Japanese Anime Influences Chinese-Born Artist Tina Yu’s Sculptures in New Solo Show

The Editors

 

Downtown Los Angeles’s  Corey Helford Gallery  is currently featuring a solo show from New York-based artist and designer Tina Yu , entitled A Journey,  which premiered July 11 .

 

Yu is a New York-based artist from China with a BFA from the Pratt Institute. After developing an interest in  sculpting in college, she decided to pursue her art and bring her creations to life.  Inspired by her childhood, fashion, film, and nature, Yu creates colorful and detailed sculptures using epoxy clay. Her figurines are sculpted into mysterious creatures that are ornate, lifelike, and personally meaningful.

 

Yu’s newest series, A Journey,  is a fantasy world centered around the artist’s own rumination on childhood and a celebration of growth. She explains, “The world was smaller and brighter when I was younger, and I want to capture that with my art.

 

“In 2016, I graduated from art school and the same year, I made the biggest and scariest but yet, the best decision of my life - to become a freelance artist. For the first time of my life, I felt like I was following my heart and doing something for myself. I think I have found my calling. Gradually, I started developing my own identity in art through sculpting. However, sometimes I feel a little dissociated from my younger self. In the past year, I realized a big part of who I am today has a lot to do with my youth growing up in China.”

 

According to Yu, the characters she created for the show are based on her family, friends, childhood imagination, and things she loved as a child. The animal characters in the show have some correlation with her previous mini solo show, Animal World. Yu created a series of zombie animal characters who died from abuse and then returned as zombies to seek revenge on those who had made them suffer. For this show, the artist has recreated animal characters with new identities.

 

 

 

 

 

COREY HELFORD GALLERY

571 S. Anderson St.

Los Angeles, CA 90033

Open Tuesday-Saturday, 12 p.m. - 6 p.m.

(310) 287-2340

 

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All photos courtesy of Corey Helford Gallery
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