Rene Yung: mountainriver

Overview

Bay Area-based, Chinese-American artist Rene Yung’s installation “mountainriver” is rooted in the Chinese traditions of landscape painting and Scholars’ Stone connoisseurship. The heart of the installation is a group of large-scale graphite drawings of fruit stones. The realistically rendered pits appear at first glance to be traditional landscape paintings. The fruit stones reference scholars’ rocks, the ideal of “mountain,” and, ultimately, the universe, inviting the viewer to consider infinity and simulacrum. Further, the knowledge that these are in fact drawings of seeds raises issues of diaspora: the sowing of seeds, or migration of peoples.