put it below a harsh limelight, however the concept was not as bloody. I simply wished to current the doll as an object,” stated Solar, who stated the selection of Ken as an issue was additionally a response to “calls to subvert the male gaze popping up in public discourse.”
Ken, 2023
Courtesy
Mathieu Borysevicz, director and founding father of the Shanghai-based Financial institution Gallery, who first found Solar on Instagram in 2017, argued that the artist, with exact brushstrokes, absolutely debunked the symbols of patriarchy, very like the movie “Barbie,” which hit theaters two years after Solar’s Kens made their debut.
“Nevertheless, Yitian’s gesture is extra extreme,” noticed Borysevicz, who stated Solar’s Ken recalled beheading moments within the works of Caravaggio or Guido Reni.
“He isn’t the person working round mad with out a head, however he’s the idle head staring out into oblivion. Ken is a nonetheless life, speechless, objectified, and impotent,” added Borysevicz.
Her plastic animals, which gave life to merchandise starting from purses and ready-to-wear, to fragrance bottles within the newest Louis Vuitton Voyager Present, are part of Solar’s earliest works, which she created throughout her senior yr in faculty.
The Taobao-purchased, mass-produced plastic animals are first photographed in her studio after which painstakingly became work that take over a month every to supply. The characters, starting from a duck, a parrot, and a dinosaur to a panther, are extra symbolic artifacts than the Kens, however nonetheless discover related concepts about synthetic magnificence.
A penguin character, which Solar created in 2018, fetched as much as 1.7 million renminbi, or $234,000, within the secondary market, in keeping with public information from Yongle Public sale in 2023.
“Penguin With Eyelashes,” a portray created in 2018 by Solar Yitian
“It describes how the world has develop into so clean and exquisite, a world we view as a phenomenon,” stated Solar.
As for the usage of photorealistic particulars and intentionally loud colours, Solar stated they had been influenced by French thinker Jean Baudrillard’s idea of hyper-reality, which “foretells again and again a world that has develop into obsessive about lovely illusions.”
Borysevicz, who praised Solar’s distinctive ability and craft as a painter and her “sharp conceptual wit” as a conceptual artist, believes that the attraction of her work lies in its sheer, shimmering and aesthetically pleasing floor, which rapidly turns decadent.
“She feeds us the plasticine world of commodity and status that defines our post-capital international aspirations,” noticed Borysevicz. “We relish within the easy delights of superficiality.”
Solar enjoys the labor-intensive course of that’s “not a lot completely different from a building employee,” however since 2023 she has added extra workload to her schedule by pursuing a PhD at her alma mater centered on Twentieth-century French philosophy.
Solar joked that the collaboration with Louis Vuitton was a method to collect intel for her dissertation, which could have a chapter that dissects consumerism.
“This was an opportunity for me to grasp how manufacturers construct their status of their markets, how they function as a enterprise,” stated Solar.
“It helps me higher perceive consumerism and the way trend and luxurious are exerting extra affect on this planet,” she added. “Luxurious has develop into as huge as Coca-Cola. It’s ubiquitous, you may’t escape it.”
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