Wanted

Massimo De Carlo Gallery is pleased to present Wanted, Yan Pei-Ming’s long-awaited return to London after five years. This exhibition follows his major commission for the Vatican’s Jubilee in Rome earlier this year, marking a significant chapter in the artist’s international practice.

This new body of work by Franco-Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming is about the dynamics of desire. The small portrait presented in the gallery’s first room is the starting point of the exhibition: it is painted after Lucien Freud’s 1952 portrait of fellow artist and friend Francis Bacon, which was stolen in Berlin in 1988 never to be found – at least to this day.

Portraiture is the cornerstone of Yan Pei-Ming’s practice. Best known for his epic, large-scale monochromatic renditions of iconic figures, ranging from popes to emperors and world leaders, he explores the representation of the human spirit through the medium of portraiture.

Yan Pei-Ming discovered the story of “the stolen portrait” and the fruitless hunt that ensued during a visit to the National Portrait Gallery. In 2001, its robbery was denounced by black and white posters with glaring red letters spelling the word W-A-N-T-E-D, in a style more reminiscent of Hollywood Westerns than the pursuit of a real-life missing artwork.

The canvases presented at Massimo De Carlo Gallery in London all respect the stolen portrait’s original proportions, in varying enlarged scales, each rendering Francis Bacon in different introspective postures. These portraits, like the multiple facets of a diamond - optically similar but never identical – seem to explore the complexity of Bacon’s emotional states.

With Wanted, Yan Pei-Ming points to the paradox of longing vs. possession, absence vs. presence, and what some are willing to do to get what they want. It should not be lost on us that Yan Pei-Ming chose to reimagine the missing portrait in a way that keeps it just out of reach - its absence still felt, its presence unresolved.