Yuri Yuan (b. 1996, Harbin, China) 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.
Yuri Yuan 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.
This is Yuri Yuan’s first solo show with the gallery.
