Sun Yitian Shelter V, 2024

Sun Yitian is best known for her paintings of monumentally enlarged mass-produced objects lovingly rendered in colorful acrylic paint. This painting depicts a monumental inflatable bouncer castle, as one might find in a children's theme park. Portrayed in a night scene on what appears to be a lawn, the actual scale of the object remains ambiguous. The sense of unreality is heightened by the subtle highlights on the surface of the inflated shape that suggests the sheen of reflecting lights on a plastic surface, a recurring reference that attests to the artist's work from staged photographs taken by herself.