Yen Yu-Heng was Born in New Taipei in 2001. He is currently pursuing his MFA at the National Taiwan University of Arts. In 2024, Yen received the S-An Aesthetics Award (Visual Arts Category). Working primarily in painting, his recent practice investigates the visual effects of overexposure and blurred focus in photographic imagery. The artist tries to capture such optical phenomena through his brushwork and, through the transformation between photography and painting, reinterpret familiar scenes from fresh perspectives.
Artist Statement
It all began when I accidentally shot an overexposed, out-of-focus photograph through glass with a film camera. It made me contemplate the meaning of this accident, because the photo, with its flaws, would be considered a failure by conventional standards. It was precisely the abnormal visual characteristics that fascinated me, inspiring me to depart from my previous works that focused on expressing the immediate emotions in the moment of observation, and to enter this current phase where I begin to explore ways of expressing these accidents visually, to make my paintings appear unfamiliar and exotic, to interpret everyday scenes from new perspectives.
The works on display at this exhibition represent an extension of my earlier reflections. The paintings depict subject matters gathered from photos captured in daily life. The optical flaws in those photos, be it slight overexposures, blurs, shaky compositions, fading colors and reflections, are all transformed and reinterpreted through the pictorial language. The brushwork aims to convey the feelings evoked by different light qualities, such as the warmth conveyed through hotter light colors or the sense of distance implied through colder color temperatures. By deliberately changing and accentuating the original state of the lights, I try to capture these optical characteristics in order to amplify, expand and enhance the sensory perceptions that they trigger. The resulting paintings ooze a kind of tranquil atmosphere and leisurely pace that invites the viewers to immerse themselves for longer durations.