Artist Shangkai Kevin Yu explores our relationships with objects in this series of large-scale oil paintings. In striking detail, he constructs several settings of an imagined, fictional house—each work pairs household items with specific art historical references, ranging from nineteenth-century European portraiture to classic American masterpieces.
Treating the still life as portraiture, Yu examines form as a narrative device from various periods of art history; taking structural and compositional cues from old master paintings and applying them to newly placed subjects, all lived-with objects from the artist's life. This near life-size piece recalls the full-length portraits of John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler. In place of an historic subject, Yu depicts the ironing board that remains in his childhood home in Taiwan, draped in a slip made by Yu’s mother.
Shangkai Kevin Yu, b. Taiwan, lives and works in New York. Yu spent his childhood in Taiwan and later moved to New York, earning his BFA at Parsons School of Design and MFA at New York Academy of Art. He has participated in residencies with the Leipzig International Art Programme in Germany.
Oil on canvas over panel
Unique