Sun Yitian Hi Hi, Bye Bye, 2024

Sun Yitian is best known for her paintings of monumentally enlarged mass-produced objects lovingly rendered in colorful acrylic paint. The diptych depicts two nearly identical figures, apparently inflatable. Each dressed in a green suit, the figures with large eyes and cartoon-like generalized features are almost indistinguishable except for slight variation of their hairstyles. The most pronounced difference is the position of their respective arms. Both figures have a small name tag on their jacket, one reading Hi Hi, the other Bye Bye. This distinction gives the work a certain humor: what is it that makes one a greeter, the other a sayer of goodbyes?