Ye Linghan’s solo show, “Yi · Alice”, debuted at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in Japan on April 3, 2024. This marks the artist’s first solo presentation at a distinguished museum in Asia. The show will be divided into two parts, encompassing 19 representative works he created in the past 8 years, including the well-noted painting and video series LUCY, and the newest series of large-scale paintings, Yi · Alice.
In 2016, inspired by the documentary “Homo Sapiens”, Ye set the most famous early human ancestor, “Lucy”, as the implicit protagonist of his series, expressing his discussions of technology, futuristic aesthetics, and the history of art through a variety of mediums. His works exhibit distinctly the aesthetics of the post Internet age. Ye extensively collects materials on the web through screenshots — conceiving the concept of “working from screen” — and uses digital manipulation to create works with these images. LUCY thus adapted a kaleidoscopic presentation: the fragmented, warping, and dazzling visuals respond to the society of spectacle in the digital age. Seven years later in Yi · Alice, Ye turns his source of information and images to the phones of those around him. Engaging with a yin-yang cosmic philosophy and distinctive Oriental elements, Ye transforms these materials into an exploration of post-Internet societal living and relationships. The 12-meter-long Yi, Nine-Colored Deer, Fire, an exemplary work of the current series, is inspired by the eponymous mythical creature on the ancient murals of Dunhuang, while the accompanying white figures are cutouts of different groups he encounters.
The works in this show does not only exhibit Ye’s exploration of the post-Internet aesthetic, but also make clear his dedication to exploration as an artist of this age. As the cultural studies scholar Hiroki Yamamoto writes specifically for this occasion:
“Ye’s artistic practice unites insinuatingly yet definitively the aesthetics before and after the advent of the Internet age. This imbues his work with an idiosyncratic mannerism, distancing it from conventional narratives. However, this is not a simple occasion of a digital native artist creating with emergent technologies. In a post-pandemic world, discourse surrounding technology evolves rapidly. The showing of Ye’s works in Japan — thus contributing to this discussion — is a truly well-anticipated event.”
