Yu Hong: She’s Already Gone

The fifth and final Virtual Reality artwork of the exhibition, Virtual Reality Art, is a new piece by Chinese painter, Yu Hong, premiered at Faurschou Foundation Beijing. In the piece, She’s already Gone, the viewer is invited to follow the life of a female character from birth to old age. As the character’s life moves forward, the viewer will notice that history itself moves backwards. Yu Hong has hand-painted every detail within each scene, bringing her artistic language into the Virtual Reality world. When compared to the previous Virtual Reality works shown at Faurschou Beijing, Yu Hong’s piece is yet another example of the broad spectrum that Virtual Reality Art works with. 

The overall exhibition, Virtual Reality Art, is exhibited in Beijing from August 27, 2017 to February 3, 2018, and consists of five consecutive “sub-exhibitions” for each participating artist: Christian Lemmerz, Erik Parker, Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler and Yu Hong. Each artwork is exhibited for a one-month period with complementary sketches, books and artworks for each of the artists and their respective Virtual Reality pieces. Faurschou Foundation is collaborating with Khora Contemporary, the producer of the Virtual Reality artworks.

Christian Lemmerz: August 27–September 29 (Opening: August 26)
Erik Parker: October 1–27 (Opening: September 30)
Paul McCarthy: October 29–November 24 (Opening: October 28)
Tony Oursler: November 26–January 5 (Opening: November 25)
Yu Hong: January 7–February 3 (Opening: January 6)

Yu Hong
Yu Hong’s virtual reality work places the viewer in the middle of four moments, traveling through the life of a female character from her birth to her old age. The narrative follows differing timelines as the life and aging of the protagonist moves forward while history goes backwards. Whereas her birth takes place in a modern hospital, the subsequent scenes take her and the viewer further and further back in time, until reaching a shamanistic ritual in the earliest known period in Chinese history.

Each scene is painted by the artist by hand and adapted into virtual reality, the visible brush strokes adding a layer of physicality to the virtual world and creating an exchange of virtual and real matter in the piece. Yu Hong’s method of painting is vastly personal in the portrayal of the woman, emphasizing the beauty in the details of her daily life, linking events in history to intimate moments. 

Yu Hong was born in 1966 in Xi’an, China. In the 1980s, she studied oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, and graduated with a post-graduate degree from the oil painting department in 1996. Since 1988, she has been a teacher in CAFA’s oil painting department. The core subject of Yu Hong’s paintings has always been human nature, with a focus on the growth and existence of a particular society and the world at large. Recent solo exhibitions include CAFA Art Museum (Beijing, China), Long March Space (Beijing, China), Shanghai Art Museum (Beijing, China), and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, China). Yu Hong has also had group exhibitions at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), Long Museum West Bund (Shanghai, China), National Art Museum of China (Beijing, China), New York Academy of Art (New York, USA), and Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA).

Faurschou Foundation
Faurschou Foundation is a privately owned art institution with a collection of contemporary art, and with exhibition venues at Copenhagen North Harbour as well as Beijing’s attractive art neighbourhood 798. Faurschou Foundation introduces the visitors to some of the world’s most acclaimed artists. Faurschou Foundation’s collection is constantly developed and expanded.

Over a very short period since its establishment in 2011, Faurschou Foundation has profiled itself as a significant art institution with solo exhibitions of, among other artists, Cai Guo-Qiang, Louise Bourgeois, Shirin Neshat, Gabriel Orozco, Danh Vo, Bill Viola, Ai Weiwei, Yoko Ono and Peter Doig.