Paintings - lee wen 李文

     “Yellow man, where are you going?” was done in 1990 just before leaving Singapore for London. It was executed with spontaneous brush strokes. The allusions were to the way I liked how some Chinese paintings were done, especially those with Zen or Taoist inclinations. Perhaps it was because the Chinese saw painting as an extension of writing and calligraphy. They were not hampered into stiffness and over-respect for the painting surface that I find most uncomfortable about some western oil paintings. This painting was perhaps the initial germ or hint of the yellow man performances.
      Facing this was an installation of 4 large paintings with accompanying small paintings below each of them. The small paintings were appended to them like explanatory signs or even propaganda information for the larger works.  It refers to the media, marketing and advertising of the modern world or they could also allude to how art seems to require explanations at every step of the way in our confusing post modern pluralism.