Yuk King Tan and her “Shelter”

I came to gallery Quynh yesterday with some of my friends and get a chance to know about “Shelter” of a New Zealand’s artist: Yuk King Tan.
At a first look, I was impressive by these paintings. I thought these are paintings in Chinese styles in the ancient time when people drew by dark ink. However, I was wrong. The black background was made by smoke instead of ink. This makes me more interesting in these paintings.

The “Shelter” shows the powerful as Yuk King Tan combined smoke and the line art together. It somehow likes the combination of text and image in design. Although the image itself is very powerful, it’s still incomplete and text will play the role as the missing part to make the image more meaningful and more powerful. That works the same for smoke background. It is very strange and attractive but there is no meaning if it just stands alone. Combination with small drawings will give these backgrounds a role to delight the whole image.