Mao 2007

Yu Youhan made this painting, "Mao," with, what looks like, acrylic on canvas and the date is unknown. What strikes me is the way he’s approached portraiture. It's like he's not trying to capture a likeness so much as an idea, a feeling. The canvas has a matte surface and the brushwork is pretty direct. Nothing is obscured and the color palette creates a powerful emotional space. I particularly enjoy the way Yu Youhan has broken the face up into colour blocks of mauve and grey, and these have been offset with a pop of emerald green for the left eyebrow, and cornflower blue for the eye itself. This treatment makes the image so much more unsettling than a straightforward portrait. You can see echoes of Pop Art, maybe even a nod to Warhol’s repetition, but with a twist that's all Yu Youhan’s own. It's a potent reminder that art is always in conversation, always remixing and reimagining what came before.