Wu Yiming – B-Side Ink

Eli Klein Gallery is pleased to present “B-Side Ink”, Wu Yiming’s first solo show at the gallery and in New York. The exhibition showcases the artist’s latest works, marking a significant evolution in his exploration of ink as both tradition and as play. Featuring ink works on paper, cardboard, and collaged elements, Wu’s mastery of and ability to understand the inherent and cultural qualities of material comes to the forefront of this exhibition.

Wu’s move from Shanghai to New York in 2020 introduced a stark environmental shift that has profoundly influenced his work. A master of ink as both a practice and historical medium, Wu has delved into the American perception of ink and Pop, pulling to the forefront the many contradictions that all people in a globalized world live with.

Ink’s demand for precision, its indelible nature, and its unforgiving tonality seem to be at odds with American Pop, whose raison d’être is to proliferate and duplicate, to become a commodity in the same moment that it deconstructs commodity. Ink demands urgency, a sense of intense presence where one folds themselves into the moment of strike. Yet so does Pop, which devours commercial and celebrity to digest and synthesize rapidly, to produce multiples and maintain relevance to a constantly evolving and global world. Wu blends with prowess the conflicting and dual nature of these discursive forces without ever yielding to one or the other.

“B-Side Ink” blurs the boundary between Eastern and Western traditions, particularly in portraiture, where Wu has pulled upon the Mona Lisa, who, like the Buddha, smiles softly in an eternal gesture of generosity to onlookers. In “Flower Sermon”, a series of four works which are featured in the exhibition, the Mona Lisa of Wu’s mind merges with the eponymous Buddhist gesture and virtuosic ink technique to form images of ambivalence, teetering between reverence and parody, yet always remaining profoundly sincere. Silhouetted by halos, all of Wu’s portraits confound origin and cultural identity.

Including Wu’s portraits, depictions of mortal flora and beings of immemorial existence coalesce into a cohesive vision of cultural perception. Wu’s “Banana” series is featured prominently in the show, done spontaneously on cardboard and painted as if in motion, tossed up in the air. Yet they also seem stationary, resting on the ground. The chosen materials at the core of the series reflect Wu’s concise and discerning response to living in New York. Banana peels and cardboard are the discarded shells of what has now been removed.

They are also products of consumption that proliferate on sidewalks, in alleys, and burst from the tops of garbage cans anywhere you might go in the city. This imagery is remarkably ‘Pop’, in a way that recalls the use of champ’s readymade as a symbol elevated beyond commodity. Yet it also engages with readymade as a waste object, something that in itself bares a reflexivity toward consumer culture, or an ability to self-critique through its own existence. The subjects recollect visions of unseemly metropolitan waste, and highlight Wu’s protean ability to adapt and respond with astounding clarity to his surroundings as both symbolic and literal, one never far behind the other. In his work, whether in response to subjects of vaunted status, consecrated religion and history, or phantasms of consumption, Wu is always in keen discourse with tradition, environment, and the contemporary.

Wu Yiming was born in 1966 in Shanghai, China. He received his B.A. from the Fine Arts Department of East China Normal University in 1992. Wu was part of a generation of Chinese artists put to the task of reconciling the various conflicts between Chinese artistic tradition and Western influence and pressure. Through his perennial relationship with ink painting, he has both embraced and defied his cultural heritage and the challenges against it, existing both as a contemporary literatus and as a maverick.

Since relocating to New York in 2020, Wu’s work has undergone significant evolution, revealing that his sensitivity to environment was never conditional upon globalizing changes but that it was and is an innate trait vital to his oeuvre. In particular, his keen understanding of materiality has provided an exciting backdrop for the continuing evolution of his work.

Gallery hours Tue-Sat 10 am – 6 pm

Exhibition Duration 08 March – 17 May 2025

www.galleryek.com

Location:
Eli Klein Gallery
398 West Street
10014 New York, NY
United States