Yang Yongliang is a Chinese contemporary artist, whose incredible mixture of traditional Chinese art and cutting-edge technology yields stunning landscape images that combine the old-school Chinese art and modern day themes. Yang works in painting, photography, video art and installation, sometimes successfully merging his media.
Yongliang was born on July 27, 1980, in Jiading, a suburban district of Shanghai in China. From an early age, Yang showed interest in calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting, also known as shui mo, which he explored and shaped with the help of Yang Yang, a professor at Hong Kong Chinese University. In 1995, Yang finished Shanghai Arts and Crafts Vocational School, and four years later, in 1999, he graduated from China National Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai, where he majored in Visual Communication. Along with several friends, he established a studio in 2004, and subsequently assumed the position of Art Director of the studio. From 2005 onward, Yang has been striving towards creating new forms of contemporary art by combining photography and video art. Yongliang also worked as a tutor at Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts from 2006 until 2008.
Yang Yongliang’s images perfectly capture the essence of Chinese Shanshui paintings. But they are only seemingly that. Upon a closer inspection, complex modern cityscapes emerge. By using traditional Chinese ink-wash painting and photography, Yang blurs the fine lines between the conventional and modern. Shanghai, his native city, serves as a major source of inspiration for Yongliang’s artworks, as the elements of China’s most populous city (such as traffic signs and construction sites) appear in almost every image, revealing current urban culture. Harmony rules Yang’s pictures, balancing the conflicting elements such as gentleness and vigor, ugliness and beauty. His work leaves his audience baffled by issues concerning culture and fast-developing society.
Yongliang manages to bring his photographs to life by converting them to video. He goes around a city, usually a fast-developing one, and snaps photos using a digital camera. His many views of the cityscape are used as the building blocks for his work. The computer is his tool. Yang combines a vast number of his digital photographs and expands them by adding animations to the image. In his Phantom Landscape for example, Yongliang creates mountains from the buildings, rivers from urban waste and the forest from cranes and towers. The piece indeed looks like an intricate mixture of collage and painting, and it captures the Shanshui style. However, everything is composed of manmade objects; not even an inch of the landscape has anything “natural”.
Heavenly City is a series of photographs created in 2008. It shows a cloud of dust rising from a city, which looks like an explosion. From the cloud, a new city emerges, with roads and highways jutting out of the smoke. The series could be the artist’s way of acknowledging and dealing with the issues that we face nowadays. It could also be seen as an ominous prediction of an impending doom – the threat that urban development poses.
Yang Yongliang has received numerous awards for his highly acclaimed artworks, including a Gold World Medal at New York Festivals in 2009, and a Silver Award in 2010 at Clio Awards. His images have been exhibited extensively around the globe. Some of his more notable shows include Wonderland, a 2011 exhibition in Luxembourg, Moonlight, a 2012 solo exhibition that was organized by Magda Danysz Gallery in Shanghai, and most recently Landscapes in 2014, a show held at Magda Danysz as well.
Yang’s artworks are a part of many collections, including Nevada Museum of Art, British Museum, and Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, to name a few. He is represented by Magda Danysz Gallery.
All images copyright © the artist
Year | Exhibition Title | Gallery/Museum | Solo/Group |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Yang Yongliang Solo Exhibition | Sophie Maree Gallery, Den Haag, Netherland | Solo |
2014 | Human Landscape | Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney, Australia | Group |
2014 | Art & Arcade | MU Strijp-S, Eindhoven, Netherlands | Group |
2014 | Outside the Lines - New Art From China | RH Contemporary Art, New York, USA | Group |
2014 | Tradition-Reversal - Sarajevo Winter, the 30th International Festival of Sarajevo | Collegium Artisticum, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina | Group |
2013 | Moonlit Metropolis | Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong, China | Solo |
2013 | Silent Valley | MC2 Gallery, Milano, Italy | Solo |
2013 | The Moonlight | Galerie Paris-Beijing, Paris, France | Solo |
2013 | Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA | Group |
2013 | Insightful Charisma | Himalayas Art Museum, Shanghai, China | Group |
2013 | DE LEUR TEMPS | Hangar à Bananes Art Center, Nantes, France | Group |
2013 | Images Festival: How far away is the horizon? | Holbæk, Denmark | Group |
2013 | Occupy Utopia | Copenhagen, Denmark | Group |
2013 | Seven sunsets, waiting dawns, all in one. How to kill a wondrous time…not wanting a thousand hours | Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China | Group |
2013 | Space-time: 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art | Moscow, Russia | Group |
2013 | New Ink: An Exhibition of Ink Art by Post-1970 Artists from the Yiqingzhai Collection | Sotheby’s Hong Kong Gallery, Hong Kong, China | Group |
2013 | Et la Chine s’est éveillée… | Espace d’art contemporain Thonon-Les-Bains, Thonon-les-bains, France | Group |
2013 | Stad in Beeld, Beeld van een Stad | Stedelijk Museum Zwolle, Zwolle, Netherlands | Group |
2013 | Venti d'oriente | Galleria Al Blu di Prussia, Naples, Italy | Group |
2013 | Dreamers: AlexandFelix - Alessandro Lupi - Yang Yongliang | Palazzo Tagliaferro Contemporary Culture Center, Milano, Italy | Group |
2013 | Landmark: The Fields of Photography | Somerset House, London, UK | Group |
2012 | The Moonlight | Magda Danysz Galleries, Shanghai, China | Solo |
2012 | A Sprinkle of Salt: Shi Zhiying - Yang Yongliang | MOT ARTS, Taipei, Taiwan | Duo |
2012 | Printed Image in China 8th - 21th Century | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Group |
2012 | Conceptual Renewal - Short History of Chinese Contemporary Photographical Art | SiShang Art Museum, Beijing, China | Group |
2012 | Creators Project: Beijing 2012 | Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China | Group |
2012 | Damaged Heritage: Jiangnan in Contemporary Photography | Bottega Veneta Art Space, Shanghai, China | Group |
2012 | Babel | Museum of Fine Arts of Lille, Lille, France | Group |
2012 | Time Catcher | National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia | Group |
2011 | The Peach Colony | Galerie Paris-Beijing, Beijing, China | Solo |
2011 | The Peach Blossom Colony | 18 Gallery, Shanghai, China | Solo |
2011 | Window 70th: Yang Yongliang | Gallery Jinsun, Seoul, Korea | Solo |
2011 | One Hundred flowers | Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia | Group |
2011 | Metropolis - City Life in the Urban Age | Noorderlicht International Photo festival, Groningen, Netherlands | Group |
2011 | The eye is a lonely hunter: images of humankind | 4th edition of the Fotofestival, Mannheim - Ludwigshafen - Heidbelberg, Germany | Group |
2011 | Shan Shui - Poetry without sound - Chinese contemporary landscapes from the Sigg Collection | Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland | Group |
2011 | Words and Dreams: Where technology meets dreams and vice versa | 18 Gallery, Shanghai, China | Group |
2010 | Heavenly City | MC2 Gallery, Milan, Italy | Solo |
2010 | Views from China: Yang Yongliang and The Modern Metropolis | Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, USA | Solo |
2010 | Artistic Conception: Landscape | My Humble House, Taipei, Taiwan | Solo |
2010 | Heavenly City | Galerie Paris-Beijing, Paris, France | Solo |
2010 | Artificial Wonderland | 18 Gallery, Shanghai, China | Solo |
2010 | Yang Yongliang Solo | Melbourne Intercultural Fine Art, Melbourne, Australia | Solo |
2010 | China’s Soul: Maleonn - Yang Yongliang - Zhang Dali | Magda Danysz Galleries, Paris, France | Group |
2010 | Digital Generation | Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery, Beijing, China | Group |
2010 | China’s Soul: Maleonn - Yang Yongliang - Zhang Dali | Magda Danysz Galleries, Paris, France | Group |
2009 | Yang Yongliang Photographic Works | Limn Art Gallery, San Francisco, USA | Solo |
2009 | City of Phantom Visions | OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai, China | Solo |
2009 | On the Quiet Water | 45 Downstairs Gallery, Melbourne, Australia | Solo |
2009 | China Avant Garde – Landscape in Transit | Limn Art Gallery, San Francisco, USA | Group |
2009 | Urban Utopia | Charly Bailly Contemporary, Geneva, Switzerland | Group |
2009 | Drama - Stage, Urban Photography in Shanghai | Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai | Group |
2009 | 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale | Thessaloniki, Greece | Group |
2009 | Discovery Award | 40th Anniversary of the Rencontres d’Arles, Arles, France | Group |
2009 | Stairway to Heaven: From Chinese Streets to Monument and Skyscraper | Project Walls, H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, USA | Group |
2008 | Heavenly City & On the Quiet Water | OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai, China | Solo |
2008 | Two Points: 2008 Chinese Contemporary Art | Palazzo Frisacco, Tolmezzo, Italy | Group |
2008 | Stairway to Heaven: From Chinese Street to Monument and Skyscraper | Bates College Museum of Art, Maine, USA | Group |
2008 | Artificial Nature | MOCA Art Lab, Shanghai, China | Group |
2008 | Material Link - A Dialogue Between Greek and Chinese Artists | MOCA, Shanghai, China and Athens | Group |
2008 | Shanghai (Urban Public) Space | Hamburg, Germany | Group |
2008 | Mixed Maze | Red Mansion Foundation, London, UK | Group |
2007 | Phantom Landscape II & III | OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai, China | Solo |
2007 | Art Now 2007 | Danwon Arts Festival - Contemporary Art Festival, Gyeonggido Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, Korea | Group |
2006 | Phantom Landscape | OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai, China | Solo |