This is reflented in the uniform launging faces that emerge in his work. Yue Minjun creates representations of his relationship with reality, which is also linked to the relationships that of other people with reality. It is in this relationship that Yue Minjun senses that the reality he is facing contains intimidating forces.

These intimidating forces are also what make Yue Minjun return to the issue of the personal. This problem of the personal is a “small window” that is left with which to observe the reality surrounded by the uncontrolled images, signs and symbols. The problem of the personal that constitutes this “small window” is the basic for Yue Minjun repeated return to his own face, which, in his works, appears as more than just a self-portrait.

Within that personal dilemma explored there is a spiritual space that canot be pierced, let alone be dominated by the techno-industrial signs that carry the characteristices of materialism (the basic for exploration of the material world that exists within the entire development of production in this modern world). This spiritual space functions as an “emergency door” that makes sublimation possible.

Within the existentialist aesthetic, sublimation makes the effort of “the self” to eliminate the trackes of destruction resulting from the terror of reality. The laughing faces in the works of Yue Minjun indicate that the sublimation of his representations does not change pain into something humorous and pleasant, but, rather, chandge the feeling of pain into an ache that no longer contains any trace of terror.

In facing the siege of signs of the techno-industrial regime, Yue Minjun does not take an oppositional stance, nor does he avoid or acknowledge these techno-industrial signs. In fact, he even makes use of thses dominant signs. However, this is done through the deconstruction of those images and structures.

The original meaning of aura is “a distinctive but intangible quality that seems to surround a person or thing; atmosphere”. The works auratic and post-auratic emerged in 1930’s, first introduced into the field of art by Walter Benjamin. They were revitalized in contemporary art discourses and post-modern discourses. Please see the following two quotations for the meaning of them:
1. “Aura suggests that unique, authored works of art emit a peculiar presence and effenct. Art’s aura might be imagined as a fetishized glow that exudes from products of high art, untouchable, unapproachable, made by geniuses. Such art-unlike(at least potentially) mechanically reproduced art-bears an high value in cultural, moral and financial terms. Auratic artworks force the spectator to become a passive beholder drinking in the vision of genius.”
_ Quoted from the introduction of Walter Benjamin’s from The Literary Encyclopedia at www. LitEncy.com

2. “……a ‘post-auratic’ object, deprived of aura and hence democratized by the processes of mechanical reproduction, like the photograph, for which the only ‘original’ is a negative.”
_____The Materiality of the Text-Quttake From Digital Aesthetics-By Sean Cubitt