Pace presents a new series of paintings by Chinese artist Mao Yan (born 1968), on view 9 until March, 2024 kickstarting a rich season of shows in London, in both museums and private galleries.

Mao blurs the boundaries between abstract and figurative creations. For the artist, the most important perspectives are the skillful expression of raw feelings via the command of many creative languages and the exploration of significant gestures on the canvas.

“Now I am gradually adding something to my works. What exactly should I add? In fact, it is similar to the process of writing poetry, deciding which words to use, what concepts to borrow, and what tone to use to implement the expression […], I leave enough time to wait for the accumulation of this process.” The artist writes.

Rarely do Mao’s portraits originate from live sketches of his subjects; instead, they are painstakingly created and developed in private from photographs that the artist took of his friends and acquaintances in a remarkable way. The artist’s most recent attempts have given this structure a looser, richer approach. Mao only painted with oil on canvas for two years. Rather, he concentrated on experimentation with paper, including a plethora of ink experiments and constant poetry writing. This “break” from the canvas work turned out to be helpful to his practice bringing new meanings to his work.

When Mao picked up oil painting again in 2021, he discovered that the medium offered new directions. Mao’s signature figuration and his recent theoretical interest in abstraction have been gradually convergent at the same time. These irregular motifs flow in the direction of the artist’s thoughts, expanding at random to create new nodes and fracture the surface texture. The new series, Condensed or Adrift (2022–present), emerges from this foundation. Within this body of work, an ambiguous and illusory space envelops delicate geometric forms created by brushstrokes reminiscent of Chinese painting techniques, creating rhythmic tension between ground and object.