Yang Yongliang: On the quiet water / Heavenly city series, 2008
Yang Yongliang (born 1980) is a photographer and painter from Shanghai. In this series he uses digital manipulations to inverse the imagery of Song dynasty painters hereby creating 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 these 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.
Sur les panses décor de larges rinceaux de pivoines et feuillage. Collection Ernest Grandidier 11e siècle, dynastie Song du Nord (960-1127) porcelaine Chine du Nord
