The Youth, the Magical World

The Youth, the Magical World is a solo exhibition by Chinese painter Lyu Peng, featuring five large-format paintings that view past and present Chinese culture through a surrealist lens. The works in the exhibition are masterfully painted on delicate rice paper using traditional Chinese inks and pigments. The series centers around the evolution of knowledge, tradition, and culture as it passes from older to younger generations, symbolized in part by the large red books which recur in Peng’s work. To craft his fantastic, almost mythological scenes, Peng combines elements of traditional Chinese art and philosophy with Renaissance art historical details. The influence of Renaissance paintings can be seen in the linear way the artist depicts beams of light, his sculptural approach to the human body, and the lush draping of fabric. By implementing techniques and imagery from across space and time, he creates complex compositions that are both unexpected and uncanny, familiar yet physically impossible. The artist meticulously organizes characters within his densely packed and patterned scenes to adhere to a harmonious internal logic. In highlighting the complementary aspects of his aesthetic influences, Peng suggests that younger generations may determine which parts of culture they accept, reject, or adapt as their own. Though Peng has often represented the cultural clash of the new and old in his work, this series builds a bridge. The artist’s multi-layered work highlights how young people can absorb a variety of histories and cultural influences and out of them create new realities. Each element of The Youth, the Magical World works together to simultaneously summon and resolve the chaos of modern life, generating new stories to pass on and new ways to make sense of the world.