NEW YORK, NY.- Kasmin announced Mark Yangs first solo exhibition with the gallery. A suite of new paintings by Yang will be on view at 297 Tenth Avenue from January 11 through February 17, 2024, showcasing recent technical and thematic developments in Yangs painting practice.
Ambiguity remains a pervading theme in Yangs hallmark compositions of intertwining body parts that explore the nuances of human interaction. Evading clear assignments of gender, Yangs figures resist the throes of a totalizing narrative. Yang realizes his new, boldly colorful figures by staining raw canvas with thin, transparent layers of oil paint. Layer after layer, Yang develops full-bodied fields of color that ground his figures in their liminal settings, before defining their backgrounds and shadows. Using techniques associated with the history of abstraction, but departing from the typical use of synthetic acrylics, Yangs staging of his compositions amplifies a sense of conviction and immediacy often found in drawings onto canvas. Yangs approach to the line as a tool to build his compositions is akin to that of a draftsman, seen in his dynamic applications of charcoal after the process of staining, which further provide striking delicacies and subtle textures. Yangs improvisational color pairings reflect an exploratory drive that undergirds his signature mash-up of body parts and limbs. As the artist has stated, Im not interested in rendering. Im more interested in bold colors.
Yangs new works see the artist developing the environs of his paintings. Since moving from New York City to New Yorks Hudson Valley in 2023, Yangs paintings increasingly reference nature, as seen in a lively network of tree branches in Sleeping Couple (2023) or in a distant mountain range in Birth (2023). Several works feature circles or semicircles that suggest the sun or moon, rising or setting above a horizontal figure in Asleep (2023) or floating in the frame of an open window in Life (3) (2023), a nod to the rectangular forms of Robert Motherwells seminal Open paintings. Imbued with a newfound autobiographical impulse, these paintings routinely make reference to Yangs own life, made most explicit in the figure of a child in Kellys Colors for a Larger Wall (2023), realized in the year since the birth of Yangs first son in 2023.
This body of work expands Yangs repertoire of art historical references forward in time. Previously invoking Old Masters from Michelangelo to Peter Paul Rubens, Yangs new paintings allude to the existentialist queries of Francis Bacon while recalling the postwar abstractions of Ellsworth Kelly. The child in Kellys Colors for a Larger Wall is positioned before a wall patterned with a brightly colorful grid, instancing a dialogue with Kellys Colors for a Large Wall (1951), on view at MoMA. Meanwhile, Phthalo Reverie (2023), the largest work in the exhibition, features an array of anonymous legs and torsos apprehended in a sea of blue, green, and purple; beneath their bodies lie their shadows, glowing with pink contours that offer a sense of foreboding, calling to mind a device often found in Bacons major works. Precipitating a new direction in his practice, Yangs shadows suggestively mimic the shape of the figures, but are brushed with a weight that insists on a form all their own.
Mark Yang
Mark Yangs colorful, incongruous arrays of anonymous limbs entangled together investigate the nuances of human interaction through a critical lens of art history. Morphing and distorting idealized figures into conglomerates of body parts, Yangs forms exhibit a sculptural quality, the result of the artists thoughtful rendering of plane, dimension, and space. Reducing, dismantling, and reassembling their limbs almost to the point of abstraction with a variety of painterly techniques, Yang creates characteristically mysterious compositions that are not immediately forthcoming with their narrative plot.
With a comprehensive set of art historical references, from the Baroque compositions of Peter Paul Rubens to the postwar abstractions of Ellsworth Kelly, Yangs anatomical abstractions have been praised for their complication of gender norms. Yangs ambiguous bodily arrangements rarely depict his figures faces, prioritizing their bodies over their identities. Resisting homogenizing classifications, Yang calls attention to shifting cultural conceptions of masculinity between South Korea, where Yang was born, and the United States, where he was raised.