In 1961, Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of "the banality of evil" in her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." She argues that individuals become perpetrators of evil when they abandon independent thinking and reduce themselves to cogs in a system. Her analysis of totalitarian regimes reveals that in modern society, power does not always manifest in oppressive forms but is embedded in bureaucratic systems and everyday norms. People get caught up in this, becoming cogs, bystanders, or even silent accomplices, often without being aware of it.
Looking back at art history, many paintings exhibit an unusual sensitivity to this anonymous power structure. Francisco Goya's "The Third of May 1808," completed in 1814, adopts a perspective distinct from previous war paintings. Faced with the collective execution of Spanish rebels by Napoleon's troops on the outskirts of Madrid, bright light illuminates the rebels about to be shot, while the executing French soldiers are rendered as a line of faceless figures, with only the raised gun barrels glinting coldly. Violence is no longer glorified but is presented as a mechanical and anonymous slaughter machine. Goya’s brushwork “strikes against the brutality of the aggressors” precisely by denying the executioners faces, causing specific individuals to disappear into a functional presence that echoes Arendt's later comments on "cogs."
More than half a century later, Édouard Manet continued this inquiry in "Exécution de l'Empereur Maximilien du Mexique" (1867-1869), depicting the execution of Maximilian, the Mexican emperor supported by France. Unlike Goya, Manet gives a direct face to the individual on the far right, pointing to the mastermind behind the power—Napoleon III. These examples indicate that painting continually questions the same issue: who are the executors of violence, and where does true responsibility lie?
Both Goya and Manet clearly attempt to mark the attribution of guilt on their canvases, but for artist Shan Yuhan, the issue of power becomes more complex. The exhibition titled "Balancing Techniques" directs attention to the process by which individuals constantly adjust their positions amidst conflicting, contradictory, or even antagonistic choices. As the artist states, "balancing techniques" are not about how individuals "control" their choices but about how to "endure" through "methods, strategies, skills, and mentality." When individuals cannot completely land or fully escape, they repeatedly adjust their relation to the world within a perpetually unstable environment. The so-called balance lies in the continuous ability to seek a fulcrum amid ongoing imbalance. Therefore, he no longer arranges a clear entry point for the audience's judgment but instead leaves the figures in various unresolved postures.
Understanding Shan Yuhan's recent shift in creation through "Silent Confrontation" (2025-2026) may be an appropriate entry point. The violence depicted by Goya is direct and silent, echoing with silent screams as the insurgents raise their arms in anger, glaring at the executioners. Shan compresses resistance into the folds of ice and snow, creating another kind of critical moment. The gun has not yet fired, but under the chill of the cool tones, it transforms, and resistance dissipates in the cold. The crowd on the left, crushed into edge figures by the artist's chaotic brushstrokes, contrasts with the lone gunman on the right, the only one in the scene to show his gaze. The missing faces behind him cast the scene into silence, rendering the ongoing confrontation seemingly meaningless. The artist has clearly stated that power dynamics are fluid, and the roles within them are not fixed: "We may be the ones being held at gunpoint, or we may be the ones holding the gun; we may be the powerless, or at another moment become bystanders, evaders, or even accomplices." The gaze of the gunman hints at the remnants of consciousness within humanity amidst the chaos of the painting, reflecting Shan Yuhan's understanding of role fluidity.
Another work emphasizing gaze is "XX-ist" (2025), whose title echoes the labeling of "molecule" in the social context. The figure in a hood suggests that in reality, everyone may be defined as a "certain molecule," becoming objects of classification, carving, and discipline. Yet, the character's gaze pierces through the obscurity; even with their face erased by the hood, their eyes stubbornly look beyond the canvas. "I see you, I remember you, I will not let you vanish into anonymity." The artist does not wish these figures to become portraits of specific roles, as they are first and foremost abstract "embodiments of roles," repeatedly shaped by consciousness, judgment, desires, and circumstances.
"Irresistible" (2026) responds to this indeterminate state from the perspective of suspended bodies. The image of the inverted human form has appeared in both "Suspension" (2024) and "Silent Confrontation," but "Irresistible" presents a background that resembles an invisible sphere of power, holding up the floating body while also isolating the upward supports and downward points, leaving individuals in a drifting intermediate state, silently shattering and falling within it. This transformation may hint at the artist's recognition of power experiences shifting from external fierce conflict to inner, enduring endurance.
In contrast to the aforementioned works, "Sink and Rise" (2025) demonstrates how to extend this contradiction into the horizontal dimension. Individuals are always torn between two forces: the obsession with "getting ashore" and the recognition of the "fate of drifting." The contemporary living condition resembles an irresistible torrent, where everyone is searching for a place to anchor themselves but cannot stabilize it. The work employs floodwaters as structural metaphors, overflowing streets, eroding geographical boundaries, and submerging shared experiential foundations. As Shan Yuhan states, some people struggle to climb towards lifeboats in the murky currents, while others gradually lose the clear outlines of their bodies in the ebb and flow. The white-clad woman seated at the bow of the boat becomes a visual anchor. The artist endows her with divine symbolism, making her the brightest presence in the painting, yet this brightness cannot change the current's trajectory. She embodies multiple conflicting significations: a potential light of redemption or an irreversible watershed of fate. Precisely because there is no clear narrative of redemption, the woman in white becomes an open signifier, capable of transforming into hope, illusion, comfort, or another kind of entrapment.
Shan Yuhan views this latest batch of works as a "self-calibration." In the previous phase, the "Hesitant" series, recurring figures such as "the Looker-Back," "the Suspended," and "the Hesitant" were placed within scenes laden with allegorical meaning, a sense of catastrophe, and historical depth. Snowstorms, flames, wilderness, migration, explosions together formed an image structure supported by geopolitical experience and a crisis of the times. In "Balance Art," these macroscopic backgrounds are further compressed and internalized, transforming into more specific yet ambiguous psychological realms. Shan Yuhan is no longer eager to unfold a complete narrative around a specific event; instead, he shifts towards a more introspective perspective, looking inward at those phase-specific feelings that are harder to directly name, such as the infiltration of power, the oscillation of consciousness, the fluidity of roles, and the chaos of being unable to judge.
In works that portray the consequences of violence, Dan Yuhan attempts to retain traces of will amid disintegration. The fallen bodies in "Unfinished" (2026) serve as the most direct imprint of power, yet the tightly clenched fists break through absolute defeat, akin to a steadfast defense of self-dignity and value. The imagery the artist emphasizes is highlighted in the flowers on the left and the petals falling to the ground; life, fragile as morning dew, blooms with a more resilient posture in decay. "Unfinished II" (2026) pushes this imagery to an even more extreme expression. The figure's head is entirely covered, and the skull in front evokes the classic theme of vanitas—“memento mori,” reminding us of inevitable death—bringing us closer to a gaze upon death itself. The disappearance of the head and the visibility of the skull juxtapose life's transience with the permanence of power.
Unlike Goya and Manet, who situate acts of violence within specific historical contexts, the figures in Dan Yuhan's works do not point to specific identities; their faces often exist in a state of ambiguity, obfuscation, or fragmentation. In "Gaze" (2026), he deliberately undermines the paradigm that judges' portraits in Western visual tradition pursue completeness, propriety, and solemnity. The ambiguity and fragmentation of the face strip the judge of stable personal identity, emphasizing a one-way, anonymous sensation, even hinting at internal divisions within authority: the judge no longer embodies the perfect representation of legal unity but becomes a self-contradictory figure filled with fissures. The wig and robe, as garments of power, remain intact, enveloping an unrecognizable face.
The artist's avoidance of concrete and definitive elements reiterates that power today no longer always emerges in the form of clear oppressors; it seeps into every crevice of daily life, manifesting through discourse, discipline, information overload, and even unnamed forces. This is precisely the warning highlighted by Arendt: totalitarian regimes dissolve human judgment, making individuals lose their autonomy in distinguishing good from evil. The blurred, broken, and unstable faces depicted by Dan Yuhan are products of this eroded capacity for judgment.
Moreover, the questioning of the primal imagery of human competition within power structures is extended by Dan Yuhan into "Mirror Girl" (2025), where he alludes to the most primitive logic of competition between people through the childhood game of "tag." Two children face each other in almost symmetrical stances, creating a mirror-like reflection of their competitors, thereby revealing the duality of competitive relationships. Opposition and recognition, distinction and imitation are always two sides of the same coin. The power struggles in the adult world have already been prefigured in childhood games.
In contrast, "Ferry" (2025) resembles more of an internal dialogue with oneself. The garden depicted in the artwork is constructed by the artist as a "homeland of memories," a spiritual space that carries the warmth and fragility of childhood. The boy in the red garment stands amidst it, his backward glance emphasizing the necessity to recognize his current identity within the soil of memory, thus finding a fulcrum for moving toward the future. This composition evokes the iconic "back figure" from Caspar David Friedrich's "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" from the Romantic era. The lonely figure standing atop the mountain, gazing towards the horizon, invites viewers to project themselves into his broad back, becoming anonymous vessels experiencing the sublime of nature. Through the "backward glance," Dan Yuhan enhances the sense of identification between the viewer and the boy, while the vivid red and golden background sharply delineate the rift between social identity and the true self. The red suit on the boy symbolizes adulthood's identity, also embodying internalized pressure, and the warm yet indistinct golden garden background cannot truly dissolve that rift. The profusion of flowers resonates with the metaphors in "Unfinished" and "Unfinished II." This confrontation between the external and internal, the present and the past, embodies the manifestation of "An Balancng Act" across the dimension of time.
In terms of painting language, compared to the previous "Hesitator" series, which heavily utilized palette knives and created a "very full, very intense" effect, the recent new works employ richer brushstrokes, adding a semi-transparent peeling effect. The artist believes that he has "toned down a bit" in terms of visual effects and made the imagery "a bit more concrete than last time." This shift from palette knives to brushes, from impasto to semi-transparency, transforms the extroverted, explosive narrative into an introverted, sedimented psychological depiction. The canvas no longer overwhelms the audience with all-encompassing textures but instead invites viewers into a time that requires contemplation through layers of transparency and overlay. The symbolism of brighter colors also illuminates the picture while adding immeasurable tension to the complex psychological field. From the identity conflict in "Ferry" with its bright red suit and golden background, to the serene cool-toned cave atmosphere in "Resisting Inability," and then to the resplendent blood-colored and floral imagery in "Unfinished II," Shan Yuhan's use of color no longer serves a unified tone. Instead, through the richness of color, he creates a more dramatic feeling for the painting.
The figures in Shan Yuhan's paintings are rarely truly in a stable state. They kneel, fall, look back, float, stand still, or appear to be suddenly emptied by an invisible force, remaining in a moment of powerlessness while retaining the appearance of "endurance." This intermediate state is precisely the focus of Shan Yuhan's recent paintings. And in an era that demands everyone quickly take sides and give clear judgments, viewing itself becomes a process of identification, swaying, and repositioning.
