...One of China’s hot new crop of neo-post-modernists, Han Dai-Yu — who now lives in Los Angeles — also relies on technical brilliance to convey a more intricate regard for both art and the human condition. Han’s realism is exacting but not slick, and he applies it to sensitive portraiture whose seeming traditionalism quickly melts away on closer inspection. Most of his figures lie on horizontal panels, rendered with a gentle, knowing intimacy and accompanied by a telling still-life item such as a handful of flowers or a locket. These appealing (if slightly vertiginous) paintings are augmented here with several homages to art history, most specifically Edouard Manet’s Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass. Han updates and inverts these proto-impressionist monuments with clever but effective substitutions and startling juxtapositions, slyly adding a “sur” to Manet’s realism.
--- Peter Frank
