Yuri Yuan’s solo exhibition “Dark Dreams” is currently on view at Alexander Berggruen Gallery. 👁️ Speaking about her painting "Metamorphosis", Yuri Yuan stated: "This painting shows a canvas being looked at by many different eyes, almost like surveillance. The artist is gone or evolved into a butterfly, or the artist was a butterfly; I’ll leave it for the viewer to freely interpret the narrative in the work. The Greek word for “butterfly” is psyche, as in the soul of the dead. Butterflies are often used as a symbol of the soul exiting the body, freed from death. Each eye is taken from a different movie; most of them are psychological thrillers: Dr. Strangelove (1964), The Truman Show (1998), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Vertigo (1958), Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), and Paprika (2006), among many others." "I want to emphasize that the movies were selected based on both their aesthetic value/cinematography as well as their concepts/narratives. For example, the anime eye is from Paprika, an animated psychological thriller film that discusses the ability to see other people’s dreams and as a result, losing one’s own identity (Christopher Nolan cites this film as an influence for his film Inception (2010). In my opinion, Paprika is a much better film)." "Even though this painting looks the oddest in this group of paintings (perhaps formally), I would argue that the sense of weirdness and eerieness, 'the strange with the familiar', is shared among all of the works." 👁️ Yuri Yuan Metamorphosis, 2022 oil on linen 72 x 68 in. (182.9 x 172.7 cm.) Yuri Yuan: Dark Dreams September 7-October 12, 2022 Photos: Philipp Hoffmann #YuriYuan #DarkDreams #AlexanderBerggruen