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    YANG YONGLIANG

    YANG YONGLIANG

    Yang Yongliang is questioning our economical, environmental and social issues, by foreseeing the devastating effects of unrestrained urbanisation and industrialisation in China and abroad. Inspired by Chinese ancestral culture and the famous Shan Shui, Yang Yongliang works with digital photography like a painter.

    The overall view of his work reminds us of a landscape, but a careful analysis will reveal an image made of man-made shapes and the representation of an undoubtedly urban context.  The characteristic trees from the classical Song dynasty paintings become metallic lattice or poles from which are drawn electrical power lines.

    The contemporary urban imagery in total decay is always present: the mountains covered by giant skyscrapers in ruins will soon be ooded by the rise of the waters, taking more and more over the surface. However Yang Yongliang subtly suggests a possible agreement between tradition and modernity, nature and culture.

    Born in Shanghai in 1980, he studied traditional Chinese painting with the calligraphy master Yang Yang for ten years. Photographer, painter, videographer and visual artist, he graduated from the Shanghai Institute of Design and the China Academy of Arts in the fields of visual communication and design. He is now a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art.

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      Born in Shanghai in 1980.
      Currently works and lives in Shanghai.

      COLLECTIONS

      Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio, USA
      Arendt Art Collection, Arendt & Medernach, Luxembourg
      Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
      Bates College Museum of Art, Maine, USA
      The British Museum, London, UK
      Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA
      Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
      Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, USA
      Deutsche Bank, Hong Kong, China
      DSL Collection, Paris, France
      Fidelity Investment Corp. Collection, USA
      Franks-Suss Collection, London, UK
      How Art Museum, Shanghai, China
      HSBC Hong Kong, Shanghai, China
      Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Oregon, USA
      M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong, China
      Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
      Middlebury College Museum of Art, Vermont, USA
      Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg, Germany
      Museum of Modern Art, Paris, France
      Museum of Mankind, Paris, France
      Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA
      Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, USA
      The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
      Nevada Art Museum, Nevada, USA
      The Rare Books Department of the National Library of France, Paris, France
      Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Florida, USA
      San Francisco Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA
      The Utah Museum of Fine Arts, USA
      Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Kansas, USA
      Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art – University of Salford, Manchester, UK
      White Rabbit Contemporary Chinese Art Collection, Sydney, Australia

      SOLO EXHIBITIONS

      2023
      Solo exhibition, PARIS-B, Paris, France

      2022
      Imagined Landscape, Whitestone Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan

      2021
      Journey to the Dark II, Fotografiska, Stockhom, Sweden
      Imagined Landscape, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney, Australia
      Imagined Landscape, Matthew Liu Fine Arts, Shanghai, China

      2019
      OCMAEXPAND: Eternal Landscape, Orange County Art Museum, Santa Ana, USA
      Yang Yongliang: Eternal Landscape, HdM Gallery, London, UK
      Artificial Wonderland, Dunedin Pulic Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand
      Views of Water, Whitestone Gallery, Hong Kong, China

      2018
      Salt 14: Yang Yongliang, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, USA
      Journey to the Dark, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney, Australia
      Journey to the Dark, Whitestone Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan

      2017
      Time Immemorial, Matthew Liu Fine Arts, Shanghai, China
      Time Immemorial, Matthew Liu Fine Arts, Shanghai, China

      2016
      Time Immemorial, SHIBUNKAKU, Tokyo, Fukuoka and Kyoto, Japan
      Fall into Oblivion, Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore

      2015
      YAN, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China
      FT5 Review with Yang Yongliang Film Screening, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan
      Solo Exhibition, Galerie Paris-Beijing, Brussels, Belgium

      2014
      Solo Exhibition, Art Basel Hong Kong, Galerie Paris-Beijing, Hong Kong
      Solo Exhibition, Sophie Maree Gallery, Den Haag, The Netherland

      2013
      The Silent Valley, Galerie Paris-Beijing, Paris, France
      Silent Valley, MC2 Gallery, Milan, Italy
      Moonlit Metropolis, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong

      2012
      The Peach Blossom Colony, Galerie Paris-Beijing, Paris, France
      The Peach Blossom Colony, LIMN Art Gallery, San Francisco, USA
      The Moonlight, MD gallery, Shanghai, China

      2011
      Yang Yongliang: The Peach Colony , Galerie Paris-Beijing, Beijing
      The Peach Blossom Colony – Yang Yongliang, 18 Gallery, Shanghai
      Yang Yongliang: Phantom Metropolis, Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
      Solo Exhibition, Window 70th: Yang Yongliang, Gallery Jinsun, Seoul

      2010
      Heavenly City, Galerie Paris-Beijing, Paris, France
      Heavenly City, MC2 gallery, Milan, Italy
      Yang Yongliang and Modern Metropolis Solo show, Nevada Art Museum, Reno, USA
      Landscape – Yang Yongliang Solo Exhibition, My Humble House, Taipei
      Artificial Wonderland, 18 Gallery, Shanghai
      Yang Yongliang, MIFA, Melbourne, Australia
      Seoul International Photography Festival, Seoul, Korea

      2009
      Yang Yongliang Photography Solo Exhibition, Limn Art Gallery, San Francisco, USA
      On the Quiet Water, 45 Downstairs Gallery, Melbourne, Australia

      2008
      Heavenly City & On the Quiet Water, OFOTO gallery, Shanghai

      2007
      Phantom Landscape Series 2&3, OFOTO gallery, Shanghai

      GROUP EXHIBITIONS

      2022
      Les Paysages de l’Âme, Musée Départemental des Arts Asiatiques, Nice, France
      Summer Group Show, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney, Australia Between Shan Shui, Thames City 1974 Club, London UK

      2021
      The Earth as A Legacy, Musée des Con uences, Lyon, France Landscapes of the Soul, Asian Arts Museum, Nice, France Glow Shenzhen International Arts Festival, Shenzhen, China Thousand Mirages, The Mixc, Shenzhen, China
      Digital Art Fair Asia, Asia Standard Tower, Hong Kong, China
      What Happened Here?, Appetite, Singapore Grand Opening, Meta ZiWU, Shanghai, China

      2020
      Longing for Nature, Museum Rietberg, Zürich, Switzerland Scenery in Mock-up, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan
      Allure of Matter: Material Art from China, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, USA
      Immaterial/Re-material, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
      Les flots écoulés ne reviennent pas à leur source, Abbaye de Jumièges, France
      Group Show, HDM Gallery, London, UK
      Out of the Shadows, Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego, USA

      2019
      MGM Presents: Hua Yuan Exhibition, MGM COTAI, Macao, China
      Canne XR 2019, Festical de Cannes, Cannes, France
      Art of the Mountain, China Institute, New York, USA Pal(ate)/ette/, Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China Hua Yuan, MGM COTAI Theater, Macau, China

      2018
      Endangered Species: Artists on the Front Line of Biodiversity, Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, USA
      City, Photo Brussels Festival 03 Edition, Hangar Art Center, Brussels, Begium
      2050. A Brief History of the Future, The Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan
      Trompe-L’Oeil, Sullivan+Strumpf, Singapore
      Inside Outside: A Century of East Asian Landscape 1900s-2000s, Samuel P. Harm Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA
      Shanghai Beat –The Dynamism of Contemporary Art Scene in Shanghai, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan
      Altering Home – Culture City of East Asia, 21st Cery Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
      Worlds Apart: Nature and Humanity Under Deconstruction, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, USA
      Photography Biennale 2018: Photography to End All Photography, Brandts – Museum for Artand Visual Culture, Odense, Denmark
      Object, The British Museum, London, UK
      Power and Beauty in China’s Last Dynasty, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota, USA
      Rebuild Utopia, OCT Art & Design, Shenzhen, China
      Beyond Brush and Ink: The Multiplicity of Eastern Aesthetic, China Art Museum, Shanghai, China
      CHFILL Art Space, Stockholm, Sweden
      Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens, China Institute Gallery, New York, USA
      Inky Bytes: Traces of Ink in the Digital Era, Museum of Arts and Crafts – MKG Hamburg,
      Germany

      2017
      Art is Science, Karuizawa New Art Museum, Nagano, Japan
      40 Years of Chinese Contemporary Photography, Three Shadows Photography Art Center, Beijing, China
      China in Motion, Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Annecy Museum, Annecy, France
      Energy Filed, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China
      The Five Moons, Return of the Nameless and Unknown, PyeongChang Biennale, Pyeongchang, Korea
      Prix Pictet: Disorder, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, USA
      Land and People, Cairns Regional Gallery, Queensland, Australia
      Geo-Civilization: Land and Man in Contemporary Photography in China,
      Geological museum and the City Gallery, Ramat Hasharon, Israel

      2016
      Jimei Arles Photography Festival, Xiamen, China
      An Contemporary Art Experiment for Fu Lei, Zhoupu Art Museum, Shanghai, China
      Après Babel, Traduire, Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean, Marseille, France
      Beijing Independent Film Festival, Li Space, Beijing, China
      Humanistic Nature and Society (Shan Shui) – An Insight to the Future, Himalayas Museum, Shanghai, China
      Ink Remix: Contemporary art from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Museum of Brisban, Brisbane, Australia
      Art-On Cascina, Festival di Arte Pubblica, Cascina, Italy
      Shan Shui Within, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China
      China: Grain and Pixel – 150 Years of Chinese Photography, China Cultural
      Center, Brussels, Belgium
      Another Landscape, Yang Art Museum, Beijing, China
      Prix Pictet: Disorder, Municipal Gallery of Athens, Athens, Greece; Somerest House, London, UK
      Ink Remix: Contemporary art from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, UNSW Galleries, Sydney, Australia

      2015
      Prix Pictet: Disorder, Musée d’Art Moderne da la Ville, Paris, France
      Grain and Pixel, Shanghai Center of Photography, Shanghai, China
      Copyleft: China Appropriation Art, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China
      Shanghai Ever, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China
      Bizzarreland – Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Photography, Dadi Art Museum, Hefei, China; Kunstraum Villa Friede, Bonn, Germany
      Humanistic Nature and Society – An Insight into the Future, 56th International Art
      Exhibition of La Viennale di Venezia, Palazzo Flangini, Venice, Italy
      China8 – Contemporary Art from China, für Kunst und Kultur e.V., Bonn, Germany
      Aandacht! Aandacht! – Stormopkomst Festival, De Warande, Turnhout, Belguim
      1st Overclock Festival, Espace Nova-Velaux, Velaux, France
      State of Play, White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia
      Ink Remix: Contemporary art from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra, Australia
      Dislocation: Urban Experience in Contemporary East Asian Photography, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, USA
      2050. A Brief History of the Future, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Brussels; The Louvre, Paris, France

      2014
      Human Landscape, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney, Australia
      Art & Arcade, MU Strijp-S, Eindhoven, Netherlands
      Outside the Lines – New Art From China, RH Contemporary Art, New York, USA
      Tradition-Reversal, “Sarajevo Winter” the 30th International Festival of Sarajevo, Collegium Artisticum, Sarajevo, Greece
      Aura of Poetry, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China
      1st Xinjiang International Art Biennale, Urumqi, China
      Phantom City, Rotorua Museum, Rotorua, New Zealand
      In the absence of Avant-garde reading, 798 Art Factory, Beijing, China
      5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan
      Origins, Memories and Parodies – 5th Daegu Photo Biennale, Culture&Arts Center, Daegu, South Korea
      Contemporary Photography in China 2009-2014, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China
      China’s Changing Landscape, Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, Skärhamn, Sweden
      4th Singapore International Photography Festival, Singapore ArtScience Museum, Singapore
      Babel, destiny of a myth, Bibliothèques de Pantin, France
      Staging Encounters – Ten Years of Chinese Contemporary Photography 2005-2014, Lianzhou Foto, Lianzhou, China
      Hohe Berge, fließendes, Chinesischen Kulturezentrum Berlin, Berlin, Germany

      2013
      DE LEUR TEMPS, ADIAF(Association for the International Diffusion of French Art), Art Center, The Banana Hangar Nantes, Nantes, France
      Occupy Utopia, Holb�k, Denmark
      How Far Away is the Horizon? Copenhagen, Denmark
      5 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Space-time / Main Project, Moscow, Russia
      123b4, Exhibition with works-donations from the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki-SMCA (Warehouse B1,port), Thessaloniki, Greece
      New Ink An exhibition of ink art by post 1970 artists from the Yiqingzhai collection, Sotheby’s Hong Kong Gallery, Hong Kong
      European Media Art Festival 2013 – Artbox, Stadtbibliothek Osnabrueck, Germany
      Et la Chine s’est éveillée…, Chapelle de la Visitation, the contemporary art space of Thonon-les-bains, France
      Stad in Beeld, Beeld van een Stad, Stedelijk Museum Zwolle, Zwolle, The Netherlands
      Venti d’oriente, Al blu d prussia Gallery, Naples, Italy
      2013 Changwon Asian Art Festival, Sungsan Art Hall, Changwon, Korea
      Dreamers, AlexandFelix | Alessandro Lupi | Yang Yongliang, Palazzo Tagliaferro contemporary culture center, Milan, Italy
      Landmark: The Fields of Photography, Somerset House, London, UK
      Babel, Botanique, Brussels, Belgium

      2012
      The Printed Image in China, 8th-21th Century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
      A Sprinkle of Salt – Exhibition of Shi Zhiying / Yang Yongliang, MOT ARTS, Taiwan
      Babel, Palais de Beaux-Arts, Lille, France
      The creators project, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
      Time Catcher, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
      Conceptual Renewal – Short History of Chinese Contemporary Photographical Art, Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing, China

      2011
      4th Fotofetival Mannheim Ludwigshafen Heidelbery, Mannheim, Germany
      Silent Picture: Dai Mouyu Sun Yu and Yang Yongliang, FQ Projects, Shanghai
      The End of the Brush and Ink Era: Chinese Landscape, True Color Museum, Suzhou, China
      Art Mia Living group show, Art Mia Gallery, Beijing
      Open: exhibition of new generation, My Humble House, Taipei
      “ollectif Generation, The Librairie Auguste Blaizot, Paris
      Biennale of Photo in Alessandria, Alessandria, Italy
      Post Traditions: Enlarge the Carve, Shanghai Duolun Musuem of Modern Art, Shanghai

      2010
      3×3, Crossing Art Gallery, New York, USA
      2010 Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, ddm warehouse, Shanghai
      Digital Generation, Galerie Paris-Beijing, Beijing
      Multiple Visions a group show with Chu chu, Liu Ren, Liu Ke, Yang Yongliang, Epsite Beijing
      Will to Height – Contempotary art exihibition, Epsite Shanghai
      Urban Utopia, Charly Bailly Contemporary, Geneva, Switzerland
      China Soul: Maleonn, Yang Yongliang and Zhang Dali, Magda-Danysz Gallery, Paris

      2009
      Scene-A dialogue with space & time, River South Art Center, Shanghai
      Under construction-Photography on the EXPO 2010 Shanghai, Pudong Library, Shanghai
      China Avant Garde – Landscape in Transit Han Bing, Yang Yongliang & Zhang Wei, Limn Art Gallery, San Francisco, USA
      City of Phantom Visions, OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai
      Drama/Stage, Urban Photography in Shanghai, Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai
      Photo Beijing, The Agricultural Exhibition Centre of China, Beijing
      2nd Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki, Greece
      40th Anniversary of the Rencontres d’Arles, Discovery Award, Arles, France
      H&R Block ArtspaceProject Wall, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas, USA
      New Chinese architecture, Institute Cervantes, Beijing

      2008
      Two Points: 2008 Chinese Contemporary Art, Palazzo Frisacco, Tolmezzo, Italy
      Stairway to Heaven, Bates College Museum of Art, Maine USA
      FOTO OFOTO, OFOTO Gallery, Beijing
      Artificial Nature, MOCA ARTLAB, Shanghai
      Collision Part I – New Classic: Yang Yongliang & Gao Feng, FQ Projects, Shanghai
      Material Link – A Dialogue Between Greek and Chinese Artists, MOCA, Shanghai, Athens
      Collision Part II – TU LONG JI: Installation by Yang Yongliang, FQ Projects, Shanghai
      Shanghai-urban public-Space, Hamburg, Germany
      Contemporary Chinese Art, Limn Gallery, AQUA Art Miami, Miami
      Mixed Maze, Red Mansion Foundation, London

      2007
      Art Now 2007, Gyeonggido Museum of Modern art, Ansan, Korea
      2007 Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao
      Celebrating, Epson Imaging Gallery, Shanghai, Beijing

      AWARDS

      2020
      Asia Society – Asia Arts Game Changer Awards NORTH AMERICA – Awarded

      2019
      Asia Society, Asia Arts Game Changer Awards – Awarded
      Prix Pictet – The Global Award in Photography and Sustainability – Nominated

      2009
      40th Anniversary of the Rencontres d’Arles, Discovery Prize – Nominated

      PUBLICATIONS

      2017
      Yang Yongliang: Time Immemorial, Matthew Liu Fine Arts

      2013
      Yang Yongliang: Artificial Wonderland, Galerie Paris-Beijing

      2012
      Yang Yongliang: New Landscapes (Chinese Contemporary Photography), David Rosenberg
      Yang Yongliang: Paysages, David Rosenberg

      • MEET YANG YONGLIANG

      • Yang Yongliang - Endless Streams, 2017

      • Yang Yongliang - The return, 2019

      • Yang Yongliang - The waves, 2019

      The Mirror of Time
      By David Rosenberg, May 2011

      Yang Yongliang walks through his city – Shanghai – and photographs the buildings that he will then use to compose his “Phantom landscapes”, his “Heavenly Cities” and “Artificial Wonderlands”; these series of digital “pictorial” works whose visionary power and plastic coherence have quickly earned him unanimous international recognition.

      He is above all a walker, a surveyor. In this he joins the line of the pioneers of modernity, such as the photographer Eugene Atget (1857-1927), a large part of whose work consisted in keeping a kind of inventory or visual archive of the architectural forms that surrounded him, both those that were about to disappear and those that were just appearing. He was not an observer of a serene and impassible landscape, but rather of continuous upheaval. Thus his photographic images could not be conceived, according to him, without this double determination: the mobility of the artist, and the city as the field of a visual, philosophical and artistic investigation. These two characteristics are also found in the works of Yang Yongliang.

      Strolling, wandering, collecting: his attentiveness and the shifting outlines of his gaze also call to mind Walter Benjamin’s “Passages”, where he writes thus about Paris: “Even to the flaneur, the city – be it that where he was born (…) – is no longer native soil. It represents to him the stage for a performance.” This line, this lineage also reaches back to the surrealists, to Aragon, whose visual as well as poetic work “The Peasant of Paris” traces back the genesis of the complex feelings that the transformation of the Parisian landscape inspire in him.

      For these idlers, these gleaners of perceptions, thoughts and fragmentary affects, the “now” of the image contains the “once upon a time”. The traces and remanences are at the heart of their concerns and, if they compose their works using the visible, it is as much in order to decrypt that which it unveils as that which is left concealed within it. Seeing is a way of thinking, and thinking is another way of seeing. It isn’t just about simply recording, but as the American photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976) explained, it’s about working with a “machine” for inventing new ways of seeing.

      Their gaze is a prism whose facets diffract not only light, but also time and history. Through this dialectic seizure of present and past, what emerges is a vision of the future or of possible futures. “Each era dreams of the next”, wrote the historian, Jules Michelet.

      In the works of Yang Yongliang, the stroll is not limited to a physical walk amid the urban landscape. It is also a mental walk through images of the history of art. It is from this double advance – through an upset and evanescent physical space as well as a stable, impassible mental observation – that this present body of work is derived.

      “The city,” he explains, “is the place where I live, a space that evolves with me and which contains my memories. A mirage or ghost-city is the environment towards which I reach out, but it only exists in my imagination. The water of the mountain (the landscape) suggests the imitation of the traditional art forms of my childhood, which have gradually disappeared as the city and I have evolved. The birth of the Ghost Landscape is not an accident. The City, the Landscape – I love them and hate them at the same time. If I love the city for its familiarity, I hate it even more for the staggering speed at which it grows and engulfs the environment. If I like traditional Chinese art for its depth and inclusiveness, I hate its retrogressive attitude. The ancients expressed their sentiments and appreciation of nature through landscape painting. As for me, I use my own landscape to criticize reality as I perceive it.”

      The megalopolis and its new technologies are seen as a biotope of images and art; the contradictions, tensions and mutations of the real are the motor of creation; the remanence of traditional culture and the emergence of new ways of thinking that polarize contemporary artistic conscience: this, in brief, is what characterizes Yang Yongliang’s work.

      But getting back to the profound connection between the artist and the city of Shanghai, it should be stressed that it is not so much this particular city, with its characteristics, its “soul”, its history and aesthetics, that interests him. The issue that is at the heart of Yang Yongliang’s work is the essence of “building” – the grey seriality, the repetition of the same, the proliferative and uncontrolled phenomenon of excessive urbanization, and the antagonistic relationship to nature which underlies it. In a sense, he is like those scholars whose pictorial work was based more on a conception and a feeling of nature than on direct perception and observation.

      Another paradox is that the artist uses the photographic medium and the resources of modern technology to produce these “paintings”, whose texture and whose rules of composition are borrowed directly from Shan Shui, the traditional landscape art of China, an art in which the image’s moral and contemplative component is ultimately more important than its aesthetic quality.

      On the one hand the artist uses this open reflection on the world, while on the other there is a critical reexamination of his medium of choice as well as the pictorial heritage in which he was trained, making Yang Yongliang a contemporary artist in the full meaning of the term.

      The critical potential contained in his works may not, however, be reduced to ecological clichés or to the righteous feelings of a guilty conscience deploring the loss of the link between man and nature. There is in them a true visionary breath, a spectacular sense of composition that allows the artist to play with a wealth of almost imperceptible details without ever losing sight of the whole of the landscape of which they are a part.

      Faced with the accumulation of skyscrapers and oversized buildings, faced with these pharaonic construction sites, these mountain-cities or mountains of cities, one thinks of the German Expressionists and Dadaists, such as John Heartfield or the brilliant Belgian engraver, Frans Masereel – who, it so happens, also spent time in China – both major critics of the dehumanized modern megalopolis. One also thinks of Altdorfer’s battle scenes, of Brueghel’s Tower of Babel, and of Bosch’s apocalypses. Nevertheless there is a notable distinction: In Yang Yongliang’s works there is no trace of the individual, not a single human figure in sight.

      What does this mean? Is there no actor, no author? Does the city reproduce itself by itself indefinitely? Does it proliferate along the lines of uncontrollable metastases? Or should we seek the answer in the seals and inscriptions in red ink that adorn these rolls of paper? Seen from afar, these signs inevitably recall the texts and marks of collections that adorned ancient paintings. But here we find an accumulation of bar codes and the logos of multinational corporations. It is these abstract entities that sign the landscape we have before our eyes, they are the co-authors of these latent images that the artist makes visible and records.

      Construction and destruction, inevitable cycles: it is a total show that is both strange and familiar. We are torn between the limbo of dreams and naked reality. The essence of the megalopolis is revealed here: it is a colossus with feet of clay. Here a giant wave sweeps away everything in its path, there buildings stand half-submerged, elsewhere disturbing steam clouds completely cover the surroundings, buildings teeter on their foundations, or else dramatic and devastating explosions shatter a once familiar and livable world into pieces.

      Only from a certain distance is it possible to account for these invisible and antagonistic energies whose tumultuous interlacing sometimes draws majestic and unique shapes, and sometimes draws accumulations of discordant structures. It is these energies that open up space or lead to its saturation; these energies which generate fluid and ample trafficpatterns or lead to fatal gridlocks. Hence the “distant” and withdrawn point of view from which the artist builds, directs and composes his “paintings”.

      Premonitory works? Yang Yongliang’s landscapes linger patiently: they are simply waiting for the world to end up resembling them. There is a profound truth in them which gives them a head start on their model. The mimetic relation between the real and the image – between the model and its double – is reversed. It is like Picasso explained to Gertrude Stein, whom he had just painted, that if the painting did not look like her, she would end up looking like the painting.

      The images emerge. They appear like a ghost ship on the shimmering surface of the deep waters of the unconscious. The conditions conducive to the breakup of the spirit and to the fragmentation of sensitivity must be fulfilled so that both the gaze and the world can be transformed and can complete their reconstruction.

      Whether it is patiently meditated and planned in its structure as well as its execution, or whether it is the unpredictable consequence of an instinctual and uncontrolled energy, the picture – the oracle – only takes place and achieves its full significance in relation to reality, going beyond mere likeness or verisimilitude. It is at this price that it acquires its illuminating power of anticipation. The picture – the big picture – is the mirror of time. In it are reflected the startling landscapes of Yang Yongliang, which are like the memory of the future.

      Yang Yongliang’s Visionary Landscapes
      By Jan Stuart

      Yang Yongliang was born in China in Jiading (an area near Shanghai ) and as a young student studied traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy before attending the Shanghai Fine Art Institute, where he specialized in design beginning in 1996. In 1999 he attended the China Fine Art Institute, Visual Communication Department, Shanghai branch.

      In 2005 he started his career with the stated goal of “creating new forms of contemporary art, which he has done using photography and digital manipulation. Yang’s new visual effects are a critique on the breath-taking, frightening pace of urbanization in modern China. China’s massive population shifts into urban centres threaten the continuation of a traditional, agrarian and community-based lifestyle and point to how little time individuals have to explore or enjoy nature. Agrarian life is being replaced for many citizens by the throbbing pace of urban life and all that it entails. A new emphasis on the “individual” instead of the family unit and on personal economic gain has fostered a new lifestyle that brings with it a kind of pseudo-anonymity as people crowd together and live in monumental skyscrapers where occupants seldom know their neighbours or have family. The buildings in modern cities are cut off from natural surroundings.

      Yang Yongliang’s digital manipulations are clever inversions and subversions of the images created by Song dynasty painters. His works are attractive and possess a layer of romantic beauty with the impression of mists, open water, and towering mountains, despite the fact that these images are created by cold, harsh symbols of urban life such as skyscrapers. By making his works “beautiful” they are much more than a mockery of modern life. Instead they subtlety pose the difficult question of whether urban life can be simultaneously loathsome and threatening of the established order, while still perhaps possessing it own kind of intrinsic beauty and desirable lifestyle. Yang’s riffs on Southern Song landscapes are powerful because the paintings he takes as his paradigms were long regarded in China as a sublime expression of nature’s beauty and mystery. Now we are left to ask whether Yang’s images of cityscapes are intended as expressions of urban beauty or the terror felt by relentlessly urban encroachment?

      Yang’s work forces us to ponder China’s modernization.The artist comments on his own work saying: “City and Landscape, I love them and hate them at the same time. I love the familiarity of the city, more so to hate it growing too fast and invading everything around it an unexpected speed.” He also wrote, “I love the depth and inclusiveness of [the] traditional Chinese art, more so to hate its non-progress[ive] attitude. I have input this complex feeling to my blood and lift it out to form my artwork. Ancient Chinese expressed their appreciation of nature and feeling for it by painting the Landscape. In contrast, I make my Landscape to criticise the realities in [before] my eyes.”

      Jan Stuart, Keeper of Asia at the British Museum. Adapted from the British Museum’s website Collections Online entries for the Museum’s acquisitions by Yang Yongliang (2008,3012.1 and 2008,3012.2)