Mostra / Luc Ming Yan. La tartaruga e il palombaro

Curated by Alessandro Gazzotti, with a written commentary by Davide Ferri
Reggio Emilia, Palazzo dei Musei, 19/12/2024 – 02/03/2025
 
Thursday 19 December at 5:30 pm: Opening of the exhibition Luc Ming Yan. The turtle and the diver. Visions spanning nature and painting in Palazzo dei Musei.
Constant interplay between archaeology, art, photography and science is one of the main objectives of the new Palazzo dei Musei. The museum collections will be harnessed to open up the endless variety of narrative, poetic and scientific opportunities that they can offer to contemporary culture. Taking the view that artists can use the collections of the City Museums as analytical tools and sources, just like scholars and experts in various other fields, Palazzo dei Musei is promoting forms of collaboration that will inspire breathtaking new outlooks.
On this front, the young French artist Luc Ming Yan’s reaction to our museum – and the zoological, anatomical and Spallanzani natural history collections in particular – immediately sparked a great deal of interest. This subsequently took concrete form in an exhibition that encourages reflection and opens up dialogue between nature and painting.
Curated by Alessandro Gazzotti, the exhibition presents 48 oil paintings on canvas by the artist, who was born in Dijon in 1994 and works in Paris and Shanghai. With his distinctive approach to colour and vast range of styles, Yan is an original player on the contemporary painting scene. There will be direct, thought-provoking interaction between the works and the natural history collections, especially the large fossilized remains of “Valentina” the whale, a key find from the local area that dates back to the Pliocene. A written commentary for the exhibition has been provided by art critic and curator Davide Ferri, who teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and has been the curator of the “Pittura XXI” section at Arte Fiera in Bologna since 2019. Ferri is a huge admirer of Yan’s work. He writes: “Luc Ming Yan’s work is like a musical score that expands from one room to the next and combines two different sides. Some works present a jumbled, erratic kernel of frenzied, lively and contrasting brushstrokes.
Others are clearly figurative works depicting animals (such as rats, birds, monkeys and cats), skulls, metamorphic figures and aliens that have something vaguely grotesque about them and seem to be influenced by manga or pop images. In addition, pre-figural elements and scraps of shapes (such as paws, horns and sharp claws) may appear within abstract paintings, in positions around the edges or just outside the fertile, generative jumbled masses and giving the impression that they are emerging from them. It is as if a battle were taking place in these works. All the shapes and figures in the paintings seem to stem from the nervous energy on the surface.”
Luc Ming Yan (1994, Dijon, France) is a French painter who lives and works in Dijon. He won the Ernest Manganel Award and studied at the ECAL University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland. Since he graduated, his paintings have been displayed internationally. Recent exhibitions include: Abstraction (re)creation – 20 under 40, Le Consortium, curated by Franck Gautherot and Seungduk Kim, Dijon, France (2024); The Drawing Centre Show, Le Consortium, curated by Franck Gautherot and Seungduk Kim, Dijon, France (2022); Ipotesi Astronomiche, Villa Flor, S-chanf, Switzerland (2021); Stasi Frenetica, Artissima Unplugged, MAO – Asian Art Museum, Turin, Italy (2020). In 2024, Yan’s works Midnight (2023) and Time Walk (2023), as featured in the Abstraction (re)creation – 20 under 40 collective exhibition, became part of Le Consortium’s permanent collection.

It might be said that there are two sides that can be seen to Luc Ming Yan’s works. This is especially true of those in the exhibition entitled The turtle and the diver at the Reggio Emilia City Museums. On one side, there are paintings that I can only describe as abstract, with clumps of colour and thick, unsettled brushstrokes moving in many directions and swirling around the centre of the image. On the other side, there are more clearly figurative works depicting monstrous creatures, aliens, metamorphic figures, anthropoids and animals (either wild ones such as rats and birds, or tame ones like cats and chickens), or simply pop and fantasy characters that might be found in comic strips, anime or video games. Reflecting this, the exhibition in Reggio Emilia unfolds like a musical score and what appear to be two separate sides of the artist’s work go hand in hand from the first room to the last.
It is worth noting here that as soon as I used the words “abstract” and “figurative” at the start of this commentary, I realized how obsolete they sound. Should these two long-established categories still be contrasted with each other? Is it simply inevitable in discussions about painting? Would it not be better to state right from the start that for some decades now, a number of painters – including Luc Ming Yan – have highlighted the porous nature of the boundaries between them and brought the categories closer together? They can even be overlapping and interchangeable.
The premises hosting the exhibition in Reggio Emilia could hardly be further from a white cube. Part of the exhibition is actually inside the display cases and in general there are strong connotations due to the close proximity to the collections, which are of a highly specific nature and cover fields such as natural history, anatomy, botany and ethnography.
Containing taxidermied animals, bones, skeletons and various kinds of finds, they are like a Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. Luc Ming Yan almost seemed to be inspired by the variety. For example, the figures in his paintings might be common or prehistoric, imaginary or extinct, deformed and bizarre (like a dinosaur skeleton with two skulls), but in general there is a place for them all in this bestiary. In addition, there is a palpably threatening feeling in some of Yan’s paintings, along with a number of overt references to death: several works depict skulls, while a dead sparrow is portrayed prominently in another, alongside a black cat that was presumably behind its demise. The exhibition takes its name, The turtle and the diver, from a painting showing a turtle and a diver coming face to face at the bottom of the sea. The diver looks helpless and possibly dead. His head and diving suit are clearly slumped. His body is bloated and the palm of one hand is facing upward, in what looks like a sign of surrender. In a kind of role reversal, the turtle seems to be exploring and approaching to take a look at the outsider.
Now let us go back to abstract paintings. Above I have described a number of the subjects shown in the exhibition, but the really crucial point to consider is that as onlookers gradually grow accustomed to Luc Ming Yan’s paintings, these two sides to his work – abstract and figurative – start to seem like communicating vessels. In some respects, they begin to appear much closer than they do at first sight.
As I stated above, each of his abstract paintings is a swirling clump of colours and unsettled brushstrokes moving in many directions. They tend to build up in layers in a central mass, or stretch vertically or diagonally across the surface. The hordes of brushstrokes, colours and dabs of paint seem to convey excitement and energy, not to mention a battle with and within the image: it might be said that the frenzied roar of a cock fight seems to ring out in some of Yan’s paintings. Does it not feel as if it is this conflict and commotion that lays the foundations for the portrayal to emerge?
In Vincennes in 1981, Gilles Deleuze taught a university course all about painting, the transcript of which was recently published in a book in Italy. In it, the philosopher tied together a key turning point in the history of painting with a series of paintings whose subject was catastrophe, in the form of storms, hurricanes, battles and clashes between fleets or armies. According to Deleuze, catastrophe is not just a topic that begins to recur after a certain point in history. It is also a sort of abyss into which language plunges. In other words, depicting catastrophe sends the language swiftly downhill. It is what is left after this collapse (rather than a pre-established, or coherent and organic portrayal system) that provides the starting point for the re-emergence of portrayals. It is driven first and foremost by colour (a new epiphanic colour), then by forms that can be traced back to reality. “If you were to look at a late Turner, you would accept the term catastrophe,” states Deleuze. “That’s because it was at that time that painters began to use that very term. They affirmed that the act of painting takes place through chaos or catastrophe. And they added that it gives rise to something. This confirms our idea: catastrophe is needed in order for something to emerge from the act of painting.”
So could we not say that abstract shapes – such as the jumbles and maelstroms seen in Luc Ming Yan’s work – amount to another example of the catastrophes and places – or rather the chaos – from which elements emerge of forms that can be named, traced back to origins in reality and vaguely described? For instance, in his painting Cream the features of a grotesque and vaguely diabolical head seem to appear and take shape in entangled brushstrokes. Meanwhile, in Meld a similar web of brushstrokes creates the impression of a mishmash of the wings and plumage of birds, which are a recurring subject in Yan’s paintings. In Swap interwoven limbs or paws appear to be grabbing and clinging onto each other, while the white brushstrokes on the left side of Counter Helix become sharp, scratching and volatile nails or claws. Then there are the figures that appear to take shape more stably in works such as Magma, Welcome, Happy and L’antihéros: crude, ungainly, vaguely grotesque and comic strip-like, with something spooky and prehistoric about them. Do they not just feel like a more evolved form of the movement (or mixing) of potential shapes in the abstract jumbles?
Essentially, what I am trying to say is that this tangle or cloud is a sort of first step; a place for gestation from which all of the figures in Luc Ming Yan’s paintings seem to spring. Even when complete figures appear in the foreground of an image, the jumble does not fade away. It takes the shape of a landscape or habitat for the figures and remains in view as a hazy, fuzzy background, or a score of paler, more ephemeral brushstrokes and marks that have more “feeling than meaning” (to quote Deleuze again) and are dotted across the surface, at the top and bottom. Where can the traditional dividing line between the subject and the background be drawn in paintings like L’antihéros and Surprise, in which what lies behind also seems to stretch forward and reach inside or over the figures?
This aspect calls to mind some of the late portraits by Cezanne in which the subjects and backgrounds blend into one. For instance, take Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, Portrait of the Gardener Vallier and Portrait of a Peasant. A dab of brown, green or light blue might be placed without distinction on the body of the subject or in the background. Colour establishes continuity. The external colours – which might be deemed atmospheric – spread onto the subjects. The opposite is also true, resulting in figures that are almost part landscape or background.
Similarly, in Luc Ming Yan’s works colour makes the figures and landscapes into part of the same atmosphere. They intermingle and permeate each other. Take the series of paintings of big rats. Some of the muddled, hazy colour from behind can be seen on the subjects in the foreground. They almost appear to be nothing more than offshoots from the background, still made of the same obscure matter and substances. The skeleton in Deux tetes is a permeable framework. The background reaches through its outline into the figure and the gaps between the bones. In contrast, in other works the background is solid and monochromatic. This is the case with the artist’s series of paintings of big, calm (but menacing) cats. All the same, in the brown background of Xiaokelian there are grey stripes like in a cat’s coat, while the figure and background in Liaovi interrogateur seem to merge in one point, due to the yellow hue of the animal’s eye. Although the figure and the background in Bouc de Topaze are in different tones, they seem to have the same mineral – and in some respects magical – substance to them. So can a real distinction be drawn between the figures and the backgrounds in the artist’s works? And in the figures that he paints, is there an inner side and something hypothetical within that is not conveyed and made visible by the backgrounds?
One last remark: in Luc Ming Yan’s works there is constant cross-fertilization between forms that could just as easily be part of pop culture or the history of art, which lies hidden in many images. For example, one of the works on display in Reggio Emilia shows dancing monsters. It is a fresh take on the classic Danse Macabre, which has a long history behind it in the art world. Many of the images in Yan’s paintings also call to mind 18th century capriccios, especially Goya’s Caprichos. More generally speaking, are the air and wind that seem to blow in many pictures not highly reminiscent of those that ruffle and breathe life into the forms painted by Tiepolo and Fragonard?
In Yan’s works, everything is steeped in a sense of swiftness, feverish agitation and transience. Many subjects seem to have been depicted as they were moving across or passing through the image. The movement in the paintings gives the subjects a feeling of perpetual instability. Another aspect of the jumble in Luc Ming Yan’s paintings is an unstoppable mixing of different forms and figures. It is a place where his imagination can conjure up constant metamorphoses and unprecedented, visionary encounters and dialogues between seemingly incompatible figures: an alien and a parrot; a werewolf, a dog and a monkey; and of course a turtle and a diver.