Fall resident artist Yuri Yuan presents about her work across a 45-minute slideshow of images, followed by audience questions. This presentation is hosted by Frederico Câmara (Assistant Professor of Art, Photography) and Martha Poggioli (Professor of Practice, Interdisciplinary Art and Curation, and Pollock Gallery Director) and concludes Yuri Yuan’s campus studio visits with MFA students of SMU Meadows School of the Arts. Happy Hour follows across the street on the patio at Los Charros: 6101 Hillcrest Ave, Dallas.
YURI YUAN
Painting - Jersey City, New Jersey
Yuri Yuan paints surrealist scenes featuring ambiguous and physically impossible figure-landscape relationships to explore existentialist themes of longing and loss. Through visual symbolism, metaphors, and magical realism, the artist explores the ways in which exterior landscapes become projections of her and her audience’s interior psychological states. Her recent solo exhibition, Hide and Seek, at Alexander Berggruen Gallery, explored the emotional complexities of loneliness, anxiety, and vulnerability. These works reflect the fear of exposure and the shifting dynamics between observer and observed. Each painting incorporates a literal or metaphorical veil—simultaneously revealing and concealing—prompting viewers to consider what is shown, what remains hidden, and why. Inspired by the natural light and contemplative quiet of Corsicana, Yuan will create new landscape paintings that blend observation with imagination, capturing the local atmosphere and color while continuing her exploration of introspection and perception.
uri Yuan (b. 1996, Harbin, China) holds a Visual Arts MFA from Columbia University, New York, NY, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Yuan was a recipient of the Helen Frankenthaler Scholarship at Columbia University in 2020 and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2019, 2022, and 2024. The artist’s work has been exhibited at Alexander Berggruen, NY; Make Room Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Haverkampf Leistenschneider, Berlin, GE; Simon Lee Gallery, London, UK; Moss Arts Center, Blacksburg, VA; Lenfest Center for the Arts, New York, NY; Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, IL; and International Center for the Arts, Umbria, Italy, among others. Her work is represented in the public collections of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, and the X Museum, Beijing, China. Yuan was an artist-in-residence at Hercules Art/ Studio Program from 2021 to 2023 and at Silver Art Projects Residency in 2024. Yuan lives and works in Jersey City, NJ.
