YANG YONG
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
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INTRODUCTION
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C.V.
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WORKS
Cruel of Youth-Night...
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Orectic Hotel
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
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INTRODUCTION
“Women are born to be art,” Yang Yong from Shenzen seems to say. The quickly growing metropolis near Hong Kong offers everything that makes for a modern, swank life in breathtaking artificiality, but for all that – or exactly because of it – every corner reveals gaping holes of paralyzing boredom, where the protagonists of Chinese photography’s picture stories cower. Yang Yong’s models are young women from the province, friends of the photographer who often finance their existence through prostitution, with whom he spins a kind of high-gloss romance of his impressions of loneliness. The products are series such as Diary of a Dreadful Youth (2001), a portrayal of a typical day in the “new urban life,” that convey the image of tritesse in luxury and give an account of the conflict between predetermined social roles and the vacuum of a metropolis culture molded by the West.
Yang Yong (*1975 in Sichuan) initially studied oil painting before making an international name for himself in photography in exhibitions at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof and the at Venice Biennial. He makes no secret of his admiration of women, to whom he dedicated his 1999 solo exhibition Women are Beautiful Always and Forever. Of all of the socio-political intimations, one is unavoidable; these images focus on the beauty that becomes even more poignant when amplified by sorrow. Yang intones a universal melody of loneliness and need of protection that wistfully fades away and yet always has an effect – on all cultures equally.
Dr. Boris von Brauchitsch
