Heavenly City — Yang Yongliang — Paris-Beijing Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 25 → April 10, 2010

Yang Yongliang is a Shanghainese artist who studied traditional Chinese art such as shui mo painting, “cun” and calligraphy from an early age. His stunning compilations of thousands of tiny photographic images combine his personal interests within the compositional style of Chinese traditional paintings and present a ’New Classic’ artistic expression.

When viewing Yang’s photographic works at a distance, they are dreamlike Shanshui paintings. Up close, they become shockingly modern city views. The scenes of construction sites, large cranes, traffic signs and fly-overs, that all Shanghai citizens are so familiar with, have become critical elements in his artworks. These common objects can be found everywhere in Shanghai and yet Yang Yongliang has arranged them to fit into the traditional Chinese Paintings’ composition. Yang perfectly handles the contradictions between the ephemeral and solid, the vigorous and gentle, the sparse and bold, the beautiful and ugly: whilst the entire pictures are poetically harmonious, the details are the ’blots on the landscape’.