“The Time Thief – Prophecies & Fragments Ye Yongqing Works 2010-2014” debuted at the Shanghai Longmen Art Projects on March 8, 2014, showcasing a massive piece comprising of 110 small paintings, created recently by Ye Yongqing.

Completed between 2010 and 2014, each of the 110 works that make up “The Time Thief – Prophecies & Fragments” embodies their own character and composes their own thesis. For this exhibition, Ye Yongqing has split up the works into several groups based on his own feelings and inspirations and presented them in a dramatic installation view – emphasizing the transitional state of the works, their interaction and relativity with each other as well as separating and narrating the artist’s own fragmented vision and experiences over the past 4 years.

“The Time Thief” is a metaphor of being. It refers to the documentation of the process by which inspiration is gained, intentionally, or unintentionally, in life, and in time. “Prophecies and Fragments” is a commentary on contemporary culture. The underlying theme of these creations is fragmented and prophecies of the apocalypse. This is the interpretation of the title of the exhibition by Ye Yongqing.

Lv Peng once said: “Ye Yongqing has always been a poet, and has always injected his poetry into his paintings and images. Therefore, if we use a Western methodology to interpret his works, we would lose a key perspective. Chinese contemporary art is constantly evolving, regardless of how complicated and tedious this evolution is, one thing we can be sure of, is that we need art that is based on the realistic living world of the artist, as well as their inherent cultural background, spirit, and sophistication”.

Ye Yongqing loves travelling. Lyricist Yao Qian once said: “Ye Yongqing is like a parallel walker, walking his own path at his own pace and keeping his distance. Unchanged in his romantic elegance. ”

Cultural Observer Huang Liaoyuan: “Basically, Ye Yongqing does not use structure, or any reliable form of people or objects for his expression. This is his transcendent skill: as effortless as a reed crosses the river, sailing with the wind, as clouds slowly cover a mountain, his paintings are driven by a force that is deeply rooted within Ye Yongqing’s delicate brushstrokes. He organizes and cleans up his own disordered chaos, and his canvases are infused with an enlightened and romantic atmosphere; apropos for any occasion, and any one.”

In preparation for Longmen Art Projects’ presentation of “The Time Thief – Prophecies & Fragments: Ye Yongqing Works 2010-2014”, Ye Yongqing has selected several entries from his own journal to compliment the thesis of the exhibition. Below is an entry from “I Touch My Own Image Prophecies & Fragments - Journal Excerpts I”: In recent years, it seems that we’ve been living in a persistent countdown, bombarded by apocalyptic prophecies, social media, social unrest, and the explosion of digital information. These bits and fragments have become the basic backdrop of survival. Amongst all the chaos, I spontaneously documented and compiled these fragments into over a hundred small paintings, each describing an individual story, and yet, relevant to each other. Someone once said, “Artists are thieves of time!” plucking bits and pieces from time, stealing moments of leisure from a tireless existence, creating culture – a non-physical product. Therefore, the underlying thesis of these works is leisurely art; produced from time, but not actually spending or taking up time. Leisure time is like empty space within a room. Painting becomes a means to kill time, to pass the time, from these small gaps within a lifetime, to gain freedom, knowledge, and vision for one’s mind and soul.

The 110 individual canvases do not simply document Ye’s fragmented canvases, but as Lv Peng said: “We now see a contemporary artist who has inherited an attitude from ancient scholars: everything is art, nothing is art, the most important truth is inherent in art, she sustains our lives”.

The exhibition will continue to April 30.

Translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO, Photo courtesy of Shanghai Longmen Art Projects.