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Lot Essay
“Beginning with ‘the Great Landscapes', using reconstructed lands to cross sections like from a textbook, I use my own way to examine the cacophony of contemporary culture, and shed light on the state of Man’s lives and the path of civilisations.”" – SHANG YANG
Under Yang’s brushstrokes, one often sees his rendition of natural landscapes: this is not scenery that people might see with their naked eyes, but a deconstructed and abstract take on the natural world. In this H Land , completed in 2000, the natural landscape has been distilled into abstract shapes, with two stone-coloured triangles that evoke the hills atop the Gobi plateaus, standing tall on the light brown backdrop which brings to mind an endless desert. Yang eschews the pursuit of realism, and instead uses minimalist shapes, loose brushstrokes, and restrained colours to realise a landscape that is filled with uncertainty. H Land is thus but a placeholder – it can be an expansive yellow plateau that inspired Yang, as well as a scene of crumbling fragments in the midst of modern society.
Yang’s drawing harkens back to ancient Chinese watercolours, in that he breaks down the landscape and reconstructs with abstract elements. This approach of sketching modern subjects with traditional methods gives his works an Oriental aura, and makes the boundless landscape seem even more desolate yet majestic. The broken texture on the canvas, created by the fusion of oil and acrylic, further creates a unique visual language; the speckled and peeling surface almost creates its own narrative, telling tales of nature’s attrition and erosion, becoming testaments to the passage of time. To Yang, nature is a vessel for life, one that changes and develops with human society. From the vastness of creation, he selects a unique vignette in this landscape, and uses it to reveal to the world the state of himself, mother nature, and human culture.
Under Yang’s brushstrokes, one often sees his rendition of natural landscapes: this is not scenery that people might see with their naked eyes, but a deconstructed and abstract take on the natural world. In this H Land , completed in 2000, the natural landscape has been distilled into abstract shapes, with two stone-coloured triangles that evoke the hills atop the Gobi plateaus, standing tall on the light brown backdrop which brings to mind an endless desert. Yang eschews the pursuit of realism, and instead uses minimalist shapes, loose brushstrokes, and restrained colours to realise a landscape that is filled with uncertainty. H Land is thus but a placeholder – it can be an expansive yellow plateau that inspired Yang, as well as a scene of crumbling fragments in the midst of modern society.
Yang’s drawing harkens back to ancient Chinese watercolours, in that he breaks down the landscape and reconstructs with abstract elements. This approach of sketching modern subjects with traditional methods gives his works an Oriental aura, and makes the boundless landscape seem even more desolate yet majestic. The broken texture on the canvas, created by the fusion of oil and acrylic, further creates a unique visual language; the speckled and peeling surface almost creates its own narrative, telling tales of nature’s attrition and erosion, becoming testaments to the passage of time. To Yang, nature is a vessel for life, one that changes and develops with human society. From the vastness of creation, he selects a unique vignette in this landscape, and uses it to reveal to the world the state of himself, mother nature, and human culture.