![alex p. berg torrent alex p. berg torrent](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91w0DlW8w4L._AC_UL600_SR600,600_.jpg)
In the foreground, the figure is encompassed by a minimal, bold, black rectangle on the window. Absent discernable characteristics, the relationship between the figures remains open to interpretation. A smaller figure, likely in the distance, stands far enough away that their features are also ambiguous. In her 2020 See You on the Other Side, a figure in a raincoat with its hood up faces away from a viewer, appearing to gaze out a window. Inspired by painters Lois Dodd and Alex Katz, Yuan streamlines her economy of shapes to employ abstract elements for metaphorical exposition. Yuan recalls relating to this gum in her loneliness within New York City: “I felt chewed up and spit out.” On the yellow center of the subway pole is a plastered chewed mound of gum.
![alex p. berg torrent alex p. berg torrent](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/E5M7KT/wilson-alexander-knox-1944-E5M7KT.jpg)
In speaking about why Hopper’s work is often associated with loneliness, Liang cites the ability of “blank walls and open windows,” features of “paranoid architecture, to simultaneously entrap and expose.” (1) Here in Yuan’s A Train, the darkened subway window concurrently confines and reveals the reflected passenger.
![alex p. berg torrent alex p. berg torrent](http://compbio.mit.edu/publications/247_Garcia_Nature_22.png)
When creating this work, Yuan was reading writer and cultural critic Olivia Liang’s book The Lonely City, which explores and seeks to redeem loneliness as a social condition within the context of work by artists like Edward Hopper. This inaccessible stranger and the figure reflected in the subway window appear to be alienated from one another. A plain grey bag rests on the leftmost subway seat, implying another passenger in the subway car, sitting just beyond the canvas’s edge. In other cases, Yuan suggests the presence of an elusive figure, as in her 2021 painting A Train. The ambiguities within Yuan’s paintings function as a guiding mirror for viewers to project their own perceptions. Below this shadow is the toe of an inconspicuous shoe. In the lower-center register, a form reminiscent of a figure’s head and shoulders darkens the silver-grey water. In her 2021 Puddle, most of the composition consists of a serene reflection of a bare tree-covered environment, distorted through the still water. Faces in Yuan’s paintings are routinely obscured via water, distance, or orientation.