YURI YUAN | Wanderlust

The paintings by Yuri Yuan (b. 1996, Harbin, China) gesture toward themes of geographical and emotional distance through carefully staged relationships between figures and their surroundings. Imbued with visual symbolism, her landscapes and domestic scenes become projections of interior psychological states. This new body of work presented in the exhibition Wanderlust, the first Berlin solo exhibition of Chinese, New York-based artist, investigates belonging and the meaning of “home” for an artist whose roots extend across multiple places. It emphasizes the importance of passage over arrival, witness over judgment, in an age when life often seems to move faster than reflection.

Yuan’s recurrent motifs of distance and longing recall Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog and Gustave Courbet’s Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet—works the artist encountered early in her career while visiting the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. In the spirit of wanderlust, the paintings in this exhibition function as visual records of a biography shaped by movement and displacement. Born in China, educated in Singapore and Chicago, and now based near New York City, Yuan explores the sensation of being “in-between.” Her works are characterized by precise layers of dry and saturated color, revealing the influence of Post-Impressionism, particularly Pierre Bonnard. This painterly approach is paired with a deliberate emotional restraint that runs through her iconography.

The conceptual anchor of the exhibition is The Dream of a Dream. The painting depicts a woman in a trench coat—a recurring symbol of protection in the artist’s work—walking past a cemetery. Rendered flatter than her surroundings, the figure appears distinctly isolated. The work reflects on the artist as an observer moving through the world without fully belonging to it, while the cycles of life and impermanence unfold around her.

A biographical touchstone can be found in Above the Clouds, which is based on a trip to the summit of the Haleakalā volcano in Maui. Rather than depicting the sunset sought by crowds of tourists, Yuan looks in the opposite direction. She captures the long shadows of two onlookers cast across the hills and research station, shifting attention to the act of viewing itself.

The psychological and physical exertion of the artistic path is examined in the landscape painting Weight of the Wind. Stylistically informed by the dynamism of Hokusai’s Japanese woodblock prints, the composition was created without a specific geographical reference. Instead, it is driven by the movement of wind, mist, and the ascent of a hiker. The painting becomes a metaphor for persisting in one’s practice under adverse conditions, even when the destination remains unclear or invisible.

Reflecting on the concept of home, Every Bird Has a Home is drawn from an everyday observation in Jersey City’s Van Vorst Park, where man-made birdhouses hang in the trees. These welcoming shelters for migrating birds took on particular resonance when Yuan created the painting in spring 2026, amid ongoing global displacement. Rather than making a direct political statement, she preserves the autonomy of painting, leaving the parallel between small-scale acts of human care and larger geopolitical crises open to interpretation.

Wanderlust showcases an artist who translates personal experiences of migration, movement, and memory into a visual language of metaphor and reflection. Engaging transcontinental art-historical traditions through a painterly lens, Yuan gives form to the quiet uncertainty of life between places. Poignant in their restraint, the works allow private memories to open onto broader questions of care, vulnerability, and belonging.

Yuri 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 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2019, 2022, and 2024. She was an artist-in-residence at Silver Art Projects Residency. Her work is represented in the public collections of Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH, The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, and X Museum, Beijing, China. Yuan was listed in in Forbes Magazine’s “30 Under 30.” Her works have been featured in the LA Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, CULTURED Magazine, Sound and Vision Podcast, and Refinery29, to name a few. Alexander Berggruen co-represents the artist with Make Room Gallery, LA. She lives and works in Jersey City, NJ.

Opening: June 12, 6-8pm.

The artist will be present.