Yang Yongliang
1980– · Contemporary Chinese artist, digital painter and photographer of urban landscapes
Yang Yongliang (born 1980 in Jiading, Shanghai) is a contemporary Chinese artist who lives and works in Shanghai. As a young student he studied traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, then trained in decoration and design at the Shanghai Art & Design Academy, specializing from 1996. In 1999 he attended the Visual Communication Department of the China Academy of Art's Shanghai branch. He began his career as an artist in 2005, with the stated aim of creating new forms of contemporary art.
His work merges the tradition of Chinese ink landscape with photographic images of the modern metropolis. His compositions show skyscrapers, highways and buildings of Shanghai floating among mountains, clouds and waterfalls, so that the city takes on the look of a classical landscape painting. Among his best-known series are Phantom Landscape, City of Phantom Visions and Heavenly City, which he has shown in galleries in Shanghai, Paris, Milan and Taipei.
His work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the British Museum in London, and is held in collections including the Bibliothèque nationale de France. He has received international awards in advertising and photography, and he is often cited as one of the artists who have renewed the language of Chinese landscape in the twenty-first century.