During his first Macau solo exhibition titled “Neo-Idolatry”, Chinese contemporary artist Yue Minjun talks to us about working at an oil rig, turning 50 and the making of an idol

If you have seen one of Yue Minjun’s “laughing man” oil paintings, then you have a basic idea of what he looks like. Using his own mirthful visage as model, Yue has been painting these visually striking portraits since the early 1990s. Today, the “laughing man”, with his unnatural, discomforting facial expression and closed eyes, is considered Yue’s signature and an icon of contemporary China. But much unlike his hysterical-looking self in his works, in real life, Yue is all cool and calm. In fact, he is far less cynical than I had expected.

“That label is in some ways apt,” he says, referring to “Cynical Realism”, a contemporary Chinese art movement that he’s famously associated with. “However, it’s also a very narrow classification, especially when it comes to my more recent works. I would like to use the term ‘pink humor’ to describe them instead.” Pink, as he explains, represents an ambiguous and neutral attitude as opposed to the cynical “black humor”, which helps him re-exam and reinterpret all the aspects of the culture and world he’s been living in. “It’s about almost everything I’ve been exposed to in my life,” he concludes.

Born in 1962 in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, Yue grew up in a family working in the oil industry and started to paint in his early teens. After he graduated high school, his parents arranged a job for him at an oil platform, where he painted every now and then – mostly the ocean and his fellow oil workers. That stint had a profound influence on his life and art. “I always like to use the color blue and defined outlines in my paintings. I believe that sub-consciously, it has something to do with that experience, being around the ocean and the hard steel all day,” he says. It might also be where his love for nature came from. “Traveling is my only hobby,” he admits. “And forget about cities, I only like to see the nature.” When The Nature Conservancy approached him about their charity auction, he donated a work without hesitation—“I remember watching ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ years ago and being shocked by it. I believe doing this is for a great cause.”

Coming back from the rig, Yue became one of the first artists that took residence at the Yuanmingyuan artist village in the late 1980s, a time when many young Chinese artists started to find their voices. Fresh memories of the Cultural Revolution drove them to shift their artistic focus on topics relevant to their lives and society, while the timely Open Door policy enabled them to study Western art. For Yue, he owes his distinct style to the likes of Da Vinci, Goya, Manet, and Warhol.

Nowadays, Yue is one of the biggest names in the contemporary art world, with works fetching some of the highest prices at auction. When asked how he feels about that only the very rich can get hold of his paintings, he thinks it’s a rather normal phenomenon: “The collecting of art, neither by organisations or wealthy individuals, is a form of art preservation. Ultimately, it provides a good environment, a shelter for us to keep doing what we do. Most iconic artists from the West and the East benefitted from it—it’s hard to create art when you’re starving or unprotected.”

That said, opportunities to have non-selling exhibitions are something that Yue cherishes. “Normally, my works are only seen at auctions or galleries in Hong Kong in Macau, so I’m very glad about the purely academic context and the serious venue this time,” he says. The exhibition, running from November 20 to next February at Macao Museum of Art, is based on a studio concept, which means that the audience can sneak a peek of his working environment and see a wide range of experiments and styles in his recent paintings and sculptures.

As for “idolatry”, he adds, isn’t about the content of his works per se, but rather himself and how he created himself as an artist. “Looking back, I was a naïve young man, always thinking that there’d be loads of time to do what I want.” Yue, who turned 50 last year, talks about the reason behind the diversity. “But now, my age makes me bolder and more willing to experiment and make mistakes because I can hear the clock ticking. It’s now or never.”