Laughing In Paris: Artist Yue Minjun Kicks Off First Major European Show

First Major European Solo Exhibition By Leading Blue-Chip Chinese Artist.

Launched today and running through March 17, 2013, “L’Ombre Du Fou Rire” – the first major European solo exhibition by blue-chip Chinese contemporary artist Yue Minjun — takes place at the Fondation Cartier Pour l’art Contemporain in Paris.

A leading figure in the wave of Chinese contemporary art that flourished in the early 1990s, as Chinese art saw its first “boom” in the early 2000s, Yue — like contemporaries such as Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi and Zhang Huan — not only became very wealthy, but also a high-profile player in the international art world. By 2007, Yue’s landmark work Execution became the most expensive work by a contemporary Chinese artist at the time, selling for 2.9 million pounds (US$4.66 million) at Sotheby’s London. Also in 2007, Yue’s global clout was further boosted by by his first museum show in the United States at the Queens Museum of Art in New York City.

More recently, 25 of Yue Minjun’s Warrior sculptures were installed at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York, while the work “A-maze-ing Laughter” was installed for permanent exhibition in Vancouver. Earlier this fall, five of Yue’s iconic “smiling man” sculptures and 12 silk-screened prints went on show at Yue’s first Hong Kong show of public sculpture at Harbour City.

For his first major European solo show, 40 of Yue’s paintings from collections around the world, as well as selection of never-before-seen drawings, give Parisian audiences a rare chance to see work by one of China’s most well-known — yet also one of its most low-key and private — top artists. Also available at the exhibition is an accompanying hardback catalog (€37, US$47) featuring the nearly 130 drawings and paintings in the exhibition along with contributions by Chinese critic and poet Ouyang Jianghe and the French philosopher and sinologist François Jullien, as well as an interview with Yue Minjun.

Yue Minjun: “L’Ombre du Fou Rire” (Nov. 14, 2012 – Mar. 17, 2013)

Fondation Cartier Pour l’art Contemporain

261 Bvd Raspail, Paris