Yun-Fei Ji
Pierogi
175 North 9th St.
April 1–April 30, 2004
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
3750 Washington Blvd.
January 23–March 27, 2004
Rose Art Museum
415 South Street
Brandeis University
September 1–November 30, 2004
Curated by Shannon Fitzgerald and Paul Ha
Fame has come upon Yun-Fei Ji with the subtly breakneck speed of a thunderstorm: A solo show at Brooklyn’s Pierogi gallery in 2001 led to inclusion in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and now the Contemporary presents six large-scale paintings in his first one-man museum exhibition. Amid misty crags appropriated from classical Chinese landscape, “The Empty City” unfolds a dystopic visual ballad of a community abandoned; only scavengers are left among the ghosts of local dead and vanished refugees. Catalogue contributions include essays by critics Gregory Volk and Tan Lin, as well as an interview with the artist by Asia Society curator Melissa Chiu.