Xue Song (1962) Xue (nee Weng Xuesong) graduated from the Painting Department of Chongqing Fine Arts School in 1985. Learning to paint from a very young age has prepared for him a well-grounded modeling skill. After experimenting with various contemporary art forms, he has recently returned to oil painting to explore the "vividness" and spirit pursued by the ancient Chinese literati. Garden rock and animals are two of his key subjects, in which he unveils a spiritual world where the atmosphere created by the painting is conversational with the soul of its creator. Following neorealism, pop political, gaudy art and art brooding in the consumption and digital era, Xue’s painting represents a unique artistic style featuring the nature and individuality of Chinese culture. His signature series “Garden Rock” embodies the traditional and contemporary Chinese humanistic philosophies as well as high wisdom and essence of life. Y Yan Lei (1965) Graduated from the print-making department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1991, Yan is considered one of the bad boys of China's contemporary art scene. Best known for his daring and psychological portraits of blurry and confused scenes, Yan borrows from the surrounding art world, but also rails against it in his portraits and his public appearances. His images are sometimes psychedelic, like his colorful, shimmering wheel portaits. In one newsworthy prank, fellow artist, Hong Hao, and Yan created fake invitations to Documenta and sent them to Chinese artists, who were unaware that they were being taken in. Yan is also known for his videos and installations. Yang Fudong (1971) Yang's films and photographs articulate multiple perspectives. His works investigate the structure and formation of identity through myth, personal memory and lived experience. Each of his works is a dramatic existential experience and a challenge to take on. His work is open-ended and inconclusive, therefore open to individual interpretation. Each film and video is about the human condition. He mostly portrays his own generation of individuals in their late 20’s and early 30’s, young people who seem confused and appear to hover between the past and present. Yang's work epitomizes how the recent and rapid modernization of China has overthrown traditional values and culture. He skillfully balances this dichotomy to create works endowed with classic beauty and timelessness. He seeks through multiple vignettes to offer the poetics of place and people as an alternative to the prominent politics of power. Yang Jiechang (1956) Yang belongs to a generation of artists who left China to Europe in the late 1980s and built up a successful international career. Yang made his reputation with large monochrome black ink paintings, the “Hundred Layers of Ink” series (1989-98), which was unveiled to the public at the “Les magiciens de la terre” exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 1989. These meditative works combine eastern tradition and spirituality with modern and post-modern concept. More significantly, they reflect Yang’s training in calligraphy and Chinese ink brush painting during his studies at the Foshan Folk Art Institute (19741978) and at the Guangdong Fine Arts Academy (1978 to 1982). Applying layers and layers of ink on rice paper Yang created mental landscapes such that even the black is full of light while the two-dimensional plane shows great depth. The inevitable connotations of blackness – mourning, death, the void – are juxtaposed with refracted light, suggesting renewal, resurrection and the full. Yang Liming (1975) Now working and living in Beijing, Yang's mesmerising “monochrome” paintings communicate the meditative powers of music and art. Known for his habit of listening to classical music while working, it is not difficult to see the melody and rhythm in his works. With their intense palette and dense calligraphic lines, the paintings seem to vibrate from within the canvases and echo into the viewer's world. Since graduating from the Art College of Sichuan University in 1999, Yang has had numerous exhibitions worldwide. Yang Xingguang (1980) Yang graduated from Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2007. Like many artists of his generation, Yang works across a variety of media in his conceptual inquisitions of material and textile. Yang’s interest in symbiotic relationships with organic and man-made materials is rendered in his works, which reference the everyday and aesthetic simplicity. Drawing inspiration from the arte povera and mono-ha movements as well as minimalist sculpture, he uses wood, gold, earth and stone in their natural states. Previous exhibitions include: “The Big Bang” (White Rabbit Museum,Sydney, 2010); “Be natural, Be yourself” (FRAC des Pays de la Loire, France, 2011); “Super Organism CAFAM Biennale”(CAFAM, Beijing, 2011); “The First ‘CAFAM Future’ Exhibition: Sub-phenonmena: Report on the State of Chinese Young Art” (CAFAM, Beijing, 2012); “The 9th Shanghai Biennale” (Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2012); “The 1st Montevideo Biennial” (Uruguay, 2012); and “ON | OFF: China's Young Artists in Concept and Practice” (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2013). Yang Yong (1975) Yang moved to Shenzhen after studying oil painting in her hometown of Sichuan. After arriving in Shenzhen, one of the fastest growing cities of the south coast of China, Yang started to work with video using the style of Warhol/Paul Morrisey; then by keeping the use photography, she documented the underground scenery of Shenzhen using Nan Goldin s style. Yang is of a generation of artists with no memory of either Imperial China or the Cultural Revolution, and the mostly 20-something women depicted are part of her generation. Her most extraordinary and controversial work has been her portraits of prostitutes. ‘Identity’ in the context of a contemporary Chinese city such as Shenzhen can only be understood in terms of an accelerated modernity and the impact of global and globalizing media. Yang Yongliang (1980) Yang is a young artist from Shanghai who studied traditional Chinese art such as shui mo painting and calligraphy from his early age. His teacher was Yang Yang who is the professor of traditional art at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Yang Yongliang cleverly recreated "Cun", the main representation of Chinese Shanshui paintings by using a camera, the contemporary visual device, to express his creativity for the subjects he is concerned with. He combined the traditional Chinese paintings with the modern Shanghai city life and the details reveal current urban culture. The scenes of construction sites, large cranes, traffic signs and fly-overs those all Shanghai citizens are familiar with and all have become critical elements in his artworks. Yang Zhenzhong (1968) The desire to challenge normative notions of social behavior informs the practices of Yang Zhenzhong's work. He is pre-occupied with China’s intrinsic disharmony and extreme discrepancies and often touches upon taboos such as death and out-dated social norms. His approach is metaphorical rather than narrative. His videos often start from witty ideas, employing image repetition and rhythmic coordination of sound, language and image. Yang Yu (1979) Yu first received his BA from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, Shenyang, in 2001. In 2013, he graduated from Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts with a MA. Although trained in classical Chinese painting, Yu's artistic language can be described as a revitalisation of the traditional art form, by removing all representational qualities and distilling it to its basic components of water, paper and ink. Yu has participated in numerous group exhibitions around the world since 2010. Ye Linghan (1985) Since graduating from China Academy of Art in 2009 where he studied traditional mural painting and drawing, Ye lived and worked in Shanghai and recently moved to Beijing. In the few short years since graduation, he has exhibited extensively in China and overseas, including MOCA SHanghai and Ben Brown Fine Arts, London.
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