André Chi Sing Yuen: a cosmopolitan perspective between Eurasian tradition and digital art modernity

Although the Venice Biennale has been over for only a few days, there are still many artists to be known, including those who took part in the event and those who participated in the side events. Many of these were exhibited in the small but interesting venue of Palazzo Mora, a stately three-story building located in the center of Venice, in Sestier Cannaregio. About Palazzo Mora and the works of Gonçalo Mabunda exhibited at the Mozambique Pavilion, Finestre sull’Arte has already extensively reported in its third issue on paper.

During May You Live In Interesting Times, another interesting artist, the Chinese-born German André Chi Sing Yuen (Recklinghausen, 1971), represented for this occasion by the Weithorn Gallery in Düsseldorf, exhibited his works in Palazzo Mora as part of the collateral Personal Structures. Yuen is primarily concerned with media art, or that new artistic frontier dealing with digital art, 3-D animation, computer graphics, interactive art, and video games, just to name a few new technologies involved.

André Chi Sing Yuen’s installations fall within the modernity of media art in that they are created with a high-tech process, High Tech Driven, which combines techniques considered more traditional, such as painting, printmaking, photography, and video, into an image, as for example we can see in the works Marry the World and Most Popular. In these installations we see not only the strong Pop component, particularly Andy Warhol in terms of contemporary world icons and the use of screen-printing, but also other artistic models, such as Robert Rauschenberg for collage, Nam June Paik, and Joseph Beuys.

André Chi Sing Yuen, Marry the world (2018; high-tech driven painting on diasec aluminum, 100 x 100 cm)

André Chi Sing Yuen, Most popular (2018; high tech driven painting on diasec aluminum, 100 x 100 cm)

André Chi Sing Yuen, This is the now (2018; high tech driven painting on diasec aluminum, 100 x 100 cm)

Yuen’s use of this particular technique since the 1990s has made his work distinctly pioneering compared to that made by others of his age. The combination of modernity and tradition is not only about the artistic technique itself chosen by Yuen, but is precisely part of his personal and cultural background. André Chi Sing Yuen was born in Germany’s Ruhr Basin, but his family has origins far beyond that, so much so that he has lived between Hong Kong, New York and The Hague-in short, a true citizen of the world. It was, however, starting in the 1990s, during his studies, that he came into contact with the Asian tradition, when he dealt with the texts of Confucius and Lao Tzu, alongside those of the Western philosophical tradition, such as Marx, Adam Smith, Kant, Hegel, Plato and Thomas Aquinas. Everything this media artist has studied he has always investigated critically, especially research on the Western and Asian artistic traditions that he has constantly connected with modernity.

As Yuen himself states, it is precisely from his cosmopolitan perspective that his aesthetic dimension emerges. His artistic language is based precisely on what he has studied at various German academies and universities, namely graphic design, photography, film, design and painting. To Windows on Art, the artist himself said, “I don’t want to disappear like a comet, but to be able to look at myself in the mirror once I am old and say that I was able to give an impulse to society with my art, an impulse that is important for humanism and world peace.”

André Chi Sing Yuen, No pain (2018; high-tech driven painting on diasec aluminum, 100 x 100 cm)

André Chi Sing Yuen, Buddha red red light (2018; high tech driven painting on diasec aluminum, 200 x 140 cm)

André’s art reflects and promotes friendship, respect, tolerance, compassion, and peace. From these aspects comes the series dedicated to Buddha, exhibited in this Biennale at Palazzo Mora. For Yuen, Buddha is a symbol of freedom, love and friendship, a solution to the Interesting Times recounted in this latest edition of the Venetian international exhibition. On the situation of contemporary art, the artist says, “Contemporary art is a kind of religion of the 21st century. Interest in art has never been as global as it is in the present, because people are constantly searching for meaning, truth and reflection on their existence. I think we are on the way to a new age of reason that could, with the help of art propose solutions to the problems of our ’interesting times.’ I collaborate with five galleries and have always thought of art as a market, but I have never put economic interest if not artistic content at the center of my work.”

Eurasian André Chi Sing Yuen’s installations have been exhibited and sold all over the world, from Sacramento in the United States to St. Petersburg in Russia, appealing to visitors and collectors precisely because of the universal aesthetic values that are contained in the new, fresh and cutting-edge language that isdigital art. The latter turns out to be a completely expanding field of art that is of increasing interest not only to artists but also to visitors to the various art institutions because of the resulting reflections on the contemporary information age that is being experienced. The difference lies in the artistic medium: no longer oil and pencil, but lights, sounds and pixels, revolutionizing the way not only art is made, but perceived.

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