Press Release - Where are you, beautiful world by Yameng Lee Thorp
Yameng Lee Thorp - Freeeeee
Oil on canvas. 34.5 x 29.5 inches floated in walnut frame. 2025.
Where are you, beautiful world
a solo exhibition by
Yameng Lee Thorp
Opening Reception
April 18, 2026 at 6pm
pt.2
1525b Webster St.
Oakland, CA
To receive a preview contact
info@part2gallery.com
pt.2 Gallery is pleased to present Where are you, beautiful world, the third solo exhibition at the gallery by Yameng Lee Thorp. In this new body of work, Lee Thorp continues her exploration of landscape as an emotional and conceptual space, returning to a more expansive palette after the restrained black-and-white works of her previous exhibition. If earlier paintings moved through grief and rupture, these works remain in its wake, considering what persists and what becomes possible after.
Here, Lee Thorp approaches painting as a meditation on cycles: of nature, of history, and of human experience. Working exclusively in oil across large-scale canvases and smaller panels, the works reflect processes of destruction and renewal, where life continues through persistence, return, regrowth, and quiet transformation.
Yameng Lee Thorp - Rewilding
Oil on canvas. 61.5 x 49.5 inches floated in maple frame. 2026.
Figures in Lee Thorp’s paintings do not fully separate from their environments, but emerge from and dissolve back into them. They shift between human, animal, and plant forms, at times ghost-like, at times embedded in the surrounding landscape. In Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, figures move through a terrain that seems to outlast them, while in Rewilding, an animal form hovers at the edge of visibility, both present and receding. In Family, a cluster of weeds embrace in a gesture of resilience. Rather than fixed subjects, these forms suggest life as something continuous and adaptive, persisting beyond individual bodies and structures of control.
Light and darkness are held in tension, shaped through an ongoing process of experimentation. Paintings that begin as explorations of white evolve into something more layered and uncertain, as Lee Thorp approaches each new body of work with open questions. Responsive to the painting’s own movement, she allows it to arrive at forms beyond her initial expectations.
Yameng Lee Thorp - Feral Spring
Oil on linen panel. 9.5 x 11.5 inches floated in walnut frame. 2025.
References to literature, ecological thought, and history quietly underpin the work, from censored images of the Cultural Revolution to essays by George Orwell. Among these, a photograph by Li Zhensheng, kept hidden for decades, serves as a point of inspiration for several paintings. In particular, an image of a plant emerging through snow echoes Lee Thorp’s exploration of light and darkness and the persistence of life under extreme conditions.
Taking its title from a question posed in a moment of uncertainty, Where are you, beautiful world suggests that life does not ask permission. It returns, pushes through. To pay attention to it is to refuse the terms of destruction.
As George Orwell wrote in 1946:
“The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”
Yameng Lee Thorp is an Oakland-based artist with roots in China and South Africa. She holds a BFA from Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, and an MA in Design from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at pt.2 Gallery, ICA San Jose, Bass & Reiner, KALA Institute, among others. Lee Thorp is also a 2026 SFMOMA SECA Award finalist and an Henderson’s awardee for Headlands 2026 Artist In Residence. Her work has been featured in Juxtapoz Magazine, 48 Hills, Create! and Mid-Brow.