Sun Yitian at BANK
Widely exhibited and collected in Asia, Sun Yitian makes hyper-realistic paintings of toys and mannequin-like figures, inspired by the colorful consumer goods that she was surrounded by in her hometown of Wenzhou, where they were mass-produced. Working from staged photographs, which she usually takes herself, the Beijing-based artist paints inflatable toys, animals and comic book characters with the photorealism of her portrayals and reflective studio lighting making the commonplace objects appear more precious than they are. In her Ken series, Yitian paints Barbie’s fictional boyfriend’s head detached from his body. Ken’s an object of desire. He’s handsome, but without a body he’s just another trophy animal for the artist’s wall—or in this case, a collector’s home.
