Yuri Yuan

Yuri Yuan lingers on the quiet weight of the everyday, uncovering emptiness and unease even in dreamlike or surreal environments. Through a restrained and atmospheric palette, she reflects the solitude of contemporary life, following her female figures as they drift between cityscapes and rural landscapes, reality and reverie. Her work gestures toward the ineffable, offering a distinctly current vision of figurative painting shaped by vulnerability and introspection. Rather than depicting moments of climax, Yuan dwells in the pauses before them. Her figures appear caught in transitional states—hovering between isolation and intimacy, expectation and realization, familiarity and estrangement. By leaving the unfolding action unresolved, she opens space for viewers to inhabit the uncertainty, projecting their own interpretations onto her characters’ interior lives. Across her practice, themes of melancholy, longing, and disconnection recur as undercurrents. While many works rely on shadowy, cool tones to heighten a sense of distance, others shift into warmer hues of orange and yellow, softening the atmosphere and hinting at the possibility of renewal. Through these tonal variations, Yuan maps the fragile terrain of emotional experience, capturing fleeting thresholds where stillness, desire, and uncertainty converge. ...