Sun Yitian Bridegroom, 2024

Sun Yitian's painting Bridegroom introduces an enigmatic narrative element into the artist's recurring motif of severed doll's heads.

Lovingly rendered in acrylic paint on canvas, Sun Yitian’s painting depicts a doll's head in monumental scale. Placed in a setting with a patterned colorful background, the head wears a delicate veil with small flowers. Portrayed with an unconcerned gaze and a friendly smile, the painting perfectly captures the generalized beauty of dolls and the paradox of their life-like yet vacuous presence. The addition of the veil, adds a surprising detail, reinforces the ambiguity of the motif's reading. One the one hand, the veil could be part of a child's play, dressing up the doll, on the other hand, the head becomes part of a more complex and perhaps more naturalistic setting. The delicate lines of the lace imbue the doll's features with a sense of fragility.