Trained in traditional calligraphy and ink and brush painting since a young age and formally studied computer imaging at China Art Academy, Yang Yongliang has been creating stunning imageries that demonstrate both traditional literati aesthetic and contemporary methods and digital technique.Since his early series Phantom Landscape (2006-2007), Yang has developed his signature visual language of digital painting, which allows him to juxtapose various compositional elements and imageries that allude to the spiritual home in the past and issues at present. Often presented in the manner and style of traditional ink painting,his landscapes explore both collective history and personal memory. At first sight his works evoke nature imagined and delineated by the literati in pre modern China, yet with closer look, the viewers are startled to realize that the artist deftly replaced the towering peaks and misty valleys with thick layers of identical high-rise buildings, luxuriant trees and plants with construction cranes and electricity towers, and seals and calligraphic inscriptions with map symbols, industrial printed characters and financial charts.By doing this, he addresses to the issues of swift urbanization that has been taking place in China since the early 1990s, collective cultural identity in the age of total Modernization, and the seemingly unavoidable assimilation in the process of globalization.

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Yang Yongliang was born in Shanghai in 1980 and he received a BA from the Visual Communication Department at China Academy of Art in 2003. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Matthew Liu Fine Arts, Shanghai, China; Shibunkaku, Tokyo, Fukuoka and Kyoto, Japan; Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore; Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, China; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan; Galerie Paris-Beijing, Paris, France; and at Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, USA. He has been included in group exhibitions at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China; 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; Museum of Fine Arts of Lille, Lille, France; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China, among many others.

 

Yang’s work has been acquired by numerous institutions, including the British Museum andThe Saatchi Gallery, London,UK; the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum, NY, Museum of Fine Arts, MA, and San Francisco Asian Art Museum, CA, USA; DSL Collection, Paris, France; The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and White Rabbit Contemporary Chinese Art Collection,Sydney, Australia; M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong, and HSBC Hong Kong, Shanghai, China. He lives and works in Shanghai, China.