Aishan Yu: old photographs, no nostalgia

(Others 16 & Others 18 © Aishan Yu)

MOT International is a London gallery that opened a Brussels branch a few years ago. After operating for a while downtown, it moved recently to attractive premises on the Kleine Zavel/Petit Sablon. As a result, the gallery now has a different, more homely atmosphere. It is currently presenting a solo exhibition of work by the Chinese artist Aishan Yu, who is fascinated by the German photographer Hedda Morrison, who lived in Beijing from 1933 to 1946. Morrison documented life in Beijing at that time, recording the old city and its inhabitants, temples, and markets. Yu has drawn a number of her photographs onto paper. The artist is clearly incredibly talented technically: she copies the photographs so meticulously that you sometimes have to take a second look to be sure that what you are looking at really is a drawing. But she also deliberately disrupts her virtuoso performance by adding stains and smears around the edges in a variety of colours. To a picture of some books, for example, a large red stain has been added. A Victorian-style circular portrait of a girl reading a book at a table has been copied right down to the smallest detail; on the edge you see grubby streaks made by her hands, while a red pattern is visible in the drawing itself.

(Installation view)

The old source material gives Yu’s work a somewhat archaic, and at times even surprising quality – as in a drawing in which two women are carrying out a strange ritual that involves attaching glass grapes to a stick. Yu has painted a green stripe of paint onto this scene and placed a rapid sketch alongside on paper. The artist is not interested in creating a perfect imitation that can stand in for the original: the blotches etc. are added precisely to create a distance from the original. And to add a trace of today in order to counter nostalgia.

AISHAN YU > 21/12, di/ma/Tu > za/sa/Sa 10 > 18.00, gratis/gratuit/free, MOT International, Kleine Zavel 10 place du Petit Sablon, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-511.16.52, www.motinternational.com