No. 054
Lee Huanyu
The Surging of Auspicious Omens
70x60cm
Acrylic on canvas
2025
US$3,000
The Onset of Auspiciousness employs the artist’s signature layered construction method. Stylistically, it uses Modernist deformation as its core, integrated with cartoonish imagery to reveal an inner fragmentation within the monumental, architectural density formed by the horses. A profusion of "auspicious" symbols—golden vases, braziers, corals, ginseng, and lingzhi mushrooms, topped by a UFO-like golden mandala—creates a carnival of yearning and fervor.
While the brushwork emphasizes a classical architectural order, the content presents a child-like gaiety and a hysterical longing for good fortune. These two psychological drives attempt to reach a healing spiritual intensity through a classic, sublime formal language. However, the stitched nature of the painterly elements and the excessive piling of treasures—under a cold visual order—subtly hint at the commodified nature of the "auspicious" narrative and the compensation mechanism for scarcity within the collective subconscious.
About the Artist
Lee Huanyu
（China，b.1986)
BFA in Oil Painting, Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. Based in Xi’an. His artistic practice is rooted in a critical reflection on the Symbolic Order. People are often constrained by established symbols in daily life, forming unconscious patterns of domination. By breaking the logical frameworks of images and introducing randomness in color, he seeks to transcend these linguistic and conceptual constraints. Within the tension of “control and loss of control,” he explores a visually comprehensible balance. In the work “Neither Harmony nor Disharmony” (“Fei He He Fei Bu He He”) exhibited in this show, inspired by the Tibetan Buddhist painting “Four Auspicious Symbols of Harmony” (“He He Si Rui Tu”), seemingly absurd characters are integrated within chaotic patterns structured into orderly forms, creating an uncanny yet rationalized organic architecture.