Mushroom Cloud, 2009

Yue Minjun   Famous Artists

Mushroom Cloud belongs to the set of twenty lithographs from the “Snatched Ecstasy of Yue Minjun", which comes as a limited edition of 132 rare books. The work of Yue Minjun is instantly recognizable with its uniform laughing faces, the artist's faces thus Yue Minjun creates formations of self-portraits. Minjun creates various realities against which the laughing figures are rendered, thus creating ambiguous images, often with the sinister atmosphere, which comes as his personal cynical reaction to various social and political dimensions of contemporary Chinese realities. The artist has said: "I consider my paintings as tragic and painful expressions, and I can even say that they are all scenes of combat." Mushroom Cloud features nine laughing figures resembling part of the regiment rendered against the background with the enormous cloud caused by atomic explosion. The iconography alludes to artist's concerns with the issue of the nuclear power in contemporary China and beyond which is executed by the means of his emblematic irony and cynicism.