Artchipel

Yang Yongliang (b.1980, China) - On the quiet water - Heavenly city

Yang Yongliang’s digital manipulations are clever in their inversion of the imagery of Song dynasty painters and he has created works that are themselves visually attractive. His cold, hard urban images possess a layer of romantic beauty with their mists and towering forms. By making his works “beautiful” he has managed to make them much more than a mockery of modern life. Instead they subtly pose the difficult question of whether urban life can be simultaneously loathsome and possess an intrinsic beauty. Yang carefully made these riffs on Southern Song landscapes because the earlier works have long been regarded in China as a sublime expression of nature’s beauty and mystery. Are Yang’s images meant to be taken as expressions of a city’s beauty or of the terror of urban encroachment. Fantastic rediscovery thanks to OFOTO Gallery.

Inkjet print on Fine Art Paper
© OFOTO Gallery collection

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