Get real with Yu Hong's poignant canvases

In the Gold series (2010–11) of paintings, this feeling for form takes on its most poetic level. Yu's intensive studies into the traditional Chinese paintings of Dunhuang, the murals of the Kizil Cave complex and Western painterly traditions take form, interweaving a sensitivity towards art history traditions and contemporary daily life. For Wondering Clouds (2013), Yu interviewed six people about their internal states and their personal histories, all revolving around the topic of anxiety. By so doing, Yu was attempting to express not only their individual sorrows, but to share the universality of the experiences of human beings in society and to understand the core of people's depressions. Executed around the same time, On the Clouds (2013) was an attempt by the artist to combine a spatial concept with the landscapes of daily life, using a more theatrical method of expressing the uncertainties with which life is filled.

A turning point in Yu's career seems to have ensued with Concurrent Realms (2014–15), a series of works floated into a world of fantastic fables and reality. Here, she combines seemingly disparate nations, regions and cultures to form a single entity. Such can be seen in her most recent work, A New Century (2017), in which she blends both macro and microscopic perspectives, highlighting the circumstance of being an individual within a larger group. Today, the student cutting her hair in her dormitory from Yu's early career has become a photographer, perched atop the clouds to capture one of the most repeated images in Western art – The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, part of his masterpiece which graces the Sistine Chapel ceiling. China as window on the world and Yu's view of it: subtle, elegant, parochial and compelling.