MINE PROJECT is thrilled to announce a solo exhibition of work by the Beijing-based artist Yang Bodu. It is her first solo exhibition in six years. In the intervening period, she has come to understand painting as a negotiation between looking and being, at the image as a moment in time and an intervention in space.

In the “Dual Portraits,” bodies are masked on multiple levels. Our portrait sitters face away from the picture plane, hooded and disinterested. As viewers, we see one body, but we are coached into believing that there is another, hidden body behind it or elsewhere, lodged somewhere in the infinity of perspectival space, visible only through subtle hints and clues.

Since 2011, the “In the Museum” series has grown to several dozen pieces. Many works focus on the space of the museum or the art gallery, embracing this abstracted, emptied, idealized space as both a stage for human action and a celebration of its absence. For the past several years Yang Bodu has looked at these evenly lit, dramatically constructed architectural moments as ways of seeing as well as the eventual foundations for individual material paintings. Her practice takes place in this uncanny space between private and public, between making and viewing, and between seeing and being seen.

One painting stands out with a distinct look and feel. “The Colour of a Diamond” reads as a heavily pixelated image, the perfectly vertical and horizontal bars of a digital image echoing, emphasizing, and simultaneously fighting against the diagonal faceted surfaces of a meticulously cut colourless gem. It’s a painting that never forgets to be a painting, and one that marks how an artist today can see.

Yang Bodu received her BFA in 2008 from Tianjin Academy of Art, followed by her MFA from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 2012.

The artist currently lives and works in Beijing, China.

https://mine-project.com/

Instagram: @boduyang