Born in Shanghai in 1980.
He studied at the China Fine Art Academy Institute.
Yang Yongliang is a resident of Shanghai, China who depends heavily on his a camera and a laptop computer to make his art. Using only these tools—and a knowledge of traditional Chinese painting traditions – Yang Yongliang invents urban scenes that depict skyscrapers under construction, freeway systems, electrical power plants, and bustling urban corridors.
His compositions starkly reveal the impacts of technological progress that China has undergone over past decades.
His work has been exhibited internationally at museums and biennials, such as Thessaloniki Biennale in Greece (2009), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2012), National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (2012), Moscow Biennale (2013), Metropolitan Museum of Art New York (2013), Daegu Photo Biennale in Korea (2014), Singapore ArtScience Museum (2014), Modern Art Museum Paris (2015), Kunst und Kultur in Neuried e.V (2015), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (2015), Somerest House London (2016, 2013), Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney (2016, 2011); collected by more than 20 public institutes including the British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, San Francisco Asian Art Museum and etc.
Yang currently lives and works between New York and Shanghai.
Yongliang is among a generation of young artists who came of age after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and therefore embraces a level of artistic freedom that is not common among past generations of Chinese artists. Yang Yongliang combines ancient Chinese art techniques, such as shui mo painting and calligraphy, with photographic elements of modern urban Shanghai, arranged in the traditional composition of Chinese landscape, to produce artworks with a perfect balance between fragility and danger, beauty and cruelty.
