Yikui Gu, The Immigrants
Gouache, acrylic, ink, gouache on photograph, yarn, printed newspaper cartoon & expired American passport on bristol board, 18 x 14”. 2020.
My studio practice centers my Chinese immigrant experience as an entry point into exploring contemporary American society. My works touch upon pop culture, politics, food, internet memes, art history, consumerism, and the Asian American identity, usually with a biting sense of humor. By combining painting, drawing, and collage, alongside materials ranging from chopsticks to bodily fluids, my works engage with the full spectrum of image making and the plurality of the modern world. Through this combination of political, cultural, and domestic imagery, I hope to affirm and subvert the contemporary human condition through a Yellow lens.
Yikui (Coy) Gu was born in 1983 in Nantong, China and emigrated to the United States at the age of seven, growing up in Albany, NY. He has a BFA from Long Island University and a MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
He has exhibited his work nationally in New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, and St. Louis; and internationally in London, Berlin, and Siena, Italy. He has been an artist in residence at the School of Visual Arts, and has lectured at Tyler School of Art, Alfred University, Gettysburg College, and Fontbonne University. He has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, the Washington Post, KunstForum International, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Denver Art Review, and the Yale Daily News. His work has appeared on the cover of the Lower East Side Review, and in Fresh Paint and Art Maze. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Siena Art Institute, Alfred University, Wheaton College, Camden County College, and numerous private collections.
He resides in Philadelphia and teaches at the College of Southern Maryland. The bulk of his time is spent in the studio, where he is currently plotting his takeover of the international art world, while remaining mostly harmless.
