Edge Gallery Until October 30

With his new set of oil on canvas paintings Mainland artist Yan Renkui is attempting to convey a sense of mythical narrative by drawing on the iconography and composition of pictorial art in Chinese history.

One image, first appearing in The Bridge (2008), is repeated across several pieces: an arching bridge composed of male figures. On a boat or over a river, nude and laughing, this form emerges as an iconic but absurd and isolated component, bearing virtually no relationship to its stated aim of constructing narratives of fear and greed. The brushwork in these and other pieces depicting frogs and plum blossoms is middling, demonstrating no aptitude for or exploration of painting as a specific medium but rather mindlessly repeating the tropes of half-cartoon, half-ink wash colour and texture so common to the second-tier art academies of Sichuan and Yunnan, where Yan studied.

In terms of composition and language, the trite images dealt with in these works lean far too heavily on the tired iconography and repeated graphic forms characteristic of long outmoded political pop, applied senselessly to an inappropriate and inhospitable subject matter seemingly without any greater purpose beyond the production of objects that vaguely resemble contemporary art.

The exhibition points to a longstanding issue with the Hong Kong system: unambitious galleries prove themselves all too willing to pick up Mainland artists so uninteresting that they have no relationship with the art world beyond these particular commercial exhibitions. Without a single credible exhibition to his name, Yan Renkui does himself no favours by continuing to show in this space.

Robin Peckham