Lunatic
2005
Evan Yi Feng
Taiwan
Art Medium:
Oil paintings often using thin scraped layers to give textured areas. These have then been imported into a computer graphics program and modified with collaged elements.
Description:
This Taiwanese deck was issued as a portfolio of large format 'cards' loosely bound on their top edge into a perfect bound book, so that it was easy to disassemble in order to have a set of large cards. The artwork was very detailed and really needed that large format. A year later the card designs were issued as a standard format deck with the cards being slightly cropped to fit the space. It is a contemporary, in-your-face, gothic, neo-symbolist Tarot. The card titles are printed on the rear of the card black and white version of one of the Rider Waite decks leaving the face for the imagery. Though born in Hong Kong, Evan has now based himself in Taiwan and has worked on many art projects. He is not only an accomplished expressive painter but also an illustrator and sculptor. Evan’s artwork has been favourably compared to Klimt, and although one sees some influences from there, his reach is much wider. He has obviously studied the symbolist and decadent painters of the late 19th century, and though he does not copy their style, in some way he seems to be working out of this aesthetic. His tarot, apart from a handful of cards, expresses its ideas through a human figure. This figure is usually sharply drawn and painted, while the backgrounds in many cases are just blocked in with washes of colour and texture, often over graphically collaged flowers. In places he has inserted what, to a first glance, seem to be sketched construction lines for his figures, however, as these are on top of the painted surface it is just a neat device to make the photorealism of the paintings appear more spontaneous and lively. He is a true master of his medium being willing to incorporate tricks like this. He uses a small group of models (a young woman and two men) who thus appear on many of the cards and this integrates the imagery and ties the whole concept neatly together. It is likely that he worked by initially taking precisely posed and well lit photographs as the basis for the paintings. The figures are often depicted in BDSM chic, with leather straps and rivets, some having facial piercings. The Queen and King card of each suit are in a more classic symbolist fin-de-siècle style, rather than the modern bondage fashionware. These are sumptuous images, and though some of the images seem disturbing on an initial glance, this is not a dark gothic deck, but merely one glorifying a style, underneath the outer surface of which lies rather conventional tarot imagery. The Minor arcana closely echo the familiar emblematic material of the Rider Waite deck.
