Although the erotic female nude is virtually unknown in the canon of classical Chinese painting, for his New York debut, Taiwanese born artist Yu Peng confidently asserted his unique, fully developed vision of the genre into contemporary discourse. Yu has scrutinized Western masters of erotic line, hybriding the Apollonian detachment of Matisse with the nervous quirkiness of Schiele, and has FedExed the result into the esoteric world of Chinese landscapes.

Yu’s languid, clearly contemporary ladies, drawn on traditional scrolls, directly from life, lounge incongruously on carved rosewood divans in Confucian interiors or inhabit classical Chinese gardens. Executed on absorbent Chinese paper with traditional brush and ink and some washes of color, the figures possess crisp contours that convincingly delineate the creaminess of the feminine flesh, yielding a nearly tactile weightiness to these nublle Amazons. The effect is startling in its candid sexuality, and the deft dislocation of private intimacy into the public context of the study or garden enhances their already sassy eroticism. Why are these luscious women so brazenly naked? Who are the effete, emasculated men, nude or dressed, who observe and serve them? Without concrete answers, viewers are free to imaginatively meander through the complex sense.

The scale is slightly oversize—the hanging scrolls taller than a person, the hand scrolls quite long. The compositions are updated lexicons of different conventions of Chinese painting—the forms being built out of an incredible range of small, individual brushstrokes—from the fleshy nudes to the Brillo-like mountains to the melting rocks. Yu’s varied passions echo the complex cultural history of his island homeland, simultaneously the preserver of Chinese traditions and the product of a complex colonial history. Even the scroll mountings eschew expected pastel shades and surprise us with sensuous black, vermillion and aqua. In questioning the limitations of his chosen confines, Yu has uncovered totally new arenas of subject matter and mood while remaining loyal to tradition.

Many of us are looking to Asia for the next chapter in the evolution of late 20th-century art, but why look just at Asian variations of Western forms? I find Yu Peng’s level of discovery considerably more profound and visually satisfying than the miles of Asian conceptualist installations so ubiquitous lately. Isn’t it more provocative, and perhaps even radical, to focus on a young, accomplished master painter such as Yu Peng, whose work is just entering the international area, and join him in his new visual universe heretofore uncharted ?

——By Robert Kushner，Art in America，Dec.1998