The Mendocino College Gallery is honored to present this collection of drawings and paintings by renowned academic realist artist, Yu Ji. This exhibition focuses on large-scale works in both charcoal and oil, in which Yu Ji composes figures which were originally drawn from life in sketchbooks into larger multi-figure compositions.
Born in China, Yu Ji completed his undergraduate studies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (CAFA). China’s Open Door Policy allowed Yu Ji to immigrate to NYC where he completed two Master of Fine Arts Degrees, in Painting (1986) and Printmaking (1989), both from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He then moved to Southern California, where he has been teaching for the past 25 years.
The following are excerpts from the recent booklet published in tandem with Yu Ji, At the Crossroads: Selected Works, part of the ongoing exhibition series created by the Department of Art at Biola University.
“During his time in New York, Yu Ji began a discipline of drawing in sketchbooks from direct observation. Leaving the safety of the studio, Yu Ji would venture out to public spaces in the city to draw. In places like Washington Square, Yu Ji witnessed the extraordinary diversity of America with a fresh eye. As he rapidly recorded structural information from his unsuspecting models, he was also collecting the raw visual material, both figures and environments, for many of his later studio compositions.
In 1999, Yu Ji moved to Southern California, the third major metropolitan area in which he would live and work. Los Angeles provided Yu Ji with a new and contrasting urban environment in which to re-engage his practice of sketchbook drawing.
Yu Ji continued to develop painted compositions from his sketchbooks and other observational source material. These later compositions have a broader color range, responding to sunlit Southern California (as well as its coloristic painting traditions).
During his early career as a university professor, Yu Ji began to develop multi-figure compositions from his sketchbook drawings. Many of these paintings have a pensive interiority, with languid figures who though placed together, often appear absorbed in their own thoughts. These invented compositions utilize the complex spatial overlapping, including exquisitely subtle scale shifts, on which his subsequent work elaborates.”
