Yun-Fei Ji
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Installation view, Yun-Fei Ji, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, James Cohan, 52 Walker Street, November 17, 2022 - January 7, 2023
YUN-FEI JI
Sunflower Turned Its Back, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 30 in.
101.6 x 76.2 cm
JCG13667
YUN-FEI JI
Everything Moved Outside, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 in.
76.2 x 76.2 cm
JCG13671
YUN-FEI JI
Sewing / High Noon, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 24 in.
76.2 x 61 cm
JCG13677
YUN-FEI JI
Migrant Worker's Tent, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
24 x 24 in.
61 x 61 cm
JCG13669
YUN-FEI JI
The Long, Long Wait, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
36 x 24 in.
91.4 x 61 cm
JCG13675
YUN-FEI JI
Going Home in High Spirits, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 in.
76.2 x 76.2 cm
JCG13670
YUN-FEI JI
The Red Moving Truck, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
36 x 24 in.
91.4 x 61 cm
JCG13674
YUN-FEI JI
Satellite Dish on a Bed, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
20 x 20 in.
50.8 x 50.8 cm
JCG13668
YUN-FEI JI
The Man with Glasses, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
24 x 18 in.
61 x 45.7 cm
JCG13673
YUN-FEI JI
Bunk Bed, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
24 x 30 in.
61 x 76.2 cm
JCG13676
YUN-FEI JI
Man with Cut Down Trees, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 30 in.
101.6 x 76.2 cm
JCG13666
YUN-FEI JI
The Red Truck is Waiting, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 24 in.
76.2 x 61 cm
JCG14027
YUN-FEI JI
The Fan with Cloth on It, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 in.
76.2 x 76.2 cm
JCG13672
YUN-FEI JI
The Bed, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 40 in.
76.2 x 101.6 cm
JCG13665
YUN-FEI JI
The Woman in the Pink Shirt, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 in.
76.2 x 76.2 cm
JCG14026
James Cohan is pleased to present The Sunflower Turned Its Back, an exhibition of new work by Yun-Fei Ji, on view from November 17, 2022, through January 7, 2023, at 52 Walker Street. This is the artist’s fifth solo exhibition at James Cohan.
For more than two decades, Yun-Fei Ji has employed the flattened space of classical Chinese painting to tell contemporary stories that, while geographically specific, speak to collective human experiences. The artist has an enduring interest in issues of migration and labor, both in the US and China. Each composition is an act of resistance, and a recognition of the resilience of those who have been uprooted in the name of progress. Ji insists that these narratives of displacement and environmental destruction are worth preserving.
For The Sunflower Turned Its Back, Ji shifts from his established medium of ink and watercolor on paper to create vibrant paintings on canvas that possess a quietly evocative intensity. In these works, Ji paints landscapes and interior spaces marked by human presence, often absent of figures themselves. These spaces are makeshift or in transition, suggesting the migration and displacement of the individuals who live in them. When people do appear in these compositions, it is obliquely–their backs to us, depicted in profile, and rarely gazing directly at the viewer. Ji builds this sense of inhabited space through the accumulation of everyday objects that together tell the stories of lives lived in motion.
For inquiries regarding Yun-Fei Ji, please click here.
To explore the exhibition in our Online Viewing Room, please click here.