Yang Yongliang 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. 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. In the video of his artwork, all of the video footage is taken with bird’s-eye view of the various places he has been to. During the filming process, he discovered this point of view produces an unusual experience. The viewer can step back and look at the familiar places with a completely objective view.
This picture is imitating the old traditional Chinese landscape painting, what we called Shan Shui. Like a typical Shan Shui painting, there are mainly mountains in the painting. It is in black and white color; also, it is compose in wide and horizon. We can also see there are many red stamps sealed on the painting. These all are the features that show the style of Chinese painting a lot. When we look closer, the audiences will discover that the jagged surface of the rocky mountains are actually composed of densely-stacked concrete buildings. Besides, in the foot of the mountain, there are some cranes. Also, it uses a lot of blank especially and this shows a great mood and emulate Chinese-style vintage.
For the medium, indeed it is a collage of digital pictures (it actually has another version of this artwork which is a video of the same painting). The artist captured many skylines of the city, the cranes and some people. He made it as a collage and also made it like a traditional Chinese painting.
As we can see that the middle mountain of the picture has the darkest color while the back of the picture is gradually changes to lighter. Indeed, the artist used a big contrast between light and shadow to show the relationship of the distance between all these layers. Light is representing far while dark is representing the front side. By this skill, we can tell that the artist had used the concept of aerial perspective which has combined the element of perspective from western painting. At the same time he had also used the cavalier perspective in the whole composition which is very common in traditional Chinese painting.
In Yang’s opinion, « Landscape » is representing his education and foundations of traditional culture since childhood; but also a fading art form in the moving-on wheel of times. Hence, he transplants modern art into ancient “Landscape” and then take a turn thoroughly from transcendental “Landscape” for ancients to mundanely and criticism “Landscape”. As Yang’s words goes, “Ancients use “Landscape” to express their feelings and praise the mighty of nature; on the other hand, I use “Landscape” to criticize reality.” As China’s urbanization continues to develop at record breaking speeds, artists like Yang Yongliang are transforming the techniques and software used to interpret older forms of China. Yongliang creates his photo-collage landscapes with an amazing impact. Creating beautiful photorealistic environments, using a collection of photographs of skyscrapers and other manmade structures, his stark juxtaposition of cities v.s. nature is a brilliantly clever approach. The work is trying to seek harmony between two contrary subjects. On one hand, this kind of thinking stems from traditional Chinese philosophy, but also relates to the fact that we live our lives in a world which is full of conflicts. As the results, it is an ironic depiction where the nature that once served as a way for ancient poets to find inner peace is supplanted with the modern city life and building.
People might think it is a weird match of contemporary art and Chinese traditional art, but Yongliang did a perfect mixture of it. As we see in the video, the rich layers 2D skyscrapers make an interesting visual effect – imaginary and innovative. Yang uses digital image to create contemporary landscape artworks exactly presents the concept of Shan Shui. Although he uses the form of tradition landscapes, he chooses contemporary urban image as content to imitated “Landscape” which piling up with artificial sceneries of tall buildings, but not natural landscapes. This deviation of ancient and modern, form and content are the offbeat portrayals of “Mountain in eyes, not in mind”. Thus, Yang’s work shows a huge and shaking momentum.
As an artist stepped in Chinese tradition, culture, and art, his work provides a new way to represent ancient techniques in the face of these older art forms becoming obsolete. The way he try to produce the visual effect is very clever. He used many layers of flat building instead of normal photo or 3D images to pretend the style of old Chinese painting. And I think it is really successful because it is one of the reason this art work look very harmony and integration.
Also another reason is that he used black and white colour in the animation and the picture he create. At the same time the size of the work are mostly wide and horizontal. He imitates the style of traditional Chinese art style on purpose in different ways.
On the other hand I appreciate the message behind his work is to present the message that Chinese should remember to be proud of a Chinese but at the same time do not be sink into the past and history. There is much urbanization inside china, it brings a lot of improvement to the people and the country but at the same time many problems like pollution. He turns photography documenting China’s rapidly-changing landscape into animated takes on classic Chinese painting and it make refection on modern China.
http://thecreatorsproject.com/blog/9-chinese-artists-who-give-tradition-a-facelift-with-shiny-new-technology#ooid=04NW5oNTqM53Lo9MonvcBd-cm7NzZusC