Content area
Full Text
AWOUNDED man lying upon a hospital bed. Rioters in Tibet. The Dalai Lama. Uniformed athletes. The Olympic torch run. Rendered on grouped canvases, these images spread across the walls of downtown's Morono Kiang Gallery suggest an almost hyperlinked view of recent protests surrounding the Olympics in China.
For 31-year-old Beijing painter Li Yan, news is a muse, and in "Quotidian Truths," his first solo U.S. show, Li explores the various intersections between Chinese sports and politics. In seven painting clusters, called "Snippets," Li relies on splintered details to get at larger truths. "Li breaks apart an event into little pieces in order to analyze it," says gallery co-owner Eliot Kiang.
The...