Yuri Yuan ’21 Plays Hide and Seek in Solo Show at Alexander Berggruen
On Wednesday, April 16, 2025, Yuri Yuan ’21 opened her third solo exhibition with Alexander Berggruen Gallery, Hide and Seek.
Hide and Seek expands upon a recurrent theme in Yuan's work: inward and outward looking. In When You Are Found (36" x 48", oil on linen, 2024), one painting in a series set in the deep blue shades of dusk, a solitary figure is portrayed in a boat, finding their way by flashlight. Within these dark, isolated scenes, a scant light source illuminates the way. Whether the figures are hiding, seeking, or both, is left ambiguous.
This sense of ambiguity extends to Yuan's philosophies about art-making and the artist's role in shaping the world around them. This is particularly evident in Where the Light Ends (48" x 60", oil on canvas, 2024), a painting that highlights the artist's hands within a domestic scene. The bedroom and the artist, cross-legged on the floor, are portrayed in simple, though elegant, blue gestures. In contrast, her hands and the books and sketches surrounding them are portrayed in full-color realism.
"This painting inverts the idea that the artwork comes to life through the artist; instead, the artist comes to life through art,” Yuan said.
While conceptually driven, Yuan's paintings are grounded in color, symbolism, and the interplay of light and shadow. Alternating the direction of her brushstrokes across the canvas, she creates a surface that feels oddly flat despite often dramatic lighting. Perspective can be disorienting, as well; while human figures frolic in a snowy scene, squirrels may take the foreground. In this way, Yuan fashions vague emotional atmospheres that allow room for a vast array of understandings—highlighting the viewer's role in ascribing meaning to the work.
Yuan's surrealist scenes feature enigmatic figure-landscape relationships which trouble the distinction between our internal and external worlds. What might a figure's interaction with a seascape or a stark, snowy field reveal about the artist's—or the viewer's—psychology? Crafting a tenuous balance between obscurity and clarity, Yuan encourages her viewers to approach the work as the figures in her paintings approach their external worlds: seeking meaning, connection, and revelation in liminal spaces.
Yuan lives and works in Jersey City, NJ, and is represented by Alexander Berggruen Gallery, New York and Make Room Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited at Alexander Berggruen, NY; Make Room Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Haverkampf Leistenschneider, Berlin, GE; and Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Rome, IT; among others. Her paintings are represented in the public collections of Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH and The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA.
Hide and Seek will be on view April 16–May 14, 2025 at Alexander Berggruen, NYC. If you missed the show, you can purchase the catalogue, which features essays by art historian, lecturer, and author Dr. Ben Street; writer and art critic Will Fenstermaker; and Professor of Professional Practice Rirkrit Tiravanija, here.