Alice Amati is pleased to present the first exhibition in the UK of New York based artist Phyllis Yao (b. 1994).

 

Phyllis Yao’s practice is rooted in an ongoing inquiry into the complex sensations generated from everyday moments, bringing together experiences of intimacy, observation, and personal history, as sites for reflection and transformation. Her paintings emerge from close attention to the overlooked — the texture of seemingly insignificant objects, the rhythm of daily gestures, or the surprise of the first snow falling — and reimagine them as poetic, visual meditations on desire and wonder. Through this approach, Yao constructs an emotional vocabulary that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant.

 

Time and perception are central to Yao’s process. Her paintings often hold the tension between immediacy and duration, inviting viewers to sense both the moment of looking and the histories embedded within it. The artist’s surfaces are layered and patient, the result of repeated adjustment and reconsideration. Each mark becomes part of a conversation with earlier decisions, creating compositions that feel both deliberate and searching. This material sensitivity mirrors her conceptual interests: how meaning accrues, how beauty and unease coexist, and how the familiar can suddenly appear strange or luminous.

 

Colour functions as an active presence in Yao’s work, carrying emotional weight beyond representation. It constructs a world that is not descriptive but atmospheric — a register for longing, uncertainty, or tenderness. Through this, Yao’s paintings become less about depicting a subject and more about evoking a state of being. Ultimately, Yao’s practice navigates the intersection of the internal and external, where introspection meets observation. Her work asks how we make sense of our surroundings when the ordinary becomes extraordinary, when care and curiosity become forms of survival. In this way, Yao offers painting as a way of staying with life’s mysteries — patient, unresolved, and profoundly human.