HAY, YOUNG

Beijing Trip, 2000
From the series Bonjour, Young Hay (After Courbet)
Gelatin silver print
11 x 14 inches
Signed Edition of 50

(Chinese, b. 1963)

Young Hay reinterprets French painter Gustave Courbet'sBonjour, Monsieur Courbet (1854) in which the painter depicts himself as a proud traveler-artist meeting his patron, Alfred Bruyas. Young reinterprets this narrative by having himself photographed in cities throughout the world with a large blank canvas on his back. In these images, the artist remains hidden and the canvas appears as an empty, luminous void. This series can be seen as a reference to transformations in China, where visual influences from the West have been incorporated into already existing aesthetic patterns from the East. The glowing white rectangle of the canvas can also be read as reinterpreting a nineteenth century art historical reference of the Buddhist notion of the void.