Sun Yitian's collaboration with Louis Vuitton's Pre-Fall 2024 collection was unveiled on April 18th, as interpreted by Nicolas Ghesquière, Artistic Director for Women's Collections. In the trailer of the Louis Vuitton's Women's Voyager Show in Shanghai, the inflatable animals depicted in Sun Yitian's paintings were scaled up to surreal sizes and floated like balloons next to the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Bund, and the Jinmao Tower, among other landmarks in Shanghai.
The collaboration utilizes seven of Sun's paintings of inflatable animals as visual elements. Sun's work focuses on the concept of the "object" and itself, using classical brushstroke and balencing light and shadow in colour to portray seemingly inexpensive "objects". While classical brushstroke has always been used to depict exquisite objects in still-life paintings in art history, the artist goes in the opposite direction, giving these assembly-line products a mysterious and grotesque quality. The objects themselves also symbolize the rapid development and economic boom of the era in which the artist grew up.
