Phantom Metropolis

Press Release

(Undated)

Schoeni Art Gallery is excited to announce that one of the most highly-anticipated solo exhibitions in Hong Kong this year, Phantom Metropolis by Yang Yong Liang, will be opening on September 1^st at the Schoeni Main Gallery. Yang is a multi-talented multimedia artist who is most known for his creation of breathtaking and mysterious city-scape scenes that look like traditional “Mountain and River” (山水) paintings of the Song Dynasty, but on closer inspection the mountains are in fact made up of a myriad of metropolitan buildings.

Not only is this exhibition going to be Yang’s debut solo in Hong Kong that will feature a selection of his best creations, but it will also be showcasing his newest never-to-be-seen works from the series entitled Peach Blossom Colony for the first time!

Born in Jiading, Shanghai in year 1980, Yang Yong Liang was taught Chinese traditional painting, calligraphy and various traditional Chinese art techniques from a very young age. He studied at the Shanghai Fine Art Institute, Shanghai Arts & Crafts Vocational College, and the Shanghai Branch of the China Academy of Art, from which he obtained a degree in Visual Communication.

After graduation, at the age of 24 Yang Yong Liang set up his personal studio with his friends and took on the role of Art Director. In 2005 he began experimenting with modern art and started producing creative pieces including modern Chinese ink paintings, photography and videos, many of which won local awards and were published by the Chinese media. Yang’s extraordinary creativity and talent very quickly came to the attention of those in the art scene.

In 2006, he held his first solo exhibition, Phantom Landscape Series I in Shanghai, and since then he has held solo and group exhibitions in Beijing and many cities around the world including Ansan, Geneva, Hamburg, London, Kansas City, Miami, Melbourne, Milan, Nevada Art Museum, Paris, Taipei and Seoul just to name a few.

More recently, Yang’s works are also already appearing in auctions with favorable results, and earlier this year, his piece entitled Artificial Wonderland No.2 was nominated for the Sovereign Asian Art Award and was one of the 30 finalists. At an age of only 31, Yang is no doubt one of the most promising young artists and the fastest rising-star from the Chinese art scene in the past two years.

Phantom Metropolis is Yang Yong Liang’s debut solo exhibition in Hong Kong. His newest series of 2011 entitled The Peach Blossom Colony will be unveiled for the first time, together with a selection of his most impressive works to date, including the Heavenly City Series (2008), On the Quiet Water (2008), Snow City Quaternary Series (2009), and Viridescence Series (2009), all of which encompass Yang’s typical theme of the clashing and fusing between the modern city and the ancient Chinese landscape.

Another major highlight of this exhibition will be Yang’s recreation of his stunning Cigarette Ash Landscape installation that he presented four years ago at the Danwon Arts Festival-Contemporary Art Festival Art Now 2007 in Ansan, Korea, with a new interpretation based on his previous experiences in Hong Kong.

“City and landscape – I love them, and I hate them. I love the familiarity and friendliness of the city, but I hate it even more for changing too rapidly, and how it engulfs everything around it in an unimaginable speed; I love the profoundness and depth of the traditional Chinese culture, but I hate it even more for being so unprogressive and stubbornly self-restraining. I let these very complex and mingled emotions and feelings of mine flow out from my blood, to form the art pieces that I have now in front of me.” – Yang Yong Liang

Selected Artworks

Catalogue

Additional Material

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