Drawing its roots from traditional Chinese painting, Yang Yongliang's art subverts its scenery to transpose them to the Anthropocene era. At first, the eye thinks it sees mountains from the Song dynasty, but it discovers that a tangle of skyscrapers has replaced the rocks, and that forests of cranes and electrical pylons cling to their slopes. Yang Yongliang lives between Shanghai and New York, adopting the codes of shanshui – “landscape,” “mountain and water” – a counterpoint to rebuilding a world whose norm is now rampant urbanization and industrialization. Metaphors for modern life, his black and white digital photographs subtly reveal a world in decline, much like his 2007 installation, Cigarette Ash Landscape, highly topical.
By Sophie Reyssat